Episode 37: Interview with Jennifer Bishop, Fitness Instructor
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Welcome to Chasing Life Podcast, where we talk about fitness, running, career, and life tips to inspire you to live your best life. I'm your host, Sarah Kane, and I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Welcome to another episode of Chasing Life. I'm your host, Sarah Kane, and today's guest is Jennifer Bishop. Jen leads a very full and busy life, juggling being a mother of two, full-time work as the assistant director for transportation and parking services at a university, and balancing multiple side businesses, including a successful career as a kickboxing and fitness instructor for over 24 years. Despite the schedule, she does not feel overwhelmed, stressed, or discouraged. She

She remains motivated and successful, finding enjoyment in what she does. Jen believes that there is no such thing as I don't have time. If it is important to you, you make time. Outside of her job, she loves to make time for reading, gardening, snowboarding, boating, running, and all things active.

During this episode, we talk about Jen's fitness journey, juggling parenthood, how she coped with her fitness classes being transitioned to a virtual platform, how to make time for a new habit, and hearing all about her new obsession. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome, Jen. Thank you for joining me on Chasing Life Podcast.

Thank you. I'm excited to have you and have our listeners learn more about you. And as I mentioned in your intro, we currently work together. So I was just wondering if you could maybe expand a little bit on

who you are, what you do, and how fitness has impacted your life. Sure. In addition to working at university, I also have been teaching kickboxing and other fitness classes for 24 years. I first got into fitness...

as a teenager, really, I just started like doing aerobics classes in gym running, just really like minor basic stuff. And then I started focusing on nutrition, but not really with much knowledge on it. So I became a vegetarian, but basically that meant I didn't eat anything but like plain pasta and bread. Like I really did not have good nutrient content in what I was eating. So then from there, I

have come a very long way to being what I call a nutritarian, focusing on, you know, the quality of my food rather than, you know, any certain category of food that I'm getting. But then I started taking karate and basically I,

I took a kickboxing class and the instructor was a karate instructor and he basically sat me down at the end of the class and said, you need to compete in karate and we're going to world championships in a few months and I want you to start karate and I want you to go to that competition and compete and also you gotta be kidding me. So from that point on. That's when I really got into martial arts.

heavily. I was just about 16. As soon as I started, then I started teaching his kickboxing classes for him. So once I started that, I just loved it because you're actually doing something and it was effective and it was like more purposeful than just basic aerobics. And then I continued to run and get into functional fitness and, you know, much more recently than that. But

I just like to be active. I think even as a little kid, I just really liked to be out climbing trees. I never really had an interest in TVs. My mom had to pay me to read books because I really just wanted to be like active all the time. I didn't want to focus on anything else.

So it's been natural for me. Then I have two daughters. One is 16 and one is five and a half. So as a parent, from before I even had my first daughter, I really made it as a focus that I would not lose myself or my health and fitness goals for parenting, because I feel like you can be a better parent if you take care of yourself too. Yeah.

So I would run with my kids in joggers, even actually when I was pregnant with them. I still taught kickboxing. I still went running. Even my second daughter, who's five, I taught two kickboxing classes the morning I went into labor with her. So I never stopped. And I felt great the whole time. So I think that for me, it's consistency with kids.

fitness that keeps me feeling good. And then it helps me to stay motivated because it's a lot easier to maintain than it is to get, you know, the normal like yo-yo that people go through of getting way off track, say in the holiday season or in the winter, and then having to come all the way back again. It's so much easier to make steady, continuous progress.

whether it's nutrition, fitness, really any goals, if you just stick to it. So I think for me, it helps me keep sane. I'm very busy between having kids and juggling. I do have training clients. I teach kickboxing classes and then other fitness classes. So juggling that with a full-time job. And I also, a few years ago, owned a photo booth business. So having to handle all of those things, I think...

fitness time, whether I was teaching a class or training somebody or going running, it was like my mental free space away from my regular job or

my responsibilities as a parent, even though I'm thinking about those things as I'm running or as I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing that's active, I feel like the physical activity creates like an open mind for me. Yeah. There's so many things that I want to dive into after what you just said. The first is, now I'm not a parent myself, but I do feel like it's common for mothers to lose themselves in

when they have children. And I really like what you said that you didn't lose yourself. Do you have any tips to share with any parent, mother or father?

how to juggle that parenting and you know why that's so important for you to make that time to take care of yourself well my sister has a one-year-old right now and so I've had some recent conversations with her on this because she's able to stay home most of the time with her daughter and she really caters to her daughter's preferences and schedules and a few times recently she's been like thinking of taking on different things and then wondering if if

