Episode 10 - Art, ADHD and Being Fearless
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:01] LA: Welcome to the Positively Charged Podcast. I'm a certified coach who's innately curious and loves discussing life, work, family, and everything in between. My guests and I are sharing how we step into our power and live a positively charged life. Let's dive in.
[EPISODE]
[00:00:15] LA: Welcome, welcome to another episode of Positively Charged, with myself, Lindsay. I am joined by a wonderful guest, Sasha. I'm going to let her tell her story and everything about her. But I was so grateful to meet her at a modeling gig of all things, where we were both beautiful real models for Lost In Layers, another wonderful Lindsay. Maybe we'll get Lindsay on the podcast now that I –
[00:00:38] SW: She’d be an awesome guest.
[00:00:38] LA: Yeah. I’m sure she’ll say yes. Lindsay, you’ll have to say yes. So Sasha and I have only known each other for a short period of time. But I think you’re the coolest, and I cannot wait to hear more about your story, so thank you.
[00:00:51] SW: I’m so excited to be here. This is super cool.
[00:00:53] LA: Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much.
[00:00:54] SW: It’s nice to know like real people who are doing this now and talking to other real people.
[00:00:59] LA: Yeah. It’s the whole point.
[00:01:00] SW: Not just someone you don't know.
[00:01:01] LA: Yeah. It's totally the whole point. Like I say to all of my guests, like all the people that I connect with have a beautiful story to share and are really interesting and have transformative unique genius within them. That might be my superpower. I don't know. I'm still working out my own superpower. But I see that in people really easily. That's exactly why you're here is because of your unique genius and beautiful powers. So just start off, Sasha, by telling us a bit about yourself and why you're here, why Positively Charged? Why did you show up here today?
[00:01:34] SW: Same thing, like when I met you at the modeling gig. I just felt like we all just kind of bonded like we've known each other forever, and I just met you. You already knew Lindsay from Lost In Layers. It was just so much fun. We follow each other and –
[00:01:48] LA: I had just bought something from you like your arts. And how that was funny too. Like, yeah, I just had purchased three beautiful art pieces from you. Then we showed up at the same modeling gig.
[00:01:58] SW: Yeah, small world.
[00:01:59] LA: Yeah, small world. So tell us about your art because that is like amazing stuff that you do.
[00:02:05] SW: Yeah. So that started 2018. We got pregnant, and then I ended up having a miscarriage, and I needed something just to distract me. It ended up being kind of like meditation, my own kind of version of art therapy. I actually started in alcohol ink and loved it and decided, “Hey, I’ll post things on Instagram.” I had like maybe, I don't know, 150 followers at that time. Just like people I knew from Facebook or school or something like that. People were like, “Can I buy this?” I thought, “Well, I guess so.” Imposter syndrome, especially when you start out, you're like, “You want to pay me for this? You want to pay me for my grief that I'm putting onto paper, sure.”
It kind of just started like that, and I got into markets and kept growing, and it was probably the year my daughter was born. So 2020, that summer is when I got exclusively into resin. It just kind of took off, especially once I got into the ocean art and the abstract art. I can't sit still and I can't just commit to one thing, so I'm constantly trying different ways of using my art and using resin. Some of them work out. Some of them don't, but the ones that do work out well. So I just keep growing my business. I have a website and everything.
[00:03:22] LA: How many followers do you have now?
[00:03:24] SW: Just over 4,100.
[00:03:26] LA: My gosh. You went from just doing it out of grief and dealing with something difficult to –
[00:03:32] SW: It's a thing.
[00:03:33] LA: It's a thing.
[00:03:33] SW: It’s legit.
[00:03:34] LA: It’s a legit thing that –
[00:03:35] SW: Too legit to quit now.
[00:03:36] LA: Too legit to quit. You can't quit. People will be mad. People will actually be banging down your door looking for it.
[00:03:42] SW: Yes, exactly. It’s not what I expected at all. It was literally just something for me to do to feel good. I was going through a tough time. I didn't know how to process, and this helped me. This just stayed with me.
[00:03:56] LA: Or therapy.
[00:03:57] SW: Now, I feel like I can’t not do it.
[00:04:02] LA: Don't mind Bella. Yeah. It’s stunning what you do, and some of the most beautiful things are born from grief and born from the shittiest things in life.
[00:04:15] SW: Yeah.
[00:04:15] LA: I'm personally grateful. I've enjoyed your art. I've procured it for myself. What about it? Like what about what you create gives you freedom and space?
[00:04:28] SW: Oh, man. I like to be in control. I have a lot of issues in my life and history with feeling controlled, and I really don't like that. So I'm one of those people that you tell me to do something, I'm going to probably do the opposite. I'm not very good with authority. I'm not very good with strict rules, unless I create them for myself.
