The Best of 2023: Top 6 Learnings From Our Guests on Self Love & Sweat THE PODCAST

In this episode, Lunden shares her top 6 learnings from guests we've had on the podcast this year in 2023! Of course, this just scratches the surface of the incredible guests we've had this year. THANK YOU for your continued support. Cheers to more episodes in 2024.

Timestamps to help you navigate this episode:
0:00 Intro
2:46 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
7:13 Insights from Episode 124 with Gary Goldstein
10:56 Insights from Episode 146 with Dr. Tanya Stephenson
13:35 Lessons from Episode 140 with Jen Drummond
17:20 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
19:13 Insights from Episode 127 with Megan Gallagher
24:21 Lessons from Episode 143 with Lyndsay Lee
26:35 Lessons from Kevin Suber
27:57 Insights from Megan Arneson

Mentioned in this episode:
EP 124: STORYTELLING & SHOWING UP FOR YOUR DREAMS WITH GARY GOLDSTEIN

EP 146: REWRITING YOUR IDENTITY NARRATIVE WITH DR. TANYA STEPHENSON

EP 140: 7 SUMMITS, 7 KIDS, 7 LESSONS WITH JENN DRUMMOND

EP 127:  Transforming Education: Mental Health, Mindfulness & Empathy in Public Schools with Megan Gallagher

EP 143: SHOWING UP MESSY & AUTHENTIC ONLINE WITH LYNDSAY LEE

EP 137: AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP WITH KEVIN SUBER

EP 132: BREAKING FREE FROM THE HUSTLE CULTURE WITH MEGAN ARNESON

BOOK: Breakproof by Jenn Drummond

Transcript

Lunden Souza: 2:26

Welcome to Self Love and Sweat The Podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host, Lunden Souza. Hey, have you grabbed your free Self Love and Sweat monthly calendar yet? This calendar is so amazing. It comes right in your inbox every single month to help you have a little nugget of wisdom, a sweaty workout, a mindset activity, just a little something, something to help keep you focused and motivated and keep that momentum towards your goals. So every day, when you get this calendar, you'll see a link that you can click that will lead to a podcast episode or a workout or something that will be very powerful and quick to read. And then you'll also see, on the top left corner of every single day, there's a little check box in the calendar and what that is is that's for your one thing. You can choose one thing every month, or it can be the same, something that you want to implement and make this something that you can easily implement, like daily meditation or getting a certain amount of steps or water, for example, and staying hydrated and even taking your supplements. This can be something if you want to get more regular doing a particular habit and routine. You can choose what that check box means. So if you want your Self Love and Sweat free monthly calendar delivered right to your inbox every month on the first of the month, go to lifelikelunden. com/ calendar, fill out the form really quickly and you will have your calendar in your inbox within a few short minutes. That's lifelikelunden L-I-F-E-L-I-K-E-L-U-N-D-E-N dot com forward slash calendar. Go, get yours for free and enjoy this episode. Happy today.

Lunden Souza: 4:33

Welcome back to the podcast. This is the last podcast episode of 2023. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for all of you who are new, who have been listening to the podcast for years. Next March, 2024, will be four years of doing the podcast, because we started in March of 2020. And I say we because you know I couldn't continue to do this without you guys. Without you guys listening, sharing the podcast with your friends, reaching out via DMs or email and telling me what podcast episodes resonate with you, sharing ideas for what you want to hear next. I just feel so grateful to be able to do what I love. So thank you so much.

Lunden Souza: 5:15

And in this episode I've written down here in my notebook one, two, three, four, five, six, six slash seven, because the last one is from two people but learnings from guests that we've had on the podcast. I feel like I've met some of the most incredible humans on the planet through this podcast and some of them I know and invite them on the podcast. But some of them I would have never known unless they reached out to me or their team reached out to me in order to be a guest on my show, and so I'm super picky with my guests. I like stalk them on Instagram, I look at their videos, I listen to other podcasts that they've been on, because I like people who want to come on and share stories and not just be all about like products or like their services. You know, sometimes I get and no judgment but sometimes I get guests where they reach out and it's all about wanting to promote, like just a book or just talk about a product, and I don't mind if there's, you know, products or books or things associated with a person. I mean, I do too when I'm a guest on a podcast. I always want them to come over to my podcast, get my free self love and sweat monthly calendar, do one-on-one coaching with me and things like that, but I just try to sniff out if that's like the main motive or not.

