Leslie Gaudet – Your Guide to a Meaningful LIfe

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Sounds great. Hi, and welcome to the New World Order Showcase podcast. Today, we are joined by Leslie Gaudet who is a self-care specialist.

Her mission is to empower women to fully embrace self-care for their well-being, unlocking joy and purpose for more meaningful lives. So welcome to the show.

Leslie, and I'm really excited to hear about how you're doing this, but mostly I want to hear your story because I think you have fascinating story and some of the things.

That you, you're.

The changes that you've made in your life are.

Like so cool.

So welcome to the.

Tell us all about you.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, I have.

I've lived a life that I am actually really happy that I've been doing what I've been doing because, you know, growing up.

I was always led to believe that we go to school, we get a degree, we get a job and we stay there till we retire.

But when I met my the man that I would become my husband, and now we've been married over 27 years, there was just. I already had this dream inside of me to do more to.

Not just stay in one place and I've been dreaming about the warm weather.

Like I had friends who were living in California at the time and coming back and forth to Canada.

That's where I was living in Toronto

And so when I married my husband, you know, we had talked before getting married that let's go down to the US now.

The reason why we were able to do that is because I was born in the US, so I'm I have dual citizenship with Canada.

So I was born in New Jersey and then I was raised in Toronto and when I got married.

My husband and I.

Six months after getting married, we moved down to South Florida and we stayed in South Florida for 12 years and we just we just said to each other like why wait to enjoy life, you know, until we retire because time isn't really promised.

Health isn't really promised and you don't know what your life is going to be like, or even if you're going to be here.

I don't want to bring this down a down note, but you don't know because you just can't.

You cannot see into the future.

And so that's why we decided to do that now.

We lived in, as I said, for 12 years and then we decided to move back up to.

Canada and we had a short stint in Toronto.

And then we decided to go and live in my husband's hometown of New Brunswick. We were there for a little.

Bit decided let's.

Go all the way across country.

So we drove across Canada.

Yeah, and it was probably not the most ideal time because it was the middle of winter, just before New Year's Eve.

And so the weather was a little rough, but it was beautiful.

I'd never seen the country the way I, you know, the drive allows you to.

And so we got to Vancouver and we stayed there for a couple of years.

And then my husband and I, we got the itch for more warm weather again and we decided to move down to California.

So there we were again on the move two years later down in California, we stayed there for three years and over to Las Vegas.

And I'm making this quick just to kind of give the audience a little roundabout of what we've been doing.

So we moved to Las Vegas and we were there for a couple of years and I love.

Las Vegas it.

Was so much fun and then we decided.

We want to do something a little bit more, a little bit different than just having like a place that we stay all the time.

So we thought why don't we try this sort of I guess you call it digital nomadic lifestyle.

And we were going to go to we were decided Mexico is going to be the place and then of course the pandemic came and we thought, well, we're not going to stop our plans.

We're just going to do it a little differently.

So we started off in Canada for a few months and then we ended up down in South Florida again and we flew into Mexico into Cancun and we were there.

We were just outside of Cancun in a beautiful fishing village called Puerto

Morelos and we were there for almost six months, came back all the way back up to Canada, came back down again, did it all again.

And so two winters we spent in Mexico, and now we've decided this time around, we're going to spend a little time in here in Florida.

So this is where we are in Central Florida.

So that kind of gives you a little bit of a roundabout.

Enjoying life by exploring life while we are working along the way and we've both been able to do that.

So and of course my career was allowed me to do that.

So what was your career?

So I've been and I still have a little bit of a footprint in there, if you will.

I had been working as a legal.

I first I started off as a legal secretary.

That's what they called it back in the day, and then I transitioned into being a paralegal.

So for the past four decades, that's what I've been doing a little over 4 decades.

And now for the past five years, as in an independent contractor role, what I did was I took back my control over my time.

And that's really what allowed us to be able to start moving around a little bit more frequently because I decided that I couldn't be in.

The traditional setting of in an office where it seemed that work hours were getting longer and longer and.

Responsibilities and just the workload was getting heavier and I had no life and I really felt like because I had no life, that there was no quality of life and in my marriage we were we really weren't thriving at all.

And I said something has to change and that's when.

And on a leap of faith, I just said one day to my husband.

We've got to make a change.

So we decided we were going to move to Las Vegas.

We went and set it up.

OK, I'd love to still to support you and I know that I can it's doable online.

And so we created something for me to be able to still support them and that gave me freedom of my time.

And so that's kind of like what I've been doing for the last five, five years, helping them, almost 5 1/2 years.

And then I transitioned into coaching because I was able to find time to get out there and find out.

What I wanted to do and what lit me up.