With my art, because it's a fluid medium, I have to let go of that control. So it's almost like self-therapy again. I can't control how the resin moves all the time. I can a little bit with like heat and placement and some of my tools that I use, but it's really kind of out of my hands. So I can plan and plan and plan. But usually, my best pieces come from times when I didn't plan at all. I just let go. I just let things flow. It's definitely a practice.
[00:05:21] LA: Yeah, totally a practice. How do you get into that state? How do you let yourself let go?
[00:05:29] SW: Some days I can't. Yeah. Some days, I have a list of things I need to do and orders I need to work on, and I'm just like, “I just can't today.” I don't want to force it, and I don't want to be cliché, like the cliché artist who can't rush art. But you really can't. A lot of my things, I need to have inspiration for them. If I'm not feeling it, or if I'm not in a good headspace, I'm not going to waste my products. I'm not going to put something out there that doesn't fully reflect who I am and it comes from my heart because to me, that's not what I represent. I don't want my final project for the client to be something that isn't me.
So, yeah, there's days I can't. But the days that I'm into it, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to a lot of murder podcasts and music. I love music. I play all sorts of things, and it just gets me in the zone. Once I'm working on something and working on something I really love, I lose track of time.
[00:06:27] LA: What else do you do to soothe yourself and to live into your power?
[00:06:34] SW: Yoga.
[00:06:35] LA: Tell us about that.
[00:06:36] SW: I did my training in 2018, kind of the summer of 2018. Same thing, I was just kind of looking for something that I could do that made me feel good, but I could also use my superpower. What I think my superpower is is helping people. I had got halfway through my psychology degree way back when fresh out of high school and stuff and went to college. Then life kind of happened, and things had to be put on hold for some reasons. My dad got really sick, and I couldn't quite juggle it all. Mentally, I just couldn't do full-time school, part-time job, and my dad being ill, living away from home. I couldn't do it all. So I stopped.
Flash forward, however, many years later, and I still don't have that degree. So I thought, “Okay. Well, how can I use this background I have in psychology and do something that will still help people that I'll enjoy?” So I turned to yoga. I was already practicing. I've been practicing for years and thought it would be kind of a good marriage of like mental health and physical health. Yeah, I did my training. I loved it and then just recently started teaching this year.
[00:07:45] LA: Oh, my goodness. I'm so curious about your training. We were just chatting about it before all my guests. I'm like, “Okay, we need to hit record. We need to hit record.” But in regards to your training, like what was the transformative part of that? How did you transform through your yoga training?
[00:08:02] SW: Oh, my goodness. I have used that word so many times when I've talked about my training. I think it taught me at least how I'm so much more capable than I give myself credit for. Yoga training is hard.
[00:08:15] LA: In other words –
[00:08:15] SW: It's another real fucking hard. I hope I can swear.
[00:08:18] LA: Yeah, we can swear it. It is so –
[00:08:19] SW: I swear like a sailor.
[00:08:20] LA: It is so fucking hard, for all of you listening.
[00:08:21] SW: It’s so hard. Yoga training is so hard because it's – I almost want to slap the people who are like, “Oh, my gosh. It was so easy. It's just stretching.” I know you have not been to real yoga. You have not experienced a very good class or a good teacher, if that's what you think you'll get. There’s so much more to it. I remember a part of our training. We had to stand in Tadasana, which is Mountain Pose. So you're basically – For those who don't know Yoga very much, you're standing still, just standing upright. There's a lot of technique that goes to that pose to make it done correct, and we stood there for two and a half hours. Every time someone moved, he added five minutes to our time, so our trainer. It was a lesson in discipline and meditation, and there were people who started to cry. There's one girl who started to get sick. There are people who left the room.
But, yes, I stood there for the full two and a half hours. To me, it was like an out-of-body experience. I'm not very woo woo. I’m not very like crunchy granola. But to me, it was like I left my body, and I was able to stand there and do it for two and a half hours. So it was transformative in so many ways. Physically, I felt stronger and healthier and mentally. The mental and psychological market leaves on you and in a good way for me. It was definitely transformative. Definitely. I felt exactly the same way when I did my training. It was – I did my 200-hour in 2018 as well. Yeah, I think it was. Why do I say that like we’ve talked about this before? 2018 or 2019. A few years ago anyway and same thing. It was so interesting to be put in a situation where you think you know everything. So that's how I felt.
I went to yoga teacher training thinking, “Okay, I practice yoga? I'm sure I could teach yoga. I practiced it, been practicing for 10 years or whatever it was. Sure, I could do it. This is just like semantics. Oh, it was not. It was not semantics. I've never felt less confident to teach than after my yoga teacher trained me. I felt that was a good thing. It really made me look in the mirror in a way that I never had before, and it was difficult physically as well. I kind of chalked it up to like I've been practicing for a while. I can name most poses in English at least and probably a handful of them in Sanskrit as well. I'm interested in yoga philosophy, like I like that. So I'm sure that'll be a breeze. Every day, I learned something. I unlearned a whole slew of other things. It was like this in and out, in and out of information. Wow, I was shooketh. I was shooketh. It was so intense and, like you say, physically and mentally.
