Colleen Wachob, THE JOY OF WELL-BEING: A Practical Guide to a Happy, Healthy, and Long Life
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Colleen Walkup is the author of The Joy of Well-Being, a practical guide to a happy, healthy
[1:08]and long life.
[1:09]She is the co-founder and co-CEO at Mind Body Green.
[1:12]She graduated from Stanford University with degrees in international relations and Spanish
[1:16]spent 10 years working at Fortune 500 companies, including Gap, Walmart, and Amazon.
[1:21]She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, Mind Body Green founder and co-founder,
[1:25]Jason, and their two daughters, Ellie, and Grace, her first book, which is co-authored
[1:29]with Mind Body Green founder, Jason, was released in May.
[1:33]Welcome, Colleen.
[1:34]Thanks so much for coming on mom's.
[1:35]Don't have time to read books to discuss your book, The Joy of Well-Being, a practical guide
[1:40]to a happy, healthy, and long life.
[1:42]Thank you so much for having me thrilled to be here.
[1:45]So the first thing is that you're changing wellness to Well-Being, and you talk about that
[1:50]in the book.
[1:51]Tell us a little bit about that and how not only that word, but the book itself is
[1:54]a little bit of a mindset shift to how we've been thinking about everything.
[1:59]Yeah, so I've been deeply entrenched in the wellness world for 13 years, one of the co-founders
[2:05]of Mind Body Green, along with my husband, Jason, and we have a really complicated relationship
[2:11]with the word wellness.
[2:12]On the one hand, these tools have helped us both heal my husband from two extruded discs.
[2:18]In his back, I had a pulmonary embolism at 32 and was walking around Brooklyn with showers
[2:24]of clots in my lungs, and wellness was the tool that really brought me back to my center.
[2:30]And fast forward now, and we look at the wellness landscape, and it's a cacophony of voices
[2:36]on social media.
[2:37]There's so much noise.
[2:38]There's so much rigidity around routines and protocols, where as a mom of two girls, I get
[2:45]a little triggered when I hear about these elaborate 40 minute routines, where I'm like,
[2:49]I'm really happy when I get out the door, marginally on time, hair brushed for my kids.
[2:55]So I looked at it and it just not practices that I can relate to or integrate into my life
[3:00]at this current life stage.
[3:02]So we wanted to shift the conversation to well-being, which we think comes from more of
[3:06]a place of abundance, enjoy, where as wellness can be about restriction and protocols.
[3:12]And I think within all this wellness, which is great that we're all talking about this
[3:16]more, we've really lost sight of kind of the important principles of connection, enjoy,
[3:21]and making sure that that's a staple in our lives.
[3:24]No, true.
[3:26]So in the book, you highlight first all the main categories of ways where we can bring more
[3:29]well-being into our life, but you also take us in different directions, like reminding
[3:34]everybody about the importance of taking a walk by the water and how things like that,
[3:38]which by the way, you inspired me in this morning, I dragged my 16-year-old out, and I was
[3:43]like, we're going to walk on the beach, and she went kicking and screaming.
[3:48]But I was like, no, it's even better to walk by the water.
[3:51]It's not just the walk.
[3:53]So anyway, tips like that, which you might not have thought about.
[3:56]And just all these ways where we can not feel overwhelmed by the things that we're supposed
[4:01]to do, like you were just saying, but integrate.
[4:04]So what are some of these things that seem overwhelming, but really with smaller steps,
[4:09]we can all increase our own well-being?
[4:11]Yeah, I mean, you brought up one of my favorites, which is walking, which is just one
[4:15]of the most underrated activities that you can do.
[4:18]There's great benefits for improving cognitive performance.
[4:22]And there's just such a host of mobility benefits, too.
[4:26]So if you're kind of overwhelmed by all of the fitness options and not sure where to
[4:30]start, just getting your steps in is the perfect place to start.
[4:34]And when you can do it by the water, which lowers your cortisol or do it with a friend
[4:37]or a family member, that's even better.
[4:40]And we start the chapter with breath, which is one of the easiest places to uncomplicate
[4:45]your wellness and your well-being routine.
[4:48]Breath is hugely personal to me, because after my pulmonary embolism, when I was 32, it was
[4:53]the first time I really gave any thought to breath.
[4:56]I was riding the subways in my recovery process after having my pulmonary embolism.
[5:02]And it was a journey to be able to breathe again.
[5:04]And I remember looking at people on the subway and being like, I need that seat and kind
[5:08]of eyeing for the seat and racing senior citizens to the last seat, because I was worried
[5:12]about being able to breathe on a really steamy New York subway.
