Shownotes
In this tranquil episode, Jennifer Tolo, a seasoned transformational coach, shares her journey from critical care nurse to holistic health educator. Guiding high-achieving individuals, Jennifer empowers clients to find calm amidst chaos, make informed decisions, and regain control over their lives.
Discover more from Jennifer at JenniferWrenTolo.com
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Jill Hart - the Coach's Alchemist & host of the You World Order Showcase Podcast is dedicated to empowering life, health and transformational coaches being the change they want to see in the world. Join our private community, where you will find support, networking & collaboration, get featured on our podcast and we also provide coaching to help you find clients with podcasts. It all starts with joining our community! (it's free)
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Transcripts
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us, Jennifer Tolo. Jennifer is a transformational coach and is trained as a whole health educator. She's a patient advocate, personal trainer. Reiki master. mindfulness coach.
::Who teaches, speaks and provides courses to help high achievers self regulate, find balance and connection to self and inner strength and resilience in their life. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. We're so glad you're here.
::Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
::You have a lot of.
::Certifications I just have to get that out there.
::I know, I know, I know.
::Well, when you have the belief system that you're not enough, you keep trying to prove that you're enough by getting more and more.
::And more. Yeah, I totally can relate to that.
::But I'm here to tell you.
::Are enough even.
::Without all those certifications.
::So tell us.
::Circumstances made me that way. I will tell you. They taught me more than any training I've ever had.
::Isn't it amazing how that works?
::Yeah, yeah.
::So do tell us your story, how you got to where you're at.
::Sure. So.
::I started out my adult life as a critical care nurse and I always wanted to help people. Was always a nurturer. I always had that intuition and that I picked up on energy, and I was a medical intuitive. I could kind of see, but I didn't know that I was at the time because that was never. I was always told. Stop. You're trying to get attention.
::When I was a kid, so I went to the left brain. I went to logic. I went to, you know, kind of proving myself that way.
::So I was a critical care nurse. I thought I was thriving in chaos. I loved the pace of it, the troubleshooting and the excitement, if you will. And I had met and married my husband. My husband's a surgeon, had our first son, and he was the golden child, if you will.
::Everything was great. I had these. I was very type A.
::Had these expectations of, like, how life should be and how my life was going to be, and how my children were going to be, and what kind of parent I was going to be, and what the right thing to do was, I lived life in a very black and white world.
::And then I had my second son, and he was born and.
::He had a massive neonatal stroke at birth.
::And I remember waking up in the hospital.
::Kind of thinking. Where's my baby? It was an hour. I had a.
::C-section was.
::Hour went by. I'm like, where's my baby? And they said, well, he's having trouble breathing. So I had him in a Community Hospital and they couldn't really handle what was going on. So they had to send him to the Children's Hospital in Boston, which is about 30 miles away.
::And I remember waking up in the hospital to all the babies crying without my baby and thinking.
::What? What is going on? This is not the.
::Way it's supposed to be.
::And you know that feeling that you get where you just feel like the whole world is just sitting on you and just you feel like you?
::Just you're having trouble taking that breath.
::All of a sudden I heard this voice in my head that said, just breathe. So I took a really deep breath and I took a bunch of more deep breaths and all of a sudden it's like this.
::Fog lifted and I.
::And I had this clarity like I just need to get to my son. He's going to let me know what he.
::And I have to let go of all the shoulds and supposed TOS and just be here right now and connect to right here, right now and let things unfold as they're going to unfold.
::And that was a pretty powerful, pivotal moment for me because I had, like I said, lived my life before this kind of anchored to that left logical brain and.
::It almost reawakened me to that intuitive those intuitive gifts that.
::We all have.
::And I remember arriving at the hospital. My husband's laboring over neonatal neurology books. And I said, babe.
::We don't need that right now. We just need to be present and connect to him and love him and listen and help direct the care. But let's just say this experience really started to show me where the gaps in healthcare were.
::And so I that became my. I started to learn Reiki. I learned Reiki because a dear friend of mine said he's going to.
::Need this.
::And you know, she's been trying to train me and Reiki for years, but it's incredible. What?
::You wouldn't do.
::For yourself, but you'd do for your kids.
::And so that was one of these moments. And then, you know, I dove into personal training because he had right sided weakness and I wanted to help him kind of move better. And I've always been interested in fitness. I dove into my first nutrition certification because I wanted to understand the foods that can help his brain and.
