[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to align to lead. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and today we're talking about real solutions for women's health, healing and balance.
You're watching now Media television.
Welcome to align to lead. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and today I'm talking about something every ambitious leader needs to hear.
Success loses its value when it starts draining the very person building it. And unfortunately, I see so many families, professionals who are outwardly achieving, producing, and showing up at a very high level. But underneath that success, they're just exhausted, foggy, inflamed, disconnected, and running on pure force.
Joining me today is Dr. Raquel Yarrow, founder of Rockin Health and a functional health practitioner who helps professional men and women stop sacrificing their health for their career. Her work centers on root caused healing, the mindset, transformation, and helping high performers reclaim their energy, clarity and confidence so they can become unstuck and truly unstoppable.
In this first segment, I want to begin with the hidden cost of ambition.
What happens when the drive to succeed is slowly breaking down the body and its mind that the success depends on? Dr. Raquel, I am so happy that you're here.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Well, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you, Megan.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: You're very welcome.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: In this segment, I'm opening the episode with a central tension that drives the whole conversation. Many professionals have learned how to perform, but they have not learned how to sustain themselves. I want to explore how chronic fatigue, stress, poor sleep, brain fog, hormonal disruptions, digestive issues and emotional depletion often gets normalized as just the price of being successful, which, unfortunately, this sets us up for the bigger message of the show. And it's going to align to health should never be separate, but from leadership performance. It is one in the same. It's a core asset.
So to start, I want to start with you. I want to hear what pulled you into functional medicine and what pulled you into this work and why high achievers, specifically, what brought you wanting to help those people?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Well, yes, Dr. Megan, it was a personal thing for me. I am a chiropractor and a functional medicine provider. However, I was running my own business and going through school and all that stuff. So we have a lot of stress that has happened to us.
And over time, over decades of time, your body starts to break down. Because I wasn't taking care of myself like I should, because I just sort of thought, hustle, hustle, hustle, I'll deal with everything later kind of thing. And what happened is when you do that, your body just starts to break down and all of a sudden your body says, you're going to take time for me now. So I remember actually taking my business manager at the time for a walk and explaining to her when I die, how you sell the practice. Because I was getting sick and I wasn't getting answers in the modern traditional sense of the word medicine.
And I was getting frustrated. So I started praying. I'm like, the only place to go was, okay, I need some answers. God help me out here, right?
So I started praying and I came across functional medicine and nutrition and testing and finding the root cause of your health issues.
And that's when everything changed for me. I started testing myself, I started applying the rules and the principles and my health completely transformed. And honestly, it's 10 years later and look, I'm here, I'm good, I'm happy, I'm healthy. And you can have both your health and your career at the same time.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: I absolutely love that. So when I look at driven professionals and who are constantly achieving but unfortunately privately struggling, what patterns do you see over and over again?
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Well, a lot of times they have brain fog, they're not sleeping well at night, they have digestive issues, they have bloating, sometimes constipation, diarrhea they have where they're frustrated. They might be short tempered with people at work or even their own family. The people they care about the most, they just, they struggle with the day to day stuff and they don't understand why. They just, they just keep pushing more and more and more and they're like, I just got to keep going. And yet they're falling apart inside. But on the outside sometimes they look beautiful.
You know, they put all put together but on the inside they're just crumbling and it's just like, they're just like, okay, I just gotta keep going.
And it's just their body's falling apart on the inside.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: That's completely unfortunate. With that being said, why do you feel so many people confuse burnout for burnout symptoms with ambition? Or that they have to keep telling themselves that this is just how success feels?
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Well, society rewards production and getting everything done and being available and pushing, pushing, pushing and going, going, going.
And so we're used to, that's our reward. And as high ambition people and as type A personalities, that's our reward to hear, hey, you did a good job. Hey, keep going. You know, you're successful, you're doing this and that.
But what happens is we're used to just having to take a pill too.
So that One thing. So like say as you're pushing and you get a headache, it's like, well, I'll just pop a pill for it.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: You know, and it's like we get used to like, okay, I don't have time to just do everything. I was just gonna take something that's a quick fix. And health is not a quick fix. No, it's just a cover up.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. So in your experience, when success starts costing us things from sleep, energy, patience, or just seriously mental clarity, what do you find your body is trying to tell you?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Well, your body is trying to tell you a message. You want to stop and pause and listen because your body is trying to communicate with you. It's telling you maybe you need to slow down, maybe you need to rest, maybe you need to nourish your body a little bit differently. Maybe you need to change some habits and patterns that are going on in your life.
