Ep #239: Prioritize Wellness to Grow Your Business with Katelyn Sonnier

00:00:02 – Kim Guillory
Hello, hello. Welcome back to the more than Mindset show Today. It is Kim and Katelyn Live. We are talking about wellness for business owners and more specifically, a way to wellness. Guys, if you want to be out there creating impact, doing big things, changing the world, you need to sit and listen into this one today. Katelyn, introduce yourself.

00:00:29 – Katelyn Sonnier
Hello, everybody. So my name is Katelyn Sonnier, and I am a wellness practitioner specializing in Ayurveda and behavior. And my favorite thing to do is to analyze your behaviors, analyze the way that you are being well, and help you see if that is aligned for yourself and for your business or if there’s some things that you can do to make you more aligned and more successful in your business and your life.

00:01:01 – Kim Guillory
So I brought Katelyn on because she and I do some personal work together for one thing, for myself, because my intention is to live and die well. So I fell in love with ayurveda a few years ago. Katelyn is a practitioner and has been for over 15 years. You’re what, 20 years, and actually just a deep dive into it. And she’s part of the coaching community that is for health and wellness practitioners who want to be well, not just in what they’re doing in the world, but in their own bodies, their own lives, their own families, their bank accounts. And I have been doing some work with Katelyn personally on my own journey. Some things that have come up, I’m looking at the changes that are happening with age and the changes that are happening in my business. So as I grow and evolve, there are things that are no longer working. There are old patterns of behavior, as she says, because that is what she’s really good at, is that 360 view of the behavior and the symptoms and how those two are like interconnected. And so when she brings that to my awareness and I swear I just had not even thought of that. And so I thought it would be a great opportunity to come on and kind of talk about some of the common things that come up through my own experience. And so I’ll give ideas and kind of talk about things that we’re trying, how it’s impacted me. And if you guys have any questions, you can leave them below. If you’re on YouTube and Katelyn will come back and answer them. If you’re listening to this on the podcast, then you can come into the More the Mindset Facebook group and find Katelyn there, tag her or me. And we would love to get this conversation started. And if you want to do this, work with us. I work on the mind body part. Katelyn works on the habits and behaviors and routines and rituals and things that you can do to improve your health. So I’m going to go ahead and be quiet now. I think I’ve put enough out there to give you things to talk about. Is there anything that you want to start with in particular before I mute.

00:03:05 – Katelyn Sonnier
Mean, the best place to start is know. Ayurveda really talks about the way you start your day is the way that your day is going to progress. And they speak to routine. It’s like pregnancy. Pregnancy gets the baby ready for life, right? Routine gets your day ready for life. So it really aligns your day to day tasks and your behaviors throughout the day with your goal, with your driver, with the business person that you want to be in this season of your life. So really looking at your routines and your rituals and the way you do everything, because Kim says it all the time. Like, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So just being open minded to really look at the way you do things, look at the way you respond and react to things and be open to trying something different and looking at them in a different way. Because Ayurveda is ancient. And whether you want to look at Ayurveda or whether you want to look at it or not, it’s these tried and true practices that have been around for 10,000 years that have been used to help heal and uplift the people. And if you want to be a better business owner, if you want to be a better human, just try these things. Just be open to something new and something different.

00:04:38 – Kim Guillory
And I’m going to speak from my personal perspective as a busy businesswoman, that routine to actually stop and pause and give myself that much attention, and I say that much, it’s not like hours of the day. It’s the conscious awareness of the intention first thing in the day to connect, to unite. It’s unbelievable how much it changes my day from when I procrastinate even ten minutes of waiting to get up or picking up my phone or deciding to skip something, to hurry, to go do something else, or to go answer. Maybe it’s a client message or something. And that’s what I want to talk about in this part, is the unity and the wholeness and how we do anything is how we do everything. And so how often do we, as business owners put our needs and our self aside because we put the business and the client first? Or we say things like, listen, I got to go put the fire out first, then I can get to myself, but then we can’t actually show up in that wholeness, and it ends up being a codependent business relationship.