The physical side was you know the hardest part for me was all the sitting. I'm kind of slouching right now. I need to like get my shit together. But the sitting and just the discipline to sit quietly, listen to the teaching, just meditation. Just the sitting and stillness was told difficult for me.
[00:11:43] LA: Most people I think struggle with that. Even with meditation, like in classes I've been teaching so far, I've been letting people know that the point of meditation isn't to not think. It's to allow the thoughts to come in, acknowledge them without judgment, and let them float on by. So I like to describe it as clouds coming into your vision. They just let it float. Just let it float away. Don't try and take it down. Don't try and swat it away. Just let it float on by. So you're just acknowledging you can sit with the thoughts that you have without judging yourself.
[00:12:16] SW: Absolutely.
[00:12:17] LA: And just letting it happen.
[00:12:19] SW: Yeah. Like that stillness of watching the floating, as opposed to gripping to the flow, to the cloud. Because we all want to control everything. We want to fix everything. We always go, go go, and it's hard in like 2022 to just be. I struggle with it every day, and I’ve done the training.
[00:12:37] LA: I struggle with it, and I've done the training, and the same reality is like I think I know what I think I know I don't know. What I need to learn, I already know. There’s just this –
[00:12:51] SW: Yeah. It’s a constant battle.
[00:12:52] LA: Yes, it's a constant battle, which it’s why I do the practice too is just because that battle is fulfilling, like when you can move through. For me, I'm doing a lot of chatting, but I'd love to hear what you think, Sasha. But when you're moving through that battle, there's something fulfilling that comes out of it. There's like a new knowing or a new transformation that comes out of it for me.
[00:13:12] SW: Yeah. It lays everything bare. You can't hide your skeletons anymore when you have to sit with it. They're right there in front of you. It’s definitely eye-opening. I just think it's amazing. I think yoga is so good and so beneficial to almost everybody, if you put in the time to actually learn and do the practice.
[00:13:33] LA: I've never met someone who said, “I regret this. Like I regret going to yoga. I regret doing the poses. I regret signing up for this class or whatever.” I've never heard that. The only, air quotes, rejection I've seen of yoga is the fear of being with your shit, the fear of sitting with your shit. I'm just about done this book called Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty.
[00:13:57] SW: That’s on my list.
[00:13:58] LA: Yeah, it's good. It's so good and a lot of what he talks about. I’m like so close to being done. I think I'm on like the last chapter. I'm on Audible. I’m listening to it. I just need to get done. But he talks a lot about stillness and being with your thoughts in order to conquer the busyness and craziness of life, where I saw meditation especially as something to like block out the busyness of life, when really it's about accepting the busyness of life, as opposed to blocking.
That for me was a huge learning and transformation in my training. Like still that practice to this day. Even to my kid or my kids, I say like, “Be with what you're doing. Be with what you're experiencing,” as opposed to, “I hate that person. I hate this. I'm frustrated by this.” Be with it. Be with it.
[00:14:50] SW: Yeah, you're allowed to feel those things. Just know how to process and handle them. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about yoga, especially kind of in the Western world, that the goal is to be the best at each pose. Do the highest level of each pose. It's very competitive, I find, in Western cultures.
With my teaching, I try to let people know that this is not a competition. I'm a yoga teacher. I can't do all the poses. There are some things I'm just not built to do. There are some things that are very difficult for me, and I'm always going to have to work at. Your practice is your practice. It's not a competition with other people. I like to tell people that the point of yoga is not to master the poses, but it's to master yourself and try to make it more attainable for a lot of people.
[00:15:41] LA: Yeah, absolutely. Yoga is for everyone. That's where this tangent went on. You said that. Yoga is for everybody, and yoga is more than stretching. It's more than doing a myriad of poses. It really is about transforming the self, transforming the mind, being with the self, being with the mind. I love what you said because I say that to my students when I teach barely ever. I always –
[00:16:06] SW: But you will.
[00:16:07] LA: Yeah. But I will. But I will. During my 300-hour right now, I'm going to teach. I promise. I promise self, self. But there's this permission slip of you're meant for this. There's no prerequisite. There's no arrival to yoga. There's no arrival to being with yourself. You already are with yourself. I think that's just such a beautiful permission slip to give people. So all y'all listening who’ve never been, come to your class. Can you tell us a bit about where you're teaching and what you're teaching?