::Help hit the neuroplasticity and all that.
::Fast forward couple more years. The same day I found out I was having my fourth boy.
::I found out my third son had leukemia. And again at this point I was already channeling the Angels. I was already I already knew about Reiki. I already, you know, I was Reiki master at that point. I understood about connection, the importance of connection and so it was almost like the universe was saying to me.
::You know what you have all these tools now.
::Let's practice them.
::And so I did Reiki and my son. Every single day. I really dove more deeply into mindfulness, because if I started to think about the what ifs.
::I started to get completely overwhelmed and I had no control over anything except the here and now, and so.
::It really.
::Solidified everything that I learned and awakened me to my purpose, which was to help other women.
::Other people that are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to do the right thing to be the right thing show up for everybody at the expense of themselves because Fast forward a couple more years.
::I started to have health problems. I thought I was having a stroke. I had migraines so bad I started to drop my speech.
::I had all my 4 kids. Now that I was in charge of, and I remember talking to my husband on the phone and he said, Jen, you've got to call 911. I think you might be having a stroke. Cause I was. I couldn't feel my right arm. My tongue went numb and I was not able to speak.
::And I said I don't. I don't have time for that. I can't. Who's gonna watch the kids? I don't have time to call 911. So he called a friend a neighbor to come by and watch my kids. And I drove myself to the hospital. Not something I would recommend, only hold. It was my wake up call that I.
::Needed to start to take care of myself.
::That I needed to put myself on the map.
::So that's why I do what I do now. I really love helping other women awaken to who they are, reconnect to their soul, reconnect to the why, learn how to be more present in their life, and learn how to reclaim their time and energy, which we all feel like is a is a scarce.
::Commodity for us, right? But there are so many things that we don't even realize that we spend energy and time on.
::That that we don't need to so that is one of the biggest things that I've just taken all of this.
::I've taken my knowledge of how to bridge those gaps in healthcare from Eastern and Western medicine medical perspectives, and I really love to help people navigate. So, as I mentioned to you before, Jill, I, I used to focus on the physical body.
::And thriving in chaos.
::And now I teach people how to find calm in the chaos, and I teach people really how to connect and understand the emotional and the spiritual aspects of their lives that are really what throw us.
::Really, off balance that we don't, we can't put our fingers on.
::So that was a long winded.
::Way of saying that story.
::Yeah, that's a that's.
::Pretty healthy and.
::Well, I will say I should.
::Everybody asks that they're all healthy and.
::Well, that was going to be my next question because, you know, inquiring minds need to know. Yeah, that's a pretty powerful testimony that they are all alive and well.
::Yeah, yeah.
::To what you do.
::Well, you know, I really feel like being present and connecting on a soul level and allowing yourself to be guided.
::By that as well as when you learn how to calm your nervous system, because when we're stressed, which so many of us are, but we don't want to admit when we are stressed, we cannot access our decision making. We cannot access our rational mind. We cannot make the best decisions for us because we're either using our head and ego to guide us.
::Or we're being overly emotional.
::So when I learned really how to get calm and be present and give myself permission to pause, that's where I found my most powerful decision making ability.
::And the clarity on what is it that I need in this moment? What is it that my children need in this moment, I learned to become a fierce advocate for not just myself, but for my kids. And now I teach them how to be advocates and how to advocate for themselves by understanding who they are and what they need in the moment.
::So one of the most powerful things we could do, I feel like.
::I was just going.
::To ask, don't you feel like when you?
::Take that pause.
::And so few people actually exercise this, but it's like you stop time. It's 5 or 10 minutes. It is enough sometimes to just.
::Or even 2 minutes, but just consciously.
::Step back mentally and let your.
::Let your mind go.
::And feel the answers, not necessarily listen for answers, but.
::And just.
::Absolutely. And I can actually hear probably people rolling their eyes right now like, yeah, OK, how do you listen. But so I have a system, I call it my signature system. It's my ABC system. A is awareness before anything you have to be aware of.
::What's going on? What's throwing me off? Because a lot of times we're.
::Not even aware.
::Of that, because we're so busy spinning that we don't even know what's causing a spin. So the a part is the awareness, you know, in in, in nursing and healthcare we say ABC's, you know, airway, breathing, circulation. Well my ABC's are awareness. Awareness of what the stressors are and what's happening in your world.