00:05:59 – Katelyn Sonnier
And interestingly, if you’re having to put fires out around you, there’s probably a fire inside of you that needs to be tamed first, and routine will definitely tame that fire first.

00:06:13 – Kim Guillory
You talk about behavior and being a behavior specialist, why is it so hard to consistently we have the priority project going on right now and that’s been the biggest complaint from our clients, is doing it every day at the same time. Like they’re like, I got it in before I went to bed. So as a behavior specialist, how would you speak to that now that we know most humans are struggling with the consistency and the commitment of a time, a certain time, to do it on a regular basis? We had a whole argument about Lemons body and trying to go around these, and it’s crazy because it really is. You can get done in five minutes. Why is this so hard?

00:07:02 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. It is wild to think that the mind creates such resistance whenever you’re stepping into change. And I notice such a resistance in myself and in the clients that I work with of changing and then not wanting to change, but then they change for a little while, and they reap the benefits, and they see how amazing it is, but they just can’t keep going forward to it. And it’s almost like it’s got to be a mindset thing of whenever you break through or you open up from the cocoon and you see the light, and you’re just like, oh, but it’s too bright, and I’m not ready for it. So then you kind of go back again. So it’s almost like these limiting behaviors that keep showing up, and it just takes commitment and it just takes discipline of like, I am choosing to do this. You have to choose it every morning, right, and reminding yourself, like, yesterday when I woke up at 545, I got all that done, and I felt amazing. This morning, I’m exhausted, and I don’t want to get up at 545. But you have to remember how amazing it felt and how much you accomplished and how much closer you got to your goals and allow that to help you continue moving on, because it’s going to creep in, because it’s uncomfortable. And we want to remain comfortable. We want to be comfortable, but sometimes we have to crawl through the mud and crawl through the discomfort until we can find that comfort again. And then I have found comfort in discomfort. Like, whenever I am uncomfortable, it means I’m getting somewhere and there’s growth, and I’m doing something. So making friends with the discomfort, making friends with the resistance, because that means that you are in the space of growth when there is resistance and finding ease in it. One of my friends was kind of giving me some metaphors of telling me of what she was going through, and she was like, you know those those pompom balls that fall off the trees, those little spike balls? And when you walk on them, you’re like, but when you soften, you’re like, oh, I’m walking on spiky pompom balls. It becomes easier, and it doesn’t hurt as much, and then there’s less resistance. So just keep doing it. Just keep committing, and then the resistance will naturally fade away.

00:09:24 – Kim Guillory
Yeah, because planning out a routine without the commitment, the discipline and the mindset training makes it really hard because it is the nature of the mind to be in resistance. It’s like it’s got this power trip happening between the mind and the brain of wanting to be safe and then wanting to change, wanting to evolve and wanting to stay the same. And if we are not onto it, if we’re not practicing mindset, journaling, noticing the things that our mind is telling us when we open our eyes, that’s why we stay in bed. Because if we could see it and we knew that it was just a thought, that an optional thought, you can choose to take it in. And like Katelyn said, overriding it in the way of, yeah, that’s cute. Whatever. I’m still doing it. Right? Because this is just resistance. Oh, hi. Resistance. Welcome. You’re early this morning.

00:10:29 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah, and I’m wondering, too, if it’s like I mean, if you could just think about it as contrast, because everything is created with darkness and with light. And I was practicing being the witness of like it is, oh, okay. That’s just a little darkness, a little heaviness, and that’s a little light. But I can just witness it and just understand it. It just is what it is.