It's a problem because she's not focused on exactly what her daughter wants to do at that time. And one of the things she's commented on with me and my girls is that they can entertain themselves. They're like super good at being patient for me when I'm, you know, doing something else, or they know that we're going to, you know, go in the jogger and go for a run now that there's ways to make it so that they can tolerate that time that we're going to do that. But

like that's important in life. Like you're not always going to get what you want when you want it. It's always going to be your way, no matter what. So like teaching kids to comply with what you want to, I think helps them just with adjusting to like the normal flow of life. So to me, that was really important from the beginning. And that when you feel good about yourself and you're healthy and, and this even like,

getting enough of the right nutrients, you're going to have more energy. So you're not going to be always feeling like you're climbing, you know, from behind to keep up with your kids or to keep up with the chores and things like that, because you don't need as much sleep. You're energized when you're awake and you have the energy to keep up with little kids. And like all of that is, is so important. So, um,

Another piece of it, which I guess I'm not really there yet, but I've seen this happen with a lot of people is that when they do lose themselves in parenting and not say you were played baseball or, you know, volleyball or some sport and you give that up completely, anything you like to do, you used to go skiing, you used to go boating in the summer. You give all that up because you're so focused on your kids, little league games and whatever it is, the day-to-day chaos of having a family. Eventually those kids give

grow up and they don't need you taking them everywhere and they have their own life. And a lot of people, I think, cling on to being a parent so much that they lose themselves. And then once they hit that transition and their kids are moving away, then they don't even know who they are. And there's, I feel like in my,

I'm 40. I feel like in my generation of people, there's so many people that are depressed or just not able to have anxiety and they're not able to cope with the day-to-day stuff that happens as your kids grow up and move out. And a lot of that, I think starts from the very beginning where you, you gave up everything about yourself, either to be in a relationship with somebody else or to be a parent. So keeping yourself, I think,

I think you can keep those things that you like to do and enjoy to do and they keep you healthier and then you're able to take on the responsibilities and the relationships that you develop along the way while maintaining your own sanity and your own self so that you're able to move on past those relationships when they kind of separate off from you. Yeah, thank you for those tips.

Hope that parents listening found that helpful if they're struggling with finding time to take care of themselves or finding times for things they enjoy. It doesn't necessarily even have to be fitness related. It could be reading a book. It could be, you know, a craft. It could be any hobby that they enjoy that has been maybe pushed to the side because they're caring for young children. So thank you. I absolutely do not mean that.

Like, oh, just push your kid to the side and do what I do. I mean, more like time management and multitasking. Like I love to read and I read while I'm on the elliptical or, you know, I read, you

you know, when I'm up in the morning at 4:30 in the morning rather than taking time away from my kid. I'm not, you know, sitting on the couch reading a book and telling my kids to go play by themselves, but when it is time for me to, you know, get up early and go for a run and then come home and be ready to take care of my kids when they get up, I already am able to focus on that 100% because I've already taken care of myself. It's kind of like when you're on the airplane and they say put the mask

on yourself before you try to help an elderly person or, you know, a young child, because if you don't have the oxygen or you don't have the fuel or, you know, you haven't taken care of yourself, then you're not going to be able to provide for somebody else.

Yeah, I think that's a great reminder. And something that we've talked about before too is your time management and you're juggling a lot. Do you have any tips on how you juggle your full-time work, which has variable hours, as well as your multiple fitness classes? That's a part-time job by itself, plus your family. Well, I try to plan ahead and I try to

adjust as much as I can. So like my training clients, they kind of respond to me like as a joke sometimes, like I have somebody that's rescheduling a session for tomorrow and they said, okay, I'll see you at 529. Because like, I literally will say, can you come at like 605 or can you come at, you know,

3:23 because I know like if I have a virtual session, I need at least three minutes to like turn it off and switch from Vimeo to like have a Zoom meeting or something. So I try to be realistic in how long does it really take me to do this thing? Like if I'm going to go Wegmans used to be open 24 hours, not anymore, but I used to go to the grocery store like never before 11:00 PM and never after like 7:00 AM. So

So I knew that if I went in there and there's two other people in the store, I know exactly how long it's going to take me. I don't have to worry about lines. I don't have to worry about traffic. So I utilize...