::Awareness of what's going on in your body and then the B is balance, breath and balance. Take those deep breaths to balance and your nervous system. Calm your nervous system.
::And to, you know, get out of that fight or flight and kind of.
::Just we're not on fire. We don't have any Saber tooth tigers chasing us anymore. And then the sea is calm yourself. Connect to what it is that you need and then make the choices for you know that are going to be the best for you in that moment.
::So for all those eye rollers, yes it is. When you calm yourself down, you can actually connect to and TuneIn to what do I need right now what's going on. But you can't do that when you're in this triggered spin.
::And just being able to take control of what you're thinking about because when you're in these stressful situations, you've got thoughts coming at you from all angles and it's really hard to like synthesize which thought.
::Is am I going to base a decision on and you they hit you so fast. I mean, it's really hard to like.
::Right, they're popcorn thoughts. They come in the.
::Zoom in. But what we do is we give those thoughts attention and it's like instead of noticing the thoughts that come and go, we attach to those thoughts and we start giving them a home. We make them nice and cozy in there, and then they become like this constant echo and no other thoughts can get in.
::A2.
::So the key is to really notice the thoughts.
::But don't attach to.
::Them because nine times, that's not true.
::Exactly and not attaching to them. When you when you're getting a whole when your normal life is set up in a way.
::Right.
::You don't understand how to recognize your thoughts.
::As you're having them and then you don't know how to just accept a thought as a thought without attaching an emotion to it. And when you attach an emotion to it, it triggers a chemical response in your body.
::All emotions trigger.
::A chemical response and your body is going to want to do something with that, and if you've got all of these thoughts happening at you, the reason that we get into the this catatonic state is because we're releasing all of these chemicals and our body is like.
::I don't know what to do.
::That's how you.
::Get in that agitated state where you're just like.
::You feel like you're going to explode. Literally.
::And fight or fight, right? It's fight flight or freeze Candace. Perth has a amazing book on this called molecules of emotion. I teach a course at Endicott College called Holistic and complementary approach to health and healing. That's one of the things that all my students are amazed by is.
::How when we store and we repress emotions or we try to avoid emotions by not dealing with them or understanding them, we can actually create with all those chemicals that that are impacted, the neurotransmitters that.
::We can actually create illness in our body.
::And disease in our body. So it's really important to move those emotions and not kind.
::Of shove them down and.
::You know, I'll deal with them later. That doesn't work.
::They it goes somewhere. It's like, you know.
::When you gain weight.
::It's usually because.
::It's not necessarily because you're eating too much or you're even eating the wrong things. It's because the chemical reactions that you're having are causing a physical.
::Response in your body, which is to you know, let's store fat and being under stress does that, yeah.
::Of course, so does that.
::Like cortisol and cortisol causes. Yeah, sleep disruption. That's the thing that I kind of laugh at when I have clients that come in. You know, I have a course called stress SOS and I was like geez, you know, maybe I should change the name of this course because people just aren't seeming to resonate with it.
::And then I had a couple of people give me feedback and said nobody wants to admit.
::That they're stressed.
::Nobody wants to say.
::But they want to sleep better.
::Yeah, yeah. But it's if you're having.
::They want to lose weight.
::Right.
::Or digestion, holding on to weight or I know people that when they're stressed, they can't hold on to weight, they get really thin.
::I don't have that problem, but.
::I actually do.
::I can't eat when.
::I'm really stressed out.
::To it's kind of double edged sword for me.
::Well, we all got something, yeah.
::But it's kind of interesting how that works. So how do you do your coaching? Is it group coaching? one-on-one online and offline?
::Have a.
::Do it all of the above.
::So I have.
::In the past, I've kind of COVID like many people COVID kind of forced me to change the way that I do things I used to do a lot of coaching, one-on-one in my office, but I found it was more like a health coaching kind of thing and people were like.
::Fix me. And so I started to really change the way I practice.
::Now I do I do one-on-one as well as group coaching as well as I have courses online. I have some ebooks, some are free, some are paid, you know low, low paid.
::And I can do things one-on-one. I've done things virtually so I can work with clients. I do a lot of energy work and people like how do.
::You do.
::That virtually I just need to connect my soul. My guides connect to your guides and all the information flows from there. So I've done, you know, energy healings that way I create.
::Custom meditations for people to kind of help them move through some scenarios all guided meditations.