[00:16:39] SW: Yeah. I am teaching at a studio in Cochran, just a little studio that actually just opened. So I'm one of the first teachers there, and I get to teach a Yin class every Thursday night at 7:30. Then I also got hired on to work at a gym here in Calgary, and they're developing an actual hot yoga studio room. So they're going to be expanding their class offerings and everything, and I'm hoping to get trained in aerial yoga. So there's going to be lots of fun things. I don't quite have a full schedule there yet. Lots of opportunity for growth. I'm just really excited to finally get to teach at places that I kind of feel at home at.
[00:17:18] LA: Yeah, definitely. Where I'm curious is why now, why teaching now.
[00:17:22] SW: Oh, my gosh. 2022 came around, and the end of 2021 sucked. We had another miscarriage, and I was like, “Fuck it. I'm going to start to do something for me.” The reason why it took me so long to get to that point is I was finishing my training, and then we were pregnant with the first baby, which I ended up losing. It just took my body a long time to heal, so I just didn't feel ready mentally to teach. Then I had our daughter. So then I’ve been busy with her, and then COVID hit. So studio shut down, and it just never felt like the right time. Then 2022 started, and I thought, “I have a daughter now. I have an example I want to set. I don't want to do things and not finish them.” So that's why I thought I'm just going to start teaching. I'm just going to email studios and say, “Hey, I'm here. Do you like me?”
[00:18:17] LA: Yes, I do like you and, yes, I would like you to teach with me.
[00:18:20] SW: Luckily, the two places that I auditioned for, I got offers.
[00:18:24] LA: Yes, this kind of felt like the right time.
[00:18:27] SW: It was divine. Yeah.
[00:18:28] LA: Yeah. Meant to be. Meant to be for sure. It’s funny how that happens because I get asked that a lot. So I asked you. It's like, “Well, why don't you teach?” I could say the same answer. It's just life happened, and then COVID happened. That combination of life happened and then COVID happened has kept me from getting into it, but I will teach. I'm pointing at you, microphone. I will teach. I do also believe that the story you have to share now is what your students need. When you share your story in a divine timing, it just impacts the world in such a beautiful way. So it's meant to be, in other words. It's amazing.
[00:19:10] SW: Let's hope.
[00:19:11] LA: Let's hope. Yeah, it is meant to be. Then are you also teaching on your own platform like Fearless Mind Yoga? What is that and what is –
[00:19:20] SW: Yeah. So that’s how I started. I found a studio that I could just rent per class. A good way to kind of get my feet wet. It was fun because I could just create my own classes. If I made mistakes, that's okay. Everyone knew I was a new teacher. It just got to the point where it was a lot of work to try and get people on their mats, and I was paying for the room. So I thought, “Well, I've done a few classes. I'll just start applying places.” I wasn't expecting at all to get good responses or job offers. But it just kind of happened that way, so I'm just rolling with it. Maybe down the road when I have a bit more of a following, I can offer more private stuff. I would love to do like private one-on-one classes that are really tailored to the client. Part of also my new transformation for 2022 is I want to finish my degree. So hopefully, that's actually starting in May.
[00:20:19] LA: Oh, my goodness. Congratulations. Yes.
[00:20:22] SW: We’ve really talked about it.
[00:20:23] LA: No.
[00:20:24] SW: It’s just happening, and I'm kind of kind of keeping it to myself, just in case I fail. But I'm hoping I don't.
[00:20:29] LA: I'm very curious about that.
[00:20:31] SW: I have a daughter, and I don't want one day her to be like, “Mom, why didn't you finish your degree?” I don't have a good enough answer for it. So another part of 2022 where I'm like, “Fuck it. I'm just going to do it.” So, yeah, I want to finish my degree, and my kind of long term goal, I guess, is to create some sort of marriage, again, of psychology and counseling therapy with yoga.
There's actually not a whole lot out there married together. There’s things like equine therapy, where mental health and psychology is paired with working with horses. Why not something where you're moving your body? I know how therapeutic yoga can be for the mind. So if I have the background as well, with psychology and pair that up with somebody who wants to be healthier and wants to get moving but also wants that counseling side, I think that would be amazing, especially since there really isn't a whole lot of options out there for that.
[00:21:32] LA: Yeah. That's super interesting. I would be down for that. If there's anyone out there who does that, you should reach out. But that is truly cool. It's a cool marriage, as you said, and I kind of feel like that was coaching too. I’m like, “How could I connect coaching and yoga?” It's because it is so transformative. It really is. Being in the body is something that we are conditioned to push away. Especially women, I find that avoidance creates a mental health spiral, where if we can be in our bodies and be with the shit that is inside of us, then we can feel it and fix it. We can actually do something about it, as opposed to having this swirling – I’m doing vortex hand right now.
[00:22:19] SW: Yes. Spiral into the abyss of depression and anxiety.
[00:22:23] LA: Yes, and anxiety and all the things. Yeah, that is so beautiful.
[00:22:27] SW: I've been in a yoga class and finished class, and I'm lying there at the end of class at Savasana, and I'm crying.
