GABBY BERNSTEIN: “Here's the deal. In order to undo our patterns from the past so that we can be better entrepreneurs and better parents and better lovers and just happier humans, we have to do work. And that's why I wrote Happy Days is just to say, okay. Here's my journey, and let me share it with you. And here's all the work I've done, and here's how you can do it, too. And then you can decide how you want to implement your own path.
“But the first and most important quality that we have to establish in order to really create radical change right here, right now, and to support us on the journey of doing the work is compassion. It's compassion towards the workaholic. It's compassion to the parts of us that feel unlovable and inadequate and unworthy. It's compassion to the moments when we think we messed up. It's compassion towards the parts of us that feel just overwhelmed or anxious or just burnt out. Compassion, compassion, compassion, and learning to, first, witness yourself with compassion.
“Everybody listening, put your hand on your heart and your hand on your belly right now and notice anything that's up for you, that you're a little upset with or you're resisting, feeling from your past, an attitude, a behavior, a pattern you've just reignited, and just say to yourself right now, ‘I respect you, and I honor you, and I love you, and I know you're doing the best you can. I have so much compassion for where you're at right now.’”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY: My latest podcast obsession is My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. They discuss how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends. They recently released an episode with my friend Nathan Barry from ConvertKit. It was called “How to Become a Billion-Dollar Creator.” And I loved when Nathan talked about some of his biggest failures and what he'd do if he had to start over. You know I'm a sucker for conversations like that. You can check out My First Million wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Welcome to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. I’m so glad you’re here with me today, because I have a very, very special guest, who is also a dear friend of mine and a fan favorite on our podcast.
Her name is Gabby Bernstein, and for over sixteen years, she's been transforming lives. As a New York Times’ bestselling author, she's authored nine books, including her latest, Happy Days. And she has a fantastic podcast called Dear, Gabby, where she offers real-time coaching, straight talk, and conversations about personal growth and spirituality, with really unique and inspiring guests. She gets some really, really cool guests. I am obsessed with her podcast.
I've leaned on Gabby's teaching over and over again, and it helps me find more balance, more balance emotionally and spiritually, and really for both my personal and my professional life. And I find myself coming back to her strategies all of the time.
So, in today’s episode, we sat down to chat about self-regulating techniques for working through anxiety. And as many of you know, I tend to be anxious most of the time. So this book and this conversation on this podcast hit home very personally for me. And if you struggle with depression or anxiety or trauma of any kind—and we'll talk about what trauma means on the episode, but keep listening. This one's for you. We also talk about what to do when you're feeling unhappy, and Gabby shares some personal insights from her journey from suffering to happiness in her private life and in her work. You're going to devour this episode. I just know it. Let's get to it.
Well, hey, there, Gabby. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the show.
GABBY: Hello, my love. It’s great to be in your high vibration in this moment. I’m exhausted, and I’m so happy to be with you. Light talk, good vibes, thank you for having me.
AMY: Oh, my goodness. It's such my honor, and I love when we get to chat.
So, first of all, just tell me, how are you doing? Give me a check in. How are things going on your end?
GABBY: I'm good. I'm in the middle of this launch of my new book, Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace. I have been in back-to-back interviews. I am pacing myself, and I am caring for myself, and I'm petting my little kitten while we're talking.
AMY: I love that. We were talking about your kitten before—wait. Tell everyone your kitten’s name. It's the cutest name ever.
GABBY: Her name is Jimmy Blue.
AMY: Jimmy Blue. And if you guys follow Gabby on social, you get to see Jimmy Blue in action. But I feel like everyone needs a Jimmy Blue. Basically, it would bring calm and just good, good vibes to everyone.
GABBY: She’s my emotional-support animal.
AMY: Yes, absolutely. That’s what I was looking for. Absolutely. If Scout, my dog, wasn’t so big, he’d be on my lap all the time.
GABBY: Really.
AMY: So, I get it.
Okay. So, here’s the thing. We're going to talk about your brand-new book, Happy Days, and I want to talk about some of the themes in this book. And first of all, congratulations. I personally think it might be the best one you've written. Is this book number nine or ten?
GABBY: Yeah, nine.
AMY: Nine. Okay. So, ninth book. First of all, you’re the only friend I have that's written nine books. And I just loved everything about it, but also because I can personally relate to a lot of it.