Lunden Souza: 6:29

So I was reflecting after a meditation last week and I just started writing down a lot of things that I've learned from some of the amazing guests that we've had on this show, and so I thought maybe you guys would want to hear that and I could share them with you today. So I'm going to jump right into these learnings and I'll link all of these episodes in the show notes. I'll also tell you what episode number they are so that you can go back and listen to them if you want to, and maybe you've already listened to some of these episodes, so this will be kind of like a recap, maybe. Maybe you can also let me know if there was anything I missed, right? Like if there's something that you learned from an episode that I didn't mention or from a guest that I didn't mention, by all means call me out and tell me. Send me a DM.

Lunden Souza: 7:13

Okay, so the first one is from episode 124 with Gary Goldstein. Gary Goldstein has become a dear friend of mine. We've spent some time together over this year getting to know one another. He's such an amazing, kind, down-to-earth, humble human. He's the producer of Pretty Woman, Mothman Prophecies and just very successful in the Hollywood space, and I had him on episode 124.

Lunden Souza: 7:42

And the thing that really inspired me about mine and Gary's conversation was he moved to LA and didn't know anything about making movies. He didn't know the terminology like I don't even know the terminology to say what he didn't know but I remember that he shared with me, like he didn't know all the different terminologies when it came to, like you know, making movies, right, like whether people involved in making movies or the processes involved in making movies. He just knew that he wanted to tell stories and that he wanted to be a creative and he wanted to own his time and he just like had this passion and so what he did was he? First of all, he noticed that there was like a sports club by his house where people were playing tennis, like during the week, on a Tuesday two o'clock just like you know, living the dream owning their own time, and he was like who are those people? You know those must be my friends waiting to meet me. So he would go there and he would play tennis and after each tennis match he would ask the person like hey, what do you do? And if they were in a space of interest for him where he wanted to learn, he would ask them like hey, will you be my five minute mentor? And if they agreed which he said most of them did he would ask them, in like five minutes, just some questions about their expertise, ways that he could grow and learn.

Lunden Souza: 9:02

And I just thought that was so beautiful, because sometimes we don't know what we don't know, in a sense that like well, maybe that's not the way that I want to say it Sometimes we just don't know and it's up to us to go and figure it out. Right, there was probably things. Or maybe I said that, right, like there's probably things he didn't know. He didn't know when he had those questions and was talking to these people. But you know, just because we don't know doesn't mean we can't figure it out. And just because we don't know all of the things doesn't mean that we can't learn it one day or we can't get to that point.

Lunden Souza: 9:33

You know, you might have a dream of I don't know working online or, you know, being a movie producer, like he is. Or maybe you know getting your doctorate degree and you don't have the money yet and you're not really sure, like, just because you don't have the resources and the knowledge available available to you right in this moment doesn't mean it's not possible to go out and get it, and I loved his tenacious spirit and his curious spirit in the way that he did that, you know, and he put himself out there. Right People could have said no, like no, I don't have five minutes. Sorry, bye, Gary. You know we're done playing tennis, don't bother me. But he said most people were really kind and really open and that inspired me to to think about who I could ask for help and who I could reach out to in in anything right, like when it comes to our career, when it comes to, maybe, relationship advice or finances or whatever. I've really gone out this year and asked a lot of my friends, or my friends especially who are older than me, for advice, for input, and it's been so amazing to see the outpour of giving when we just ask hey, can you you know, can we, can I ask you some questions? You know, give me five minutes, you have three minutes, and he was just always prepared with some questions that he wanted to ask and getting that information, and so that's what I learned from Gary Goldstein in episode 124.