[00:22:34] LA: Why are you crying? What happened?
[00:22:36] SW: I’m like, “What the fuck is this sorcery?” That if you could harness that, if you were able to work with a client and get into like a big hip opening position, where a lot of stuff can come up, a lot of trauma can come up with any kind of opening pose. If you could get them there and work with it with talk therapy as well, I just think that'd be so beneficial for so many people if they're willing to give it a chance.
[00:23:01] LA: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:02] SW: We'll see. We'll do it one day.
[00:23:04] LA: Yeah. When you do it because you're a doer girl.
[00:23:07] SW: That's what I'm getting.
[00:23:09] LA: What is your plan in the sense of school? Are you going to go part-time, full-time? How long is it going to take for you to get your degree?
[00:23:16] SW: I’ll be doing it online, and three courses is considered full-time online. Laying myself bare here a little bit, I've tried online, and I have given up. I have failed. I have come up with all the excuses in the book to not finish. But now, I'm like, “I need to finish this,” because I want to one day say to Emory, my daughter, and be like, “Yeah, I had you. I was running an art business, I was working, I was teaching yoga, and I went to school, and I finished it.” You can do anything. There's nobody telling you can't. You're the only person in your way. So I'm trying to get out of my own way.
[00:23:51] LA: Right. Yeah. You’re doing it. You're doing it. I think that's a beautiful lesson or advice is like get out of your own way because you're only in a race with yourself.
[00:24:03] SW: Yeah, the self-sabotage is strong. Yeah.
[00:24:07] LA: So where do you think that comes from for you?
[00:24:09] SW: Oh, my gosh. I have no idea. I honestly don't know. I mean, I grew up with parents who encouraged me to do things, so I don't know why I get in my head. I think a lot of it is imposter syndrome. I don't think I'm worthy enough to do something, or even like calling myself an artist is a huge struggle for me. Because it's so personal I think, and art is really in the eye of the beholder. So not everyone's going to love what I do, and that's okay. But for me, I don't think I'm good enough for a lot of things, or it couldn't be better. Comparison is the thief of joy, right?
[00:24:47] LA: Absolutely.
[00:24:47] SW: So I’m like. “I’m not as good as this person, or I could be doing this better.” But that's all – Nobody's telling me this. It's just me. It's all in my head. It's the conversations that I'm having with myself that are stopping me from doing things. So therapy, people. Therapy is amazing.
[00:25:03] LA: I was just going to say, like what have you done to get out from underneath that imposter syndrome, or what have you done to get out from underneath that kind of crippling fear and –
[00:25:12] SW: Just do it. Like literally, I'm not trying to like rip off Nike by saying, “Just do it.” But that's really it. I just do it. There's a lot of risks I've taken, especially with my art. It can be very scary and painful when it doesn't go right, but at least I've done it. I've put myself out there. I think the last probably three years I've really kind of changed that way, where I just go for it. What's the worst that can happen? I mean, I'm not like trying to fly off a cliff. So it's not like I’m going to fall to my death.
[00:25:45] LA: Right. There's –
[00:25:46] SW: I’m to be okay. Yeah. Therapy, really good friends. But, yeah, a lot of therapy. Books, journaling. A lot of self-exploration, basically.
[00:26:00] LA: That’s totally a lot of self-exploration and yoga training for sure too.
[00:26:05] SW: Yeah. I mean, I still don't have all my shit figured out. No. I'm working on it.
[00:26:09] LA: Do we get there? Is that –
[00:26:10] SW: No.
[00:26:10] LA: Is there a destination of figuring our shit out? Because if anyone's been there, they need to hit me up because I'm still also figuring my shit out. It is crippling to feel unworthy of what you desire in life, and that's a lot of my clients come to me in that exact position, where it's like, “I know what I want. I just can't get it.” Or, “I know what I want, but I don't see how I can get it.” Everyone has a different formula, what works for them to actually overcome that. What I just heard you say, Sasha, is that you create a safe container for you to go nuts in. That’s your – There’s something safe about the container you're in, where you can take those risks, where you can stretch further and you can push yourself and know that you're okay. Know that you're not falling off the cliff, as you said.
[00:27:02] SW: That's partially why I called my businesses Fearless Mind Creations and Fearless Mind Yoga. It's not about not being scared of things. It's about being scared and doing it anyway. So that's why I call it fearless mind because we get in our heads, right? You get in your mind. So just be fearless. It doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you do it, even though you're scared.
[00:27:24] LA: Right. Fearless means doing it, even though you're scared. Interesting. It really comes through on your art, obviously. It’s so beautiful, and it really is stunning. The work that you do is just amazing. We'll obviously link it all up in the show notes, so people can go buy it. Go buy it. You're going to want it. We talked about your art. We've talked about yoga. Yeah, you mentioned that you also have a job, like another job.
[00:27:55] SW: I’m a real person.
