Meaghan Murphy, YOUR FULLY CHARGED LIFE: A RADICALLY SIMPLE APPROACH TO HAVING ENDLESS ENERGY AND FILLING EVERY DAY WITH YAY!
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[2:08]Megan Murphy is the author of Your Fully Charged Life, a radically simple approach to having
[2:13]endless energy and feeling every day with yay.
[2:17]Megan B. Murphy is an author, editor, on-air personality, lifestyle, and health expert and influencer,
[2:23]a home hack master and certified trainer.
[2:25]She was recently named Content Director of Woman's Day, the number one selling magazine on
[2:30]newsstands, charged with energizing the brand across print and digital.
[2:34]This follows a six-year stint as executive editor at Goodhousekeeping, where Megan helped
[2:39]dust off and reimagine the 130-year-old mega brand with a septanette's redesign that took a more
[2:44]modern, fun, and can-do approach to domesticity, boosting the magazine's cool factor,
[2:49]and its readership in the coveted 18-to-34 category without losing its core older audience.
[2:55]Along with guiding Woman's Day's creative vision, which reaches 18 million readers each month,
[3:00]Megan also develops strategic partnerships across all platforms, conceives of new way to generate
[3:05]revenues and promotes Women's Day in the media as a regular guest expert,
[3:09]unlive with Kelly and Ryan today, GMA, the doctor I'll show in many more.
[3:14]Additionally, she's been featured on many radio shows and podcasts.
[3:17]She co-hosted conversations with Maria Manunos on SiriusXM,
[3:21]FashionWeekDaily.com's The Daily Front Row, and TheEveryMom.com.
[3:25]The newsnet, Macaroni Kid and more, and recently launched her own podcast,
[3:29]entitled Off the Gram with Fellow Wellness Influencer, a New Jersey native Megan married,
[3:34]her younger brother's best friend Pat, and together they live in Westfield with their Irish
[3:38]triplets, Charlie, James, and Brooks, and a Labrador named Dempsey.
[3:43]Welcome, Megan, thank you so much for coming on Monster and have time to read bugs.
[3:47]Yay!
[3:50]Do you have to say that at the beginning of every interview now?
[3:52]I mean, it just comes out of my mouth kind of naturally.
[3:58]Maybe you have to do one of those things where you take a sip of
[4:02]however many times you say yay and give an hour or something.
[4:05]Oh my gosh, I would be drunk and it's dry January, so that would be a problem.
[4:09]Oh, well, okay.
[4:09]Well, in February, if you need something to do.
[4:13]Oh my gosh, that, I feel like my kids will eventually play that game and it will be funny.
[4:17]Maybe it could be with, I don't know, Oreos or something.
[4:20]Oh, James would be into that, okay.
[4:24]Okay, anyway, your fully charged life.
[4:27]Thank you for this fantastic advice, slash memoir book that's just exactly what we all need
[4:34]right now to like get us out of the bed and sit where we're off probably in and get some
[4:40]amazing tips from you and all of your experience.
[4:43]Can you tell us, nurse first, what your book is really about and maybe hold it up for people
[4:47]watching on YouTube.
[4:48]Thank you.
[4:48]What's up?
[4:48]It's up, it's up, it's up, it's up, it's like, oh my gosh, you are committed to the logo here.
[5:00]I'm proud.
[5:02]Yes, it was a bullet.
[5:03]Yes, I am owning the boat.
[5:05]But your fully charged life is a radically simple approach to having endless energy and
[5:10]filling every day with yay.
[5:11]And it is really like a science back guide to living your best life one year at a time.
[5:16]I really, really believe you're not broken.
[5:18]I am not broken.
[5:19]We don't need fixing, but I'm pretty sure tomorrow could be more awesome.
[5:23]And I think one of these tips, one of these tricks, one of these strategies is going to stick
[5:28]to get you there.
[5:29]Amazing.