::So yeah, I have. I like to. I have a course called or a group coaching program called finding calm in the chaos and it's all about, you know, learning how to a lot of us think that we need everything around us to be calm before we can be calm. And it's I like to teach people how to become that.
::Eye of the storm so they can find that calm no matter what's going on.
::Around them, they always have that that call center that they can return to. So that's what this course is about and it's an 8 week group coaching course, but otherwise I have three and four months, one-on-one coaching programs and packages. And like I said, as well as some online line courses, I do have the stress SOS.
::Online, you know, you go at your own pace using the modules.
::Awesome. So what kind of people would?
::You say your ideal clients are. How would they know that they're your people.
::They're my people. They're me. They're so my ideal clients are usually very high, achieve like high achieving, high driving type. A professional women mom preneurs people that are.
::So busy running around showing up for everybody else that they don't have time for themselves, people that everybody comes to for help and they love being the ones that people turn to for help. But people, women that have a really hard time letting others help them. Those are my ideal clients, people that.
::Feel like they just don't have enough time for themselves. They don't seem to have any energy. They have trouble.
::Trusting themselves to make the right decisions, they have trouble delegating or asking people for help. They find themselves kind of, no matter what they do, they just never feel like they're doing enough or being enough but feeling spread thin and a little bit burned out. Those are my people.
::That's you. You're my people.
::That are also they've a lot of the people that come to me that are my that I love working with are people that have done some coaching and some things.
::Before and that are really ready, I always like to say I'm not for the toe dippers. I'm not for people that kind of want, aren't really sure that they want to do anything or don't really want to take the time. I'm for people that if you are serious that you want to take back.
::Your life, you know you want to find calm, clarity and connection in your life and you want to take.
::Back your power over your life so you can find more health and more happiness, and you're willing to do the work, and you're willing to dive a little deeper. You're willing to look hard in that mirror with support. Then I'm your person.
::And what would you say about their openness to trying some of these different modalities that might run?
::Contrary to.
::Yeah, I would say that I, for me personally, I am and was a skeptic. I am a firm believer. I teach even when I teach my.
::Several times.
::Students, I have them. I do Reiki on them. I do muscle testing on them. I have them experience different things because I'm a true believer in experiential learning and in subjective data. You know where people really have to experience something and feel the feeling or.
::Feel the difference for them to buy into it and.
::I really think one of my strengths as a coach is I meet you where you are. I don't force anything of you. I kind of figure out where are you and what are you open to. And then I share with you different things and I you know I use my intuition. I use my connection to the guides. I use Oracle cards.
::I use energy work. I use guided meditations. I use a lot of different too.
::Couples and I've had people that come in and they're like, I'm not really sure that I buy into this and I'm like no problem. So I feel like eventually when you start seeing results kind of like my husband, my husband is an orthopedic surgeon and he trusts me implicitly and will now send people to me because.
::You know, he's seen it work with our kids. He's seen the results. So you, I really believe that once people start to experience things and you know, start to feel the shift or start to all of a sudden with some guidance start to really visualize things and tap into things that they didn't even know were inside them or that they had stored.
::That's where the transformation starts. You just got to be open. That's all I ask is that you have an openness.
::If you come in closed and not ready to do anything, then you're wasting your own time.
::As well as mine.
::I love that.
::You have a balance between hard science.
::And very soft I.
::I like to think of the woo as very soft science because it is there is science behind a lot of that stuff that people are like. It's not. I don't believe in that. Well, it's not about believing it's about experiencing and.
::That's amazing.
::I'll, I'll give you a little a little example when I love doing this with my students. When I cover, we do it a whole unit on energy.
::And energy is a really challenging thing for people. I remember I was working with a shaman and I was at this this meeting and it was a physicians meeting. And I would leave while everybody was going to their meeting. I would leave and work with the shaman and come back and one person was like oh.
::Did you find your spirit animal was like OK?
::Clearly you don't, and I said, trying to explain to them what energy was. And they said, well, I don't understand it like now tell me somebody who is very grounded in science. So do me.
::A favor, huh?
::And so they said, OK, I said, do you feel that vibration? Yeah, it was like, that's energy.
::And he's like, oh, I never thought about it that way. So I do that with my students, where I say I'm going to do Reiki on each of you. Whoever wants, I don't put it on anybody. But I said if anybody wants me to do a little mini session and literally it takes me about, oh, what, like a minute to connect to somebody and kind of start seeing things? So I put myself over in the corner and.