[5:17]And one of the opening chapters is about breath, because we believe so much in the importance
[5:21]of nostril breathing.
[5:23]And if you have someone in your family who snores, this could be a great place to cleave
[5:29]them in.
[5:30]Or if you're someone who runs a little anxious like me and you want to more tune into
[5:34]your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest system, breath is just such a great
[5:38]place to start breathing through your nose.
[5:41]And while I've done and tried and see a lot of value and a lot of the different meditation
[5:45]and breath work techniques at this stage of my life, it's really hard to make the time
[5:50]for a practice.
[5:51]It can feel really overwhelming to carve out 20 minutes.
[5:54]And what I love about nostril breathing is you can actually do it in the moment.
[5:58]So when you're having that tense conversation, it automatically makes you kind of go into
[6:03]this listening mode and listen, which is such a good skill that I'm personally working
[6:07]on.
[6:08]Amazing.
[6:09]I love that.
[6:11]What about sleep?
[6:12]Gosh, sleep is another personal chapter for me in so many ways.
[6:15]And I'm so glad that we have collectively started to move away from the sleep hustle culture
[6:22]and are really getting behind, you know, the power of sleep to transform your life.
[6:26]If you go without vegetables for a couple weeks, you're going to be fine.
[6:28]You've missed the gym for a couple weeks.
[6:30]You're going to be fine.
[6:31]So a couple days without sleep, you're not going to be okay.
[6:34]When I was in my early 20s, I couldn't sleep for three nights in a row, ended up in
[6:38]the hospital where they gave me a Xanax and that was where my sleep etiquette kind of started
[6:42]and ended.
[6:43]And at this stage in my life, I kind of become obsessed with the idea of sleep.
[6:46]And one of the hardest lessons to learn, which the sleep doctor, Dr. Michael Bruce told
[6:52]me was the first thing you've got to do is just let go of the stress of going to bed,
[6:57]which is so hard when you have anxiety that builds up.
[7:00]One of the things I've learned is that your sleep day actually starts in the morning.
[7:04]So how do you start your day with sunlight?
[7:06]How do you get that light exposure so that you're automatically resetting the melatonin
[7:11]and they're circadian rhythms of your natural body because we have lost our ability to just
[7:15]naturally fall asleep, a skill we used to have and studies have shown that when you put
[7:20]campers back in the wild, they adjust.
[7:22]But we with all these screens have kind of lost touch of that.
[7:25]So getting that sunlight exposure being mindful of the type of exercise modalities that you
[7:30]do.
[7:31]And at what time you do moon, how they affect your sleep routine.
[7:34]And you know, and to Dr. Bruce's point of how do you not stress yourself out too much?
[7:39]We still watch TV in bed, which is something that none of the sleep experts will tell
[7:42]you to do because it brings us a lot of joy.
[7:45]Keep your room cool.
[7:47]We put ours at 65 degrees.
[7:49]Everybody's you need.
[7:50]That's really fun.
[7:51]It's really cold.
[7:53]And you know, be mindful of your screens and just be understanding of what your triggers
[7:56]are so that you can ensure that you're setting yourself up for a good night's asleep
[8:01]as soon as you wake up in the morning.
[8:03]I turned on the car this morning to go pick up my younger daughter and the guy like
[8:09]talking on Sirius XM was like, by the way, I have eight tips for a healthy, longer life.
[8:12]And I was about to change it.
[8:13]And I was like, I'm going to move my hand away.
[8:15]Anyway, he's like, this, this, this, this, this, and this, one of which was like, don't
[8:19]be an opioid addict.
[8:20]So I felt like I had already accomplished one.
[8:22]And anyway, then he went on to, he goes, sleep hygiene.
[8:26]I don't know.
[8:27]What does that mean?
[8:28]You have to wash your pillowcase?
[8:29]Oh my gosh.
[8:30]But anyway, probably a good idea every now and then.
[8:33]Yeah.
[8:34]Good to get all of these things on everybody's radar.
[8:37]You open up a lot in the book about your own journey.
[8:41]Obviously, you mentioned multiple times your pulmonary embolism and the same view like in
[8:46]the same way was so, I mean, I felt so badly for you.
[8:49]And also your husband not being able to like stand up and like getting back to walking
[8:54]a few steps and all of his pain and all of that.
[8:58]But you also open up a lot about your fertility journey.
