Rachel Hollis, DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING
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[2:15]I could not have been more excited to be interviewing Rachel Hollis.
[2:20]You might know Rachel Hollis as the author of Girl Wash Your Face, which has sold 4.5 million
[2:26]coffees in the last few years, and she also hosted one of the most successful podcasts in the
[2:33]world she produced conferences through the Hollis company and was a food blogger.
[2:37]And now her latest book, which we discussed, is called Didn't See That Coming. Enjoy our conversation.
[2:43]Hi Rachel.
[2:44]Hi, how are you doing?
[2:45]I'm good. How are you doing?
[2:46]Good. Thank you.
[2:47]Well, thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books.
[2:50]This is such a treat to get to talk to you.
[2:52]Absolutely.
[2:53]So your latest book didn't see that coming.
[2:56]I feel like that is the story of my life.
[2:58]And obviously, we're so many people, especially during this time.
[3:02]Oh my gosh. Best title ever, pretty much.
[3:05]Thank you.
[3:06]Thank you. I appreciate that.
[3:07]So obviously, there's like so much in life that none of us can see coming.
[3:12]And you've had a lot of twists and turns from a very, very young age, starting with your
[3:18]brother's suicide, which you write about so poignantly all the way up till now.
[3:23]When you decided to write this book, which part did you want to focus on the most?
[3:28]What did you say was this is the book that I have to talk about X, Y, Z? What was it?
[3:34]Sure. You know, it's interesting. I read this something years ago that said that
[3:39]all authors are essentially writing the same book over and over.
[3:42]The very essential theme for every author that they just keep exploring from a bunch of
[3:47]different directions. And I thought that can't be true for me because I've written fiction.
[3:51]I have cookbooks and I have nonfiction, sort of personal development, self-help stuff.
[3:56]And I thought about it. And I was like, oh, yeah, all my books have the exact same theme no matter
[4:02]what it is I'm talking about, which is you can do this. You can do this thing.
[4:08]And so in this book, what I wanted to explore most was encouraging people who are going through
[4:15]a hard season or who are in the midst of something difficult that you can get through this.
[4:21]And not only can you get through this, but you can come out the other side of it as a better
[4:26]person than you went into it. But in order for that to be true, you have to make a conscious
[4:32]decision that you are going to pursue the learnings in this, the wisdom in this, the information
[4:41]that you can glean out of it because otherwise you feel bitter or you get stuck or you don't know
[4:47]how to move forward because you become paralyzed by the pain that you're inside of.
[4:52]Wow, it's all so true. And you wrote so beautifully to your point about how people can get
[4:57]through grief, especially, which is such a, you know, so many people are grieving right now,
[5:02]given the pandemic and obviously just for regular life as well. And you had this whole section,
[5:08]I just wanted to read like a tiny portion of it because it was so encouraging. And I have
[5:12]recently been through a lot of grief myself. So this was particularly resonant for me,
[5:16]but you said that the grief over death is making them miss the life that's still there. I can't
[5:21]tell you how to grieve. That's an incredibly personal process that nobody's in charge of
[5:25]that you, but I can tell you something with absolute certainty. The person you lost would not want
[5:29]this for you. The person you lost would never ever want you to suffer over their absence. And then
[5:34]you say, it's okay to be sad. It's okay to miss them. It's not okay for you to lie down and die
[5:39]too. You are still here and there's a reason for that. So tell me, tell me more about that and
[5:45]how to really channel what you might know intellectually, but then put it into practice emotionally.
[5:51]Well, I think this for me shows up in two ways. One is, you know, if you read the book,
[5:57]there's a chapter in it where I talk about my parents and they were and I have children and I
[6:03]cannot imagine what it felt like my parents for my parents to lose their only sons to suicide.
[6:09]I can't even fathom that, but I do know what it feels like to be the little sister who,
[6:15]as a little girl, I felt like I'm not enough of a reason for them to keep living because they both
[6:23]in different ways just checked out. They weren't present. And, you know, Ryan died when I was 14,
[6:29]and so from the time I was 14 years old, I truly raised myself. I didn't, you know, nobody
[6:35]cared if there was been or nobody cared if my homework was done, everything that I figured out
[6:41]how to do. I've figured out on my own and I really truly lived my life in a way that asked
[6:47]how situations, even if they're bad, can be for me. And I look back and I'm like, oh, that's
[6:52]why I'm a self starter. That's why I'm an achiever. That's how I built my company or wrote these
[6:57]it was because of having gone through that experience. But there's still a part of that that's
[7:03]deeply painful that feels like I was abandoned by these people who are supposed to take care of me.