So, here's the thing. I want to talk to you about this beautiful unfolding of entrepreneurs being open and honest about the mental challenges and anxiety of being a business owner. I've seen more and more people open up about this. I've talked about my anxiety and depression many times. And it's so funny, Gabby. If I talk about webinars and list building and funnels, people love it. That's what my podcast is all about. But if I talk about my personal experience and my journey with anxiety and depression, those are the episodes I get the most downloads.
GABBY: Totally, totally.
AMY: Right? And so you can relate to that. And so I recorded an episode that was all about the things I would do differently if I started my entrepreneurial journey. And one of the things I mentioned is I would take better care of myself, both mentally, emotionally. It's something that I didn't know to do early on.
GABBY: Mm.
AMY: So, here’s my question for you. I know you have some really great self-regulation techniques for working through anxiety. And I feel like that’s where I’d love to start, if you could talk about that, because it’d be so beneficial for so many people listening. And, actually, self-regulation techniques, what does that even mean?
GABBY: Totally. Well, first I’ll acknowledge the entrepreneur because I am and part of our family here is entrepreneurs, and recognize I think a lot of entrepreneurs do a lot more than they, one, can physically. You know, there's a lot of burn out in the entrepreneurial space. And there's also a lot of doing and a lot less being.
Now, a lot of the doing, doing, doing, and a lot of the fuel, I believe, behind entrepreneurship often sometimes comes in the form of, always comes in the form of inspiration and excitement and creativity and just genuine greatness. But sometimes the other side of that is this fuel behind the fire that is coming from feelings of being inadequate or unlovable or unworthy. And I notice this is a major pattern with many of my entrepreneurial friends and students.
And it's important to address because when you find yourself in a place of over exhaustion or allostatic load, when your stress levels have gone beyond the point of your ability to regulate or your body's ability to regulate, and you get to a place of extreme stress or burnout, or you're just sort of on the brink of it all, it's very important to ask yourself, what am I running from? Because workaholism, which is probably what we should really call it, or the tendency to burn out is a sure sign that there's something underneath that we have not yet resolved.
And I want to go right there. There's no small talk here. We're going right into the big talk because it's important to just take that moment to notice or even question and get curious, why am I running? Why do I keep throwing myself against the wall and peeling myself off of it? Why do I keep needing to feel seen? Why do I obsess over my Instagram likes? Why am I feeling so much lack? Why, why, why? And why am I pushing so hard? Because that is one of the biggest blocks to our success as an entrepreneur, that pushing, that controlling, that burn out. And it has a deeper wound beneath it.
And so I really want to address that because in this book, I do talk about my own recovery from workaholism, and I talk about my recovery from stress and anxiety, and I'm really going to go there and give you the tools that you can use in the moment for self-regulation. But I have to go on the record, saying that if you feel like this is a pattern that's become unmanageable or you're powerless over it, then it's time to look a little deeper. And the real sustainable change is going to come from that query, from that bravery to wonder what's beneath these patterns. And so—and that's why I wrote this book.
But to give you those self-regulating tools that can be really supportive and soothing to you while you're in those moments, one in particular for me is right now I'm in back-to-back interviews. I just pushed you back ten minutes. My other one was going later. Sometimes I have a minute in between. And so I have a very great awareness of what's happening to me internally, and I am communicating with my inner system all day. So I’ll say to myself, “Okay. I'm noticing I'm really tired right now,” and what I'll do is I'll just literally do a breath practice for one minute, and I'll share that with you. Or “I'm noticing that I'm feeling kind of anxious in this moment,” and I'll do a heart hold, which I'll share with you in a moment. Or “I’m noticing that I am feeling just overly stressed and burdened, and I just can't do it all,” then, I'm going to offload something. I'm just going to straight up ask for help. And so—and I did all three of those things in the five minutes between you and I, before we got on.
AMY: Wow.
GABBY: All three. So here they are. So, the first one’s a breath practice, when I was noticing myself feeling overwhelmed and tired, and I needed to wake up for my Amy. And so it's breathing in for two strokes through your nose and out one stroke through your mouth. So it’s [breath practice]. Listener, do it with us. [breath practice] How do you feel, Amy?