Lunden Souza: 10:57

The next learning comes from episode 146 with Dr. Tanya Stephenson. This one was all about rewriting your identity and the thing that spoke to me the most about our conversation was she tells a story about how she had this awareness that she was giving her partner the silent treatment. Something happened where they had guests over. I think I can't remember specifically what the the scenario was, but she noticed that she was giving her partner the silent treatment and when she stopped and thought about it she was like, oh, that was learned because my mom used to give my dad the silent treatment. And I just think that the awareness of patterns passed on when it comes to communication, when it comes to connection, is so, so, so powerful and she really pointed that out, was open and vulnerable and spot on, in my opinion, because sometimes we are so unconscious in our communication patterns and we just think that, like people deserve, in her case, the silent treatment when they, you know, do something wrong or they bother us or whatever. But she even said herself she's like it's so weird because while I was giving my partner the silent treatment, that's not the person that I am like. I want connection, I want deep communication, I want to be able to talk about the hard thing.

Lunden Souza: 12:22

Yet I was doing something that was contrary to what I wanted until I had the awareness about it, and so I really loved having her as a guest. In fact, I want to have her back. She's so awesome. I loved her. She's from Australia and at the time that we recorded the episode it was like two o'clock in the morning, Australia time, because when she booked on my calendar I didn't have. You know, I have certain windows of times when I record podcasts, but it was funny. I was like, girl, we could have. You know, you should have written me and I could have, you know, rearranged some things so that you wouldn't have to be up in the middle of the night. But anyway she did, and I'm so grateful for Dr. Tanya Stephenson for doing that and for the awareness patterns that she was aware of. And then she was gracious enough to share on the podcast.

Lunden Souza: 13:06

I always love when people are open and real and raw and vulnerable, and I understand it's not easy. You know, I can remember times in my life where I didn't share a lot of the shit that was going on in my life, and now I feel like I don't know how to. I don't know how to not share the shit. So I appreciate yeah, I just appreciate those who come on and are just like open books. That was learning number two. Learning number three comes from episode 140 with Jen Drummond.

Lunden Souza: 13:35

She's the woman who I talked to that has seven kids and she climbed seven of the second highest summits in seven continents and, honestly, that conversation blew my mind. In fact, she just came out with a new book called Breakpoint no Breakproof, sorry, I just had to look back on my bookshelf. Breakproof is the name of her book and I'll link it in the show notes as well, just highlighting seven lessons from seven summits. And I'm like I think my learning from her or I know my learning from her is seriously. We can do whatever the fuck we put our mind to. Like we can do whatever we put our mind to.

Lunden Souza: 14:18

This woman is just like when I talk to her, you think that I mean, of course she has these supernatural capabilities and all these things, but when I talk to her on the podcast, like she's just like a normal person, right, like a normal person seven kids, doing all the things, training for her summits and all the stuff, and I just felt so inspired by her because she had had a very bad accident where she could, should have she would say should have died. Like you know, if you look at what happened to her, she shouldn't be here anymore, but she was and she is, and so she decided to, you know, take that pain, take that tragedy and turn it into her mission and turn it into her purpose. And so sometimes I think about her and I think about other moms and judges. I think about other moms in general and I'll say to myself Lunden party a one, because I'm just myself, right, like I don't have kids, I live alone, like I do my thing, and sometimes things are hard. And then I think of the moms out there who have all these kids and all these to-dos, and I just am so in awe of mothers, including my own, when I think about the child.

Lunden Souza: 15:24

I was not that I was like bad, I was just like a lot, like that was a lot, I was a lot to handle, but I love it. I love that about the way yeah, I just love that about the way she shared that and just reminding us that it doesn't matter if you're a mom how old you are. If you had a near-death experience like you can always turn that mess into your message. And so I haven't yet dove into her book Breakproof yet, but I'm so excited to read it. She sent me over a signed copy, which I'm super excited about. Thank you, Jenn. That was so kind and I can't wait to dive in and share probably some learnings with you guys from that book, because I just feel like and then she's so funny because she shared, she goes yeah, you know, I'm a woman and I have long hair and I was going to be in the summits like freezing, cold, wet, so I requested a blow dryer.