[7:09]And that effectively, I don't want to say destroyed, but really hurt the relationship I have
[7:15]with both my parents for the rest of my life. So on the one hand, I am speaking about grief from
[7:21]that perspective. And then the other place that I come from is having done so much therapy
[7:28]for so many years about coming to terms with the loss of my brother and learning that
[7:36]like finding the bittersweet in missing him when he first passed away because you know grief,
[7:42]if you've experienced this and you know this is true, grief is an evolution. And the grief that
[7:48]you feel when you first lose someone or when you first lose something that really matters to you
[7:54]is very different than the grief that you experienced five or 10 years later. I don't think that
[7:58]it ever goes away, but it does evolve. And so to have gotten to a place in my life where I can
[8:06]miss my brother, but also really see that there's beauty in that missing. Like it's celebratory
[8:14]of his life. I was very close to my grandparents and I those are two other people that I sort
[8:20]of all the time in missing. And in my house, there's pictures of my brothers, pictures of grandma
[8:25]and grandpa everywhere. And I talked to my kids about them. And you know last year we lost my
[8:31]brother and mom very unexpectedly and that was devastating for a whole family. And you know, I was
[8:35]cooking him the other day in my niece who's she's a grown up. She's walking through the kitchen
[8:40]and it was her dad that we lost. And I was like, oh my gosh, I got to tell you every time I make
[8:46]this, I think of your dad. And she stopped and her eyes really big. She's like, why? Why? You know,
[8:51]she just was so like starving for that story. And I'm like, okay, let me tell you the story about
[8:55]when I was a little girl and your dad made me this thing. And it was an even though there's pain
[9:01]in that memory. There's so much beauty in those people that we've lost, they'll be very present
[9:08]in our lives. And if there's a way for people to get to that place, it is just such a better
[9:17]state to exist in than only feeling the painful emotions. It's true. I feel like people are
[9:23]sometimes hesitant to tell stories or bring up the person who's recently died for fear of
[9:27]upsetting the griever, which I feel like couldn't be free from the truth. I mean, you're already
[9:32]thinking about the person. It's not like, oh, I forgot about this horrible thing that happened.
[9:36]Because you brought up my brother-in-law now I'm upset. So yeah, I think that's a big,
[9:40]yeah, absolutely. And by the way, going back to your parents sort of abandoning you,
[9:45]oh my gosh, when you wrote about it in the book about your, you know, your Christmas holidays
[9:49]and watching the movie over and over again with your sister and like, oh my gosh. And then how
[9:53]your husband thought that that was just something you enjoyed doing. But it came from like this
[9:57]deep place. Oh my gosh. Anyway, my heart.
[10:00]was going on to you.
[10:01]Right.
[10:02]Thank you.
[10:03]I appreciate that.
[10:04]I actually recently interviewed an author named Hope Edelman, who wrote a book called
[10:06]the Aftergrief.
[10:07]I don't know if you're familiar with it or not, but it's about how grief that stays
[10:11]with you for your whole life ends up as you just mentioned morphs in some particular
[10:17]ways.
[10:18]And she followed a group of people for 30 odd years and did a lot of research into what
[10:23]the lasting effects of grief are.
[10:25]And one of the points is exactly as you had said, you know, that there is a silver lining
[10:31]to it, even though it's horrific and you wouldn't want that lining if you could return
[10:34]it, but that you do have a different type of appreciation of life.
[10:37]But anyway, in case you're in the market for a new book to read, yeah, thank you.
[10:43]You know, another thing that I was really struck by in this book is that you have built
[10:48]up such a reputation for yourself as sort of like the healer to everyone, right?
[10:52]Like you've sort of taken on everybody's pain.
[10:55]And you were so honest in this book about how that makes you feel and like the scene where
[11:00]you're out with your son and somebody comes over to you and starts like spilling out
[11:03]their most traumatic memories and you're like, um, hold on, tell me a little bit about
[11:09]that because you don't often hear people who have become sort of, you know, big deal
[11:15]sort of leaders on the emotional front, having to confront how that makes them feel.