you know, my, my time, what's going to be the most efficient and planning ahead. So if I know that something comes up that I wasn't expecting, say one of my kids tells me that, you know, they have a extra practice or something like that, or something I have to go to that I wasn't expecting that I know that I'm going to have to juggle things around a little bit or find an alternate person to give them a ride or,

you know, you always have to be adaptable and fit in. I might have something that comes, you know, tells me I'm going to be 15 minutes late to a session. So I have to make sure that I've created enough space so that I can adapt for that and that I'm realistic. So I start to get to know people like down to the point where I have a good feeling about whether somebody's going to cancel or not. So I might be like, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have an extra hour in my day today because I have a good feeling that this, I see the patterns that are coming. And then I try to

trust myself to rely on those things. Definitely things come up with work. So different times of year, like I've been at the university for 20 years. So I know that, you know, in the end of August, beginning of September, a lot more things are up in the air. They might need attention with programs at nighttime. So I have to make sure that I've taken care of things at home so that I can

you know, after I get home and give everybody dinner and get them to bed that I might need to spend a few more hours late at night focusing on things on campus again. So I try to pay attention to patterns and, you know, really use my time wisely and keep myself intrigued, I guess, by listening to different podcasts. And I'm like a finance radio addict. So I multitask by feeding my brain while I'm exercising or while I'm

you know, juicing or doing different things like that so that I can make the most of my time.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I do a lot of multitasking. Like if I'm doing the dishes, I have a podcast on. If I go for a run, I was doing a podcast. And so that way it's kind of, so you get either new knowledge or you get your brain engaged or you're hearing a new story or tips or whatever it is. But while you're doing something else in a little more passive way, you don't have to feel like, okay, I got to like just sit down right now and do this one thing. So. And also if you're learning about something new or hearing somebody's story, you're

It's more motivating than listening to the news or watching TV. I mean, I don't know if anybody really watches like regular TV anymore, like with commercials and stuff like that. But those kinds of things are things that like drag you down. Like when you're listening, even if you're listening to an audio book, you're able to imagine differently than if you're watching that same story on TV where they're showing you the picture and telling you the story.

So your brain is working differently. And I think that that's like energizing and invigorating because when you're no longer listening to that podcast later in the day, you're driving and, or you're, you know, walking to your office, you're still going to be thinking, your brain's still going to be thinking about all these things. And a lot of the time, whether it's a personal development type podcast, it's going to affect you work wise as well, like business wise, like your business is going to be intrigued by it as well.

Yeah, that's a great point. You mentioned the consistency to motivation, which makes it easier to maintain. And I think that's a really important point that just the smaller goals of 30 minute workouts a day, three to five times a week is a lot more manageable to maintain.

stay consistent with than if somebody just kind of flips and goes from zero to 60. And then within a couple of weeks, they're burnt out. They can't manage it anymore. As a fitness instructor, you've probably seen the gamut of people from all ranges of being consistent or starting from zero and coming. Do you have anything more you want to kind of

kind of add on that or any stories that you have? Yeah. I actually have people that have been taking my classes for 17 years. I have a few people, like quite a few people that are between like the 10 to 17 year range. And I,

There are even some that took my class like 24 years ago and have kind of come on and off there over the years. But those people that have been consistent over time, one of the things I wonder is how they haven't gotten bored of me yet. But I do try to keep things new and change things up as much as possible. But somebody new that comes in and they think, oh, I'm going to start coming to classes or training five days a week and totally eating healthy. Like they say they eat healthy.

take out or fast food or, you know, pasta and things that are just not really high nutrient content. And they think, okay, tell me what to eat.

And the first thing I say to them, if I tell you what I eat and tell you to go to the grocery store and start buying those things, there's no way you're going to stick to it. Number one, have you ever gotten like a recipe that you've never made before? And it's different ingredients you've ever made. It's so difficult. It takes you so much more time to go and shop for each of those ingredients. It takes you more time to cook it because you have to look at the instructions every step of the way. It's so much easier to take what you currently do and then make small changes to it versus trying to completely flip and change.

eat extremely different. It's going to take you more time to prep the food. It's going to take you more, you know, you're not going to know what you need as far as containers to take it to work. You know, you're going to fall off much more easily than if you make tiny changes. And it's the same thing with working out. So one of the things I tell people, and this is just random numbers that I pulled out of nowhere, but I say do six exercises for six minutes. So one minute each, six different things,

And do that every morning because everybody can make six minutes in their, in their morning. If you save it till the afternoon, some people aren't morning people and they want to save it till later in the day. But if you have, you know, kids and you have pets and you have, you know, work that might pop up later in the day, you don't know at the end of the day, if you're going to fit it in. But if you wake up before everybody else, you know, for sure you can fit those six minutes in and it doesn't have to be fitness. It doesn't have to be nutrition, but it can be anything. If you want to

you know, earn a new degree or certification in something that you don't know. If you spend, you know, five to 10 minutes, either researching what you need to do to get that certification or studying the information, or even Googling some of the questions you might have about it,

You're going to be further along than you were if you didn't do it. And you're also not going to feel like the way of, oh no, I have to like figure out what their requirements are. I have to, you know, I want to run a half marathon and I have to get out and run five miles, six miles, you know, every day you can start small and then you're creating a habit. And then once you have that habit, you can widen the window.

you know, and make it 20 minutes and then make it 30 minutes. But once you've created the habit, it's so much easier to try to expand it. And you also start to feel the positive effects of it once you've been consistent with it. And then that's motivating.