[00:27:56] LA: A real person job. So can you tell us a bit about your real person job?
[00:27:58] SW: It’s funny because my best friend, she's always like, “Okay. So you're going to work. Is this art? Is this yoga? Like what work?”
[00:28:05] LA: What work?
[00:28:06] SW: When I refer to work, it’s my work work. It’s my grownup person job. So I caption for live TV. What that means is I watch, let's say, a newscast. I watch it live with my headphones on, and then I have a microphone. As I'm listening to what's happening live on TV, I’m repeating it into the microphone, word for word. I have like codes for punctuation, and I can shorten things slightly, but basically talking like a robot into the microphone. Every time I work, that gets taken into a captioning software that then goes on to the TV screen into those little blocks of captions for the deaf and hard of hearing community or anyone who just wants captions on while they watched TV. But, yeah, it happens all live.
[00:28:49] LA: Amazing. How did you get into this work? Your voice is absolutely buttery, beautiful, so I'm not surprised.
[00:28:56] SW: I needed a job. I was trying to get out of a sales job in the car industry, which as a woman is a whole other ballgame. I actually – I quite enjoyed it, and I did well. But it was just I needed to get out. I found a post for a company in Calgary that was doing in-office training. I applied and got hired. I did the training, and I started with them. Then I was able to find a company that allows me to do it out of my home office, which is amazing. I don't know how I would be able to have children affordably if I couldn't work from home like this.
[00:29:29] LA: Yeah. How many newscasts do you do a day? Is it –
[00:29:33] SW: So I'll work when my husband gets home. We swap on and off of parent duty. I do about an hour and a half to two hours on weekdays and then weekends probably about four and a half to five hours. That may not seem like a lot to people. But when you're talking word for word –
[00:29:48] LA: I was just going to say that. That feels like a lot.
[00:29:51] SW: It's a lot on your voice.
[00:29:54] LA: You have such beautiful flexion in your voice, and somehow you turn off. You turn into robot –
[00:30:02] SW: Kind of. I still sound like me. But my husband, he’s funny. He sometimes will come in and like bring me a tea or a coffee or wine, depending on what the news it. But lately, it's a lot of wine.
[00:30:13] LA: News is hard right now.
[00:30:14] SW: Sometimes, he just listens. He's like, “It sounds so weird,” because I have to put in all the commas and all the periods. Any sound explainers like laughter or like probably it’s bombs going off or sirens with everything happening in Ukraine and stuff like that. It can be a bit robotic because you need the software to understand what you're saying. So you have to be very articulate.
[00:30:38] LA: Yes, like really clear.
[00:30:39] SW: Really get to the point with everything that you say. Or else you're going to get 'gobbledegooky'. It’s going to be like that. It's not going to recognize even a simple word because you're not saying it as clear as you could.
[00:30:51] LA: Wow. That's a lot of listening. It’s hard for anyone to listen with that much detail. Do you have secret sauce around that? How do you listen so well?
[00:31:03] SW: I have no idea because I also have ADHD. So the fact that I can listen to something well enough to also repeat and basically be talking and listening at the same time. Like there's never a break where you're just listening because you're always re-speaking what you just heard. You’re always a couple seconds what's happening or right behind what's happening. I don't know. It's definitely not for everyone. It's a fun party trick. It’s definitely a cool skill to have.
But I remember the first company I started with. I was in a manager position for a while, and I helped hire people and do some training. There's a reason why you're in training for three months because it's very intensive, and some people just aren't cut out for it. We did have people who joined, and they were okay. But they're like, “Yeah, I'm going to leave. I don't – I can't do this.” With Canada, the standards are very high for captioning, compared to the States. There's a different ratio.
[00:31:56] LA: Like there are some certain amount of errors you can make or whatever.
[00:31:58] SW: Yes. So for Canada, you have to be 97% accurate. The States, I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's not as high. That's why they can get away with a lot of artificial intelligence captioning. It’s not actual real people behind it. So you get some captions that are just terrible, right? Whereas Canada, the rules are a lot stricter. So it's actual people behind that.
The majority of the people who do captioning are called stenographers, like a special – If you watch a courtroom drama, and you see the lady or the man typing away, that's a stenographer. So they go to school for two years for that, whereas voice captioning is – Everyone thinks it's going to kind of take over the captioning world because you don't have to train as long you don't have to go to school. Everything is just kind of moving away from stenography. So, yeah, that's why I thought, “Well, I'll just do the voice training,” because you always are going to need captions, and the AI is not smart enough or strong enough yet to be used fully in Canada.
[00:32:56] LA: Yeah. I was going to say to be fully used to 97%. That’s amazing that you can – I don't think I can do anything 97%. Pretty sure.
[00:33:05] SW: There's definitely days where I'm probably not as good as I need to be. But I'm also human.