[5:29]And why, why put this book together?
[5:32]You know, I'm going to service journalists for 25 years.
[5:35]And I really kind of use myself as a guinea pig,
[5:38]interviewing PhDs, writing stories.
[5:40]And I would say there was a moment when I was working at Cosmo as a senior editor.
[5:45]I did a story on, you know, the seven secrets of happiness.
[5:49]And as I was, you know, writing and researching that piece, it was the first time it kind of
[5:55]dawned on me that you can't be happy, you have to do happy.
[6:00]And happy is an action step.
[6:01]It's not even the state of mind.
[6:03]It's in the doing that we become happier.
[6:06]And that there are things that we can all do right here right now in this moment today
[6:12]to get a little piece of that happy pie.
[6:13]And once I started to do some of those things, I don't want my,
[6:17]I'm going to turn my notifications off.
[6:19]I'm so sorry.
[6:19]That's okay.
[6:20]But once I started to actively do happy, I started to retrain my brain.
[6:25]I mean, I grew up, my nickname was grumpy.
[6:27]I had my negativity bias was strong.
[6:29]I was a crabby little kid and had some crap life experiences that sort of
[6:34]reinforced all of that negativity.
[6:36]But in reporting and researching the story, I began to see the light and realize that I could
[6:42]make active choices every day to live more positively.
[6:46]And once you begin to live that way, you realize how good it feels.
[6:50]And then it's like addictive.
[6:51]Like wow, I want to feel good.
[6:53]I want to be happy.
[6:55]I want to live on the bright side.
[6:56]Like this ain't so bad.
[6:58]It's more fun to live this way.
[7:00]And so I sort of identified different pockets
[7:03]that helped me do what I say, what I call fully charged.
[7:08]I know the health charge for instance.
[7:10]I squeezed in a run before this podcast because I function better in the world
[7:14]when I move my body.
[7:15]Whether that means I go for a run or I hop on the peloton,
[7:18]like things look a little different these days.
[7:20]But as long as I move my body, I feel better.
[7:23]So I have to check that box for myself.
[7:25]I really kind of realize if I sleep well and I protect my sleep,
[7:29]I function better in the world.
[7:31]So I'm very, I'm very protective of my sleep.
[7:34]I realize I need the love charge.
[7:36]I need people and I don't just need the people in my house,
[7:39]my three kids in my husband.
[7:41]I need cashiers and baristas and train conductors.
[7:44]I need those so-called weak ties to charge me.
[7:48]I want to give you a compliment in the supermarkets so that we have an exchange.
[7:52]I want to smile with my eyes now behind a mask and smiles at the cashier in the drug store
[7:59]and have an interaction because I thrive on connection as many of us do.
[8:04]So I thrive on those things.
[8:05]So basically the whole fully charged line looks at all of those different things that have
[8:09]the ability to charge us all.
[8:11]And when you pick out the ones, pick and choose the things that work for you.
[8:14]The work charge is really about like what's your passion and purpose?
[8:18]Like okay, you need a job to pay the bills and make your job isn't going to,
[8:21]you're not going to be passionate about.
[8:22]And how can you find passion somewhere else so that you come to the job with purpose?
[8:27]It's really, it's about looking at what makes you tick and doing more of that.
[8:32]The extra charge, I'm not all about the extra charge he listened, like
[8:36]dress in lightning bolts, dress how you want to feel, right?
[8:39]Like I dress in color because I think of my wardrobe as a costume.
[8:43]Like if I was acting background and if I were playing a nurse,
[8:47]I might put on scripts and stuff this goes.
[8:48]If I'm playing happy Megan, maybe that means today I'm wearing orange and a lightning bolt
[8:52]and I'm going to fake it till I make it and maybe those clothes are going to help charge me,
[8:56]right? If I dress it on black, that's also a state of mind and a state of being.
[9:00]How do I want to feel? I'm not going to a funeral, I'm going to life.