[9:01]And that if you had some funny line like, okay, you know, now that you've come with us
[9:04]for this far along in the back, like we're friends, so we're going to tell you all of
[9:07]this.
[9:08]So I wish I that was hilarious.
[9:09]And so you talked about that, tell me about that decision.
[9:12]Have you had any regrets?
[9:13]How do you feel about it?
[9:14]How does your husband feel about it and all of that?
[9:17]Yeah.
[9:18]We had such a long circuitous fertility journey.
[9:22]And one of the biggest parts of the story that we've been really open about is men
[9:28]account for 40% of fertility issues.
[9:30]And we started this journey thinking that I was quote unquote the problem.
[9:36]And you know, after doing two rounds of COVID and shame on my NYC first fertility center
[9:41]for not testing my husband, then they finally tested my husband.
[9:44]And it was a long journey of dealing with a condition called as ispermia, which involved
[9:49]surgery to extract his sperm before we could even get to the start line of IVF.
[9:54]That was probably a one year journey.
[9:56]And then I remained this medical kind of mystery.
[10:00]of, you know, I had all the good markers and all the good kind of data. But it took us a total
[10:07]of 15 embryos implanted and nine IVF transfers to get to our first daughter. And by the time we got
[10:15]to our second daughter, I had a feeling the day before the transfer that I was going to get pregnant.
[10:20]So I called up the fertility center and told them not to transfer to to just transfer one
[10:24]because I was going to get pregnant. And I think they thought I was a little lenient at that point
[10:28]in time, but sure enough, my intuition was spot on. And I'm so glad that there is so much more
[10:34]conversation about all areas of fertility these days because it was so lonely when we were going
[10:40]through it. And I think sharing these stories of resilience only helps women when they're going
[10:46]through to be able to see women who have not just survived on the other side, but thrived through
[10:51]so many different, you know, ways of becoming parents. And those stories were hugely valuable to me
[10:59]to draw on hope and inspiration along my journey. And I hope that in sharing our story, there's
[11:04]someone who's maybe going through their darkest hour and, you know, dark days of the soul that
[11:09]they're finding some hope in their journey as well. I appreciated the vulnerability and the sharing
[11:15]this wonderful. I feel like I haven't touched enough on the joy part of this book because a lot of
[11:19]it involves like doing things that bring you joy, that you enjoy doing, that it's not none of this
[11:24]is supposed to be like punishment. And how can you bring in things that are fun for you into your
[11:30]life? And and thereby you'll want to do them more, essentially. So obviously, I mean, it sounds
[11:37]obvious, but it is such an important reminder when people feel like they need to slog through XYZ
[11:43]class. So for you, like, what are some things that bring you joy that also achieve well-being?
[11:49]Yeah. So we want to integrate this conversation of joy span into the vernacular. You know, we
[11:54]started with this idea of health span where it's not just about living to 100, but having a good
[11:59]quality of life. And now as we think about this idea of joy span, it's, you know, if you're living
[12:05]until the centenarian Olympics, but you're not connecting with others and having friends and, you know,
[12:11]being a part of the community, like what is the point of all of these years of living? And we made
[12:17]the decision to move to Miami last year, which, you know, was motivated both by our children's
[12:22]school and also by our ability and desire to be closer to nature, closer to pursuits that we
[12:29]enjoyed, like pickleball, you know, it sounds super corny, but it brings us a lot of joy. We also
[12:35]love being closer to nature. We already talked about the cortisol lowering effects of being
[12:39]by water, but just being by nature is actually a spiritual experience for so many people.
[12:46]And I found that to be true in my own life. And part of it is, hey, we can acknowledge we're all
[12:51]on varying levels of addiction with our phones right now. And when you're by the water and by
[12:56]the ocean, I definitely leave my phone behind. And I hope everyone else does too for lots of reasons,
[13:00]but that's really enabled me to be more present with my daughters and to truly disconnect.
[13:06]One of the leaders who we reference in the purpose chapter is Dr. Lisa Miller, who lives here in
[13:13]Coconut Grove in Miami. And she's also a professor at Columbia. And she has this incredible statistic
[13:19]that I look to as part of my why right now, which is when mother and child are high in spirituality,
[13:25]the child is 80% more protected against depression. And it's not just within those child years,
[13:31]it's throughout life. And you can substitute mother for caretaker, for father, really just showing
[13:37]that when there's a high spiritual connection, you know, you are helping to develop a more mentally
[13:43]resilient child. And that is so much of my why right now. And what I love about Dr. Miller's
[13:49]definition of spirituality is it's so broad. It's so all encompassing. Yes, it can be religion or
[13:54]spirituality, but it can also be volunteering, helping, helping your community or spending time
[14:00]in nature and really this idea that we're connected to something bigger than just ourselves.
