When you hear the word “wellness” what comes to your mind? Has that definition changed over the years?

In this episode, Nellie climbs through the web of wellness definitions in her own life and what she has discovered through her own walk and through her research and clients over the last 10 plus years.

She walks through the 6 vital areas of wellness and shows how each of them starts in the 6570 days of childhood and sets the tone and direction for everything to come afterward!

About the Host:

Nellie Harden is a wife of 20+ years, mom to 4 teen/tween daughters, dreamer, adventurer, servant, multipreneur, forever student, and a devoted teacher, but her ride-or-die passion is her work as a Family LifeCoach& Mentor. Coming from a career background in marine mammal sciences, behavioral work, and a host of big life experiences, both great and not some not so great, she decided that designing a life of purpose and freedom was how she and her husband, along with their 4 daughters, wanted to live.

Her work and passions exist in the realms of family and parent mentorship because she believes that a family filled with creativity, fun, laughter, challenge, adventure, problem-solving, hugs, good food, and learning can not only change a person’s life but is the best chance at positively changing the world.

She helps families build Self-Led Discipline™& Leadership Into their homes, set their children up for a wildly successful life on their terms, and elevates the family experience with big joy, palpable peace, and everyday growth!

With a lifelong passion and curiosity in thought, choice, behavior, and growth she has found incredible joy in helping families shift perspective, find answers, and a path forward.

(Nellie has been coaching families for over 10 years and has degrees in Biology, Animal Behavior, and Psychology. )

LINKS:

Family Success Vault

https://www.nellieharden.com/vault

Website

https://www.nellieharden.com

Online Community

https://www.facebook.com/groups/the6570project

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/nellieharden/

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/nellie.harden/

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Hello and welcome to the 6570 family project podcast. If you are a parent of a tween teen or somewhere on the way, this is exactly the place for you. This is the playground for parents who want to raise their kids with intention, strength and joy. Come in here all the discussions, get all the tactics and have lots of laughs along the way. We will dive into the real challenges in raising kids today how to show up as parents and teach your kids how to show up as members of the family and individuals of the world. My name is Mellie Hardin, big city girl turn small town sipping iced tea on the front porch mama, who loves igniting transformation in the hearts and minds of families by helping them build selfless discipline and leadership that elevates the family experience. And sets the kids up with a rock solid foundation, they can launch their life on all before they ever leave home. This is the 6570 family project. Let's go