Absolutely. I could not agree more. That's what I tell people. There's a couple of my core beliefs that I share with people is one, if you're not motivated to do something, I mean, we've been talking a lot about fitness, but these principles can kind of apply to a lot of areas in life and your career in fitness.

you know, family life, whatever change you want to make is to just start with 10 minutes. Like on days where I maybe don't want to go for a run, I tell myself, just go for 10 minutes. And if you don't feel like it after 10 minutes, then you can, I give myself permission to come home and stop. There has never been once in the 10 years that I've been running that I haven't started running. And then 10 minutes later, turned around and came back and said, but it's just that mental, like

It's kind of, you know, I'll just start. Yeah. But, and then you feel a lot better. So like, I'm thinking with anything, like say you have to clean up the garage, like the whole garage, if you've never cleaned it out and you've lived there for a long time, like that's overwhelming. And you're just going to keep putting off, putting off, putting off. There's this book called the slight edge and it might not really apply to this piece of it, but in that it talks about how the road to failure is like a never ending spiral that you like never get to the end of because you're

There is no end point to it. But with success, if you set goals and you make effort towards them consistently, then you're gradually going to keep making progress towards that goal. And there is an end. Like once you meet whatever your goal was, like you're to the end and you met it and then you can set a new goal and keep progressing. But books like that, I really like because they help you realize that you need to start.

Even if you start super small, you will grow from that point as long as you're consistent with it. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things I like to tell people too is very similar to what you were saying of focus on one change at a time. And then once you get that habit down, add another one, add another one, instead of, as we've mentioned, trying to make five changes at once, you're going to fail at all of them. But if you focus on one change, you know, say drinking more water in a day, you're

get that consistently down for a week or two and then add another, you know, healthier habit to it. Or if you want to apply it to your career, like set a new habit of, I'm not going to check my email for the first hour of the day. And, you know, and just to help with productivity or efficiency or things like that, and just add those new habits on, on top of each other once you have it kind of down. So, yeah, I agree. I've created a spring challenge before.

challenge once for one of my classes and it was basically just a sheet that was about like creating new habits and it had maybe 10 different things on it and they could pick any one they wanted because if they were to make any of these changes, it would still be beneficial to their health. And they had to do it for, I think it was maybe two or three weeks. And then they had to add another one and do both of them for two or three weeks. And it's just exactly what we're saying is don't make too many changes all at once.

you know, kind of get used to one habit and then add on and build upon that. We have very similar mindsets about how to improve things in life. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on. So one of the things that we kind of talked about a little bit before coming on to record this was that you transitioned from

your classes from teaching in person to recording them online. Can you talk about that decision, what that experience has been like, that learning curve and how it's impacted your clients? So for years and years and years and years, people have asked me, so if they're somebody that's been taking my class in person,

and then they're moving away or maybe their schedule changes because they have kids or whatever it is. They've asked me if I would consider doing virtual classes or, you know, having a YouTube channel and recording classes. I don't even have the slightest idea of how to do like create my own YouTube. I just don't have enough of an interest in social media.

number one, to promote myself. Like I just don't promote myself really at all because it's just not my thing. So I was like, okay, maybe someday, but then I thought, okay, maybe I'll have somebody record me and make a few videos, kind of like the old get a workout on a DVD kind of thing. And then I can, you know, give people these videos if they want to, but I don't mind doing the same workout. Like I have a Pilates workout that I've had for probably 20 years that I still like,

But I don't think everybody want to do the exact same workout for that long. So I never did it. And then I did contact somebody before to ask them about like, what would it cost me to have you make a few professional videos, you know, of me doing some classes. And it was really more than I wanted to.

to invest in. And then I also had kind of the complex of like, oh, it's not going to be perfect enough because once it's recorded and it's out there, like that's, that's it. If you're in a live class and you mess up or your music has a glitch or,

you know, for me, if I'm training somebody, my daughter comes in and asks me to do something, she'll always come in and say, can you just have them do jumping jacks for a few minutes? If she wants me to do something, because since she was a baby, like she's always been around me training people. So sometimes I would say, okay, give me 15 pushups and I'd open her drink or whatever it was. So once the pandemic hit and we couldn't have classes in person anymore, I was like, okay, I might really have to make this transition. And I had

Had my daughter in soccer and they switched to doing, you know, virtual classes once they couldn't have soccer anymore. And I was like, okay, so maybe I could, could use this same platform. So I looked into it a little bit and then I ended up trying it and it was extremely stressful to me because of that. I can't, you know, doing it in my living room. I'm recording it myself. I'm, you know, there's no cuts if I need to like fix my hair or any of that stuff.