::Each and every one of my students has said ohh I want it.
::Come on.
::It's like come.
::Over and I start and I put my hands on them and I connect with them and then immediately I start seeing pictures and I'm guided to certain areas. And then I asked them permission to give them a message like is it OK if I share with you what I'm picking up and every one of them wants to and the looks on their face. When I see things like.
::You know. Ohh. Are you from a you're. I don't know anything about my students other than where they're from. What year they are, what their major is. I don't know anything about their child. You know their family backgrounds and you know, I'll say, you know, you're from a big family, you know, or, you know, do you have a.
::A. A role is like the caregiver in your family from a big family and they look on my students faces when they're like.
::How? How do you know that? So even my skeptics.
::You can't like how do you argue with that? How do I know these things?
::You know, it's the guidance, so some of that woo, they start to go Oh well.
::Phoebe, right. And then when I'm spot on, when I when I see something in them, that's where they and they feel the energy they feel the heat because they'll ask me. What am I supposed to feel? I said. Yeah, support you feel.
::What you feel? So I said. Sometimes people feel this. Sometimes people feel this so. And it's funny. I have another friend of mine that comes in and helps. She plays the sound bowls.
::When I'm doing this and she also does Reiki and I explained to them how everybody's energy is different, So what they're getting from my friend and what they're getting from me and our approach, it's all different. And that's what's really cool about this stuff.
::But unfortunately, that's why people don't believe it, because it's hard to replicate this and it's hard to research it and you know, give that concrete data that people are looking for because it's different. It's subtle, it's, you know, and it has to do with how open you are and how open I am and what you know.
::So all there's so many different factors that play a role, so yeah.
::I think for the longest time we've also been trained to look at the physical world as.
::One thing, and the spiritual world as like something.
::Else, and really, the spiritual world is just the energy world and it's both of them are connected in that everything is energy. There's nothing that exists that is not energy.
::Right.
::It it's what ties us all together. It's what holds molecules together. It's you. Turn on your computer. It's the electricity is just energy. It's.
::It's viable. It's also that what when you're picking up right and what you're picking up for other people like are, are these people like, do I feel good when I'm around these people? Do I not feel good? That's energy. That's.
::The light.
::Why it it's funny because you know the word spiritual too. There's a lot of people that say, ooh, that's like a taboo.
::Word right I was.
::Listening to this continuing education thing for personal training and they said mind body brain because they didn't, they didn't want to use the word soul or spirit.
::Because they said, you know, that starts to get pretty tricky and I think that's such a shame that we're afraid of that. I think it's because a lot of people equate spiritual and spirituality with religion, and they're two different things. Religion falls into spirituality, but spirituality is really about your connection to yourself, to the world.
::Around you and to your purpose and to kind.
::Kind of believing that there's more to life than just your little world. That's spirituality. Yeah. And your safety, your security, your trust, your ability to trust things. You know, you're all the people, you know, we're in this pandemic or epidemic of loneliness. According to the Surgeon General, it's because we are lacking.
::Spirituality, the whole I believe the mental health crisis that's going on in our world.
::And I see this in so many of my students. People don't know who they are and where they fit or you know, they don't understand.
::What their purpose is and where they where they fit, how they belong, they don't trust themselves to make decisions because we sort of stopped focusing on that spiritual well-being.
::I couldn't agree with you more, I think.
::A lot of it is.
::We've been trained to.
::We've been trained for a purpose and a lot of that purpose is to put us in a.
::Box so that we're controllable.
::If everybody's the same.
::You can control them if everybody's a unique individual and we are all unique individuals. We all come here with something a gift to offer and a lesson to learn and.
::And as we share those and as we connect with each other, one-on-one in groups.
::Get to know ourselves by ourselves. The deeper the deeper the connections can be on the outside. But it all starts with understanding who you are and accepting.
::Who you are.
::And just being at peace with who you are, it's OK. It's OK. If the whole world doesn't like you because that's not going to be true. People will be drawn to you.
::They'll be drawn to the real you, not the this facade that society says you have to put on and people like you that are coaches out there that are helping people who just really tap into this and provide.
::You specifically because you have both sides of this that you can bring to the people that come to you. It's just.
::It it's so beautiful.
::Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I feel like they people have to understand that.
::We think that we want to fix all the outside world, fix other people, we want to, but the only thing we have control over is ourselves, our thoughts, our actions, our reactions, our choices in the present moment.