Hello, and welcome to these 6570 Family Project podcast. You guys. My name is Nelly Hardin, and I am your host and today we are talking about something that is very near and dear to my heart. And that has to do with wellness, right. And wellness has played so many different roles in my life. It's looked like so many different things. It's been defined by so many different things. And so the question really is, what does wellness have to do with self led leadership and I teach wellness and part of my family life and leadership coaching for a big reason. And I'm going to kind of step through some of that today. But love like any good thing, there's a backstory here as to why I think this is such a big part of what we're doing with our families today. So let me ask you this, what is your definition of wellness? Right? We hear all these things, we see all these things everywhere. There's you know, an image or a fun saying for everything when it comes to wellness, you see the balanced rocks, you see the meditating, you see the take this do that right? What is your definition of wellness? Well, mine I will tell you in the very early days, it was what is on a label right so I was a Diet Coke versus Coke, right. Big Lay's versus ruffles, right. And I was a kid of the 80s. And so that to me was like oh, well, if I'm eating quote unquote diet something then that means that I am well or I am doing well. Right. And in the nutrition and the wellness game. You guys I had so many lunches of Diet Coke and big Lay's in my past. It's not even funny. I still definitely crave that sometimes even though I know it's no good. No bueno. But I mean even growing up I my parents, Mom, if you're listening to this, I know you're gonna remember this the turkey diet, right? We went through the turkey diet, which was insane. Literally every meal, everything was Turkey, everything. I mean, I can't think of something that we didn't make that didn't start with Turkey. Fill in the blank Turkey, fill in the blank Turkey fill in the blank, right. And so these kind of like fad diets and this idea of you know what to eat and how to be healthy, especially during the 80s and then I was a gymnast. And so there was things that my coaches were telling me things that my other fellow gymnasts were telling me to do. Some of them definitely not healthy, some of them a little bit better, all these things. So wellness looked different for me back then. And then when college started, right, I started experiencing and realizing that it had so much more to do with what you ate. It didn't matter if it had a diet or light label on it per se. It mattered what you ate and I went from an omnivore right with a heavy emphasis on the carnivorous edge. When I was growing up I grew up in Michigan I had a you know big hunting in my family and I had a lot of meat i My favorite thing to eat used to be prime rib. Well I went from that to Halloween night of 1996 to going vegan. And then a couple years after that I went from vegan to ban and I've been staying there since friends so I have I still am a veg head and I have been ever since Halloween of 1996 which is forever ago right? But anyway, when I first went from you know, omnivore and doing all these things to vegan, what did that mean for me then it When I Cheerios like, every day all day, I just ate Cheerios and rice. Well, was that wellness? Of course it wasn't. But I didn't know that then. And then when I went from being a vegan to being a vegetarian, oh, my goodness, the floodgates of cheese just came into my life, and I could not get enough of it for years. I mean, growing up in Michigan, you're right next to Wisconsin. I you know, I have a close a geographic cousin of a cheesehead and I love cheese. I still love cheese to this day, do I have it as much as I did during that time when I first transitioned? No. But that's what it really mattered. I started realizing during that time, what you ate. And then of course, mental wellness really started to play a part in my life through my own experiences, throughout college, and friends that I had, that we're going through experiences as well. And understanding really how mental wellness also affects everything from thinking and feeling and hormones, and even the body physically, and what was it manifesting and happening inside the body? Well, another definition change came after college because I realized or I started adopting, too, and taking that in that wellness equals movement, right? I wasn't on a huge college campus anymore. I wasn't walking around and trying to get from class to class and I actually had a car and so I could drive after that. All of that. And so, I mean, you should have seen me I got married when I was 22. Man Oh, man, was I running for my wedding? Right? I was like, I am gonna fit into that dress. I'm gonna look good in that dress. And I did. But really wellness took on looking like movement then Right? So another definition changed or came. Then you guys after my wedding, it was all scrubs and Mexican after that. And, uh, back to my diet coke and big blaze life, right. And all of that was just kind of happening and I then started having babies. I swear my first baby. Skylar might oldest you guys have heard from before. Her entire pregnancy was basically fueled by Portillo's cheese fries and chocolate malts. And I had, I went through a heavy running phase after that. And again, movement. So I was recycling all these old ideas of what wellness was, right? Well, in 2008, we just moved into a brand new house, and I didn't know the neighbors. So this was December of 2008. We had just moved in end of October, we have three little babies. And so you know, life was hectic. And I didn't know many neighbors or anything. My husband comes downstairs from, you know, we both put the kids to bed, I came down, I started doing whatever in the kitchen, probably dishes, and he comes down and he very calmly says, so I think I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, Excuse me What? And he just looks at me very calmly, very melancholy, melancholy and says, Yeah, my heart's not working. I said, What? And so that was a page turner, that that moment right there, changed the page. Long story really, really, I mean, years long story short, and he's still here. And he's great. But he was ended up being diagnosed after a few days in ICU, trying all the drugs, having to possibly paddle him back into rhythm and all of this and many, many treatments and things he had to have heart surgery in 2010, which is a big part of my story that I talked about in the very first episode of this podcast. But all of that to say that during this time, the power of micro nutrition, and I was you would ask me that like six months before all that happened, I would have been like micro what, but micro nutrition really started to reveal itself and actually how true wellness is a beautifully precise orchestra of body functions and thoughts and feelings and decisions and actions and all of this and it's not just the fats, carbs, proteins, right. And that I learned in health class and I don't know circle 11th grade sometime. And I distinctly remember I was probably I was like definitely no I was younger. I was reading a textbook, my health textbook this might have been like seventh grade y'all. And there was a little boy cartoon drawing of a boy playing soccer. And it was like this is health summed up in one picture and it just said if your calories in are bigger than your calories out then you are fat. And if your calories out, I'm sorry in are less than your calories out then you are selling Getting unhealthy and can play. And I was like, that's all that that wellness was right? Well, no, right. We I had been through all these definitions I had been through all these experiences. And then now we had our own experience in our in our home that we had to deal with. And I saw the power of real food and how it could do and had to have it because it was what stepped up everything else. And we use that in order to fight back over years to get my husband's health back and then retain it for all these years. And I wanted to then turn around after we did that and help others to and over time and much much work with families. And I started coaching them, teaching them what I had learned because I wanted other families to avoid what we had been through. Right, I didn't want other families to have a moment where the husband came downstairs and said, I think of going to the hospital because my heart isn't working. Right. That was a terrifying moment. And I didn't want other people to go through that. So I stepped in and I was like I was called to you guys. I am a total introvert. And I was like, I don't want to do this. And I really felt called to do it. And I was like, I can't avoid this calling. Just it was it was in me. And so it's for me, right? If it's in you, it's for you. And that was what happened. So against all natural instincts, I stepped up and I started helping others. But going through that and helping families and coaching them, interviewing so many people and working in communities, my my own path as well as the others. The definition of wellness, the broader, truer version of wellness really came into focus. And it's really how we manage stress, right? It's how we think, and it's how we rest. And it's what we intake, like, what we drink what we eat. And it's what we do. And it's the environments around us. It's all of that that is wellness. And it's not just one area of this, it has to be all of them working together. And it depends on when we spend some time thinking about these things about this. It's how you manage your stress, right? It is your thought processes and your perspectives that push all your decision making. Right? It is your ideas on rest right? Is rest futile, or is it necessary? Do you guys it just popped in my head? Do you guys remember that? Seinfield or Seinfeld Seinfeld episode? Where? Oh, you guys I don't even remember what was Cooper car Kramer There we go. He decided to stop sleeping because it was a quote unquote waste of time. And he was getting in like, maybe an hour or two at a time. And of course what happened he went crazy. And then he zonked out for like days on end, right? Because he had this idea that rest was futile. Like it doesn't matter. I'm here to live I can I can rest later. What about your thoughts and feelings around food and how you use it and how you view it or your thoughts and feelings around staying active and how you use your body physically, right? And how you set up the environment around you. If you start having these conversations, I just realized how fast I'm talking so sorry.