So it was very stressful for me. I'm not used to going into a class trying to look good. And I felt like I had to. I couldn't have my hair like all straggly and looking messy. I felt like I had to be a lot more social than I am and introduced and seem like peppy. And my teaching style is more, it's not like woohoo, like in frilly, like, woohoo, let's go.

let's go. It's not like that at all. It's very much like I'm doing it and I'm the motivator by what I'm showing them to do. Like, you know, lead by example. So there's also the piece of virtually I'm not there in the space with them. So I felt like I had to give so much more to give the same energy that I would, if I'm standing right next to them, kind of like if you're on stage, you have to exaggerate your emotions and,

And I've never been on stage, never took acting classes, so I felt like, okay, this is a lot to take on. So the first few classes that I taught virtually, I was exhausted afterwards. And it wasn't because I hadn't been working out. There's only a few weeks gap there and I'd still been working on my own. It was just like the emotional energy I had to put into it.

So it was really tough. And then I started to really like that I wasn't right there with people because I could just stop at the end. I didn't have 20 minutes of people asking me questions and I'm more of an introvert. So for me, when I first started teaching, I wouldn't even talk to the people in the class. I would like be kind of off to the side, put my music on, go in and teach when it was my turn and then go shut my music and leave and like barely even talk to the people. Not because I was trying to be rude, but I just was shy. Like I didn't, but I had over time become much more social and

like a learned extrovert. So then I started to realize like, oh, this is perfect. Like I can, I can be on there and then shut off when I'm done. And I don't have all that extra time. But then as time went on, like now that we're a year into it, I noticed that I wasn't nearly as motivated to teach. So I had to put a mirror back out. So I felt like I was like teaching to somebody because when I see myself on the screen, it's like so little and far away. I started to kind of feel bored. I wasn't teaching to anybody. And

I kind of got bored of myself versus when I'm teaching to different people, I'm feeding off of their skills in the class. Another thing I did to make it a little easier for me to adapt was I had people let me know ahead of time that they were going to take the class so that when I was teaching in my head, I was teaching to those individuals and I already knew their abilities. Most of the time, I did have some people that were referred to me by others and I didn't necessarily know, but that helped a lot too, because then I'm, I'm literally teaching to their skills and

And then if somebody else contacts me about the class, a lot of the time I would ask them some questions or give them one of my more basic classes. And then, you know, depending on their reaction to it, if they let me know that they were elected or if certain parts were too hard, then I would take that into consideration when I sent them additional classes. But I really enjoyed it. I mean, I have hundreds of

classes in the log. And I've really decided that having interruptions, like if my dog comes in or my daughter comes in, that that kind of feeds to the like, yes, I'm a mom. And I'm

you know, I have kids in the house and I'm not going to not work out because, you know, my daughter might need something. Instead, I'll turn to her and, you know, give her what she needs. Or once in a while, she'll join in on the class with me. But everybody's still getting an excellent workout. And, you know, I am as well. And it helps them to connect with me a little bit more because they know a little about it. Like I got baby chicks in the spring. And I even brought my little chicks in to show everybody at the end of the class one day.

It's cute. It's like a virtual show and tell, if you will. And it helps people just connect to you on a more personal level instead of, oh, you're an instructor, but I don't know anything about you. So most of the people have been taking my classes for years. But so one of the one of the great things is the people who had left the area and moved to Myrtle Beach and New Orleans and Pittsburgh. I have people all over.

that are now reconnected and able to take my classes. And some of the people that they've referred are people that I never would have interacted with. And now I don't know them in person, but more recently I did have the opportunity to meet a few people, but they're people I never would have connected with. Like I had somebody in Turkey taking my classes here.

And like, that's just unbelievable to me. So another thing it helped me to do was create a more flexible schedule for myself because like, for example, I'm going away this weekend to take my kids to Niagara Falls. And I normally have two classes on Saturday, but I can teach them, you know, tomorrow morning or four in the morning on Saturday before I go.

And I have that flexibility because I don't have to be there in person at a set class time. And it's really nice during the summer months because if it's a really nice day, there wouldn't be as many people in class because they're out enjoying the weather. And I would be committed to that time slot. So I would be there. But now I have that flexibility. So I don't have to be there at a set time. So it's been excellent for me, really. So now the question is, when things start to come back,

Are you going to still do online classes or were you shifted all to just in person again? I don't know. So originally I would say like in January, my answer to that was that I'm going to do both now because I still want to serve the people that are not in the area and the people that don't want to be stuck to a set schedule. And then I would just record the classes and then also teach. And then I realized that more recently that,

I don't have enough time in the day to do both really because the way the number of classes I had and the people taking them, I was teaching more classes than I needed. Not everybody was taking all my classes. I was able to,

remove one of the classes from my schedule and the people that were signing up for that day, I would send them a different class of the same type of class. So I became more efficient even with that. If I were to teach in person, I think I would teach in person some, but I don't know yet how much because I do like the flexibility that I currently have, the in-person interactions. And like I said, a lot of people have been taking my class for years and years. So seeing them, it's, you know, social engagement for me as well.