[11:20]So I was hoping you could just tell me a little more about that.
[11:23]Yeah, you know, I, it's so interesting.
[11:27]I never, this is the thing that people have to understand that this was never my aim.
[11:33]I never in my whole life thought that this would be what I was known for, truly.
[11:38]And in fact, if you look at my career as an author, I started writing fiction, like
[11:43]I just love to write.
[11:45]So I wrote fiction, then I wrote cookbooks, like I never thought, oh, I'm going to be
[11:49]this sort of like self-help, whatever.
[11:52]And then I had another author friend who prompted me who was like, well, what would you say
[11:58]to women?
[11:59]If you were going to write nonfiction, what would you say to women?
[12:01]And my answer was, girl wash your face.
[12:03]It was my first nonfiction book and I, you know, put it out there and just like every
[12:08]of the book I've ever put out in the world is sort of, it had a slow start.
[12:11]I was like, oh my gosh, five people wrote it, this is great.
[12:15]And then it exploded, like millions, I want to say it for five million copies.
[12:20]I mean, it's insane what happened.
[12:24]And then it was like, I was describing it to someone the other day.
[12:27]I said, the past three years have felt like I'm writing a runaway horse.
[12:31]And I'm trying so desperately to sort of rein it in and kind of get control of the
[12:36]journey.
[12:38]And it's not always graceful and I don't always do it well.
[12:41]I was just felt like a really crazy experience.
[12:45]And I, you know, back before COVID, we threw my company with big women's conferences.
[12:52]We'd have 5,000 women come from all over the world for three days of amazing events.
[12:58]And in those settings, I'm very prepared to hold space for your pain.
[13:06]I'm very prepared to be in that with you and talk about the hard things and do the
[13:11]the work and like, there is a way that you can mentally and emotionally prepare yourself
[13:15]for that kind of experience.
[13:17]But what happened when the books exploded was that there were no boundaries anymore.
[13:23]And so people would truly come up to the thing I talked about in the book is a real experience
[13:29]being at the grocery store and with my son and a woman walks up with no, hello, how
[13:35]are just immediately starts falling and telling a very traumatic and upsetting experience
[13:42]as my little boy is standing next to you holding my hand and he's afraid.
[13:48]Like it's funny, but it's also, it's like one thing when it's me, when it's me and
[13:53]I'm walking through an airport or whatever, let's go.
[13:55]I'm here for you, like I'll do all the things I will be present with you in that space.
[14:01]The time that it is felt out of control and it's happened many times is when I'm with
[14:06]my kids and that feels to me like so inappropriate, especially because women are often
[14:12]telling stories that little kids shouldn't hear.
[14:15]So I didn't know how to handle that just truthfully.
[14:18]I had no idea how to process that and so what I did was I just didn't want to leave
[14:25]my house.
[14:26]So I traveled quite a bit at that time and I would travel and be on the road and people
[14:29]would stop me all the time and then I would go home and I wouldn't leave home because
[14:33]I was afraid that I wouldn't know how to handle it and it just felt so overwhelming and
[14:38]it took a lot of time to come to terms with that and to accept the responsibility of that
[14:44]and I do think it's a responsibility.
[14:46]And so I handle it now by believing if I'm in public that I am prepared to hold space
[14:56]for people because I think that you know, it worked really hard to get here but I also
[15:00]believe that God and the universe gave me this opportunity and I want to take that responsibility
[15:08]with the measure of how big it is, I want to take that and do it well.
[15:12]So if I'm in public, I'm like, all right, let's, I'm here for you.
[15:16]But when I'm with my kids now, I have learned to steal the conversation and I've learned
[15:21]to hold boundaries up and make it really clear that it's not an appropriate time to
[15:25]sort of talk to me about that thing right now.
[15:30]Wow.
[15:31]That's like, that's a lot to have to put on your shoulders just to walk out the door.
[15:37]I mean, if you want to like go, you know, run to the store or pick up some milk, that's
[15:42]just a lot that you have to be, it's almost like a, like some sort of like an ambassador,
[15:48]like a ruler almost like you're at the president, right?
[15:51]It's like being a public figure, I guess it's what I'm trying to say, like, because maybe
[15:55]maybe you're not in the mood that day.
[15:56]What if you're having a terrible day yourself?
[15:58]Yep.