AMY: I mean, instantly, I feel calmer.
GABBY: No joke.
AMY: Yeah.
GABBY: No joke. My cat even calmed down. My kitten is in my arms, and she just started to settle. That was, like, ten seconds of breath. You can do it at your desk. You can do it in a meeting. You can do it in the bathroom. You can do it in the one minute in between Zoom calls. We got to check in. The breath is one of the greatest horses of self-regulation and regulating our energy and our nervous system.
Then, the heart hold. So let's say you're feeling anxious in this moment. So either place your right hand on your heart. Actually, try this out. Put your right hand on your heart and your left hand on your belly and notice how that feels.
AMY: Grounding.
GABBY: Okay. Now switch hands. Left hand and right hand. How does that feel?
AMY: It feels a little bit awkward to me.
GABBY: Totally. Okay, great. So I just did an interview with Dan Siegel, who is amazing, and that heart hold is a very valuable tool for us to create safety in our body and our nervous system. And you said, grounding, within seconds. Seventy-five percent, I think, of people, the right hand on the heart and the left hand on the belly is the grounding feeling. But then there's 25 percent that the other hand is the way.
AMY: Huh.
GABBY: And so I have to just give voice to that right now. I literally just learned this fifteen minutes ago. So you got to give yourself a moment to check in with what feels best for you. And just take a moment now and do that heart hold, and in that space of that heart hold, just close your eyes for a moment and breathe. And on the exhale, deeply let it go. And inhale deeply. Exhale completely. Take another deep breath in. And let it go. When you're ready, open your eyes. How do you feel right now?
AMY: I feel very present.
GABBY: There you go. Beautiful.
And so those are just three of the ways—did I give the third way? What was the other one?
AMY: No, not yet. Third.
GABBY: The third one I said was, oh, that was just off boarding, right? So it's like just noticing “No, Gabby. This is too much,” and saying no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, which you're very good at. We got to get good at it.
I just got on the phone with Daniel, my VP of marketing, who you know well. And he’s like, “Okay. I know you're so busy, and I hate to ask you to do this, but I need you to read this ninety-page email document. Is that where we want it to be? I need to get your voice in it.” And then I was like, “Okay. I'm going to do it,” because that's my first response, typically. And then I looked at my calendar, and I'm just like, “No. The person I employ, that's her job. She's going to go further with it. And the person I hired to support me is going to have to go back into it. I'm not looking at it until they're done.”
AMY: Good.
GABBY: Because, yes, the first thought is, “Get Gabby in there.” But right now, no. You guys go do whatever you got to do to get it to the place I need it to be, and then bring it back to me. Will it be perfect then? No. But it will be better than what I would go into right now. So that to me is just real, just not saying the yes, yes, yes to everything.
AMY: Yeah.
GABBY: Old Gabby would have been like, “Nobody else can do it. I have to do it.” That's an attachment wound that I was reacting with, which I talk about in this book. We have all these different attachment styles. And one of those attachment styles is that if I don't do it, nobody else will. That’s the avoidant attached. It’s, like, I can't rely on anybody else. I can't trust anybody else. So when we heal those wounds, as I have, and we integrate those wounds, we come into a new foundation in our mind and our body and our reactivity. And we have the power, then, to say no.
So there’s methods in the book that will address that, because our attachment style affects how we work, how we love, how we breathe, how we brush our teeth. So it's showing up for us.
AMY: Definitely, I saw myself in many of those pages about how it shows up for me. So I'm excited for everyone who's listening to get your hands on this because if anything that Gabby’s saying resonates with you, it's, like, ten times deeper in the book, where she can go into so many examples and techniques. I feel like every entrepreneur needs to get their hands on your book, so excited to be talking about it today.
I want to talk about this concept of doing the work, personal work. It's a hot topic right now.
GABBY: Yeah.
AMY: I think that it’s important, but I know you are a strong believer that there's a certain mindset shift that can do more for you than decades of personal work. And I think that you have firsthand knowledge of this. So do you know what I'm talking about? Can you share this?
GABBY: Yes, yes, yes. So, here's the deal. In order to undo our patterns from the past so that we can be better entrepreneurs and better parents and better lovers and just happier humans, we have to do work. And that's why I wrote Happy Days is just to say, okay. Here's my journey, and let me share it with you. And here's all the work I've done, and here's how you can do it, too. And then you can decide how you want to implement your own path.