So I feel like that when the body is asking for that, you just, you need to stop, listen and reframe and just get in touch with your body sometimes just taking a nice deep breath and just being okay. Body, what do we need right now? What do we need right now? What, how can I support you?
[00:06:35] Speaker A: In your experience, what are some of the earliest signs of a person who on the outside they prepare successful, but on the inside they're just falling apart?
[00:06:46] Speaker B: So what are some of the signs?
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the earliest signs that you can detect throughout your journey.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Gotcha. Well, a lot of times it's brain fog.
They're not remembering what they're thinking, they're not remembering what they're saying. Or when they go into a meeting, things are just clouded and they're just like, okay, what am I supposed to be focusing on? And they got so many things going on in their head. Other things. Again, it's like that bloating, that fatigue, the constipation, diarrhea, it's just them not learning to listen to their body. And we're just going through where they feel like they have to have more caffeine and then it causes cravings of like different sugars or salts and they get less patient, they get very short tempered. And so those are things that people notice. They're just like, I'm just not myself anymore. And they're so tired of that and they just, I want myself back. I hear that all the time. I just, I want to be me again.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Now with that being said, why do you feel it's important that people stop seeing their health as more of a side issue? And instead look at it as a part of the professional capacity of how well they can lead.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Well, in order to have your health, to be. You want to have your health so you can be a really good leader. Because if you don't have your health, you're not going to lead people, you're not going to inspire them, you're not going to motivate people.
So by having your health and using your health as an asset to help drive you forward, it's going to only help elevate you up even further. Because when you leave your health down here, you can't go up further. But when you bring your health up, it elevates you both up. And that, I think is a huge, huge, huge thing.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. That is such a great analogy. And so true, so true. And so many times we do, we leave it off to the side and that's not good. That is such a vital part of our success only in life, but just even in our personal lives as well. Absolutely, absolutely love that. Well, coming up next, I'm getting practical about root cause health because for busy professionals, managing symptoms is not the same thing as actually getting well. We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks and this is aligned a lead on Now Media Television.
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Welcome back to Align to Lead. I'm here with Dr. Raquel Yarrow. And now I want to move from awareness to. To application.
A lot of people hear the phrase root cause health, but for a busy professional trying to run a business, lead a team, raise a family, or just stay afloat, that phrase can still feel really abstract.
So in this segment, I want to make it real. I want to unpack what root cause work actually looks like when I'm not living in theory, when I'm trying to perform, meet deadlines, make decisions and stay still, have enough energy left to feel like myself at the end of the day.
In this segment, I'm translating functional health into real language of everyday leadership and performance. Instead of only talking about symptoms, I'm digging into why symptoms repeat, what systems may be out of balance and why quick fixes keep so many professionals stuck. This is where the episode becomes more actionable. And differentiated because the conversation shifts from what's wrong with me to what's driving this pattern.
Dr. Raquel, you do root cause health work. What does that actually mean in real life for busy professionals?
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Well, root cause work is all about getting underneath. Why there's symptoms. So sometimes symptoms is that top level part and we want to dive a little deeper, get underneath and get to the root cause of what's actually happening and what's driving that symptom. Because symptoms are the last thing that they're going to experience.
There's all. It's just like when we have the big iceberg, right? It's the tip of the iceberg is all those symptoms, but it's all the things underneath that that are the root cause. So we have to figure out what is their root cause, what's their driver that's causing that symptom for them.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Great example. Because that's what the Titanic and everything. Right now when I come to you and I am feeling exhausted, I am feeling wired, bloated, foggy, or emotionally flat, how do you began to help me look deeper than the symptoms that I'm currently feeling?
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Well, first I want to know your story.
So we sit down and we have a conversation. I get to learn about you. I get to find out what it is about you that is driving you to feel this way. So we need to know your story because your story is a hidden gem. There are so many things I'm going to learn your speech patterns. I'm going to learn about, you know, the.
What your life has been like.
And then I'm going to take. And we're gonna realize that one. Everything is connected.
Everything that you're experiencing is connected. The body is one unit. It's not like you're just an ear.
You know, you're your whole body. So it's like that song, your hips connected to your hip bone and stuff like that. So yeah, I'm not gonna sing until.