[00:33:10] LA: Well, yeah, you're a human being. I bet that's actually not true. I bet you actually do 97% of the time do 97%. I'm sure that's true, and it's a huge skill. Oh, my gosh. That’s –
[00:33:25] SW: Yeah, it's definitely an interesting industry, and broadcasting doesn't stop. So it can be a 24/7 job sometimes.
[00:33:32] LA: Yeah. And you mentioned ADHD. So you also have an ADHD diagnosis.
[00:33:38] SW: I got it, yeah, last year. It's interesting because soon as I started to do more research into it, I realized it's not just for hyper little boys. This can affect young girls and women as well, and it just presents differently. I'm not shy about talking about mental health at all, and I've always kind of been medicated for depression since I was a teenager. When I got my ADHD diagnosis, I thought, “You know what? A lot of what I thought was perhaps depression or anxiety.” It was just a symptom of untreated and misdiagnosed ADHD.
That was kind of like wholly eye-opening. I just became a mom, and I got this diagnosis, and how do I deal with that? How do I process that? Do I still need to be on antidepressants? Am I depressed? Or do I just have ADHD?
[00:34:26] LA: What is true?
[00:34:27] SW: Yeah. Depression seemed like so much of my identity for so long, that I had to be medicated, and I was getting to a point where I was okay with that. Yeah. Then I got that diagnosis, and I started taking medication. I don't take it every day. I take it when I feel like I'm going to have a busy day, and I need to get things done because it helps me stay on task and to complete tasks. That’s been an exploration because now I'm thinking, “Okay, can I wean off of my antidepressants, now that I have the ADHD medication to kind of work in conjunction with that?” So, yeah, that's something I'm always exploring and is forever evolving because I'm figuring out like what’s the real issue here, and what's the best form of treatment, course of action.
[00:35:13] LA: Yeah, absolutely. What made you kind of seek this out at all? What were the behaviors that you were seeing that made you want to explore further?
[00:35:23] SW: Yeah. For me, the biggest thing is, especially I noticed it, because I have my art business. It’s just me. I do all the things. So I will just have days where I just couldn't get it done, and then I'd start to feel bad because my deadlines keep growing and growing. I don't want people to be waiting around forever for their pieces. So that was starting to really bother me. Yeah, just a lot of kind of red flags going off in my brain that I felt like I couldn't control. Just a lot of the symptoms that I was reading about online and talking with my own therapist. It just sounded like me. I did the screening, and she's like, “Yeah, I would definitely say you have ADHD.”
I'm not the hyperactive type. I'm a little bit of the impulsive type, and there's a whole like diagram about it. But a lot of mine is like executive function issues and time management, so with like therapy and – Meditation actually helps a lot with ADHD and journaling and making sure I write lots of notes. Use my planners, my agendas to keep myself on task and things. It helps a lot. Then the medication is just kind of like icing on the cake.
[00:36:31] LA: Yeah. What I just heard you say is you sensed that something was awry and looked into it, and all these markers kind of lined up. There’s a huge problem with under diagnosis of this in women and girls.
[00:36:48] SW: Huge. Huge. And doesn’t present the same in women. Yeah. It gets missed a lot, unfortunately. So I’m happy to talk about anything that I've gone through to try and help others.
[00:37:01] LA: Totally. I was just going to say, we are talking about this, and this is going to help somebody. There's something –
[00:37:08] SW: Yeah, hopefully.
[00:37:08] LA: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I've met lots of women around our age who have been diagnosed later in life, and it's the same kind of rhetoric of like, “I probably have had this for way longer and has been kind of under looked at.” I think also there's something about the markers that are more acceptable in girls and women that are not as acceptable in men, where a man has lower executive function. That's a problem. Where a woman has lower executive function, not a problem. It's just built in this patriarchy of bullshit that we already have to deal with.
One thing that I'll just say is that if you think that you have, listener, something going on, ask your doctor, ask your therapist, get the support you need, and be your own health advocate.
[00:37:59] SW: You do. I would not have got diagnosed if I hadn't done my research first. I luckily went to a young doctor, probably also in his 30s. I just felt like he was more open and accepting to it. He did ask me, when I was a child, if I had any of kind of the symptoms of ADHD. Looking back on it, like when I fully got the diagnosis, I went home, and I cried because so many things made sense. I thought there are things wrong with me, and that was just who I was. It was just my personality, and I was just super flawed.
But, no, it was my brain just works differently, and like my parents never recognized it. I haven't even talked to my mom about it because she’d probably be like, “You don't have ADHD.” But I was high-achieving. I’d sit still. I wasn't constantly interrupting people in conversation, so there's no way they would have thought that.
[00:38:52] LA: Those are the markers that little boys had. So, of course, they wouldn't. Of course, they wouldn't see it, even you. Even it took you till you were an adult being like, “Hmm, I realized that if I want to change something, I need to take it into my own hands and get the information, gain the information in order to change it.”