Lunden Souza: 16:19

So she gets a blow dryer, but then of course they don't have like plugs, so she had to get like a solar plug. So she had to be like blow drying her hair out in the open because the plug needed solar to, you know, the sun to be out. So she and I just have this vision of her like on the side of the mountain and all of her gear with her solar plug, like blow drying her hair. Because it wasn't about vanity, like she wasn't trying to give herself like this glam blowout, she was just trying to, you know, keep herself safe and just like no, I need a blow dryer because it's going to be cold and my hair is going to get wet. And then she also talked about how other women were like thank you so much because you did that. We feel like we have permission to ask for some of the things that we need, because I guess the people around her, and I guess mountain climbers in general, are not always bringing blow dryers with them. But she needed it and she asked for what she needed and then, in turn, it was like an unofficial permission slit for other people that saw that to ask for what they need, and I thought that was really beautiful. Hey, really quick.

Lunden Souza: 17:20

I want to interrupt the podcast for just a minute to tell you about one of my favorite supplements for hair, skin, nails, digestive and gut health, and that is Snap Supplements Super Greens with Collagen. Now, if you're following me on social media, you've probably seen me post about this a bunch because, honestly, this product tastes amazing and it's jam packed with nutrients, like I said, to support healthy hair, skin and nails. It helps support detoxification, a healthy immune system, and there's even probiotics in there for a healthy gut. It's non GMO, no sugar added, soy free, grass fed collagen, and every scoop is going to give you seven grams of protein. And this is why I love it, because it's not like a protein shake, it's just a scoop of powder. It tastes amazing. I put it in water or, if I want more hydration, I'll put it in coconut water and mix it up, and it's like having a nice refreshing beverage that's packed with a bunch of super greens and protein. So what I'm super excited about is that for listening to the podcast, you'll get this discount here. Nowhere else, but for listening to the podcast, you can save 25% off on all your snap supplement purchases, including the super greens with collagen, and you do that by using code LUNDEN25 at checkout, that's L U N D E N 25. L U N D E N. Two, five to get 25% off at checkout. You can shop on snap supplements. com or you can shop on my website, lifelikelunden. com/ supplements and you'll see there there's already an additional 10% taken off. But you, because you're a podcast listener, you're going to get 25% off when you use the LUNDEN25 at checkout L U N D E N 25 at checkout to get your snap supplements super greens and collagen and all your snap supplements for 25% off.

Lunden Souza: 19:14

Now let's get back to the show. Okay, the next learning comes from episode 127 with Megan Gallagher. She is such a wonderful person. I love Megan. In fact, we just recorded another episode for the podcast slash radio show, because now, self love and sweat. The podcast is available on dash radio. It hasn't aired yet, but it will be soon. It'll be on dash radio on the expansion channel, and so we just recorded another episode and I told her I was like I want you back like every other month.

Lunden Souza: 19:49

I love talking with her. She's such a gem and she is a TEDx speaker and author and she's in her 20s and she's an advocate for mental health in the public school system, which I just am like I love that. I love it so much. And one of the things that we talked about that I just thought was really profound and stood out to me was she's really on a mission to get courses like breathwork, meditation, you know, emotional intelligence, you know deciphering our feelings, like getting classes taught in schools on those topics, you know starting. I asked her what would be like your ideal day in school? And she's like I think we should start the day with like breathwork and meditation and setting intentions. She also mentioned, you know, having a class on helping you understand your intuition, which I thought was beautiful and I just really admire her because she had her like a ha moment that really helped her pivot when she was 16 years old, in school, in the bathroom, I believe, she was having like a panic attack and just anxiety and was just like I don't feel good and I don't want to feel this way.