But yeah. So everything is interconnected. So so we want to get that whole story and then I like to do testing because we don't want to guess. You are an amazing machine. So I kind of compare the body to like a car.
So if you have like a Ferrari, you're going to want. If something's going wrong with that Ferrari, you want to know what's going on. You're going to run the test and you're going to make sure that you're treating that Ferrari like an amazing machine that it is. Right? You're going to make sure that you're doing the gas changes or gas oil changes, putting the correct gas in it, doing all the tune ups in it. The thing is, is when we have our bodies we have a tendency to kind of forget to do that or we treat our body like oh well, you know, it's just an old car but you know it's going to keep going, right.
So first we got to test it, we got to find out what is going on in your amazing, amazing body. And when we find out what's going on, the root causes, whether if there's toxins or if there's parasites or bugs or hormonal type issues and anything else that could be going on, we're looking at a lot of different factors. We find out what those are, that's information so that we can help coach the body back up and bring it back up into a state of health.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: I absolutely love that.
Why do you feel so many professionals stay trapped in symptom management instead of getting to the true source of what's really going on?
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Well, one, it feels faster because they just want that symptom management. We have been trained starting in the 80s with the medical system, here's a pill for that and it just makes it fast. You can cover something up, but we don't want to just cover things up. We want to peel back that layer and actually see what's going on so we can get to the root cause of everything.
We want to make sure that we're.
Oh, how do I put that?
We want to get to the root cause. We want to find out what is actually driving your system.
You're used to being busy so you don't want to take the time to figure out what's going on. But if you don't take the time now, your body will make you take time later. So when you take the time now and it can be an easy, simple fix, it might just be a little bit of a lifestyle shift change, a reframe, how you're thinking what you're doing with your body on a daily basis. And when you start adding that up at one little degree, one little change every single day just to add and improve, improve your body, you're going to also improve your career, you're going to improve your business, you're going to improve your relationships all around you.
So you want to always like take one look at yourself, who are you? I mean we've had these many discussions. It's like looking at who am I and how do I help myself become the better person that I know? I Can be.
And it's not just a quick fix. Nothing is a quick fix. Not. I really wish. We're used to instant text, instant email, microwaves and all that fun stuff, but life isn't like that. Health takes time.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: When we talk about stress, hormones, gut health, and you talk even about sleep and mindset, start interacting in ways that can quietly affect my performance.
How do those things affect that?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Well, it starts with I kind of look at it. You want to think like a circle or you want to have like this chain of events that things happen. We want to think linear, like our to do list. Health is not a to do list, and health is not linear. And it's not a perfect circle as much as we wish. It's more like you're in the center and then you have maybe have some sleep issues that happen. You lose a little bit of sleep, and that's maybe going to affect your hormones. Then your hormones are going to affect maybe your energy. And then we have also with that stress or the sleep, we affect the gut, and the gut's going to affect your inflammation and. And you have all these different parts of you going off.
And so it makes it hard to figure out, like, sometimes what's going on. But you got to look at that driver because all the parts are connected, but they're all sporadic all over, and they are all interconnected.
So it's not like a perfect circle as much as we wish, you know, stress to this, to this, to this, back to that. And a lot of times you can create that, but it's still. It's very like. It's like this big matrix and you got a little bit here and there, and if you pull that little web up, all of a sudden different things can happen.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: I love the analogies. And honestly, when you see someone that's been pushing and pushing for years and they just are constantly not taking care of themselves, but they're just keep going and keep driving. What do you find surprises them the most about their body and what it's been compensating for all this time?
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Well, one what surprises them the most is healing takes time.
That's one of the biggest things, because when they come, they want it instant. They're like, I need to feel better now. I do not have time to wait till later. But that's the thing, is the body takes time to heal. We're an amazing machine, but we are not instant.
And it takes time. I mean, our cells replicate and within seven years you have a whole new body. But people are like, well, If I have a whole new body in seven years, why am I still the same? Well, if you're still putting the same thing in your body, still doing the exact same thing over time, what's that definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
You gotta shift, you gotta change that.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Why do you think they first get into that insanity mode? Like what, what do you feel like kind of just drops them, that, you know, I've been doing this for so long, but this is all I know. And so the insanity is my now normal, right?
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, like you said, it's the new normal. It becomes who you identify with.
It is who you think that you need to be.
Because we have different limiting beliefs about ourselves. We are people pleasing, you know, we want to make sure everything is perfect. You know, so when we put that pressure on ourselves, we, we get into a habit. And getting out of that habit change is scary.