[15:59]And honestly, it really is, there's an interesting thing because I have some friends who are
[16:05]high profile figures and the, the unique situation that I'm in is that I think because I
[16:11]talk to them about so many personal things in my life that my readers feel like they're
[16:16]my friends.
[16:18]And so they don't think that there's anything weird about walking up and be like, oh my gosh,
[16:22]right?
[16:23]Like, and then they tell me some story because it's almost like they feel like they're
[16:26]in the middle of a conversation with me already.
[16:29]And they're definitely other, you know, friends I have who they don't experience that.
[16:34]So I try and look at that as a gift.
[16:37]I mean, this is like the biggest, lamest name drop that I could possibly do.
[16:41]But it's my best example of this experience is I have the opportunity at the beginning
[16:46]of this year to speak for Oprah on her tour.
[16:50]And it was a lifelong dream and she's my hero and it was just such a huge moment.
[16:55]And just my, I want to, I love this story because I've met so many people that I admired
[17:01]and have been really disappointed and I can tell you that Oprah exceeds every expectation
[17:06]you could possibly hope for.
[17:07]This is what I did my keynote and I was backstage and she had welcomed me on the stage and
[17:12]like hugged me when I was done and I'm like, okay, that's it.
[17:15]She's freaking Oprah.
[17:16]Like I've had my moment.
[17:18]I went back to my job here when I was there with my best friends and we're just like,
[17:22]oh my gosh, this is amazing and someone knocked from the door and says Miss Winfrey would like
[17:27]to come see you without be okay.
[17:29]And all of us in the room, Pierre pants, we're like, what, what?
[17:35]And I'm in this like teeny tiny dressing room like Oprah wants to come to me in this trashy
[17:41]room.
[17:42]Like she doesn't even like, she's a queen, like I should not go to her like it was so
[17:46]wild.
[17:47]So I'm like, well, yes, that would be, that would be just fine and I closed the door.
[17:50]And we start cleaning, like when you're a little of your mob, like if company was ever
[17:55]coming and the whole family just starts cleaning feverishly, like we're shoving things
[17:58]under cushions, like get it clean.
[18:01]So she comes into the dressing room and hung out with us for about 15 minutes, which is
[18:06]still blows my mind.
[18:09]But there is this moment where she said, and she, I know this sounds cheesy, but like
[18:14]she looks into your soul.
[18:16]She's not human, first of all, she's a goddess.
[18:19]She like, it's something so much bigger than a regular human being.
[18:23]But she looks into my soul through my eyes as she's like, how has this felt for you?
[18:29]And I said, it's been really hard.
[18:32]And I have had to ask myself a lot in the last year if this is something I really want.
[18:37]And she touched my hand.
[18:40]And I know that I wish you could see me right now because I'm acting out this entire
[18:44]thing.
[18:45]And she truly, I cannot explain to my best friends or all there, it was a divine moment
[18:51]in my life.
[18:52]There was no other way to put it.
[18:54]She touched my hand and she looked me in the eye and she said, do you want this?
[18:59]And nobody spoke for like 90 seconds.
[19:02]And I felt like it was the universe asking me like, are you willing to carry this responsibility?
[19:08]And I said, I do.
[19:10]And she said, OK, but you have to understand what you're taking on because very few people
[19:17]will understand what it means to hold this for so many women.
[19:22]And I understand what it means.
[19:24]So just know what you are signing on for.
[19:28]And I was like, OK, yeah, it was like, it was truly just one of the most amazing moments
[19:38]in my whole life.
[19:40]But understanding that you really do have to look at it as it's not about me.
[19:47]None of this is about me.
[19:48]It's about her.
[19:49]It's about the reader.
[19:51]It's about who might be helped.
[19:53]And I'll tell you, truthfully, that I approach my work always, my prayer, always if I'm
[19:59]going up.
[20:00]To give a keynote, if I'm writing a book always my prayer is God let this help one person.
[20:07]One person, if one single person is helped by this thing that I'm about to do, then it was worth the effort and the energy and the pain and all of it.
[20:17]Because if one, if you, it doesn't matter. I'm talking about me, we could be talking about you or your listeners.
[20:23]Whether you're a teacher of your state, Obama, if you're a podcast, I was like, whatever it is that you're bringing to the world is your work can positively affect the life of another human.