[9:03]So I dress the way I want to feel.
[9:05]I mean, I do lots of things. I do happy.
[9:08]And I figured out a lot of those things that work for me.
[9:11]And I know a lot of those things will work for you and the readers.
[9:15]Wow. It's so interesting to hear it sort of packaged up like an option.
[9:20]Yeah, I mean, like would you like to choose happy today at Starbucks or would you like
[9:25]to stay in Grumpyland? You know, like in that it's so it seems so easy the way you say it
[9:30]and the way you wrote it.
[9:32]Well, I think the thing is is you it's a process though. So like it's it's just like you brush your
[9:37]teeth. Do you think about brushing to your teeth? No, but you probably brush your teeth every day.
[9:42]Eventually choosing happy becomes more automatic, doing happy becomes more automatic.
[9:47]It's not like this daunting choice. I have to choose happy today. You just automatically do it.
[9:54]You automatically begin to default to the good thought to the positive. You know, I mean, from
[10:00]Me, the book really came, I knew I had to write the book
[10:04]two years ago after my dad had five years ago.
[10:07]After my dad had five years ago,
[10:08]I undertook this thing called Operation Good Brief.
[10:11]He had pancreatic cancer and he was gone in five months
[10:14]and it was earth-shattering.
[10:15]I had three small kids.
[10:16]I didn't know how to pick up the pieces.
[10:17]I didn't know how to get to tomorrow.
[10:19]And I started this thing called Operation Good Brief,
[10:22]which was really just a process of initially looking
[10:25]for one thing that didn't suck every day, right?
[10:27]Like, I told you my negativity bias was strong.
[10:30]I'm inherently negative.
[10:32]I trained to live the way I do now for any rainbows.
[10:35]I trained to do this.
[10:36]But during that period,
[10:38]I mean, I just had to actively say to myself,
[10:41]every damn day, what doesn't suck.
[10:44]Okay, you know what doesn't suck today?
[10:46]I got this new workout tank that says stronger
[10:49]than you think you are.
[10:51]I'm just gonna focus on that.
[10:52]I'm gonna take a picture of that.
[10:53]I'm gonna put that on Instagram
[10:55]and I'm gonna share it with the hashtag operation
[10:57]and the grief.
[10:58]I did that every single day for two years.
[11:00]Sometimes it was heart foam on a lot taste.
[11:02]Sometimes it was daffodil blooming at the end of my driveway.
[11:05]Sometimes it was taco juice day.
[11:07]And I just shared that every day
[11:09]until it created a community around Operation Good Brief,
[11:12]other people who were suffering,
[11:14]other people who had moved through the stages of grief
[11:17]that I was going through.
[11:18]And eventually it just began to,
[11:21]I started to stop saying what doesn't suck
[11:23]and I started saying what made me say yay today.
[11:25]And there was so much fit.
[11:27]There was just so much of it.
[11:28]Like the narrow pluses to see if you're afraid is amazing.
[11:31]And the pathways were rewired.
[11:34]I mean, it just, I see good now.
[11:36]It's like, it's like that all moving.
[11:38]I see dead people.
[11:39]Now I see blood people.
[11:40]I just see good people.
[11:42]So many of them are so many good things.
[11:44]And there was a process and I had to choose
[11:48]to look for those because they're there,
[11:50]but bad is loud and bad is glaring.
[11:53]And so like, especially right now, right?
[11:56]The bad is so loud and it's so glaring.
[11:59]And you have to acknowledge it.
[12:01]And you have to notice it,
[12:03]but you don't have to live there.
[12:04]And you don't have to be blinded by it
[12:06]because there's also so much good.
[12:08]And guess what?
[12:09]There's more good,
[12:11]but you have to open your eyes to it.
[12:12]You have to be willing to see it.
[12:14]You have to make that choice.
[12:16]Wow. That's very inspirational and motivating.