Change is very, very scary for people.
So when they have to do a shift or a change, they're like, but I don't know how to do this.
It's called, I just remind them, baby steps, inch by inch. Everything's a cinch. It's just do one little good thing for yourself, one good thing. And what happens is it'll snowball. It builds on itself when you start doing those good things for yourself.
So even just taking a nice deep breath, if you're in the middle of the day, it's noon and you're about to eat your lunch, just take a pause, breathe, be thankful for your food, thankful for your body, thankful that you're there, and then nourish your body with the food. You know, begin your day with, I have, I call them bookends. Beginning of the day, ending of the day, stop and pause and just breathe and just bookend your day. Just know this is the beginning and this is the end.
You can write, you can journal, but just sometimes it's a nice deep breath.
It's huge.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: No, that is honestly perfect.
And you kind of answered some of this. But if you want to go a little bit more in depth, if I'm a busy professional and right now, and the biggest thing that I'm dealing with is my mindset and shifting myself out of that.
What in real life, like real healing, what can I do to start. Start that healing instead of just temporarily patching it up with a band aid.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good one. What I always suggest one is pause, stop and listen, then get curious. Why is my body Being this way, what am I thinking about? Is this beneficial for me or not beneficial for me? And then if it's not beneficial for you, reframe it, you know? And I like to also say sometimes people have to take action.
So when you take action, sometimes. I've learned this in massage school, when I went to massage school, and it was all about step left.
So if you don't like where you're going right now and you want a new decision, literally just step left and choose a new situation, a new choice.
And so that's all about the reframing. It's like you're pausing. You're catching what's going on. What's my body feel?
You know, get in touch with your feelings. Because we're so, so good at, like, not allowing our bodies to feel because we think we're machines and we have to go right.
So stop, feel, get curious, and reframe.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: So good. And Dr. Raquel, for people who are listening and really, truly recognizing themselves in this conversation, how can they get ahold of you? How can they learn more about your process?
Where can I send them to connect with me? Rockinhealth.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Well, thank you.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: So you can connect with me on my
[email protected] and then if you go and you click the little Start here button, that's gonna take you to a quiz. So a lot of times you don't know where to start. And that quiz will guide you as to what your next best step is.
And then that will guide you to where you need to be. And then also on the start here page, you can connect with me, you can call me, you can message me. But the start here page on therockenhealth.com and. And rockin is R, O, C, k, y, N. It's based on my nickname, Rocky.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: I love it. And she's not lying. That was her nickname in school.
Up next, I want to go even deeper into the beliefs and underneath the behavior. Because sometimes it's not just workload keeping people sick and stressed. It's the story they keep living inside.
We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger, and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and this is Align to Lead on Now Media Television.
Welcome back to Align to Lead. I'm continuing this conversation with Dr. Raquel Yarrow. And now I want to talk about what often gets ignored in performance conversations. The beliefs, the quietly drive unhealthy patterns. Because sometimes the schedule is not the only problem, sometimes the deeper issue is the belief that rest has to be earned or that slowing down means falling behind, or that asking for help means weakness, or that being needed by everyone else is somehow a proof of my value.
Unfortunately, those beliefs don't just shape behavior. They shape biology, stress patterns and choices. I keep repeating.
In this segment, I'm connecting mindset to physical health in a way that feels relevant to ambitious professionals.
I want to explore how limiting beliefs can keep people stuck in cycles of overwork, hypervigilance, self neglect, perfectionism, and chronic stress. This gives the conversation emotional depth while still staying aligned with the show's leadership and performance Focus.
Raquel, in your work, what are some of the most common limiting beliefs that keep professionals sick, stressed, installed?
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Excellent question.
A lot of them is, I have to push through. I have to keep going.
I can't change my schedule. It is what it is.
I have to wait till I retire before I can do that.
I can't slow down because slowing down means that I'm not productive, that I'm not getting my work done, that I'm a failure.
And there's a lot of shame around that then and a lot of guilt. And so then that creates other dis. Ease in the body because those emotions start to break down the body inside, and that makes it very harmful for the person.
Other things is, everyone depends on me. So if they're not on top of their game all the time, they're like, but everything depends on me. I have to get this done and only I can do this correctly.
Asking for help is a weakness. They think it's. It's like, it's hard for them to be like, I need help, I need some assistance. How can I be supported?