00:10:51 – Kim Guillory
It’s really interesting because as I’m listening to you talk and I’m thinking about the dynamics of our relationship from both. Like, you coach me, I coach you in two different perspectives. One on the body, one on the mind, on money. And how once we’ve mastered one part, that there’s no longer resistance because we’ve actually convinced ourselves through it and there’s no going back compared to being in the churning of that and not quite there yet, but how it’s all the same. So the struggle with taking the time for myself to be priority and important in order to do these few things when I wake up and when I go to bed, that’s it. It’s not a whole lot, but how my mind is trying to protect me from evolving to this new, unknowing place. And this is like, this is good, this is enough. That doesn’t matter. It’s not that big a deal. Let’s go take care of them. And how that will show up. Can you just speak to how that shows up as yourself, as a growing businesswoman, and how our struggles are so similar just to speak to the audience who are maybe here for health, but maybe here about money and business.

00:12:01 – Katelyn Sonnier
Oh, yeah. Whenever I am not prioritizing my routine and my health and my wellness and taking moments in the day, just five minutes to rest, because as a projector, I need those little tiny moments to kind of just get back in my own energy. Yeah, shake it out. If I don’t allow myself that moment, I get so empty and I get so resentful, and then I’m resentful at myself because it’s like I did not take the moment to fill my own cup, right? We’ve all heard that term, you can’t pour from an empty cup. And you definitely feel I feel that whenever I step away from my routine and step away from prioritizing my mental health, my wellness and putting everybody else before me. Because if the business owner is not well and is not wealthy, then the people that are learning from the business owner are receiving services from that business owner are not going to reach their potential either. And I definitely see how it is affected and how I am affected by it whenever I am not prioritizing my health and my wellness. Like there’s a gap and I’m burned out.

00:13:23 – Kim Guillory
I’m wondering if you could speak to the overstimulation. Like the podcast that came out today was all about. We’ve been talking about this, you and I, and what we’re doing in the coaching community and needing to detox. So if it were a person who were over drinking or overeating, then you would take them through the cleanse, right? But what about it happening in the digital world and the personal development world and the overstimulation of them trying to because again, the nature of the mind, our clients want to figure it out for themselves. Like if you just let us help you tie your shoe, we’ll get to school way quicker. But we’ve got that part of us where they feel like they need to know it all or want to know it all before. And I know that’s just the nature of the mind. But how can you help someone or guide someone who is overstimulated and that has now put them into inaction because of the overwhelm.

00:14:21 – Katelyn Sonnier
So like consumption. So, I mean, if you could take consumption and information and knowledge that people want to take in and try to learn the way before you actually practice the way, so that would be like eating all of your meals that you need for the rest of your life before your life is even there, right? So just like taking in information through your mind, through what you see, through what you practice is the same as taking in information of your food. You need time to digest it. You need time to put it into action and to put it into play. So like eating a meal and then going on throughout your day and then stopping to eat some more meal. So learn something, take it in, practice it and then learn a little bit more. Take it in and then practice it and then learn a little more and take it in and practice it instead of trying to take it in all at once. And then whenever you’re taking a break, like a lot of my clients take a break, mindlessly scrolling, that is taking in more information, putting on a movie, reading a book, that is taking in more information. Just allow yourself to be in complete silence for five minutes. Allow your thoughts to just spill through your mind in silence for five minutes. And it’s so much more helpful than trying to silence the mind through a movie, through TV, through mindlessly scrolling, through taking in more information from a book of just being still.

00:15:53 – Kim Guillory
For someone who that feels very uncomfortable because they’re caught up in the stimulation, could you give a few suggestions of other things they could do? If they need to be doing something, like nature wise or what could it be? Because not everyone, when you’re not in the practice of this on a regular basis, I didn’t realize this people were lacking in creativity because of this overstimulation. So if you could give a few suggestions.