Lunden Souza: 20:59

And I think it took me probably until I was like 29 or 30 to really demand that for myself and to be like no, I, you know, want to feel better. And maybe it was a little bit sooner because, like with my hormone issues and a lot of that, I was about 23, 24 when I started going in a more holistic direction, started taking care of, yeah, just myself even more. But that moment when I really took a stand for myself and I really felt like all the culmination of everything, it was like 29, 30, you know, because that's when it really wasn't like a vanity thing, when I first started my hormone healing journey. It kind of was, because I had hormonal cystic acne all over my face and so it really was like a outside appearance type of thing. But it wasn't until I was, yeah, 28, 29, 30, when I really started understanding the importance and understanding the value of knowing my emotions and being okay to ask for help and, you know, understanding the connection between the emotional and the physical. And so I loved what I learned from her, because I think she's spot on and I have a niece now who's five, where I'm like, yes, things like trusting your intuition, meditation, breath work, all those things are things that I love exploring with her and just kind of doing with her.

Lunden Souza: 22:21

Another thing that she said, not on that episode, but on the episode that we recorded for the second one. So actually at the time of this podcast airing, that episode's not out yet, but it'll be out in January. So if you're listening to this and it's later on in 2024, you might be able to catch that episode with Megan Gallagher. But one of the things that she said and I don't think this was like her particular quote, but she brought it to the episode was your triggers are your responsibility, and I thought that was really really powerful, because sometimes we get triggered by other people and we think it's up to them to fix themselves in order to be better, so that they don't trigger us.

Lunden Souza: 23:00

But really it's up to us to, you know, ask ourselves, okay, why am I triggered by this? What part of me is being, you know, affected by this and triggered and upset and annoyed by this? And I love that. And I think that also goes the other way, where we say, like, your triggers are your responsibility. Now, I don't think you should go out and say that to people, but if we notice that we're shining and we're doing our best and we're up leveling, other people are definitely going to be triggered by that, and that's not up to us to dim our light and to play small and I'm speaking to myself here, because one of the things that I really am working on releasing is that playing small, you know that, not that dimming my light to make other people comfortable. And when she said that you know other people's triggers or your triggers are your responsibility, my triggers are my responsibility, that really, like, prompted me to turn my light up even brighter and be like wait, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what I'm doing. If they're triggered, that's up to them to figure out why. Now I'm not going around pressing people's buttons on purpose, like if I know that someone's triggered by something. I'm not going to purposely go and like push that button multiple times just to trigger the person, like that's jacked up, you know. But I'm not going to play small so that others can feel comfortable.

Lunden Souza: 24:22

And that was number four. One, two, three, four, okay, learning. Number five comes from episode number 143, with Lyndsay Lee showing up messy and authentically online. I met Lindsay through NABA community, which is the company I created my course with and the company that I am growing. We're growing a big community and so you'll hear a lot NABA moving forward.

Lunden Souza: 24:48

First of all, I freaking love Lyndsay. Same thing like Megan and Tanya, like I just could have them back on the show over and over and over again. In fact, I told Lindsay I was like do you want to be a regular on my podcast? Because I would love to just like shoot the shit with you and talk. She's so wonderful, she's super funny. Her and I play meme ping pong all the time in the DMs because she's super hilarious and we have a similar sense of humor and so what I learned from her was kind of her tagline and her and I talked a lot about death on the podcast because we're both very motivated by death, by like our mortality. We're kind of like wait, like we don't have forever here and we want to make an impact and we're just not going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs. We want to go out in the world and we want to like make shit happen.

Lunden Souza: 25:34

And her kind of mantra or theme that she said, like her mission statement or whatever she called it, is have fun, do good, don't die boring. And I loved that have fun, do good, don't die boring. And it reflects her so much. If you know Lyndsay, you know that statement is like spot on. And if you don't, once you get to know her authentic self through following her online, you'll see that that's really kind of what she's all about. And her and I really resonated on that because we were just like no, we want people to, like her, feel impacted by us. We want to have fun on our journey. We don't want to just stay small and do the status quo because Society and others say we should do it or we're supposed to do it, like hell's not, like. We want to go out and live life full out, and I really learned that from her and I just love her. So you'll see a lot more of her on the podcast in 2024. Yeah, she's wonderful.