They just don't. Sometimes you just don't think that way. When you get into those limiting beliefs and that patterns that are wrapping your brain around, you're just like, you just don't think that way. And when you start breaking that limiting belief, all of a sudden all these new possibilities open up.
But in the beginning, you're just like, you're so focused on certain patterns in your body that you don't think about it. And you're just like, I'll just take care of things later. I'll take care of myself later.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: 100%. I feel like so many of us can relate to that statement.
How do beliefs like, I have to push through, I can't slow down, or everyone depends on me start showing up physically in the body?
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Ah, yeah. It keeps your nervous system in A constant state of sympathetic overdrive which is then going to raise like your cortisol, which is going to break down your body, it's going to increase your inflammation, it's going to cause your body not to be able to sleep. Sleep. It's going to have like these repercussions. Like what we talked about earlier with everything being all over the place. But they're all interconnected. It's like if you pull one thing, it's like again, it's like a spider web and they're all connected and you pull the string of maybe you didn't get enough sleep. Well, that string replicates to all the little other different things like hey now, your hormones are off or hey now, you know, you, your body is trying to, wants to eat, but you don't have time because maybe you overslept or you underslept or whatever is going on. Right, right.
So what happens is we're getting this constant state of overdrive and then that replicates into everything else. So you might skip meals, you might decide that you're not going to go to the gym and work out because you got to work.
Or we have the opposite part of it too is where people become so obsessed with working out that they start to burn their bodies out at that same time. So you can look at it the same, like very sometimes high functioning people are intense work out for people too, which is amazing. But again, you got to bring that balance in. If you don't bring that balance, the body's going to burn itself out one way or the other, whether for your body or through your mind.
And it can show up as fatigue, adrenal stress, it can show up as gut issues, constipation, diarrhea, brain fog, you know, all those same things that we've been talking about. And those constant patterns of not feeling good, not feeling like yourself, feeling like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I do this now?
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Good point.
When I've gotten in the habit of building my identity or even feeling my identity seems to be rooted into. I have to be the strong one, the capable one, or the productive one. Why can it feel so hard to admit that my current way of operating is, is actually hurting me?
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Well, because we get stuck in that perfectionism.
We get thinking that, well, I have to keep doing this, I have to keep pushing through and again, that creates all the disorders in the body. And then we get exposed to the different toxins in the world which then starts to breaking down the body. So as we keep pushing ourselves and creating those limiting beliefs and allowing our body to keep moving, we stop listening to ourselves, and it really comes down to, you got to stop, pause, listen to yourself, check in, and move forward.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Mm. Sometimes I feel like the biggest thing is giving ourselves permission to do that. Isn't that horrible?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Now, with that being said, how do perfectionism and control create health consequences that many professionals never seem to connect back to their mindset?
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Well, change is scary for people who like to be in control.
And when you're in control, you think you're in control, when in actuality, you're probably really out of control.
And when you just learn to breathe and let things go and allow the universe, God, whatever, to work their way in is allowing that magic to happen.
But basically, control perfectionism, again, that's that limiting belief that. That part of us that thinks that in order for us to succeed, we have to be perfect. Because, again, that's how we get praised, because we're perfect. We're making things work. We're succeeding in life, and then that builds and that keeps replicating because we constantly want that, you did a good job kind of thing. So it feeds us. It's like. It's like that loop.
And so you want to break the loop so that you don't have to have the perfectionism. You don't have to be the one in control, because it's really freeing, because a lot of people, high achievers, really want freedom, the freedom to be them. But when you get stuck in the perfectionism and stuck in control, you can't have that freedom. And freedom is all about letting that go and trusting in the universe and trusting in yourself and trusting that you know what you need to do.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: So true. So very true.
Now, what starts to change when I stop treating my body like an obstacle and I start treating it like the feedback that it's really giving me?
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Well, when you stop, you start to listen sooner.
So you can stop having your body go down the wrong path. You can also stop and listen to what is your mind saying, what are your thoughts, process. So sometimes you just want to bring a journal with you and just start writing down what are you thinking, what is going on? Because then you want to come back to that. Maybe that's part of your bookend at the end of the day, and you write down and you look and read what was it that you were thinking throughout the day, and how is that contributing to your issues? Because maybe you're thinking, well, I'm trying to think just to work. This is killing me. To have to do this.
And so if you start noticing that you're saying that pattern, well, then you're creating that in your life.