::And if most of us just focused on that instead of like.
::You know, I I'm a recovering perfectionist. A recovered, you know, recovering people pleaser, as are most of my clients.
::When we realize that there are some people you will never please because they're just not happy with themselves. But that has nothing to do with you. That has to do with them.
::And when you have people that are expecting perfection from you, that is an unrealistic expectation. So I mean, I say that to my kids, all the.
::Time. I'm like, you know what I think? I'm sorry I'm disappointing you because you're expecting me to be perfect, and that's just I will never meet that expectation.
::Right, it won't.
::So you know, giving our per self, let me try that again, giving ourselves permission to be imperfectly perfect.
::And to.
::You know, with our best intentions, please others, but not at the expense of pleasing ourselves. That's a good place to start.
::I just had this flash that you were talking about kids in grades.
::Well, I think grading is like the most horrible thing that we do to people. Not everybody is going to be great at everything, but we encourage people to be straight. A students, as though you can be the master of everything.
::So I had this conversation with my son in the car, so I have my. My youngest is 15 and he's a good friend of his. That was in his he's in a chemistry class and they're in honors chemistry. And he said, you know, my friend, he's dropping out of honors chemistry because he's not doing well. He's not getting a good grade.
::And he said to my son said to me, mom, I'm so glad that you and dad don't focus on the grades I said.
::No, I don't.
::I don't care about the grades. What do I care about? He said. You care about effort. I said exactly. If you're giving your best.
::Then I'm OK.
::With that.
::And there are there was some study that came out that said actually the best.
::Most innovative thinkers were C students.
::I read that study too.
::Yeah, the people that are the most successful.
::Yeah. And you know.
::Are not the valedictorians.
::No, they're people, and here's what I'm seeing in the students that I teach.
::Kids don't know how to plow problem solve.
::We have spent so long and that's a whole nother podcast show, but I actually my brother's a teacher and we've talked about this. We are teaching to the test and regurgitating information that we are we are not raising or educating thinkers.
::Right.
::We are, you know, tell me what to do. Tell me what to know.
::And what we really.
::Want are people that can problem solve innovators?
::And those are people that think outside of the box.
::And aren't going to maybe necessarily kind of regurgitate. I mean, I have a son right now that's applying to colleges. He's a senior. My, my, the.
::One that had cancer.
::Is 18 and applying to colleges and you know it's tough because he's taking all AP classes, but he had a couple he got to see in. I'm like buddy their heart.
::You got a lot on your plate.
::And he's really expect these kids to be doing.
::High level work in a bunch of different subjects. Our brains aren't wired that way. They're really wired to focus on one thing at a time and at least become proficient at it before you add something that's.
::On a different track, I mean you have math and language.
::Right.
::But on top of that, applying to colleges nowadays people want.
::I mean it is, it's quite competitive and what colleges are expecting kids to do to stand out.
::It's, it's a lot.
::Like literally some of the top colleges and I'm a firm believer that you get in where you're meant to be and that there's a place for everybody. I believe that wholeheartedly. My, my 21 year old, the one that had a.
::He has massive learning disabilities. He tried college. He's like, this isn't for me now. He's looking for the.
::Right.
::Because he realizes now at 21. OK, I need a little bit of structure. I need a little bit of, you know, he wants to do internships and stuff. His thing is.
::Film and photography but.
::There's a place for everybody, and I think it's such a travesty traverse state when we are looking at kids and telling them.
::They're not enough.
::Right, you need to be a leader in this. You need to be in this club, that club, this sport, that sport where you need to have, you know, do this volunteer work and start this organization and maybe even, you know, start this. It's like what we're expecting of them is just unrealistic and it's not fair. They it. It's robbing them of the ability for them to.
::Be kids.
::Enjoy life.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::And I think it ends up trapping them in careers that once they get through the education.
::Tells us they hate because they're not. It's not who they are. They've just been told. You have to do all these things and move along this path, which may or may not actually be the path that they should be on to begin with.
::So I have a great story regarding that. So my oldest son is 24 and he was. He thought that he wanted to be a marine and he got an ROTC scholarship. He was also playing a college law.
::Loss and it was a lot for him. So he came back to us and said, you know, is it OK if I don't do ROTC, give up my scholarship, I still want to go into the Marines, but I'm going to go through it a different way. We said no problem. You got to do what's right for you. And if this is too.
::Stressful. We appre we understand it.