Lunden Souza: 26:36

And then the last learning learning, number six. Like I said, six slash seven, comes from two episodes, and I actually did one episode, one of my quick mindset reset episodes. I did one of them dedicated specifically to this topic, but I want to say it here again because I just think it's so powerful. This comes from episode 137 on leadership, with Kevin Suber, and Episode 132 about I can't remember the name of the episode, but it was like Getting Out of The Hustle Culture with Megan Arneson, and I actually met Suber and and Megan Arneson as well through the NABA community, and the reason why both of their episodes stood out to me and why I think both of what they shared is so Important and so profound in both of their models of the world, is they both said the same thing on the podcast when I was talking with them, but they meant it in different ways.

Lunden Souza: 27:33

So, Kevin, when he was on the podcast, he was like I remember you know it wasn't a matter of if I was gonna go to college, but when. So for him it was like he was the first person in his family line to go to college. He, you know it wasn't a matter of maybe or if, but when, and he didn't know how he was gonna make it happen or what it was gonna look like, but he just knew that there would be a time when he would go to college. And then for Megan, she was in a family where everybody went to college. It was just expected that you, you go to college and you do that. It was just like that's what you do next, that's what you're supposed to do next. And for her it was like it wasn't a matter of if I was gonna go to college, but when, and so for her it was kind of like putting her in this box of doing everything that everybody else and her family had always done.

Lunden Souza: 28:19

And so that last learning is just a reminder that everybody's model of the world is different. And that's cool, right, like as long as it's empowering to both of them and it helps stir some shit up in them to go out and make a difference and get Some momentum and go out and do good and go out and execute their purpose like more power to them, right. So that really stood out to me and I I think I interviewed Megan first and then Kevin second, and I remember in the second interview I can't remember which order, but I think it was that way in that second interview, as soon as they said it, I remembered I was like, oh, that's exactly like. Megan and Kevin said the exact same thing, but with different tonalities, different models of the world and different meanings for them personally. But what I love about both of them is that they chose to turn that into momentum and chose to turn that into their message, and that was really really just yeah, so amazing. So, yeah, that's what I learned in 2023. Like I guess I learned so much more, but these were just like some powerful interviews off the top of my head from this year that I just really, really, really loved and I think you'll love too.

Lunden Souza: 29:26

And if you have any other learnings that you received from any of the episodes, just like send me a DM, send me an email. If you're on my email list, you can just hit reply to any of the emails that I send out and those emails go directly to me and you can let me know. Hey, Lunden, you know, in your learnings of 2023, you didn't mention this episode. This episode Really changed me. I would love to hear it or you can send me a DM on Instagram @lifelikelunden and just yeah, let me know, let's have a chat, let's communicate about this episode and what you might have learned and how you might have grown through any of the episodes on the podcast.

Lunden Souza: 30:05

These ones were all guests that I've had, so I didn't choose any solo episodes to highlight. Well, I do learn a lot from these episodes that I do alone, like I don't ever script them. I do write down some bullet points, but sometimes when I go back and watch them later and I edit the episodes, I'm kind of like, oh good, job self, I learned a lot from you. But these ones, like I said, in particular, are Learnings that I had from some of the awesome guests. So thanks again you all for listening, for being amazing for almost four years of self-love and sweat the podcast and cheers to all of these learnings, plus many more and many more to come in 2024 and I did not plan that.

Lunden Souza: 30:47

That was not a planned rhyme. You're welcome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of self-love and sweat the podcast. Hey, do me a favor wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review this really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help, we can really spread the message of self-love and sweat and change more lives All around the world. Lunden Souza, reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self-love and sweat. This podcast is a hit spot. Austria production.