That is so amazing.

You were kind of like ahead of the curve.

On the whole COVID thing working from home.

A little bit, but I have to say, working from home when COVID came and then being told that you can't go out was, you know, I was so used to being at home working.

But then when I was told I couldn't go out, that was a little bit hard to get used to because now even though I was already doing that.

I didn't like the idea that I actually couldn't go out and network and be around people because that was something that I absolutely love is being around people.

Yeah, that that was the really hard part about it.

One of my kids was graduating from high school during that whole process, you know, it seems so unfair because she was home schooled so that she could go to this alternative school and then she went there for a year and then COVID and then she was back home again.

Yeah, I know.

It all worked out.

It all worked out I think.

I don't know the whole, the whole taking responsibility for your own happiness and doing self-care and.

Really looking at.

What exists in your life and how is it serving you?

You know, everybody has to make money because you.

Know you need.

You need stuff, you know, like food and shelter.

The little things but.

How do?

You work this whole self-care angle into what you're doing.

Yeah. So I really believe that self-care is the lifeblood. It really is what I think supports us in our life, our personal life and in our business life. And when I say self-care in our personal life, that could be the things like people.

Talk about mani-pedis and massages and getting your hair done and having fabulous lunches out with your friends.

Spending quality time with the people that you love.

Those are all great things, and those are for your personal life.

But when it comes to your professional life, in order for you to really thrive, I believe in business is you have to take care of yourself.

Your emotional self, your physical self and that starts with things like making sure that you protect your time, learning how to say no to things that really don't serve you right now.

And I think you know, when I first started out, I was saying yes to so many things that I overwhelmed myself and overwhelmed my calendar.

And that led me to wanting to quit a couple of times because I just started to feel burnt out from always in the doing.

And so when I learned that saying no opened me up to the right things.

That was game changing.

It allowed me also to protect my time using it more wisely.

It allowed me to start looking at like, what am I doing so that I can have more clarity around what I'm doing and structuring my time.

I feel like there's so much freedom in that when you structure your time.

And then also being able to like take those breaks every single day throughout your day when you're working.

It's so important if you're always in the doing your push, push, push, you're gonna find that it's gonna, it's gonna be mentally draining and you will feel exhausted.

I can just speak from experience and from talking with so many different women, this has been their.

experience. So learning to, I believe putting self-care into your life is so important because then it protects you, you’re whole.

And when you do that, you're the best of yourself.

You show up as the best of yourself, and then everyone else around you benefits from that and you feel good about whatever.

What it is that you're doing, whether it's spending time with friends or family, whether it's working on your business and you have it just there's just a different way that you approach life.

You just feel better about it, so that's why I think like self-care is so important to incorporate into your life as a priority, not something.

That you'll get to, but something that should be non negotiable.

You have a tip for how people can actually incorporate this into their life.

Yeah. So there's not a one-size fits all model because I truly believe everyone's lifestyle is different. Some people have young children at home, so their time in the mornings might be different.

The way you start your day, you know you might not have a lot of time to perhaps spend an hour where you're doing your journaling.

Maybe meditation, getting in some exercise

So whatever helps you to start your day on a on a win is what I would suggest so.

So for myself as an example, I'll give you an example I like to.

I start my mornings every day with prayer and meditation that for me, centers me and it grounds me.

And then of course, I throughout the day make sure I have other things incorporated, like exercise, whether that is doing some form of aerobic exercise.

Or if I'm also going on a walk because that's another form of self-care for me is getting out into nature and I'm listening to something that.

Fills me up with, you know, positivity. So I have a, you know, great podcast. One of my favorites that that I have been listening to on Mondays because that's when she drops in is Gabby Bernstein's Dear Gabby.

So I listened to hers, but there's other great podcasts like, even your show, like having podcasts like yours that are going to drop every day is going to give a lot of people.

The ability to hear from other people around things that have helped them with their lives, and this is going to be helpful.

So finding things that fill your cup to start your day, start something on a on a win.

But don't feel bad that you might not look the same your self-care as someone else. Someone else might have more time than you and your days actually could be fluctuating, meaning you might have an hour on Tuesdays and only 15 minutes on Wednesdays, and that's OK. However, your self-care looks it has to fit your lifestyle.

And you have to feel good about doing it and not worrying about what everyone else is saying, that you should be doing.

Do what makes you feel good.

So for me, I think if I was to suggest anything, I truly believe in meditation and it is a really great way to do that and it doesn't have to be long meditation.

If you if you feel like, oh, I can't just sit quietly without any noise, then I would suggest going online and finding a guided meditation.

I've done that many times.