[12:18]I love that.
[12:19]The thing is, it's like, listen, I'm not a scientist.
[12:22]I'm not an expert.
[12:23]I'm a guinea pig.
[12:24]I tried this crap.
[12:25]And I'm like, it works.
[12:27]And I am feel so grateful to get to live this way.
[12:31]My days are good, even when they're bad
[12:34]because I got the strategies in place to recharge.
[12:39]Wow.
[12:40]I mean, I think that's so much more motivating
[12:42]than hearing this from an expert.
[12:44]I mean, you're just saying like, you figured this out
[12:46]and you want to share it from the goodness of your heart
[12:48]because it helps so much.
[12:49]That's how can you turn that down?
[12:51]It's like somebody's giving you a gift.
[12:54]And here's the cool part is like, I figured it out
[12:57]and then I have all the science in the world to back it up.
[12:59]That was the really cool part.
[13:01]I went backwards and I'm like, this works.
[13:04]I'm a researcher.
[13:05]I'm a journalist.
[13:05]Why does it work?
[13:06]Then I needed to know why.
[13:08]And so I talked to some of the best,
[13:11]positive psychologists and PhDs and researchers
[13:14]and looked at some of the best studies out there
[13:16]to back it up.
[13:17]Because I didn't want it to be like,
[13:18]this is what make it worth it.
[13:19]Thanks a lot.
[13:20]No, this is how making our feet lives.
[13:21]And guess what?
[13:22]Science says, here's why it works.
[13:25]And I promise you like,
[13:27]if just one of these little little tricks sticks,
[13:31]you will be that much happier.
[13:34]Amazing.
[13:35]That's all it takes.
[13:36]Little tricks just to get through life.
[13:37]That's all it takes.
[13:38]And I think that's the biggest thing.
[13:40]Like I didn't want my book to come out in January
[13:42]because I hate all that new year new, new, you crap.
[13:45]It's like, you don't need to be a new you.
[13:48]But like, what if you,
[13:51]the you you already are could just be a little bit happier?
[13:53]Like one if there's just this one thing
[13:57]that's gonna like turbocharge your happiness.
[13:59]Like you're already okay.
[14:01]But how can we turbocharge that?
[14:04]Like how can you wake up more optimistic,
[14:07]more joyful every day?
[14:09]I mean, if not like why not pursue that?
[14:13]Why not make your life better by doing all these things?
[14:15]You know?
[14:16]Well, I think the cool part is is that like,
[14:19]so I finished the book at the beginning of the pandemic.
[14:21]And you know, I have three kids.
[14:23]I'm homeschooling.
[14:24]I started a new magazine job in March
[14:26]without ever meeting my team
[14:28]or like actually being in an office.
[14:30]And like we reinvented women's team magazine.
[14:33]And you know, we did all this isolated from our homes
[14:36]while I was finishing a book
[14:38]and doing a podcast and all the things.
[14:39]And I really had to lean into my tips
[14:45]and tricks and strategies like a hard core.
[14:48]I mean, I had a week where I was just rock bottom.
[14:51]I'm like, I can't do it.
[14:53]I can't do it.
[14:54]I had, I'm like taking Zoom calls in the pantry,
[14:58]you know, after setting up a kind of like crafting
[15:01]a kindergarten sloth.
[15:02]Like I can't like I'm done.
[15:05]I miss people, I miss my life.
[15:07]I miss the world.
[15:08]I miss every.
[15:09]So okay, let me look, I took this like,
[15:12]then I'm like, let me look at myself.
[15:13]Where, what am I doing?
[15:14]And what am I not doing?
[15:15]Why do I feel this way?
[15:17]Oh, I hadn't worked out in three days.
[15:19]Oh, I hadn't showered or like, you know,
[15:22]beach wig my hair thrown on mascara
[15:24]or gotten out of sweats in six days.
[15:27]Like I didn't make, I wasn't making my bed.