But the first and most important quality that we have to establish in order to really create radical change right here, right now, and to support us on the journey of doing the work is compassion. It's compassion towards the workaholic. It's compassion to the parts of us that feel unlovable and inadequate and unworthy. It's compassion to the moments when we think we messed up. It's compassion towards the parts of us that feel just overwhelmed or anxious or just burnt out. Compassion, compassion, compassion, and learning to, first, witness yourself with compassion.
Everybody listening, put your hand on your heart and your hand on your belly right now and notice anything that's up for you, that you're a little upset with or you're resisting, feeling from your past, an attitude, a behavior, a pattern you've just reignited, and just say to yourself right now, “I respect you, and I honor you, and I love you, and I know you're doing the best you can. I have so much compassion for where you're at right now.
AMY: Whoa. Hm. That’s powerful.
GABBY: Mm-hmm. That’s where it starts. That’s the mindset shift.
AMY: I love that. I absolutely love that. I'm going to put exactly what Gabby just said in the show notes of this episode. I want you to put it on a Post-it Note and put it somewhere where you can repeat it. I think, what you just said, I think if I did that ten times a day, when I find those thoughts, I'm beating myself up, or I'm hard on myself about this or that—literally, I just did it this morning, and my friend Jasmine Star literally wrote a text back to me and said, “Please stop beating yourself up.”
GABBY: Yeah.
AMY: She literally said that. So this idea of having compassion for where I'm at right now would go a long way.
GABBY: Yeah. Beautiful.
AMY: I love that.
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Okay. I want to talk about why most people feel stuck in patterns that make them unhappy. I mean, from the outsider's perspective, it seems so easy to say something like, “If it doesn't make you happy, just change it.”
GABBY: Mm.
AMY: But I think that we know that it's easier said than done, and I feel like it's a habit that's hard to break. So again, I feel like you were speaking to me in every single page. But how do we identify these patterns that make us unhappy, and, more importantly, what do we do about it?
GABBY: Well, we can recognize the pattern—many of us are aware of the patterns, and some people are not. But we, first, can become the witness of the patterns. So in the second chapter of this book, I have a little chart that you can fill out. And the first question is, what triggers you? So right now, is there something that you'd share that triggers you, Amy?
When I say trigger, we can give examples. Like, for me with work, it’d be like, years ago a trigger would be if the Internet went down during a launch.
AMY: Yes.
GABBY: Right? A big trigger.
AMY: That's a big trigger for me. Or here's one that I experienced a lot last year, where my conversions weren't as good or some of the launches didn't do as good as they did the year before. Huge trigger for me. And instantly in my head I'm like, “Am I losing my mojo? Is something wrong? Is something broken? Am I broken?” Like, it came up a lot last year.
GABBY: Mm, okay. Beautiful. So when that trigger occurred, how did you feel in your body? How did you feel in general?
AMY: I felt very anxious. All year I felt anxious.
GABBY: How’d you respond to that anxiety?
AMY: So for me, I am an emotional eater, and I’ll just eat without thinking or planning my meals or anything like that. I tend to turn toward food, or I get really quiet and kind of withdrawn.
GABBY: Okay. Beautiful. So what we did there was just take a moment to take a little inventory of something that triggers you, the feeling behind the triggers—it was an anxious feeling—and how you respond to it. And that awareness, which you've already come to, was really handy when we look at all of the different ways we get triggered, because you can start to see the responses are very similar. And what you're doing is you're starting to recognize that the pattern of overeating isn't just a bad habit; it's a way that you've been “protecting” yourself from feeling a deeper feeling of anxiety or a deeper feeling that I'm not going to name. I would let you name it in a private session with me. But there’s deeper wounds underneath. And so recognizing what activates us and how we feel and how we run from it is one of the first steps to really noticing that I am not my behavior. Overeating is a way that I am running from an impermissible feeling.
And so that’s the beginning of this book. It opens you up to seeing, oh, here are all the ways I'm running. And then it moves into this next chapter of, now it's time to become brave enough to wonder what I'm running from. And the rest of the book is a really gentle process of really looking into and touching into and supporting the parts of ourselves that we're running from.