::So COVID came. He got long COVID, he had trouble breathing. He had to defer his officer candidate school. He went to the first one, his senior OCS. He had to defer. He wasn't able to play lacrosse. His junior and senior year because of his health conditions.
::And then come senior year, he's still and I remember talking to him and saying, Are you sure this is the path you want? Yeah.
::This is what?
::I'm supposed to be doing mom. It's like, OK. And then senior year, March of senior year, he had more, some more health complications.
::And he turned. I remember him calling me from school. And he said, mom, I feel like the universe is trying to tell me something.
::Of course, inside I'm like what you think, but. And I said, well, what do you think? What do you think they're telling? You said this is not the.
::Right path for me and I was like, OK.
::That's great. And then he, you know, he graduated and here he has this degree and he got a degree in international relations again thinking he was going to go the military route.
::But he really loved his entrepreneurial business classes and he really that really sparked an interest in him. He's got a he loves storytelling and connecting to people, and so he thought, you know, I think I kind of want to do something in marketing. But, you know, he graduated, he didn't have any internships, like all of his friends had already had internships. Bunch of his friends had jobs lined up.
::And he literally took a year after he graduated doing, you know, working in a brewery, working, coaching lacrosse, doing a bunch of different things. He had three jobs at a time, but he was taking that time to.
::To network and figure out the right fit and he landed a job.
::Uh, almost a year ago now. And he loves it, loves it. He's in marketing. He's working for a small marketing firm, but he's able to do it. He's a brand manager and he's able to do a little bit of this. He calls me every week to tell me about some cool thing he did and he just got an award for being so. And he's like, I'm telling people stories.
::I'm able to, you know, all this stuff that I thought good for you, but it took him a while and it took him this kind of spiritual crisis to open himself up to.
::Do what is it that I'm meant to do? And he said so many of his friends are miserable in their jobs because they followed the shoulds instead of following their soul.
::So I'm so proud of.
::Him for that. But yeah. So yes, I've experienced that.
::I'm so proud of him too.
::Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean he's happy. Yeah.
::And I encourage that for everybody, that's just like so important well.
::You offer the power of three to people that.
::Want to connect with you and.
::Tell us a little bit.
::About that.
::Yeah. Well, so the power of three is my guide to of my three questions to ask yourself and it's kind of three prompts for reflection to shift from that negative worst case scenario thinking to positive and it was born from my 18 year old did a he thinks he wants to go into media.
::And he did a medical mission, going to the Dominican Republic this summer. And it's, this is my son who doesn't like getting outside of the comfort zone. And this was really pushing him outside his comfort zone, and he wanted to do this because he wanted this personal growth. But he has a lot of anxiety.
::He has sort of this, I call it the gremlins in his head that constantly tell him all the things that could go wrong. The catastrophic thinking. So he was the first five days on this trip. He was wanting to.
::Come home overwhelmed.
::All the negative voices in his head. And so I spent.
::Several hours on the phone with him, but before he left, we processed this and I said every day I want you to ask yourself these three questions.
::And so once he started to do that and then when he'd start calling me spinning, I'd have him read me those. Did you do the prompts? OK, read them to me. What are your three things? And it started to just shift him out of that catastrophic thinking into.
::This being a little bit more open to the possibilities and positivity, so I created this guide after that thinking OK, let me help some more people do that and it's pretty simple. I give you some prompts. I would also love to offer your listeners a free call if they think that they want to learn more about what I do or they think that they want to see if.
::I can help them on their journey. I always offer a three free connection call.
::And where can they find?
::You they can find me on Instagram at Gen. Ren, Tolo WRNT to lo. Same for Facebook at Jen Wren Tolo. My website is Jennifer Wren Tolo dot com.
::Perfect. And we'll make sure we put those links in the show notes.
::Below. So Jen, what's the one?
::Thing you want to leave the audience with today?
::One of the biggest things especially for US high achieving women, I want to leave you with the thought that you are in control of you. You're in control of your energy. You're in control of your time. And when you learn to really embrace that and that your choices are your greatest superpower.
::You can start to take back your power over your life. You get to decide who gets your time. You get to decide where your energy goes and you get to decide what you need in that.
::Don't let yourself be led by all the shoulds and supposed TOS and really start to tune into your wants and your desires.
::I love that.
::Thank you so much for joining me. This has been amazing.
::Thank you. Thanks for having me.