[20:35]Then, oh my god, what a blessing, what a gift. And that's willing to, it like I'm willing to carry the hardship and the stress of that if it means that I can be helpful to someone.
[20:48]Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I'm going to be like, I want to like stop recording and just replay this like five times for myself. That was amazing. Thank you.
[20:57]Oh, you're so welcome.
[20:59]First of all, I can't believe you started that by saying it was a pathetic name drop. That was like the most inspiring.
[21:07]Oh, well, I always feel like who's like all this time I met Oprah like shut up dude, don't give up for a thing, but it was, I met a lot of people that I was like, oh man, I wish they weren't too lame and she was so wonderful.
[21:21]And not only that, but she like talked to my friends and hung out with my friends and took picture like she had no reason to do that.
[21:29]No reason whatsoever. So I like to tell that story because I think it's good to hear that people are good.
[21:35]I agree. And I think that especially somebody like Oprah who's so iconic and for you know this personal experience and to know, you know, sometimes you hear things about people and you're like, oh yeah, you know, she seems great, but privately she's really awful or she's so rude to the women right.
[21:51]And then it's you're like so disappointed.
[21:53]So I'm not surprised to hear that she's as authentic as she seems but it's still nice to hear.
[21:59]Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Well, wow, that was a fantastic answer.
[22:04]And how, so how do you let's you're like, let's talk about like time and how you deal with all of the things that you do being of service to basically anybody who has an issue and like the entire country or world or whatever, dealing with all of your kids writing books, running a business, how are you doing all this?
[22:25]And I don't want to talk about like juggling, but just literally like, what are your, how do you get through this?
[22:32]Yes, you know, I actually just posted something about this last night on Instagram. I will tell you I am.
[22:40]Well, I'm saying this and maybe it's not true, but I am one of the most intentional people you will ever meet.
[22:47]I am wildly intentional with my time. And this is, I want to say this to your listeners. This is a learned behavior.
[22:55]This is not something that I sort of grew up having, but I would say about 10 years ago when I really started to grow my business and I really started to focus on pursuing the goals that were in my heart.
[23:08]I started to understand that I needed to be so effective with the hours that I had inside of every single day and you do that by number one, knowing what your personal values are.
[23:24]So especially for women and especially for moms. We are often told by the world, by our family, by society, what we are meant to value.
[23:35]And I absolutely fell into that trap when I was a new mom and was first trying to figure it all out.
[23:42]And I was trying to be sort of this picture perfect Pinterest mom and like throw these elaborate birthday parties and volunteers room mom and like do all this stuff.
[23:53]And I felt so frustrated. I felt so bitter. I did not feel closer to my kids. I felt like I was sort of making other moms think that I was doing a good job, but that I wasn't really doing what I wanted to do with my own family.
[24:07]The first piece is knowing what your personal values are. And I tend to think that we should choose like four to five things that we're really going to focus on.
[24:17]And the key once you know what your values are is to say anything that is not these values does not have a place in my day.
[24:27]So, for instance, one of my biggest personal values is growth.
[24:33]I want to learn. I want to grow. I am a voracious reader. I am constantly challenging myself trying to learn Spanish and taking horseback riding lessons like I want knowledge.
[24:45]It lights my heart on fire. I don't even care what the knowledge is about. I just love to learn. And so that is really important to me where someone else might say, okay, my greatest personal value is showing up in my community and volunteering.
[25:01]And so they might then spend their time doing that. If you know what it is that you care about, then you can lay out your day to make sure that you have time to do the things you say you care about.
[25:14]So, note your personal values are be willing to say no to anything that doesn't fall into that list. And then if you saw my schedule right now, it might stress you out. It might stress lots of people out.
[25:26]Yes, I am very busy.
[25:28]But beyond the stuff that's inside of my work schedule is just like I'm looking at my calendar right now as I'm talking to you. My calendar starts to try the end.
[25:37]So I put things into my calendar like this is your reading time. This is when you do your gratitude work. This is when your workout happened. This is when you're going to meal prep for your day to make sure that you're eating foods that are going to bless your body today.
[25:51]When you're, you know, going to go on your run like it's all in there because in order to accomplish and make traction against your goals, both personally and professionally, you have to have a plan for when they're going to show up.
[26:05]So I'm super intentional and very focused on where I'm going and I guess the other piece of this is that if you're going to take the time to figure all of this out and you say that you care about something and you say that you're putting in your calendar, you have to show up for yourself.