AMY: Yes. And I think, I would say that we all are running from something at one point or another. And just throughout the book, you do such a beautiful job of helping us realize, now that you know you're running from something and now that you've likely identified it, what do you do? It's like you don't leave us hanging. You actually give strategies and techniques and a background about that.
But here's the thing, Gabby. One thing I love about you and the work that you do is that you are so close to the work that you do. I know a lot of people in our industry, and not every one of them will walk the talk, and you absolutely do. And so even though you're a successful self-help and spirituality author, you also have had your own trauma. So my question is, can you speak to that journey and how that plays a role in the work that you do and how you give to others?
GABBY: Mm-hmm, yeah. Well, the journey of this book takes you through, in a way, very much my entrepreneurial journey, although it's not much reference to my business, but how my work was this sort of companion along the way of my trauma recovery. And I share in the beginning of the book about being twenty-four and strung out and a cocaine addict and about how I got sober. And then I got sober, and I put a lot of that energy into workaholism and relationships and food and other things to just numb out, and all the while, really developed my spiritual skill set and wrote tons of books and just kept going. But the workaholism was really taking me down. And by the time I was thirty-six—and I always kept wondering, why do I have to push so hard? Why am I so anxious all the time? Why do I burn myself out? Why don't I get more help? Why don't I let anybody help me? Why was I a cocaine addict? Why? Why? Why? I just couldn't pinpoint. I just didn't know.
When I was thirty-six, I started really cracking into a lot of painful discomfort and break down, real mental break down, where I was literally on my floor every other day, screaming, “I can't go on like this.” And by that point in my life, I had published six or seven books, I had been on Oprah, I had multiple New York Times’ bestsellers, and all the credentials in the world were not going to heal these feelings.
And so I hit my knees, and about a month later, I had a dream. In the dream, I remembered it was my adult self, addressing this experience of being sexually abused as a child. And when I woke up, I just was, like, no fucking way. I am not touching that. That is way too real. I cannot ever speak of that again. I was really shaken by it.
And a few days later, I was in therapy, and I didn't tell my therapist what I recalled in this dream. And she just carried on, and we started to talk about some of the things that were up for me in the moment. And one or two things that she said really led me to fully remember a dissociated memory from my childhood, a memory that I had likely shut away for over thirty years. That was the moment that I, one, went into a very scared place, a very terrified place, but then in addition, felt a tremendous amount of relief because I realized in that moment this is why I've been a workaholic. This is why I've been codependent. This is why I was a cocaine addict. This is why, this is why, this is why. So I identified the why, and then I began the deep devotional journey of healing that energetic disturbance and fear-based neural pathway to come out the other side.
And now here I am in 2022. Put my face on the cover of this book, Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace. There's no way in hell, Amy, that I would put my face on that cover if I couldn't stand behind it and ready to share these truths to help other people tap into honor, respect, all the parts of themselves that they've been running from.
AMY: I mean, so beautifully said. Here's the book, first of all. Every time I pick it up, I'm so excited that this is out into the world. I believe everybody listening to this podcast should get this book. But I want Gabby to tell you, Gabby, who did you write this book for? Like, who is it for? You're talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs right now. They're either just starting their business or they've been at it for a while. And the workaholics and the hustle and the feeling like they're not enough and the lack of clarity and confidence, these are themes that come up for us a lot on this podcast. So I'm curious: who is this book for, and why did you write it?
GABBY: The book is for anyone who is willing to become more aware of their patterns and the reasons that they have those patterns and that is brave enough to show up for them so they can truly manifest the life they want, so that they can truly feel free, so that they can truly wake up without anxiety every day. And the reason I say it's for anyone who wants it because I don't write books for the people who are unwilling to—for the non-converts. It's like, I need buy-in from my reader. I need my reader to feel a desire to change, to want to show up, to listen to what we're talking about and say, “Yeah, I'm ready for that.” I don't need this reader to dive into every single method in this book tomorrow. I actually want this to be the kind of book that people come back to year after year after year after year, and that this year they do what they can and what’s safe for them now. And then as they get more steadiness and safety in their nervous system and in their mind, they go to the next step. And they can take it all in now, practice what's right in front of them, and then come back.
AMY: Yes.
