Shownotes
If you are looking to jump start your life and persevere to beat the odds, this four part series is for you. Hear from Checkable Medical founder and CEO, Patty Post, as she shares personal experiences she's had navigating adversity. In this series you'll learn how facing self doubts and finding your inner strength allows you to take on any challenge.
Patty Post is the founder and CEO of Checkable Medical. On episode 2 of a four part series, she details the danger of making excuses and how you can stop making them so you can start accomplishing your goals. After all, as Patty puts it, "excuses only sound good to the one making them."
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Transcript
0:00:00.0 S1: Hi, it's Patty Post, the host of The Persevere Podcast. And today, and for the next few episodes, I'm going to share some stuff about myself. And, these things are things that I have accomplished, challenges that I've gone through, and I'm gonna do it in an interview style, so they're gonna be our little minisodes, and I hope you get to know me a little bit more. And really the goal of it is, I wanna share some things that I've worked through professionally and personally, and how it's helped me achieve and become a better version of myself, and I hope that it helps you as well. So it's super easy, digestible, nothing is like rocket science here, and a lot of you will probably think they're great reminders, that's what I'm hopeful of. And I hope you think of this as, "Okay, I can do that too. If she did it, I can totally do it." That's what I want to inspire you, to have a mindset that anything is achievable if you put hard work, dedication and consistency to it.
0:01:16.3 S2: Welcome to The Persevere Podcast, powered by Checkable Medical, and hosted by Patty Post, a female founder, entrepreneur, wife and mother of three, doing all of the things. The strength to persevere in business is powered by passion, grit and hard work. The Persevere Podcast is for entrepreneurs and business leaders who set out to innovate and change the world with their ideas, whether it's fundraising your start-up, product development, marketing, branding, or scaling your existing business, this podcast is for you. We'll discuss everything it takes to persevere and build the business you've always dreamed of. Let's make it happen.
0:02:08.1 S1: Well hello everyone, this is Patty Post, your host of The Persevere Podcast. We are on mini episode number three, and, interesting topic today is, how to turn travel anxiety into a positive. I don't know if any of you know what travel anxiety is, but it's that nervous feeling that you get prior to going on your vacation, and it could be for fear of the unknown of where you're going, you've never been there before, or all of the things leading up to the vacation just makes you very stressed out, or maybe you need to pack for your family and yourself, and you get a little anxious over the outfits, and for a lot of women, we feel that way of, "Okay, what's my agenda for the week and what am I gonna wear?" That takes a lot to put that all in one bag, as well as I know my husband has a lot of anxiety just going through the airport, that is stressful for him. Getting his license out, getting the phone, where is he gonna sit, he doesn't like crowds. Leading up to vacation can be very stressful and anxiety-ridden, but it doesn't have to be a negative because you don't go on vacation to feel anxiety, so...
0:03:31.3 S1: Let's get into it. The main reason why we go on vacation is because we want to detach, we want to relax, we wanna spend time with the people that we love and experience something new and create memories, and as a founder, you definitely need to detach from your world, that is ever-chaotic, and you go on vacation to get away. How vacation serves us as founders in a positive way, is that when we get away from the day-to-day activities, we can focus on creativity, that allows us to let our mind wander. We get a break. If you think of pulling a band, if you just keep pulling, pulling, pulling, you're gonna snap. This allows us, that band, to come back together, so that's our brain, that's our bodies, that's our nervous system, a time for our batteries to recharge, and that's why vacation is positive, especially for those of us that are founders. Some of the goals that I set for myself when I returned home are, I'm going to block time every day for writing, or I'm going to start exercising, I'm going to start eating healthy, I'm going to... It's always a fresh start for me, it's sort of like a new year when I come back from the vacation, and it just is like a clean slate, even if you're going in February, which I end up going vacation in February…
0:05:17.0 S1: Every year, I look back on the first six weeks of the year and like, "Okay, did I even closely get to what I wanted to do in terms of consistency and discipline and goals in the month of January?" If I didn't, "Okay, where did I fall short?", and intentionally write that down and I do it where I let my mind just bounce back and forth, and if I'm hanging on a subject, I know that I'm not at where I need to be, and that's something that I am going to activate when I get home, "Okay, I gotta do better at this, I've gotta get better at having intentional team meetings and allowing my team to connect, and I'm not hearing from Kayla, I don't know how she's doing, I don't know how her spouse is doing, I don't know how her life is going". I think about those things, and if it comes up in my mind, then that means that there's a gap, and so I identify those gaps and then when I get home, I activate them and just in that first two weeks, I try to do that. So, I'm super intentional about it because in just a few days time, when I get back into the swing of things, I will completely forget about those feelings that I had while I was on vacation, so I activate on those thoughts right away.