[26:20]You know, I have a personal rule that I do not break a promise that I make to myself.
[26:28]As women, we often will break promises will like keep our promise to everybody else, but break the promise that we made to ourselves meeting.
[26:36]You said, man, I'm for sure going to get a walk in today because I know it makes my spirit feel so good and I love to get outside.
[26:43]But then someone needs you to do a favor and you're like, okay, yeah, you know what, I'll not do the thing that matters to me so that I can do the thing that you need me to do, which is how we get to the place we'll burn out and stressed out.
[26:56]And if you say that you are going to do something, you got to do it, you've got to hold yourself accountable to the things that you said you were going to do.
[27:05]Those are some really tactical things that I do to make sure that I can accomplish all the things that I set out to do.
[27:15]This is amazing. You have like bullet points for everything I ask. This is like perfect advice. It's amazing.
[27:21]I get a lot of the same question.
[27:25]Whatever. No, no, no, no, no, don't you don't hear me like that.
[27:30]What I mean is I get a lot of the same questions from like people in my community.
[27:34]So not that I get the same 10 questions, but I get the same 100 questions.
[27:39]So I try really hard to come up with answers that are helpful because I think, I mean, even for you as someone you're doing this podcast and you're helping people find information in the world.
[27:50]And oftentimes someone will ask us how to do something. And we're like, we think that the knowledge that we have, and you're like, oh, that's so simple.
[27:59]Like, well, everything I tell you would be dumb, like nobody wants to know how, no, people want to know exactly how.
[28:06]So I try really hard to pay attention to how I get the results so that when somebody prompts me, I'm like, oh, okay, great. I've got three things you can do right now.
[28:16]Well, I'm going to put that on my list of things to do.
[28:19]Having a million answers ready for when anyone asked me anything, not that anyone cares. But anyway, my one father.
[28:26]Say that if you have a listener.
[28:29]No, I'm joking.
[28:31]My one question about your really effective intentional time management system is that you have lots of kids. And so do I.
[28:39]And so they don't really care what's on my schedule sometimes. And you know, when they fall right a bandaid or when they I, you know, they want to show me their art project, I stop everything right.
[28:50]So how do you then?
[28:52]How do you interweave the complete unpredictability of having children with the need to be totally like self directed.
[29:01]Great question. So I'll tell you that as I look at my schedule right now. I've got this chunk of time that starts at 5 a.m. And ends at 6 30, which is when the kids get up for school.
[29:13]And then there's a chunk of time that's just get to get breakfast lunches like get everything prep get everything ready get the day going.
[29:21]Once they're settled, then I'm going to start my work day. And I will tell you because I'm like the queen of ask for help. I have a nanny.
[29:29]Louis blessed and that I have an any of four kids. I could not do the work that I'm doing if I didn't have her help. The kids dad is as present as a father as I am as a mother. So definitely co parenting inside of this family.
[29:44]The other thing I would say is the schedule ends every day at 5 p.m. So 5 p.m. past 5 p.m. is clear. Now I know the things that I want to do because I'm really big on routine and ritual.
[29:55]So each one of my kids there's a different bedtime routine that I go through with them.
[30:00]And that's really important to me and that's, you know, I talked about how do I want to show up as a mom.
[30:04]I'm freaking love teachers and I'm so grateful for teachers and if someone wants me to donate money or get cupcakes for the class bake sale, I am there.
[30:13]But if you want me to volunteer my time, that is not a value.
[30:17]That's not a personal value that I have as a mom.
[30:19]My value with my kid is intentional time with them at home.
[30:25]So what happens in the morning, what happens at night, what happens on weekends?
[30:29]After 5pm it's clear again because that's just family time, that's kid time.
[30:33]And by compartmentalizing my day like that, I am so much more productive with work.
[30:40]And at five o'clock, I do not look at work. I'm not picking up my phone.
[30:45]I'm not checking email. I'm not on Slack because that time is for me and my kids.
[30:50]Wow. That's impressive and inspiring. Okay. Thank you.
[30:57]I know. Please know, like, this took me years to get to this place where I would just make like a little bit of progress over here.
[31:06]And then on that progress, I'd add another great little thing and another great little thing to get to the place that I am today.