GABBY: Come back, come back, come back.
AMY: Talk to me about the word trauma, because some people will say, “Well, I wasn't sexually abused,” or “I didn't have a hard childhood,” and “I can't relate to trauma. Trauma sounds something like that's not me. I have challenges, but I don’t have trauma.” What do you see as trauma?
GABBY: We all have trauma.
AMY: Yes. Agree.
GABBY: And I say that with a loud voice, that we all have trauma, because trauma—the t word—has been really given a lot of shame energy, and, therefore, so many people go overlooking or minimizing their own trauma. And just because you may not have a big-t Trauma like childhood abuse or overwhelming neglect or alcoholic parent or living through a catastrophic event, if you don't identify with any of these types of big-t Traumas, you have a small-t trauma. Small-t trauma could be being told you were stupid, being told you were fat, a teacher not listening to you or respecting you.
I was speaking with another podcaster today, and he shared a small-t trauma of being wrongly blamed for—he was trying to break up a fight when he was in high school or something, and he got blamed for it, and then his mother didn't listen to him and still blamed him for it.
AMY: Mm.
GABBY: And today we did a little work on it. It was like that's an old wound that’s still showing up in his life now. Just the other day, he got some media coverage or some kind of social media, somebody talking about him, and it wasn't true. So what did that do? It activated that child part of him that's like, “You're telling me I'm wrong, but I'm actually not wrong.” And so that small-t trauma is up in his world right now, and he’s super angry, and he’s super protective of himself.
And so these traumas, big-t or small-t, affect everything in our life. They affect how we work. They affect how we eat. They affect how we brush our teeth. They affect how we relate. They affect how we love. They affect how we parent. And so if we don't address them, we're just going to stay in the cycle, the constant cycle, of trigger, fear response, and then acting out. And so that's why this book is just, in my opinion, required curriculum for any human, any human being. But the human being has to be willing to go there.
AMY: I love that. I love that you said you don't write your books for people that you have to talk into doing the work. Like, they're ready. They’re open to it.
GABBY: You'll read it when you need it. This book is going to be, really spark an interest for you. And if somebody gives this book to you, trust that, because that is the universe at work. That is a sign. May sit on your shelf for a year, but you're going to read it when you need it.
AMY: Yes. And I love this idea of going back to it. I can see myself going back to it over and over again. Like, “Oh, I can use that different skill or that different strategy or that technique or go deeper.” So it's a beautiful work, my friend. I'm so very honored to call you a friend. This is incredible. I want everyone to get their hands on it. We will link to it in the show notes. I’ll be talking about it on social. Congratulations for another beautiful book.
GABBY: Thank you, my love. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
AMY: Thank you so much for being here. And, obviously, you can find the book wherever you buy books.
But, also, where can they learn more about you, because I talked about this in the intro, but you have a beautiful podcast. And tell everybody the name of your podcast.
GABBY: My podcast is called Dear, Gabby, where I really take these principles and start to workshop them on people. I Dear, Gabby people. And if you are interested in the book, go to deargabby.com/happydays, where you, in addition to the book, you can get some free resources that really, really will help you for meditations, a lot of guidance and support. And yeah, and then I'm @gabbybernstein on social media. And I'm just really wanting to, particularly for this audience, just put a lot of positive energy and hope for you that you can do the great work you do without the extreme behaviors that make you sick and suffering and uncomfortable.
AMY: Amen to that.
GABBY: It can be a lot easier.
AMY: Yes.
Okay. On a lighter note, we’re doing this new thing on the podcast, and we’re doing a rapid-fire-question portion. Are you open to five quick questions?
GABBY: Yeah, girl. Let’s go.
AMY: Okay. I'm actually very curious about your answers, so this is going to be fun. Here we go. Number one, who is someone that's inspiring you at the moment, and why?
GABBY: My husband.
AMY: Oh, I love this. You know, I don’t know. Have you ever posted a picture of him? Is there—
GABBY: Handful of times. Handful of times.
AMY: Okay. I’ve missed it, so I don’t even know what he looks like.
GABBY: He’s hot.
AMY: Although, I know he’s always a little behind the scenes. I’m assuming he’s hot.
GABBY: He’s beautiful.
AMY: He’s always a little behind the scenes, and I’m always so curious about him. So tell me why he’s inspiring you right now.