[15:31]I was staying up to one o'clock in the morning
[15:33]to binge watch crap because I had no reason
[15:35]to get up early.
[15:36]Oh, wait a second, I function better when I go to bed
[15:39]at a reasonable time, get myself an hour to sleep
[15:41]and wake up early before the kids.
[15:43]I function better when I have on a swipe of mascara
[15:46]and maybe try to do something with my hair
[15:49]when I'm not completely in sweats.
[15:51]And once I started to just check those boxes,
[15:55]I was like, oh wait a second, I feel better.
[15:57]Oh, I feel even better.
[15:59]I feel even better.
[16:00]Oh, I'm okay.
[16:01]But it was like, I just had to do the inventory
[16:04]and go through the checklist.
[16:05]And once I started to charge up in those areas,
[16:07]I was okay again.
[16:08]Wow, that is impressive.
[16:10]I love your approach to this whole thing.
[16:12]You know, it's funny, in the beginning of your introduction,
[16:15]you were talking about how like you're not for everyone
[16:19]and like maybe people find you annoying.
[16:21]And you're cool with that
[16:22]because you are just a positive person
[16:24]and that's just the way you are now.
[16:25]And you know, if they don't wanna take it or leave it,
[16:29]this is the way you are.
[16:30]And then you go into your whole backstory
[16:33]about well, maybe not in the introduction,
[16:35]but further into the book about the pain
[16:38]that you've been through.
[16:39]And you have been through a lot of stuff, right?
[16:41]So I feel like it's so important to say
[16:44]relatively early that you're not just like, you know,
[16:47]little Miss Sunshine over here
[16:49]and that everything is all roses and rainbows.
[16:51]And you've lived through a lot of stuff.
[16:54]And I was hoping maybe you could just talk a little about,
[16:56]you know, your history with your losing your friend
[16:59]and your evening disorder and the TV maybe
[17:01]and like the whole drama that can arise
[17:03]that time of your life.
[17:05]Well, and that's what it's so surreal
[17:07]because people who know me now and didn't know me then
[17:11]are like, wait, what?
[17:12]How is that possible?
[17:13]And so I sort of, I love some of my oldest
[17:17]and dearest friends who were like, oh yeah.
[17:19]No, yeah.
[17:20]Like you're, you transformed.
[17:22]Oh my God.
[17:23]But because you had to know me then.
[17:25]Yeah, I had some, I had some short life experiences.
[17:28]I just cursed, you know, that doesn't get me
[17:29]that's supposed to be.
[17:30]But yeah, and it's surreal to look back on it now.
[17:34]But as a teenager, I had a new new disorder.
[17:37]My best friend and I were what we called
[17:39]Tanda Manarexics.
[17:41]We kind of fueled each other's eating disorders.
[17:43]Exercise for 90 hours and like eight nothing.
[17:47]And you know, I went up in the hospital.
[17:50]Our moms happened to be best friends as well.
[17:52]And my best friend was going to be admitted
[17:55]into the hospital with me as well.
[17:57]And I'll be driving to the hospital.
[17:58]She jumped out of the car and she subsequently died.
[18:01]And that was tough.
[18:03]And you're living with the guilt of that,
[18:05]the devastation of that, losing your best friend
[18:08]in such a tragic way at 16 years old was pretty intense.
[18:12]And like as I said, I was already kind of a miserable
[18:16]human suffering.
[18:18]You know, I subsequently had three lengthy hospital stays,
[18:22]you know, and didn't finish my junior year of high school,
[18:25]had to go back and move in with my aunt and uncle
[18:28]to finish in a different town,
[18:30]about a writing an essay about it.
[18:31]So like there's a grain of good and all that.
[18:33]Everyone's essay about it, which wound up getting
[18:35]the $10,000 scholarship in the attention of NBC.