Or, well, I just have to do this. That have to. I should. Those are also killers. Because you want to choose to do something, you know, take that choice back and be and own it so you don't feel like you, oh, I have to. Should do this and I have to do that and I need to do this. I hear that all the time from people. And it's just like, well, wait, what are you choosing to do?
And when you choose change or you choose to be 1% better or 1 degree better, when you choose to shift your course a little bit, just be conscious of what you're choosing. And just being like, it's okay for me to choose something new, and it's okay, I got this. I'm learning, and I'll learn as I go.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: So with that being said, I feel like mindset. Mindset becomes crucial. And how can someone who they might notice year after year, they're stuck in this awful cycle? And how can they begin challenging their belief system that unfortunately keeps them recreating that cycle over and over again?
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Well, kind of like what I've been saying earlier is, again, it's pausing and just noticing what you're doing and becoming aware of it. And honestly, when you go through and you write down what you're feeling or what you're seeing, and then you start writing down why you feel that way, then things become more clear.
And that's why also, I do different breakthrough experience experiences for people, because what we do together is I can hear things differently than what they might even hear or see themselves. And then we go in and we have a conversation around that and help them see that so that they're like, oh, and then the light dims on, right?
So, yeah, so it's all about creating those different choices, is stopping, pausing, listening to themselves, connecting, but also knowing when to get ask for help, whether if it's they need to talk to a functional medicine health practitioner or see somebody to help them with different things. It's like, get to the root cause and your emotions, what you think, what's going on, Those are all things that are at the root. And when, like, for me, I mean, I just wanted to blow things up. And I like, I just like, well, how do I do that? I'm like, I just don't want to be confined to four walls. And I know a lot of people are in that. You know, you and I both Talked about it. We don't want to be confined. We want adventure, we want life. We want freedom.
And in order to do that, you've got to have your health and you got to break through of those limiting mindsets that are keeping you playing small so that you can play big.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: No, very, very, very good point. And how can they, how can they recognize that, like, those warning signs? Are there warning signs? Like, you look at the dashboard and you say, oh, this is happening and I should be aware of it. What kind of things should they be aware of?
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Well, that goes right back down to not sleeping good.
Fatigue, gut issues, the bloating, the constipation, diarrhea. Those things aren't normal.
And we normalize it. Thinking, well, it's just my normal, like, even bowel movements. I talk to a lot of people and they think, you know, once a week is kind of normal. And we're like, no
[00:33:05] Speaker A: toxins have blood. Right, Exactly.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: We're just recycling toxins, making you s sicker.
So there's a lot of things that we just normalize because it's just our normal, but it may not be normal. So we want to, like, open up that pathway to look at how else can things operate? And sometimes we're so closed down that we want to open up that big picture and see things from a broader perspective. Just pull yourself out, get in a bird's eye view looking down at things and just be like, okay, I see myself now. How can I support myself?
[00:33:39] Speaker A: I love that. Well, coming up in our final segment, I'm bringing this all together around the bigger question.
How do I build meaningful career without abandoning myself in the process?
We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and this is Aligned to Lead on Now Media Television.
If you want more episodes like this, you can watch Now Media TV live or on demand. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. No problem. Catch the podcast version on NowMedia TV.
Welcome back to our final segment of Align to Lead. I'm here with Dr. Raquel Yarrow, and this is the question I really want to leave people with.
How do I build a successful career without abandoning myself to do it? Because that's a deeper issue. For so many professionals, it's not just they're tired. It's that something along the way they learned to disconnect from their body. They've learned to override their needs and suppress their stress and measure their worth by how much they can carry. But sustainable success requires something different. It requires alignment.
In this final segment, I'm moving from insight to vision. I want the audience to leave with a healthier definition of success.
One that includes energy, clarity, emotional steadiness, resilience and self respect.
This is where the episode lands its core message.
I do not have to choose between impact and well being. I can build a strong career and still stay connected to myself.
With that being said, Dr. Raquel, when I build a career without abandoning myself, what does that actually look like in real life?
[00:35:37] Speaker B: That's good.
Well, you want to create it so that you're not burning yourself out, so you're not burning your candle out at birth ends. What I have found is that when you figure out your values in life and values in your career, your business, money, relationships, you know, fitness, when you start to learn your values, you start to act from alignment. When you act from alignment, you're making better choices and being more conscious of what you need to do.
So you want to build without burning yourself out, without sacrificing your life.