I listened to everything you guys everything on like three or four speed. Because I just I listened quickly and I can get through it faster. But then I find sometimes I start talking really fast too. So I'm trying to be very conscientious about that for you all. But anyway, when you start really diving in and having these conversations with people about, you know, the rest and food and activity and all of this, it all calls back to the childhood. It all does you guys this 6570 days of training this runway that we have toward adulthood for my kids and in my research. It doesn't matter if the people that I interviewed were still in their childhood, they would still say when I was a kid, right? How many kids that I have one of my daughters is turning 12 Tomorrow, two of them turned 14 today. And anyway. It doesn't matter if they are 12 They'll be like well when I was a kid you know and you're like I'm still a kid but it doesn't matter when I was a kid right? Or if I was interviewing people in their 20s 40s or 90s It all came back to this 6570 You guys and I would hear things from my clients and my community and and everything like well when I was a kid I used to hear you know you can rest when you're dead right have you guys ever heard that one you can rest when you're dead or if you want something done do it yourself that is a real big thinking one right there. If you want something done do it yourself. You know never mind collaboration Never mind learning how to work with people because you can can't trust anyone. And if you want something done, do it yourself, right?

No rest for the weary right? Finish your plate kids in Ethiopia are starving, that was a big one. What about just rewards that are circling around food. And there's habits and hang ups that surround some families with alcoholism or different kinds of addictions, right, and the environments that people grew up in, and what is it's so different now than it was in the 80s 90s, or even early 2000s. And you know what it's going to be different a decade from now than what it is right now to, it's always, always changing. That's why I love to stick with the ever changing alien proof pillars of leadership within yourself here at the 6570 family project, because it doesn't matter if I'm talking to someone if I could, and I had a time machine, if I was talking to someone in 1920, or 3020, these pillars are still always going to be the same. But anyway, for this, and many, many other reasons, I truly believe that when we can help a family, we can help the world because all of these things around wellness, which really lead into that self led leadership and that inner compass that we're looking at, they all start back in the 6570. And the family unit is the absolute core of every culture, and every future. So you cannot teach or learn and focus or make great decisions or have your best life, if you're filled with all these things that do not serve you, not just from what you eat, or what you drink, but from all those other areas too. And I mean, think about it, you can fill yourself with kale and purple cabbage, like all day, right? I mean, please don't go out and just fill yourself with kale and purple cabbage. But you can do that and still not have a great life filled with focus and impact and time mastery and mindset and these core beliefs that drive you and help you move through your goals to accomplishments and in your everyday life. Right. So having one of those things is not going to be the be all end all it is not going to be all of your wellness right there. It all fits, it all matters. And it is learned now, it is learned right now with your kids in the 6570. And let me tell you what it is learned. Even if you are learning right beside them. It is and it is changing and you are helping them just as much as you are helping yourself. And along the way. Parenting does not require you to have it all figured out on day one. No one does. So never feel that pressure. I know we all do. But try not to feel that pressure because no one has parenting figured out on day one. Most of us don't have parenting figured out, you know, on day 6560. Right. But we are learning and open to learning along the way. That is what parenting requires. It requires that we are open to the adventure and open to learning all the time, all the time. There's never a wall that says I am done learning my way is my way. And this is what you need to abide to. And this is the way that it is right because the world is always changing. So you always have to be in this constant state of critical thinking, right? We talk a lot about critical thinking on this podcast because it is so essential, it is essential for you. It is essential for your kids and it's essential for you guys to do it together as a family, I mean, you are the architect right you are designing, you are planning and you are building the foundation of their life the first 18 years of their life is being built because of you and with whatever direction and whatever teaching you are giving them. So side note if you guys are not already if any of you listeners are not already in the family architects community, it's the family architects club actually and that is our community. Then be sure to head over to my website it's Nelly hardened calm so any ll ie so many people like spelt with why but n e ll IE, H AR D n.com, right, head on over to my website, you could scroll down on that first page and you will see an invite there to the family architects club. And you're going to want to get in there. It's completely free of course. And this is where we really dive in and have some of those questions answered each and every week and we collaborate with one another. So definitely go in and take advantage of that. Join the club. It's a good glove to be in because we are all architects of our families right now. So what does wellness have to do with self love? Leadership, you guys, everything it has everything to do with that how people are thinking and what they are doing and what they're taking in and how they're managing stress, and how they are thinking, right? And the environments that are set up around them. And I loved I diving deep into this with all of my people. I'd love to dive deep into this with you, you know where to reach me, send drop me a DM, I'd love to dive into this with you and your family specifically and see where we can help. But