[00:39:09] SW: Yeah. Part of also, at least my ADHD, for me, is the constant striving for perfection and wanting more and wanting to do all the things and juggle all the balls and wear all the hats and be all the people for everyone in your life. That is one of my symptoms.
[00:39:26] LA: Totally.
[00:39:26] SW: It's one of the big ones for me.
[00:39:28] LA: I would love to hear more about perfectionism and how that impacts your life.
[00:39:35] SW: Fuck that. It can be very, I want to say, toxic. It's not a positive trait to be a perfectionist because I feel like you're not giving yourself the grace to make mistakes. Try things and fail and be like, “Okay. Well, I'll do that differently next time.” With my art, I've learned a lot through what I do because I make mistakes. I'll try something that I see online or on YouTube. I'm like, “Yeah, I'll do that. And I'll spend the money and I'll do it.” I’m like, “I don't like this.” It’s okay to not have to do everything.
So it kind of comes back to yoga and how we're talking about just sitting in stillness. I struggle so hard with just sitting and just not doing, and that's a huge part of ADHD is I can't really sit still for long. I'm not one to really relax. I'm always doing something, even if it's just a chore around the house. So finding the time to just let go and not trying to do everything. It's so exhausting.
[00:40:36] LA: It's exhausting being perfect, girl. Yeah, that's what you're saying is it's fucking so exhausting.
[00:40:41] SW: And perfection is boring. If we were all perfect, the world would be such a boring place. Some people could be a little bit better as human beings.
[00:40:51] LA: Oh, I could think of a couple.
[00:40:52] SW: Yeah. I mean, just a few. Just a few. But perfection is – It’s boring. Flaws in people is what makes them interesting. Yeah, perfection, it can go away.
[00:41:03] LA: Yeah. That sparks the question I just want to ask every single person I meet literally. People walking the dog, and I want to ask them like, “What is your secret sauce? Like what is your superpower? What do you do differently than everyone else, and how does it support where you're at in your life right now?”
[00:41:22] SW: I don't know if I do it differently than everyone else. But I like to think that I'm good with helping people. Almost everyone in my life knows that they can come to me with everything and anything, and I'll be there. I'll support them, and I'll try and help them get through things. I'm not going to solve it for them, but that's not what they want. They just want me to be there. I've always kind of been a mediator as well that people come to, which has been a lot of the reasons why I go to therapy for me. Because I've been dealing with other people's shit for so long that it kind of becomes mine, even though it's not.
I think really for the past three years – Well, I guess almost for now since 2018 when I started Fearless Mind Creations. I would say my secret sauce is just being authentically me. Not everyone's going to like me. I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. I can be okay with that. It's a daily struggle, especially when you're on social media. There's always going to be trolls. There's always going to be someone who doesn't like you. I just have to be like, “Their opinion of me is none of my business. I'm secure in who I am, and I'm strong with my values and my integrity.” Just staying true to me and what I believe in. I think there's not enough of that in the world now.
[00:42:44] LA: I just heard you say that, “My secret sauce is being authentically true to myself and sharing that gift with others.” How does that feel when you hear me say it?
[00:42:56] SW: It's pretty nice.
[00:42:57] LA: Yeah. It is pretty nice.
[00:42:58] SW: I just know it feels – It’s just doesn't feel good when I'm sacrificing my integrity for something or someone. I just feel dirty. So I just know I feel good when I'm just me.
[00:43:11] LA: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:43:12] SW: Yeah. I think all of us, like all of us, feel better when we're just being ourselves. What I'm really noticing and what I think is just truly so beautiful is you are shamelessly sharing what's important to you and how you change the world and how you bring your light to the surface. That is what we need. That is what we need. We need you to do that. We need all of us to do that. That's what creates beautiful life. That's what creates an interesting dialogue. That's what creates so many things that we need in our lives. I'm so grateful that you shared with us, with my listeners.
[00:43:52] SW: Yeah. Great to be here.
[00:43:52] LA: They are so lucky. Before we sign off, so you said Fearless Mind Creations, Fearless Mind Yoga. Is there anywhere else that we can find you? Do you have a website you want to share or –
[00:44:03] SW: Yeah. So I have my art website. It’s fearlessmindcreations.ca. If you look me up on Facebook or Instagram, Fearless Mind Yoga, Fearless Mind Creations. You'll find me there.
[00:44:14] LA: Hear it from me listeners. Go find her because you'll regret not doing it. So go for it. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful.
[00:44:21] SW: So much fun.
[00:44:22] LA: Thank you. Bye-bye.
[OUTRO]
[00:03:08] LA: Thank you for being here with me. If you loved this episode of Positively Charged, please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. If you could benefit from illuminating your own personal power, please contact me to get a free coaching consultation. Stay positively charged, my friends.
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