And that's what a lot of people start doing, is they start sacrificing themselves because they feel they have to sacrifice something, order to move, or they feel like they have to sacrifice their career in order to get their health back. And we want you to make sure that you can elevate both up. So we want to make sure that you know your, your values, make sure that you stay connected to yourself, make sure that you can pay attention to who you are at the core of you and really go for what you believe in about yourself and act from that. And that will allow you to actually elevate yourself up even better, have a high, better career. Because you're acting out of your true values. You're acting out of who you are and who you need to be.
So I feel that if you stop and listen and act from who you are, then you won't be burning yourself out.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: I love that.
So how can I tell the difference between healthy ambition and self betrayal that's just dressed up as discipline?
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Well, healthy ambition stretches you and self betrayal, that kind of makes you dismiss yourself, kind of devalues yourself.
So healthy ambition is going to help build your body up, it's going to help stretch you, it's going to help allowing you to become who you want to be. But when we start to betray ourselves and we stop listening to ourselves and we start going against Our true nature.
That's when we start to get disharmony with things and we're not actually aligning ourselves with who we need to be and what our true core is. So then we start making wrong decisions, we start not paying attention. We start choosing things that don't support who we need to be.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: No. Very, very, very good points.
When daily habits, or I should say what daily habits help protect energy, clarity and emotional steadiness for leaders who still have big goals.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Yes. Well, you want to protect your sleep.
Sleep is a huge, huge one to, to really focus on. You want to make sure that you're going to bed at a set time and getting up at a set time and getting that consistency in your life and knowing that you need to protect your sleep. That's huge.
Other things is making sure you're eating to nourish your body. A lot of times we just eat because we're, we're might. We're not mindful about what we're doing.
We are just grabbing anything and everything because we're in a hurry. So hey, we're walk by, grab that or we grab that coffee or we grab whatever we want to grab because we're busy. But when we actually stop and just like it doesn't take that long to actually bring some nourishing food or to pick a different option and really nourish the body. Because when you nourish your body, your self talk changes. When you're eating, then the food that's not good for you, your self talk, how you beat yourself up, becomes so much worse. But when you start to feed your body good nourishing foods, you actually talk better about yourself. It completely changes that.
Other things is hydration, making sure you're getting that water in your body, getting, you know, I try to aim for around 100 ounces of water a day. Do you always hit it? No. Sometimes you might go over, sometimes you might be under. But if you have an aim and a goal where you're going and figuring out how to measure and track, that makes a huge difference.
Movement, getting out, walking, getting in nature, even connecting to nature.
Take your shoes off, go walk in the grass, get grounded, right?
But movement is good because it gets the body moving. It gets like if so if you have toxins, you can flush your toxins out. When you start walking, you sweat them out and it's very good. Besides that, it just makes you feel good. It releases endorphins that make you feel good. So movement, exercise and find something that feels good to you. Just because Someone loves running. Doesn't mean you have to run. You can bike, you can hike, you can do yoga, you can do Tai chi, you can, you know, there's all different kinds of things that you can do. Swim.
I know there's like hundreds, I'm like, you Google it. And there's like hundreds of ways that you can work out or just exercise and move that body of yours.
Even when you're even at your desk, like get up, set a timer and start stretching your neck, start allowing your body to move, get up and just walk around. Because sometimes we get so caught up in working that we just get there and then when we get up to move, we're like, oh my God, I feel like a 50 year old. Right?
When in reality, if you just set a timer for like even if it's every hour and a half because of how your brain functions, you want to have those hour and a half time segments for productivity. And then you can take like a 20 minute, like just mental download, take your eyes away from the screen, just get out, just relax, just move around, drink some water, rehydrate.
Those are all really good things for the body.
And finding ways to reset your stress.
So sometimes we get so caught up and we get very anxious. I hear a lot of people like, I'm just so anxious, I'm an anxious person.
But if you just stop and just breathe in and realize and just Pre frame yourself 15 minutes from now, 15 minutes from that event, everything's going to be fine. How are you going to feel in that moment?
And when you realize, I feel relief now, just bring that back into where you're at and you can have that stress release and it's just checking in with your body instead of your to do list.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: You know, isn't it funny how when we actually slow down and we take that self care instead of us pushing through, we get more accomplished?