GABBY: Because of his devotion and commitment to his internal condition and his bravery to go to the places that scare him so he could become the best version of himself, best parent, best father, best CEO, best everything. And I'm just so proud of him, and he's such an inspiration to me.
AMY: I love that. I love that.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
GABBY: Stick around for the miracles.
AMY: Mm. Perfection.
What is one self-care ritual you have in your routine that you can’t live without?
GABBY: There's so many.
AMY: I know. For you, you're probably my only guest I could name twenty of them. So what's one of your favorites?
GABBY: Breath work is necessary for me and baths and—
AMY: Mm. I love that.
GABBY: And [unclear 35:50] and just really caring for my sleep. And there's so many. So, so, so many. Compassion towards myself.
AMY: That’s a good one. That’s my new one that I’m going to work on.
What are you most looking forward to this year?
GABBY: This year I am most looking forward to witnessing the profound impact that I know this book is going to have on the world. I believe so deeply in my mission, and I feel it right now, Amy, more than I ever have, that I'm here to really be a source of soothing and a source of guidance for people who are suffering. There's so much more suffering than we've ever known before, and I'm looking forward to witnessing the healing as a result of thousands and thousands of people going through this journey.
AMY: Oh, I absolutely know it’s going to happen. I know you're the person for that.
And finally, if you could describe your life mission in one word—this is a big one—what would it be?
GABBY: Well, one would be love.
AMY: Absolutely. Like, if I chose a word for you, I’d absolutely choose that word.
GABBY: Yeah.
AMY: For sure.
Gabby, one of my most favorite things about our friendship is that I've gotten to know you even more this year. You've been such a huge support in me writing my book and getting it out into the world. So now the fact that you've got this book finished and it's ready for the world, I want to shout it from the rooftops. But I also just want to say thank you so much for your love and compassion and kindness to me. I love our friendship, and I’m just so honored that you’re here.
GABBY: I love you, and I'm really proud of you, and I want everyone to know that behind the scenes you do your work, and you're committed to your work, your inner work, and it shows, and it will continue to show more and more and more, as we all develop and grow. And so I just want to be the little behind-the-scenes voice that says, “Yep. My girl Amy truly walks her talk.”
AMY: Ah, I feel that, so I so appreciate it.
Thank you, my sweet friend. And I’ll talk to you again soon.
GABBY: Love you.
AMY: Love you.
What a beautiful interview. I think the work Gabby is doing is so important, and I think as entrepreneurs, we need to be paying better attention to the types of things that she is teaching so we can put our mental health and our well-being first, even before our business. And coming for me, that's saying a lot because I haven't always done that.
Now, my biggest aha moment, or my biggest takeaway, from this conversation is where Gabby talked about compassion and if we could all just have more compassion for ourselves, but for the people around us. And considering today was a day that I literally was beating myself up for not being enough and not showing up in the way I want to show up online and feeling as though I'm just not doing enough, that's just something that sometimes comes up for me. Although, I know it's not true, it still comes up. You know that saying, don't believe everything you think? Well, that's, like, my life. So anyway, if I would just put my hand on my heart and my other one on my stomach, like Gabby was doing, and just breathe and give myself all the compassion for where I am right now, imagine if every day you told yourself, “I love you, and I have so much compassion for where you are in your journey today.” Imagine if we all said that.
Some of you are rolling your eyes. It's not your thing. Others of you are like, “Yeah, I could use a little of that.” I'm in the camp that I know it might sound silly, but yeah, I could use a little of that. So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you.
So, think about what your aha moment or your takeaway from this episode. And I'd love for you to DM me. Just DM me on Instagram and let me know what you took away from this episode. I want you to share it with me as well.
All right. If you’d be so kind, please, please share this important episode with an entrepreneurial friend of yours. I know there’s a lot of people that don’t listen to my podcast that need this episode. They need to learn about these techniques and, more importantly, dive into this book. So if you've got an entrepreneurial friend, send it to them, because I promise you, if they focus more on their mental health than all the strategies and marketing funnels in the world, they will absolutely build a joyous business, something that they love and they're most proud of.
All right, my friends. Thanks so much for tuning in. I’ll see you same time, same place next week. Bye for now.