[18:38]I was on an NBC special with Trisha Yeerwood
[18:40]and Donaldson above cost us, which wound up getting
[18:43]me an internship and subsequently contributing
[18:45]at a job at William magazine and sort of springboard it
[18:49]my career.
[18:50]And in that same moment, my deceased friend's parents
[18:54]then came back and tried to sue me.
[18:56]I'm served with papers in my college dorm
[18:58]for having shared our story and how they talked about her life,
[19:02]which was intense as a, you know, not fully formed,
[19:08]19-year-old person being served with papers
[19:11]for having, you know, shared something so deeply personal.
[19:16]And the sharing was cathartic for me.
[19:18]And I wound up becoming sort of a, as I healed and got well,
[19:22]a body positivity kind of person.
[19:25]I had a column for why I'm magazine about body positivity.
[19:28]And it sort of became a champion for loving yourself
[19:30]and loving yourself as you are and using food
[19:33]and exercises fuel and treating yourself with kindness.
[19:36]So that was a bit of a harrowing experience.
[19:40]It seems like someone else's life now,
[19:42]which just kind of feels good to be so separate from it.
[19:45]But coming through that was intense and it was tough.
[19:49]And it did shape me and inform who I am
[19:51]and give me a very deep appreciation for life.
[19:55]My father's death from pancreatic cancer
[19:57]was also pretty intense.
[20:00]That wasn't my dad was my person losing him so suddenly also just kind of grounded me in the present and made me appreciate and grateful for everything we get to have and the people we get to love and the experiences we get to have, but it was also my dad's death was the reason I knew I had to write this book,
[20:21]moving through that grief, moving through that loss and really kind of landing in this place of joy and optimism despite everything I've kind of had to navigate really made me feel like I had to share it.
[20:36]I feel like I figured out some kind of secret sauce here and if other people can feel this way and this kind of energy can be contagious, it sounds so naive, but I really think the world could be a better place, right, like it feels good to live this way and good to other people and other people are good to me by virtue of this energy.
[20:56]You know, my husband is sort of similar to you and that he thrives with connection and talking to people and when we first got together, I was much more not guarded, but just maybe from being a shy child.
[21:10]I don't know, I just didn't often talk to strangers like in the elevator say, and once we got together and he would every opportunity he could get to give someone a compliment, he just takes and it's not.
[21:21]It's like what you're saying about habit like he doesn't think twice better that's just what he does I don't know how I don't know if it stemmed from your from a conscious choice, but we'll be in the elevator and he'll be like, wow, what a great scarf you have on and it makes that person's day right.
[21:33]And it's almost like that that ad campaign where like somebody says something nice and then the next person says something nice to the next person.
[21:39]So I totally believe that once you put that positive energy out there, it ripples and then that person takes it on and you like put it out and it's great.
[21:48]So I totally am on board and have seen this work because now I've adopted it too.
[21:54]And it's even cooler than you think like compliments are magic right so like your husband compliments that woman on that scar.
[22:00]Great in the moment that feels good but guess what that also feels good the next time she puts on the scar the next time she looks only in the mirror and that scar so like the good is is it like there's this massive ripple effect that you can't even found.
[22:14]I'm a big compliment giver because I just think it is it's a way to connect it's a way to share kindness and I especially in a world of a role mask.
[22:24]I mean, you can only smile so hard with your eyes a compliment goes really far, you know, I had someone who was sort of rude to me in the store and instead of being rude back and meeting negativity with negativity as your mask is so fun.
[22:38]I love your mask is just making me smile.
[22:41]And the next thing I know she's like oh thank you I got it as like my daughter gives me as again like and it it's softened that the blow of her initial crap interaction like because it's easy to be rude and it's easy to meet
[22:55]negativity with negativity but one of you diffuse all of that with joy and goodness in kindness just isn't even as an experiment it's actually funny it's like becomes you can like almost gamify it like okay.
[23:10]This guy I was just I was wanting today and this guy almost hit me in a crosswalk.