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Oh my God. Yes.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: It's just the strangest thing.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: It is, it is so much. It's just like instead of doing that to do list, it's just like I just pause and you just start going and it's just like you become like, like something's moving you to get everything done and you like by the time you get done with the day, you're like, wow, that was the most productive day I've ever had.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: I accomplish more by doing less.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: With that being said, I'm going to go into how do boundaries, how do boundaries become part of sustainable success rather than something that's just getting in the way of it.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Well, boundaries protect your energy.
They also allow you to choose what you're going to allow in your life.
So you have the choice to say yes or no. So I've had people come in and they're just like, well, I have to go to work, I have to do this, or I've said yes to this, and then I said yes to that and I said yes. I'm like, well, every time you say yes to somebody else, you say no to yourself.
So you may need to keep a list. Okay. If you're saying yes to certain things and you're saying no to yourself all the time, you might have to, like, learn to say no to other things. So you say yes to you because you do have to make yourself a priority.
And so when you create that boundary, you know what is going to work for you. If something is outside of that, you know that that's an instant no.
It's a hard no. And if something is something that's going to work for you and align with you, then that's going to be an instant yes.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: No. I love that. And you made a good point because obviously if you're always saying yes and you're always saying yes to everybody else, the careers, you're putting yourself at the bottom end. And that's when it really does depletion. Because you've said no to yourself for so long.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: And that's a huge problem.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: What does it change in my work leadership and even relationships when I stop succeeding from depletion and I start leading from alignment?
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Well, you're going to gain more confidence in yourself. You're going to become more clear on who you are. And when you set those boundaries and you're choosing to act from alignment, you're just going to have more confidence in yourself and better patience.
We've talked about patience and it's like, again, a little bit about Mel Robbins. It's like, allow them, but allow yourself. Let them let you. And so when you do that, it brings that all together with saying yes and no and what's important to you. But then you build your confidence, you build your clarity. You know exactly what you need to do. You can allow connections, you can allow relationships, you can allow things to flourish because you're aligning yourself with that and you're setting the boundaries of what's important to you. So therefore, you create the life you want.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: No, that is really good. So for the person who's been sitting here and they're watching and they're like, wow, she's talking to me. And they just feel like they've just been in survival mode for so long. What is the first step that they can take toward building a career that doesn't cost them themselves?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Well, one, we already talked about pausing and stopping. But also, you've got to get close and figure out what it is about you that you want to shift or change so that you can create the career you want to create so that you don't burn yourself out or you aren't sacrificing your health. So one thing, I mean, high performers think about major athletes. They have their healthcare team, they have their fitness pros, they have their chiropractors, they have their nutritionists. They have all them. We're high performers. We need those people in our corner too. So one thing is make sure you get somebody that's going to be there to help take care of your health, that's going to guide you as to what's right for your body. Because what's right for you and what's right for another person may not be the same thing. So by having somebody in your corner to help guide you and do that and also to test, find out what's going on your body, take care of it now before it crashes, support your body up because then you can actually lift yourself up and then it's just going to.
Okay.
Gotta love when you have brain farts, right? But, you know, but when we take that time to actually get to the root cause, find out what's underneath so you can clear that path and you're supporting your body, then you can stop that sacrificing, you can move forward and you get somebody in your corner and you break through those limiting beliefs. You break through what's holding you back and you just let those chains go.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: I love that. Dr. Raquel, this has been such a valuable conversation. Where can people follow your work and connect to Rockin Health and continue learning from you?
[00:46:26] Speaker B: You can connect by going to my website, rockenhealth.com and that's R, O, C K Y N Health.
And then if you hit the little start here button, it takes you to a quiz. And that quiz will help you guide you as to what your next best step is. Because sometimes you just don't know. And when you take the quiz, it guides you. This is what you need to do. And it just takes that guesswork out of it so that you can feel supported in life.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Dr. Raquel, thank you for this conversation. It has been wonderful and for the work you do, it's just, I just want to commend you for it. Today I explored what happens when success starts costing me my health, what root cause healing really means for busy professionals, and how limiting beliefs can keep people sick and stalled, and why true leadership requires me to stop abandoning myself in the name of achievement. What I hope people take away from this episode is simple but powerful. My health is not a distraction from my success.
It is part of the foundation that makes sustainable success possible.
When I protect my energy, listen to my body, challenge unhealthy beliefs, and build from alignment, I do not become less effective. I actually become stronger, clearer, and more capable of leading well, for the long term.
I'm Dr. Megan Parks. Thank you for joining me on Align to Lead. I'll see you next time.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Sam.