[14:05]So it's not just for me, a joyful connection, but it's truly a spiritual connection when I
[14:10]spend time and water. Tell everybody about my body green and how you started it and where it's going
[14:16]and who should take advantage of everything you have to offer. Just talk about all that great stuff.
[14:21]Awesome. So my body green started out of our Brooklyn apartment 13 years ago, our 700 square
[14:27]foot apartment in Dumbo. And my husband was going through his own personal health issues.
[14:32]I mentioned he had two extrude discs in his back. I was on this journey with my pulmonary
[14:36]embolism. And we had this view of the world where we wanted to kind of redefine the way in
[14:42]in which wellness was portrayed at the point in time. Wellness was something you thought of as like
[14:46]a European spa. And there wasn't people talking about health and well-being in a way that
[14:52]incorporated mental, physical, spiritual, emotional and environmental well-being. So if you fast-forward
[14:57]13 years, those same pillars are still true. Those are the same values of the site today.
[15:03]We reach about 15 million people on the site itself, 5 million across all social channels.
[15:09]And in addition to the content that we have on the site, we also have a line of supplements and
[15:14]personal care products. And also an incredible health coaching certification, which is part of our
[15:19]online education. So really, all things laddering up to helping people live a life well-lived.
[15:25]Do you include reading in that bucket? Is that one of the ingredients for you?
[15:30]Absolutely. And there are some great brain experts on not just the value to cognitive
[15:36]performance, but if it all comes back to joy and finding what brings you joy from a reading
[15:42]perspective and how you incorporate that into your daily life. How do you, I mean, I hate this
[15:48]question, but when you're managing your wellness and your family and your business and your book
[15:54]and all of that, what are the nuts and bolts of how you're structuring your time during the week?
[16:01]Yeah, I think it is all about integration for us. We have been very realistic that right now
[16:09]at this moment in time as two parents of a four year old and a six year old that are at a very
[16:13]high-touch elements of our parenting journey, as well as a business that's still at a high-touch
[16:18]element. It has to be about integration. So our morning routines are basically getting out of the
[16:23]house in one piece, ideally on time to school. And beyond that, you know, I've realized especially
[16:29]after I turn 40, you know, the importance of kind of evolving my fitness routines and how I move,
[16:35]I still love walking. And even though we moved to Miami, we still have very New York kind of state
[16:41]of mind and that we walk to work and we walk all the time within our Miami community. And that
[16:46]for us is about integration, taking the stairs when it's less than when it's less than five
[16:50]stories. And we've also added in resistance training because sarcopenia is real and having,
[16:56]you know, better bone density as we age is something that is really top of mind for us and kind
[17:02]of building the body armor as our Y continues to evolve. You know, and I think about not just my kids,
[17:07]but okay, I want to be able to hold, if my kids decide to have kids, the 30 pounder, you know,
[17:13]that's going to come out and get off the ground and be able to play with them. And that's a big part
[17:18]of kind of the biggest shift we've made about how we think about the movement piece of our
[17:23]equation. And it's about being intentional about building community and making friends. And frankly,
[17:30]those were new muscles for us after living in Brooklyn for 13 years and moving to a place where
[17:35]so many people ask us, do you have family hair? And we're like, no, not really. We're intentionally
[17:40]cultivating a community of people. And we have to kind of take that awkward first step a lot of
[17:46]times to ask people out, to ask another couple out, to ask another family member out or family
[17:52]and I think that's been a really important part of establishing a strong community here, new
[17:58]muscles that we've had to build. I'm always thoughtful about sleep etiquette, my caffeine curfew or the
[18:03]time at which I sunset and stop having caffeine during the day because sleep is really, you know,
[18:09]such an important pillar of life. But I think being here in Miami at this moment in time, you know,
[18:16]are wise evolved. We entered this through personal health crises. And now as parents were really
[18:22]frankly freaked out by the mental health crisis that's facing all humans. It's particularly hard at
[18:28]for boys and girls who are going through the, you know, teenage years and we're really focused on
[18:33]building mentally resilient children who can help whether the inevitable ups and downs at life
[18:38]is going to throw their way. I'm actually going to be in Miami throwing a retreat in November.
[18:45]And I feel like it would be really fun if we were to partner with you on bringing all these
[18:48]hopefully book lovers and we're going to go to the Miami Book Fair and have parties and all that.