00:16:21 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah, so something before I was able to actually be still, like, yoga is a very good practice for that. So going through a yoga practice taking your shoes off and walking barefoot in the grass or keeping your shoes on and going for a light stroll and just noticing the trees listening to the birds noticing the cars pass by the bikes that pass by the bugs that land on you going for a hike in the woods going sit by water and watching the water watching what the waves do watching how the water splashes looking up at the clouds and making figurines. Going back to those things that we used to do as a know before there was all of these distractions, doing those things. I forget who says it. I came across this one quote, I think it was Carl Jung, but it was like, the key to happiness is going back to what made you happiest as a child and what made you feel most connected as a so. Like, go and do those things. If it’s crafting coloring in a coloring book, there’s these amazing coloring books that they have now, and you just mindlessly color in a coloring book. Cutting the grass used to be great for me when there was a riding lawn mower, like those skid steers, like, I’d just get on there and I’d whip around cutting the grass. Like, that was amazing for me. So finding that thing that is mindless for you, that you’re not taking information in, you’re just noticing.

00:17:51 – Kim Guillory
I have two questions. Let me see if I can get them in. You know how I do this? They’re going to lead into each other. It’s about the stimulation and the overstimulation as well as the information consumption. So when it comes from both perspectives so as you were talking, I was thinking, oh, yeah, that’s like if we waited to know how to mother. Yeah, we learned everything on the other side of mothering. Everything. Every kid is different. All of the lessons are different. And if I had to, like, wait, boo don’t grow. Wait, I’m not going to have I haven’t learned that yet. Right? Yeah. Like, sorry, you can’t move in. It’s not time to start walking. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to start walking yet.

00:18:33 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah.

00:18:34 – Kim Guillory
Crazy that we do.

00:18:35 – Katelyn Sonnier
It’s a practice. I remember when I was studying as an elementary teacher, you could only prepare the teacher so much until they got into the classroom. You can only prepare the doctor so much in school until he gets into the office and starts practicing. My studies could only prepare me so much until I was helping my clients. So it’s a practice.

00:18:58 – Kim Guillory
I see that with the coaching, too. And I have coach training. It’s like, okay, here’s the 32 modules of information. Everything else is implementation. Yeah. And you’ve got to get your practice hours in. It’s a force, but it’s a force with benefits because they really will not learn the rest unless we have the experience. So that’s for all of you who want to know everything before getting started, we can’t consume it. It’s like having all this food that our body can’t digest, and it doesn’t actually nourish us. Yeah.

00:19:32 – Katelyn Sonnier
It’ll get you bogged down.

00:19:34 – Kim Guillory
What’s that?

00:19:34 – Katelyn Sonnier
It’ll get you bogged down and just create more disease in the body.

00:19:39 – Kim Guillory
The second question, or the second part to that question is what is happening to the body and the nervous system with this overstimulation, without the presence and the practice and the routine, how does it show up in their body, in their business, in their bank accounts, relationships?

00:19:56 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. So I see it showing up in two different ways. And most of it is either like, it’s very scattered, almost like a squirrel who collects all of these nuts and then hides them and then doesn’t remember where they are. And so they have to go collect more nuts. Or it shows up as like a raccoon who goes and collects all of the food, moistens it, and then eats all of it. And then they’re just like really full and really stuffed, and they can’t even get to the next place to go get food. Right. So it shows up as basically.

00:20:36 – Kim Guillory
It.

00:20:36 – Katelyn Sonnier
Shows up as you not progressing and you aren’t getting where you want to be. But it happens in two different ways. So you’re either over consuming and you don’t know what to do with this information, so it gets buried and it doesn’t blossom, or you’re taking it all in and you become bulked down with the information, and then you feel like you can’t do anything with it, and it just gets stuck and it just lives in here. So it’s either accumulation in some way, shape, or form, but it’s not taking you to where you need it to go and what you need it to grow into.