And I do think that it's good, especially because I'm an introvert and I like to be home and away from people. I think that it's important that I still, you know, force myself. And that's one of the ways that I enjoy forcing myself to get out and interact with

And then the other thing is by being like in a gym setting, I do mean that even though I don't like to advertise myself, being in a gym setting is advertising. I've gotten a lot of clients just because they've come to my class and then they want to work one-on-one with me. So without being out in person teaching, I don't have that as much. Right.

very similar to you also with being the forced extrovert. I identify as an introvert too. So like having podcasts has been really fun because I'm good with one-on-one conversations, but my forced extrovert activity is going to a racing event and

And then socializing with people afterwards, instead of just going in the race and then leaving grade afterwards, it's like, okay, well maybe I should try to make a new friend or something. Like actually. It's not that I don't like people. It's just, it's not natural for me, which is so funny to me because my five-year-old is complete opposite. Like before we went camping, before we even like pulled into our campsite, she was like, can I get out of the car and go talk to this kid who can't be next to us?

And the other day she had the neighbor across the street helping her scrub her pool because I told her she had to clean it. And I went in for a training session and then she's like, oh, me and the neighbor are cleaning the pool. And I was like, what? You went across the street and asked the neighbor? Like I would never do that. She's extremely resourceful. And I feel like she's actually learned that from hearing me interact with people that come to train who I'm friends with because I've been training them for so long. But it's like in that controlled setting.

you know, I asked them how they're doing and she hears all these questions and our interaction and she's learned that, but she's taken it to a much wider level. Like this child will never be lonely. Yeah.

Isn't it so funny how different family members are, right? And that you're more introverted and then she'll just make a friend the instant that she walks into a room. So yeah, it's been such an enjoyable conversation, but I also wanted to just cover a couple of fun things, which is if you're working toward a current goal and what

what that is and what inspired you to decide on that goal? I don't really know that I have a goal right now, like a short term goal. I used to say that I wanted to be able to run a half marathon when I was 105. And I

I don't know that it'll be a half marathon. I mean, that's quite a long ways out, 100%. So on the shorter end of things, I don't really have any health or fitness goals that I can... Or business goals or career goals.

family goals, anything? I guess I kind of like ride the wave of, you know, as things are happening and where I want them to go, but they're not really like, I would say a big goal. They're more kind of like feeling the flow of things and adapting, like if I evaluating and reevaluating and reevaluating again so that I can make changes along the way.

But not as much setting a goal, you know, that's very far out. Because of the flexibility that I have now with my classes, I did, I would say I did set a goal for the summer of just doing more.

kind of things with my kids, little weekend trips. They're really like one or two day things. Camping, like I said, I'm going to Niagara Falls. I rented a tree house for a few days in August. So more like trips and just enjoying as busy as I am. I don't want the time to pass me by with my kids at each stage of their life. So I'm making more effort to stop working and take that time

So I guess that's a goal because I've really put significant effort into it this year. And I've already done a lot of things with them. But kind of the slowing down and enjoying the time that we had last year and continuing that, even though things are getting back to normal, you know, not letting the rush of things and the work and the busyness take away the fun of the day-to-day. Like my days literally are scheduled from 5 in the morning to 10 at night every day. And so I have to...

schedule in that time to have fun with them. And it's not nearly as rigid as it sounds like because so much of it is enjoyable that if somebody asks me, even though scheduling this podcast, I mean, it was

a month away. That's short, but it's because you're willing to do like late night on a weeknight. But if somebody wants me to do like a whole weekend or a whole day long weekend day thing with them, a lot of time I'm like, okay, well I can schedule right now, like last weekend in July or, you know, middle of August and

And they think that I'm just being like difficult, but really that's really how it is. But along the way, I know that not all those things are going to work out perfectly. Like last Friday, I was going to take my girls to an amusement park, but it was going to, there's a 90% chance of rain. That was going to be like 50 degrees. So we canceled. So then I have that whole day.

you know, to do other things with. So I'm definitely flexible and, you know, willing to adapt as things come up or as things change, but, but we have things to look forward to that are fun and we're making sure that we are making the best of the time. And as soon as we know that like, that's not the best plan. Okay. Let's see what else we can do. Yeah. I love hearing that. I think that's really refreshing that, um,