[18:53]So we should talk about that. That would be fun. Sounds fine. Count me in.
[18:58]How was the process of actually writing a book? What was that like for you? Would you do it again?
[19:03]Major stresses involved? What did you think? You know, I think it was definitely a learning process.
[19:09]Over 100,000 pieces of content on my body green, but writing in one format is so different
[19:17]than the other format. And it really became crystal clear for us in terms of establishing our
[19:22]why. And I think one of the challenges is when you have so many pieces of content on the site,
[19:28]what is your actual philosophy? You can get a little bit lost because there is so much content.
[19:33]So what it really helped us to do was to crystallize our why to kind of look back on the past 13 years
[19:40]of wellness and what did we want to keep and what did we want to discard from the conversation.
[19:45]And the joy of writing a book is that you can have a little bit more of a POV.
[19:50]You know, in content, especially online, there's a lot of rules, whether it's SEO or
[19:55]you know that you need to abide by, but we can really get a little bit more playful.
[20:00]A little bit more fun with our tone and our voice, which was really exciting. And, you know, for us, it's about redefining what well beings going to look like for the next decades.
[20:13]Wow.
[20:14]You ever feel like all this well being is just too much and you just want to like.
[20:19]Eat an ice cream Sunday and like lounge round and not think about it anymore or not.
[20:25]I totally understand all the critiques on wellness because I have and share many of them. And, you know, when we were thinking of kind of the positioning and the audience for this bulk, it's it's longevity for the rest of us. It's longevity for the 99% and the folks who are kind of sick of the rigidity and the routines and, you know, if we were to bring it back to this, you know, especially this important ingredient of joy, absolutely have the ice cream.
[20:52]But make sure that it's a really good Sunday or cone or whatever it is that you that you're desiring don't skimp on something. You know, that's not going to really satisfy you.
[21:02]But, food is something that should be enjoyed and having those great rituals, whether with their with our kids or with our family is such an important part of the life's experiences. And, I think through writing this book, we've become really aware that, you know, we only have 4000 weeks to live when you think a lot about longevity.
[21:20]You think about it in very finite terms. And we only have 4000 weeks on planet Earth. So how do we make the best of it and have these really memorable experiences for us and for our kids and for our family.
[21:32]I really does not sound like a lot. Are you sure that never is right? Can a pack check me.
[21:38]Oh, man. Oh my gosh. And then I'm like, what did I even do last week? I don't know. What am I going to do next week?
[21:46]So what do you like to read when you're when you have extra time?
[21:50]You know, I read a lot of, I read a lot of business and I read a lot of wellness books.
[21:58]And it's kind of that, you know, fusion of the two, which in business like our business has changed and evolved so much in the past 13 years prior to 2020.
[22:11]So prior to COVID, our business was essentially all advertising and 25% of our revenue was from events.
[22:19]That has changed significantly. And now we have a supplement line and like learning these new business lines like has involved lots of lots of reading of books, lots of reading of Twitter, you know, and using a lot of resources to kind of figure out the next stage of our business.
[22:34]I love reading lots of leadership books along those same lines. And we are always looking for kind of who is going to be the up and coming face and wellness who's going to have something new that's going to really break through.
[22:46]So I don't know if it's work, if it's pleasure, but we love reading books from so many wellness luminaries.
[22:52]And what do you think the secret to being a successful entrepreneurs? Oh gosh. I think it's about putting one foot in front of the other and, you know, believing in yourself, believing in your mission.
[23:02]I think what's given us the tenacity over the past 13 14 years is we are so passionate about health and wellbeing. We've seen these tools, transformer, own lives.
[23:12]We love diving and making ourselves guinea pigs, trying it, talking to these super inspiring leaders within health and wellness.
[23:19]And, you know, that gives us the four to two to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.
[23:24]Love it. And any advice to aspiring authors, you know, I think it's about really taking the time for us to figure out what was our why and what was our mission behind the book and what could we convey in a book that we couldn't convey on social media that we couldn't convey in one of the 100,000 blog posts and that really led to a result that we're really proud of.
[23:46]Amazing. Well, congratulations, the joy of wellbeing, a practical guide to a happy, healthy and long life. Take it up today, joy of wellbeing and start experiencing joy right away.
[23:57]Thank you so much for your time. Congratulations and I'll use accomplished and the whole company and the book and everything else.
[24:05]Awesome. Thank you so much.
[24:08]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:11]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:16]Also, sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:23]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:27]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.