[23:17]I guess what like the deep hole just to flip them the bird right like that would have been really easy to flip them with the bird instead of getting a fist pumping a smile like all right man we got this and like like.
[23:28]Right that's the better choice that fully charged choice because you know what my middle finger and then like makes him drive with anger and angst like why I rather make you smile with a crazy fist pump.
[23:41]Then then like turbo charge your anger with up with a middle finger right like I had this one experience this is reminding me of years ago I was in tasty delight back when I was having that like every day no matter how cold it was and I would be like.
[23:58]No it would be snowing and I was like in there with my tasty delight the only person anyway this one lady was so rude behind the counter to me one day and she was just you could tell she's in the worst mood and she totally snapped at me as I was trying like I don't know 67 flavors or something.
[24:11]Anyway, instead of like getting like all huffy back I remember like deciding in that moment like I wonder what's going on with her and as she said something reached me I was like I think you're having a really bad day are you okay.
[24:24]And she starts crying and she was like thank you so much like I'm having the worst day and then she was so nice and of course gave me like free ice cream and anyway, it was the first time I had like decided that I wasn't going to like buy into someone else's.
[24:38]And it just changed the way I looked at things.
[24:41]And it will just change the way you move through the world because like you're like that rude that nasty that miserable part there everywhere.
[24:50]Right, so like you can get dragged down with all of them or you can rise above and rising above is really simple it's like not.
[24:58]Giving the person will teach you by the hit you with the car on the cross lot the finger not letting the cashier ruin your day just not letting that happen.
[25:07]I mean it's I enjoy it, I think it's like it's so fun to change someone's bad to good it really is.
[25:14]And now how great that there is actually a book that teaches people how to do this essentially which is fantastic it's I mean it's really.
[25:21]It's really fantastic I'm like totally on board with this whole book in concept and lifestyle and I just think it's the best.
[25:29]Tell me like the actual writing piece of this and I know you finished it in the pandemic and you alluded to that in your book and added a chapter at the end and everything.
[25:37]What was it like having to manage all the other things in your life and then also writing this like when did you get it all done and like what advice would you have on somebody else trying to accomplish a feat like this.
[25:48]Yeah, so it sometimes feel like it's like 20 years in the making I mean I feel like I've been living this since my first job at YM magazine when I was 19 years old.
[25:59]This writing process was pretty grueling you know in a book starts with a proposal right so the proposal itself took a year.
[26:07]That was a hard year of pushing and pulling and what this book should be and I like I love my agent Lauren Nolan because she really worked me and worked the proposal to get it to a place of like.
[26:22]this is a book and so once that was in place that's when we did like the shop it out to the publishers and we went to option and like.
[26:32]So in that deal with Penguin Random House which was like honestly probably the best day of my life like I came home and my kids had made me a big sign with penguins all over it that said you're fully charged life and like a cake with a lightning bolt and I made them proud like they had seen how hard I worked on it and it was like a big moment because.
[26:52]It could have just been an idea in my head and it might not have been a book so like I really felt very vulnerable in that process and was just elated beside myself when it when somebody else actually wanted to publish it.
[27:05]A couple people actually but penguins was the dream and then setting out to write it was kind of daunting because I am so in the editor chief of Wednesday I was the good housekeeping executive editor.
[27:15]There was definitely a moment of like do I quit my day job and just work on this book and the answer was no because me hold up just writing I lose my juice.
[27:26]I need to function in the world, I need to be around people, I need to be creating to be creative so the thought was nope you got to you got to do it all.
[27:35]And that meant number one asking for help so I hired a collaborator to do the research to work really hard with me on the research to make sense of the hamster on the wheel in my brain when I had 900 ideas at four o'clock in the morning.
[27:50]So that my collaborator like less her heart I think she was probably very happy to be out of my brain right now because we worked very closely together.