00:21:08 – Kim Guillory
Yeah. And for those of you who need to have the understanding in order to integrate and implement that, let’s talk about how we do anything, is how we do everything. It all shows up as a mirror in the world. And so if we have this need to get to get, to get. There is inner child work to be done on this, and it comes from us not getting not getting, not getting, not having. I remember the whole closet thing that was going on whenever I was working with a style coach was it was the kid trauma that kept coming up in my body when I would shop. And then I had this belief that I can’t find anything, and it was because I was shopping with my dad at a Western store, and I was traumatized even being an adult with money and resources and access that would come up. And I mean, I steal I went shopping this week. Sweat. It is steel. There’s still fragments of it. So what it does is it forces me or what’s the word? It compels or pressure. It’s pressure. It pressures me into buying a bunch of just in case. So I might have five or eight pink shirts and black shoes, just in case, because it was uncomfortable. The clothes they made me wear was uncomfortable, like these wool dresses in the summer. There was just so much trauma about being uncomfortable in my body that now, as an adult, some of that stuff is still there, which that is kind of the same thing of, I couldn’t have what I needed and wanted. It wasn’t available for me. And we take that story into our now life. So do you want to speak on that? The inner child work, and they’re not lies. They’re just habitual behavior patterns that are lodged in the system, in the nervous system and in the body.

00:23:12 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. And it’s really hard to see how they’re playing out until someone helps you shine the light on it. There’s so many things that you pointed out for me that I was like, oh, all right, so I see how that’s happening in my business, and I see how that is happening in my body, and I see how that is happening with how I’m taking care of my body because it shows up in every avenue. So one of mine was, whenever something tastes really good or I have created the perfect recipe, I want to keep eating it because it’s so perfect. And then that showed up in my business of like, wow, I can see the financial gain from my business, so I don’t want to invest. I’m going to hang on to it because it’s not going to happen again. I may not make this recipe again the way that it is, so I’m going to enjoy it and hang on to it really tightly because I may not get it again. And so I was able to make the parallel of, like, this is what I’m doing in my body and with my diet and my lifestyle, and it’s also showing up in my business.

00:24:19 – Kim Guillory
Yeah. It’s insane how the investment matches the growth. That blows my mind. And I know there’s a lot of money wounds around this. And I hear and see what all the coaches say about, yeah, as long as you keep playing, as long as you keep paying, that’s the only way. And I’m like, yeah, because it forces you into this new version of yourself that moves into that financial paradigm. It is different. My investments are unbelievable. I never even imagined I would make in a year would I invest sometimes in three to six months. But it’s not about the money. It really isn’t about the money. It’s about getting in the environment with the high mindedness of people or who are doing that. That what it costs to get in those rooms because of what’s being provided. But that’s a hard one when we have scarcity, because scarcity of food, of love, and of money all show up in our business, our life.

00:25:17 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. And when you say environment, I really enjoy talking about environment and painting the picture of, like, your body is an environment, right? And so if you are wanting to be something different, if you are wanting to be a specific or you have this view of what kind of business owner or entrepreneur that you want to be, you have to change the environment. You have to get yourself in the environment that’s going to help you grow. And so if you’re not creating the environment for your body that is going to help you grow and align with who you want to be, then you’re not going to be the business owner or the entrepreneur that you want to be, because this environment is not aligned with the environment that you’re trying to.

00:25:55 – Kim Guillory
Live in, and it impacts everything. So the last question, last thing I want to talk on is why it’s so important to have this goal or this driver to be the catalyst for upping the investment, upping the routine, upping the rituals, or whatever the commitment is. Do you want to speak to that? Like, if you didn’t have a very strong driver to feed the world, right, to help the world heal through food? Or if I didn’t have that strong driver to help people break generational patterns and cycles so our future generations would have a better chance if that weren’t my driver. There’s no way I would be able to stay in this game if I didn’t put my grandkids and kids first and foremost, foremost and myself of not wanting to be in an environment of scarcity. Could you speak to that, to the business owner who’s listening, who really wants to get their health together, but they’re like, yeah, doesn’t really matter. It’s all right because it’s so hard.