[31:12]So I don't think we go from zero to 60 overnight.
[31:16]I think that you just slowly try and weave in things that will be helpful to you.
[31:21]And then you sort of build the foundation for the life that you want to have.
[31:26]That's great. If I could figure out how to cut out like hours of emails after 5pm, that would be very nice.
[31:33]Right. But I'm working on it. I'm going to use the Rachel Hollis tools now and I feel empowered and others.
[31:39]Have you read, I mean, I know you're a reader. I know you're a reader. I just want to ask.
[31:43]Have you read the one thing by Gary Keller?
[31:46]Not. Okay. Please put that on your list because especially as you're, you know, you're working on the show and you're trying to grow your platform, whatever that looks like.
[31:55]It is for people who are listing her business owners.
[31:58]Heck, you could look at it through the lens of, you know, having a better family.
[32:02]The idea in that book is Gary Keller, who is Keller Williams, real estate.
[32:07]And he talks about this idea that we all have this stuff. We have like 50 million things that we want to do in our business and our life.
[32:15]And it helps you to identify what's the one thing that I could do that would make the rest of the list obsolete.
[32:23]So if I pursue this one thing and I make traction against this one goal, everything else. It's like the tide coming into the harbor all the boats rise.
[32:31]So that's a really powerful tool, a really incredible read for anybody who feels like, Oh my gosh, there's so much going on. How do I even focus the one thing by Gary Keller?
[32:41]I am, I'm buying it right this second. I'm on my phone as we're talking. It's in my heart. I'm checking out done. See both two tasks.
[32:48]There you go.
[32:49]Do you have, I know you've, this whole thing has been advice, but in terms of writing itself, because we haven't talked too much about the actual writing.
[32:58]Do you have advice to aspiring authors on how to get everything done or just in just any inspiring, inspiring advice on that friend?
[33:06]Honestly, I will give you a little tidbit and I will tell you I just, I got this request so often that I just did a podcast about this.
[33:15]I want to say three weeks ago, four weeks ago, and it is our, it is my most successful podcast of all time, which is wild.
[33:22]The Rachel Hollis podcast is called How to write a book. And if you go look, it's just a few weeks old. So it won't be hard to find.
[33:29]The, the interesting thing there, I just, I share all of my wisdom, but what it boils down to is writing. I don't care how much support you have from family and friends. I don't care if you don't have support.
[33:42]Writing is a really interesting thing because it is a solo endeavor. It doesn't matter what is going on in the world around you. You have to find the will to write down the words.
[33:54]So I was at an author conference years ago, and I was listening to workshop given by Nora Roberts, who has written 10 million books, right?
[34:05]And someone raised their hand and they were like, what's the trick? Like, tell me, how are you so productive? Like, how, what's, you know, because everyone's sort of looking for the magic bullet or the, the thing that's going to make, oh, can I buy something that's going to make this easier? Whatever.
[34:20]I said, Oh, yeah, I'll tell you how to finish that you're butt in the chair, except she didn't say but she said to sit your butt in the chair and write the freaking words. She also didn't say freaking.
[34:35]You put tea like palace older woman fully dropping f bombs was like, write the words. That's the trick. Like there, if you want this thing like there's a reason that not everybody does it because it's hard.
[34:50]And you have to give yourself the permission to get to a first draft that's awful.
[34:57]This is not just for writers, this is anybody who wants to create. You're going to have to let your creation suck.
[35:03]Because if you don't let it suck so that you can get to the end of the first draft, you're never going to get to the polish book which comes in the eighth edit.
[35:13]So just let yourself have that freedom and push yourself to finish. And if you want all the other advice, go listen to the podcast.
[35:21]This is great. I wish I could interview you like every day.
[35:25]There you go.
[35:27]Well, I hate to even like end this, but I don't want to take too much of your time and I know I'm already over.
[35:33]But thank you so, so much for coming on momstone time to read books and sharing all of your tips and tricks.
[35:40]And I know there are a bazillion more in the book. Didn't see that coming. And I just, your story with Oprah is going to stay with me the rest of the day.
[35:48]And it was just awesome. And the work you're doing is amazing. So it was just great to be able to chat with you.
[35:56]Thank you. I appreciate that.
[35:58]And problem. All right. We'll have a great day.
[36:00]You too. Okay. Thanks. Bye bye.
[36:02]Bye bye.
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