[28:00]And it meant like getting up to four o'clock in the morning, writing for an hour, going to maybe a five amp workout, writing for an hour and then dealing with the kids.
[28:08]I, my commute to New York was writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, I mean it was like I have scribbles everywhere I've noticed in my phone, like because you'll see when you read the book it's all life experiences it's a lot of the science then ties back to vignettes or interactions or experiences in my life.
[28:26]Like if I were to write the book again today would be different again because like my experiences in my interaction with the world change on a daily basis.
[28:34]I really wanted everything to feel very real life and practical and accessible so all the stories all the anecdotes all those little moments were so important to me and it was doing April.
[28:46]I took the new job as energy of a woman's day I'm on lockdown I've got to reinvent that magazine completely new logo new whatever the cool part was is I just use the book to inform the redesign of woman's day is now called woman's yay on officially.
[29:02]And it's become destination celebration no holiday left behind from chocolate Tuesday to Christmas and it has become this joyful place to escape the scary and and just celebrate life.
[29:14]And so like the joke is I basically just made your fully charged woman's day because that's what I was in the mid that was my mindset and I'm really proud of the work we're doing and I'm really proud of the magazine.
[29:25]Absolutely an extension of your fully charged life like I'm not going to sugarcoat like I made a magazine from everything I believe and live in the book.
[29:34]And then I had to rework a little bit because the recharge chapter is all about resilience and overcoming loss and not about back and at that moment we are in the middle of a global pandemic the loss was real for all of us.
[29:47]The biggest moment of national grief imaginable we'd lost our freedom we'd lost our many of us our livelihoods our family member I mean it was just I had to rewrite that chapter and it kind of now starts with me.
[30:00]be walking to what was a prayer wall at the end of my block that I had passed for weeks
[30:05]that I just felt compelled to go write a message of hope on a ribbon and tie it to that wall.
[30:11]Like that's not how that chapter started. That's how that chapter then had to start because
[30:15]that's where I was in that moment. And then eventually I had to stop rewriting myself and turn it in.
[30:22]Do you have like a whole line of fully charged stuff in the works like to editors with your
[30:27]fully charged life? And here's the thing, like my 10-year-old daughter will say to me outside,
[30:32]you need merch. Yeah, you need merch. Yeah. The reality is is like I am a mother of three,
[30:39]the energy of a magazine, a podcast or an author with like if somebody wants that like
[30:43]somebody could help me with the business of that, I would be so on board because I have all the
[30:49]merch and I love the merch. I'm not there yet because I'm just a bit overextended. And it's hard
[30:56]because I mean one of the biggest philosophies of or premises of your fully charged life is say no,
[31:01]say no a lot, say no often so that you can say yes to what matters. I'm saying yes a little bit more
[31:06]because so many things exciting right now. But I'm going to have to figure out what I can say
[31:11]notice so that I can say yes to merch. Even if you just have a charger, like so that every time
[31:17]I were to plug in my phone, I could get that jolt and remember to charge myself. I don't know,
[31:22]just like right right there. Oh, I'm so there. I mean, I'm a walking rainbow. So yeah,
[31:28]I am not. So I need you. I need that. I need that like in the in the present. Well, Megan,
[31:35]thank you so much. I feel like even just talking to you has changed my mood around today.
[31:41]Thank you for that. I really needed it. And your book is fantastic. And I can't wait to have the
[31:45]hard copy and put it on my own shelf. And it looks so pretty in there. It looks great.
[31:50]It looks amazing. Love the lighting bulb. And I will now forever. I have a secret. It was originally
[31:55]turquoise and oranges my power color and they changed the orange. Isn't that nice? Yeah, right?
[32:03]Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate all your time. And I am internalizing your
[32:08]messages and we'll be using them to live my life better. So thank you. Thank you for having me. My
[32:14]pleasure. All right. Take care of it. Today's sponsor was Gemist G E M M I S T dot com. Give it a try
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