00:26:52 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. I mean, as much as people want to deny it, and as much as people say, I am not my driver, because they don’t want to sound selfish, you got to be selfish whenever you’re building something for yourself, even with you, if your driver is your grandkids. Right, but you want to be healthy enough so you can enjoy your grandkids, right? So if your driver is your business or your driver is money or whatever, you want to be healthy enough so you can be the person that continues to forge and to pioneer a whole new way of how you want to run your business and how you want to be an entrepreneur. And so if you’re not clear on your driver and what your driver is, then you are going to be that business owner that’s planting acorns and forgetting where they’re planted, right. Instead of going plant them in one spot.

00:27:42 – Kim Guillory
My driver is so selfishly, strong. Like everything that I want is for my own comfort, convenience. I don’t want to sit in a room with my grandkids and talk negative shit. It is about me. I want to get this work into the hands of more people so that I can have conversations like this because it feels good to me. It is so selfish. I don’t want to travel the world by myself. I want to help other people get to the position to where they could come with me. You get to the top of the mountain and you try to send them a picture or a live and they can’t see it and smell it and experience it and then here you are as a business owner, a leader, an entrepreneur, you’re at the top of your game. It’s selfish. I want other people at the top of the game. Guys, no one successful wants to see you lose. They are not your competitor. I promise you. I want more than my clients for them to succeed because I know where they’re going. They can’t see where they’re going. I have to keep planting the seed with Katelyn. I have to keep upping the game. I have to keep the invitations higher to where it’s like, damn it, I’m going to have to make more money. And I’m not doing that because I want to fill her bank account. I’m doing that because I want her to impact the world at the capacity that she wants to impact the world, which is to bring food as medicine back to the families and the people for the health. And it’s like our missions are so aligned. But I will not push you out of the nest unless I dangle some little invites that I know your soul wants. Right? It’s trickery.

00:29:31 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah.

00:29:33 – Kim Guillory
And so the driver is I don’t want to keep waiting to go. I want to go like the driver is if I go experience that, I can bring it back to the people.

00:29:43 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah.

00:29:44 – Kim Guillory
But not necessarily to save the people, to feel better about creating impact of helping someone else because that feels good to us. Sorry, I took over that one.

00:29:59 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yeah. It’s just so important, too. It’s okay to be selfish about your driver.

00:30:04 – Kim Guillory
You’re going to have a hard time sticking with it and. Sticking with a routine if it’s not selfish, to be honest, because we ain’t doing shit. We don’t want just how it is.

00:30:13 – Katelyn Sonnier
And if it’s dependent on somebody else, then when that somebody else is not showing up, then you just forget it. They’re like, well, they’re not here.

00:30:21 – Kim Guillory
That’s exactly how I had to break away from the codependent attachment to my clients and their success, because I was never getting the satisfaction, because my success was dependent on their success. And they didn’t want it as bad as I wanted it, or they didn’t want the same thing that I wanted, or it wasn’t even in their game. It was all mine. It was all mine. So I had to take that back, which feels very selfish. I feel guilty, I have shame, like all of that stuff. But my option is to die of boredom and lack of satisfaction. And that doesn’t feel like dying. Well, we just got to get over the fact that not everyone around us wants what we want. And we’ve got to prioritize. There’s that word again. We have to prioritize ourself and our routine enough for us to stay in the game, to keep evolving and growing that fire inside of ourself. That is where we’re going to find wellness. That’s the way to wellness.

00:31:11 – Katelyn Sonnier
Yes.

00:31:12 – Kim Guillory
Thank you for coming, Will. Katelyn will be you’re. If you’re here because Katelyn sent you, contact her about the coaching that we’re doing together. If you’re here because you’ve been following the channel, contact me. You can ask either one of us. The link is below in the information. And if you’re listening on the podcast and you are a business owner or you know a business owner, please share with friends. Leave a rating and review. We do want to get the message to more people. And so in order order to do that, we need people helping us to get the platform going and growing by more people seeing it and responding to it. You know how that is. That’s the stimulation. Social media.