0:06:47.4 S1: I would say the biggest anxiety that I have before I go on vacation is all of the work that I did leading up to vacation, that huge to-do list, and taking care of all of those loose ends and making sure that there aren't any loose ends. I think that's what I get the most anxiety about is the loose ends. It's like, "Oh my gosh, how did I forget that? What did I not do? Did I give that person direction, what if someone reaches out for me and I'm not there", and those are the kind of things that give me the anxiety, but I've noticed what happens is day one and two, I don't even start relaxing because I'm still thinking about what's happening back at home, or back at the company, or back with the people that work for me. And, instead of continuing to hover over those items, my best practice is I have created a space that is just myself. And in my notes on my phone, I will go for a walk, and I just think about all of the things that come up in my mind that I didn't do 'cause those first two days, I'm thinking, I'm still back at home.
0:08:07.3 S1: So by doing that, I'm on my walk, I'm getting that energy out. I put the notes down and I label it, like random things from day one and two on vacation, and then I just write down the list. And then I'll put the little bullets next to it, so then when I get back, then I have this to-do list. It's almost like when you are wide awake in the middle of the night, the best practice is to one, take a melatonin from Checkable Wellness, two, is to write down what is going, running through your mind, what, get that hamster off of the wheel, and by getting them off of the wheel is writing down what you're thinking about, what's keeping you up, and sometimes it's sitting there for 45 minutes and writing it. So I will end up doing it a couple of times during the day, whether on my notes are just journaling, and those first two days, I don't allow myself to really think about anything of those to-do items. If I'm not intentionally thinking about it like, "Oh, I forgot about this, okay, I'm gonna grab my phone, I'm gonna write it down, and then I'm gonna close it."
0:09:24.0 S1: And that's just the best practice for me, so then I can be present with my family or with my husband, or even with my girlfriends, if I'm on a girlfriend trip. There was a time in this last vacation that I took in October to Indian Rocks Beach with my family and I was wanting to get to the next level as being an executive, and there was so much going on with people at the company with raising money with product, we were just starting our clinical trial. I physically didn't have the time to sort of level up and leveling up to me is really being enriched in a book or a thought leader and taking in a bunch of information and just learning, like I can't go and get my MBA right now, I'm getting it while I'm working at Checkable. But what I did is, I heard of a great book by Jim Collins called BE and it's Be Entrepreneur 2.0, and what I did was every morning I walked for an hour and 15 minutes and I was gone for six days, and I told myself, I am gonna take the first day to just do my walk with no sound, and then for five days, I'm gonna get into this book and then I'm gonna read it on the plane, and that's it.
0:10:52.8 S1: And I did that and I felt so good about it because I turned off all of my, told my team, I'm not gonna answer emails, I'm not gonna do any work, and I'm gonna focus, and that totally allowed me to, I vividly remember a lot of his advice from that book, and I also vividly remember reading some of these and listening, I listen to the book as well as I have the book, some of these case studies, and I put them into motion right when I got back, and I also was very intentional about my sleep, intentional about my alcohol intake, and just was really healthy, I didn't make a ton of unhealthy choices, and that was the most progress that I had made on a vacation personally with my family, and then professionally, intellectually on that vacation as well as distress. I came back absolutely rejuvenated, invigorated and totally ready to crush the last 10 weeks of the year, which we completely did, and I felt like a really great leader for doing it. And I recommend anyone that is going on vacation to intentionally put together something that will make you feel good that you're gonna level up using that time on vacation as well as getting some fun and getting your family time in, you can have it all…
0:12:36.3 S1: And to take a negative to a positive, that anxiety that holds us back and makes us feel icky and probably crabby with our family, turning it into a positive and putting in the work, you're gonna feel really, really good about it. My closing thoughts on this episode is vacation is worth it, and at Checkable we have a no vacation or an unlimited vacation policy, and unfortunately, it ends up where we don't take a lot of vacations, and that's something that I really encourage people to, even take the couples vacation, just a weekend trip somewhere, or some get away with your friends or even be by yourself and take that time. And it is good for your soul. It's good for the people that are around you, it's great for your company, and if you get that anxiety before you travel, anxiety is excitement and anxiousness is excitement. Nervousness is actually the same emotion as excitement, so take that and use it for a positive for your business, for your personal development, and make it holistic that you are going to come back, rejuvenated, excited and just ready to conquer whatever challenges that lay ahead of you after you go on your amazing vacation.
0:14:13.2 S1: So with that, please, if you're on vacation, even as you're listening to this, or if you're planning a vacation, tag us @checkablehealth. We would love to see where you're going on vacation. I think those are the most fun things on social media when we see people's destinations. And follow us, @checkablehealth and me, @pattypostceo on Instagram and TikTok as well as Patty Post on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you, and of course, five stars if you loved this mini episode and we would love to hear from you. So with that, have a great vacation, and don't let that anxiety get you down, turn it into a positive.
0:14:56.1 S2: Thank you for listening to The Persevere Podcast, powered by Checkable Medical. Head over to perseverepodcast.com for notes, links and additional resources from today's show. To continue hearing insights and gaining knowledge from those persevering, succeeding and making their dream a reality, be sure to subscribe through your favorite podcast app. Now go make it happen.