Yeah, there was a lot of things canceled last year. And I've had a lot of things come up on like my time hop or my Facebook memories that were quotes from this time last year of saying like, I hope that people, when this all goes back to now, a year ago, we didn't think it was going to last this long, right? But there was still the sentiment of saying, okay, things are closed down. We're spending more time at home with our families. Hopefully this might

mindset, this mentality, this quality time together will continue even after the, after the pandemic is over. And now that kind of the end is in sight, it sounds like you've continued to try to make that effort with your family or just at the specific time. Things to look forward to, I think is a great way to, to live life because then you're,

seeing more things, you're doing more things and you're not just kind of stuck in the same routine over and over again. So I think that's, and it's not, it's not always like super busy things. Like one of the things that's scheduled into those days that I take my daughter to horseback riding and my older daughter is a dancer. And when she would go to dance, I, instead of being in there watching, I would go running or I would go run errands or things like that. Um, when they used to let you come in and watch and I can't even do that, but horseback riding, I can go in and watch. And I know how important it is to my daughter to

to know that I'm there watching her versus, oh, I drop her off and she gets to do it, but I leave immediately. I pick her up, you know, when she's done. So I try to take into consider, like the five love languages is a book that I'm like a big fan of. And I don't think it applies just to your spouse or your significant other or your kids, but I think you can,

find ways to work it into any relationship you have, whether it's, you know, with your boss or coworker, but knowing what is important to somebody as far as how they feel appreciated can go such a long way. And it makes your time more effective. Like if I know that my little one wants me to be actively engaging in spending quality time with her, whether it's me watching her horseback riding or whether it's me reading books with her or playing a game,

then I'm not going to waste time buying her things that she can do by herself when it's much more effective at getting the point across that I love her if I'm spending time with her, actively doing something. So obviously that's downtime, it's enjoyable, it's fun, but it is scheduled into my day. And I might tell her instructor, like, sure, we can do a makeup class together.

you know, on Tuesday, we can be there about 10 after four, but we have to leave by, you know, 525. So I set the standard ahead of time. So they know, like, I'm not just ditching out quick because, you know, I don't respect you and in the lessons that you're giving my daughter, but we're fitting this in because we really want to do it. But we have this, this, this, and this also to do that day. Yeah. I think that's great just to remind people that it's okay to set those boundaries and

And to share those with other people, not to be rude or to dismiss them or be disrespectful of their time, but to say, listen, like I got to go like I have other things that I want to be respectful of that, too. So, yeah, this is kind of where we need to fit things in. So, yeah, I think that's a great point. And like you said, setting boundaries. So in the past, I probably would let myself down.

If I had somebody that wanted to train with me, even if I didn't have the energy to go to do a session at nine o'clock at night, I might be like, okay, I'll do it anyway. Because I felt like I needed to do it for them because they wanted my purpose. But I'm much less likely to do that now because I know that that means...

you know, I'm not going to be putting my daughter to bed until 10 o'clock at night, or that means that I'm not going to be able to eat dinner or, you know, so I'm, I'm better about setting boundaries and saying like, yes, I do want to do that, but you know, I'm not going to be able to do that right now because I have so many clients, but you can take my virtual classes or, you know, we can train every other Sunday, you know, something like that. So I fit in everything by setting boundaries and, you know, setting specific timeframes and, and,

making sure that I get to do everything that I want to do. And yeah, I think that's a really good reminder. And, you know, the time management or structuring those things, in my opinion, doesn't make you feel pigeonholed, but it provides you the discipline so that your mind doesn't have to focus on like remembering a hundred different things. You know that you've written it down, you know, you've scheduled it so that can allow you freedom to focus your energy elsewhere too. Mm-hmm.

It's like the finance radio that I listen to, they talk all about budgeting and creating a budget doesn't restrict you, but it gives you permission to spend on the categories and the things that you need to spend on.

so that it's not like an up and down cycle. It's with all these things. So it's like a consistency. So you know what you're agreeing with yourself to do, or maybe with your spouse or whoever you're going to be responsible to. And then you're giving yourself permission to do those things while still being responsible to the things you might not want to be doing, or you might not want to be spending your money on.

So it's same thing, just a different category. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's kind of the tagline on this podcast is fitness, running, career and life tips. So I feel like we're covering all that in here. So I love it. Another fun question I have for you is what you are currently obsessed with or loving right now, whether it's a TV show, book, you mentioned their finance radio. Do you want to go down that route?

but that's not a new obsession though. So I would say that that's just like probably an old addiction, but, um, my obsession right now is my chickens. I have chickens and, um,

I have 12 and we are just learning like the older batch that we have a few roosters. So we're trying to figure out how to handle that. But I never ever would have imagined that I'd be so excited about chickens. And it all happened because one of my friends said, oh, do you want to come to my friend's farm to see these baby goats? So I thought Chanel would love it. I also took her recently to feed some like baby cows at another friend's farm. So I did not think we were getting into like the farm life at all, but

When we went to see these baby goats, she pulled me aside and she was like, mom, I need to get chickens. And she hadn't even paid any attention to the chickens when we were there. I don't even know where it came from. But then I was like, okay, like how, as a mom, a lot of the time, like when your kids ask you for something, you're like, okay, how can we figure this out? Like, how can we make it work? And the responsibility of taking care of an animal, I feel like, or animals is something that's good for kids to learn.

So my parents have four acres and I thought, okay, like they have a chicken coop on their property. They haven't used it yet, but you know, maybe we can get them to do it. My mom's retiring. Like this is a perfect hobby for her. So I called her and asked her and she's like, oh, maybe I'd consider that.

And then we just spun with it. We got the baby chicks and then we didn't want to get rid of them. So, you know, from figuring out, you know, how to keep them safe from predators to creating a bigger coop and how to get them to interact and agree and just learning all about them. It's just really extremely fun and exciting. And I'm so far on the other side of like not willing to deal with like the mess of predators.

chickens and animals and that kind of stuff that I never would have imagined that I would like it so much, but it's pretty fun. How long have you had them for? Like three months. Okay. So very still new. Yeah. Except that it's so consuming. Like it's an everyday thing. So it's, it doesn't seem nearly as new. Um, so we'll see how long it lasts, but yeah.

And the funny thing is like so many of my friends also just have gotten into it. So it's not, but so I have people to kind of like learn from their experiences and we all kind of got into it around the same time or, you know, pretty close. My older daughter says I do not want to live the farm life. She wants nothing to do with them. And my younger daughter absolutely loves them. And my dog loves them.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Does your dog tie like hurt them or, you know, what's their interaction with them? When they were little, they were in a box in the house. So from that point on, she was very interested in them. Like if one got up on the edge of the box, because once they start to fly and they'll get up on the edge of the box, she would come crying. She would wake me up in the night to tell me that a chick is either out of the box or on the edge of the box.

um crying like once it got a little warmer i'd bring him out during the day and bring him in at night and if she thought i didn't bring him in yet if she didn't see me bring them in she would cry and cry and cry for me to go out and get them and i'd be like no i already brought him in so i'd show her the chicks were already in so she's surprisingly like interested in carrying them but she's like a mothering puppy she's only she's not even two yet but okay it's the same way with my younger daughter like if my younger daughter wants to have a sleepover in the living room

The dog will stay in the living room, like watching out for her all night long. And she was just like this with the chicks. So she is great with them. That's so cute. I was mowing the lawn one day and they got scared of the lawnmower. So they went across the yard and she was out in the yard with me and she was like, Oh no, they're getting wet. And she like dashed after them, but only to kind of like heard them. Like you said. That's so cute. I feel like my dog would like chase them or, um,

I don't know. I don't know how she would be. Cause she likes to chase squirrels and rabbits and all that stuff. So like a small animal. I think because she sees me caring for them and, you know, holding them and feeding them and, you know, moving them back and forth. I think that she understands. It's kind of like if you had a puppy and then you have a baby. Yeah.

usually understands like okay this is your this is our baby going to kind of like look out for and sometimes it doesn't happen but a lot of the time it does and I think it's the same kind of thing because they are very very small when we got them and she's kind of seen them grow I mean they're

They're grown now. I'm glad I asked you that question because that was a really unique answer. I know you're not happy to have chickens. Like no one expected at all. And like, I love them. I don't, I don't know what happened to me over this last year, but a lot of things changed. So my last question to wrap things up is what does chasing life mean to you? So I think that chasing life means, um,

you know, always trying to be the best you to enjoy your life,

you know, to the fullest. And that doesn't necessarily mean just throwing your hands up in the air and like let your hair blow in the wind and just go in to have fun, not be responsible. I think that there's a lot of fun in work and responsibility and commitment to yourself. So even though I said that I don't really have goals, I guess to me, my everyday consistency is, you know, what I mean, like I'm living the life that I love. And so I'm not willing to give that up really, um,

for anything or any anybody. It changes over time, but it's always, you know, to do a good job at the things that are important to me and to continue to, you know, explore and expand my horizons in whatever direction, like the flow of life takes them at that time. Perfect. I love it.

Thank you so much for joining me. So much fun talking with you. I know. It's funny because I've wanted to talk to you. I mean, I watch your stories on Facebook. As much as I don't look at Facebook, I do see your stories pop up. And I'm always like, oh, I'm glad we had that opportunity last month and that we sparked a conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you.

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