I love guided meditations because then it's guiding me through whether it's the breathing techniques or whether it's just, you know, some type of visualization or just relaxing.

Or getting you know, just getting grounded.

So that's how I would suggest you start finding something that works for you and there's so many different things, but it's also looking at your time and don't feel bad.

That it doesn't necessarily look the way you think it's supposed to.

It's supposed to look the way for you, for your lifestyle.

I think that kind of goes along.

With you don't have to do the same thing every day too.

You could do journaling on Mondays, or maybe you decide you're going to do journaling on Thursday and today you're going to do meditation or.

Or yoga for 10 minutes or, you know, just there's so many self-care modalities out there.

And you can.

You can have a smorgasbord you can pick and choose.

Just make sure that you're doing something for yourself every day that you're actually like, getting it done too, cause it's easy for us to say, oh, we're just gonna do this today, and then it's bedtime and

You haven't done it.

Exactly and, but also making sure that you have those essentials of self-care. As I was saying earlier, like learning to say no, having a hard stop till the end of your day, it should be high priority for you because you don't want to be working, working, working, working like long hours and you are exhausted when you fall into bed at night.

That doesn't help.

It's better to allow yourself to unwind, and then you could spend that time with the people that matter.

Close to you connecting with them because absolutely bonds you know when you have family bonds.

Those should be deepened through, you know, connecting with each other and not being on a screen all the time.

And the other thing is being able to get away from tech as well.

So when you have that hard stop is getting away from your technology, your phone, your emails, your text messages, no client calls, nothing.

Just allow yourself.

To unwind from the day and then and taking those breaks so important you want to be able to avoid burnout because burnout right now is one of the biggest things I think is becoming the norm rather than something that people have talked about in the past.

It's really something that's becoming the norm, especially with women.

Being highly susceptible to.

To be suffering, not suffering, but to experience burnout and then as well, the other numbers are 30 year, 30 and under.

You know, our young people are starting to experience burnout on a regular basis, so it's really important to incorporate those breaks so that you're not always in the doing and just allow your brain to unwind and then you can get back at.

About it, even if it's only 5 minutes, 5 minutes is way better than none at all.

And you know, going outside, just breathing the fresh air sometimes is like.

A whole attitude changer.

What are your thoughts on pursuing?

Careers that you've been kind of pushed into versus doing something that you feel like you were called to do.

So I don't think you.

So this is how I look at it.

A lot of the time we have a job that we start out with and maybe we do love it.

When we first start, but now we decided we want more.

There's something different.

I always talked, I, you know, a couple of women that I've worked with in the past.

I've always said you can have both, and - you don't have to choose.

And when you're ready, if you decide you know what I really do want my passion to be the thing that I step into fully, that's great.

But I it's helping with the mindset that I'm not feeling like.

Ohh I have this thing that I'm trying to get away from.

Rather than saying you know I'm really good at what I do in the job that I have to support whoever whatever I'm doing and then I have this thing that I love to do, this passion that I have.

That lights me up, that I truly want it to be my number one at some point, but then that allows you to love both and to be able to not feel like resentful of one over the other, like one is taking so much time.

So you can't work on your passion project, and when you're working on your passion project, then your work is suffering.

And that maybe be your source of income.

So I think you can love both.

And then when you're ready to step into your passion just depends on where you're at.

But you really I think comes down to clarity knowing what it is that you want.

Not doing it because you feel like that's the thing to do.

Like everyone is stepping into entrepreneurship.

It's not an easy thing.

It's not when you step go away from being in a set job where you have hours scheduled for you, you have a work routine, you've got your outline of what you do.

From day-to-day.

When you go to become your own boss and a pay check, when you become your own boss, then you're like the ones telling you what you have to do on a daily basis.

And the pay check.

What does that look like?

How much time you know?

And when you, if you are not careful, you could be that person like I was in the very beginning, sitting for in front of your computer.

15 hour days until one day my husband.

To me, you know, are you still working?

You know, I started complaining that we weren't spending time together.

He said well, you're always working.

And I just didn't want to bother you and I and I and that really hit home because I thought, wow, that he saw this in me and I didn't notice it, that I'd been sitting in front of my laptop for 15 hour days.

And he didn't want to disturb me.

And yet here I was complaining that we weren't spending enough time together.

But I was my own worst enemy on that.

So yeah, I think it's really important.

You can still have both, but have that clarity on what it what it really means to you, what you're willing to do and be able to have structure around what you do in your day.

Yeah, I think structure around your day is really important.

I know for my husband and I, we walk in the mornings.

It's like our time together.

We have dinner together at the table and we sit outside in our backyard for an hour in the evening and those, those are times when there's no technology.

We leave our phones in the bedroom.

And we.

We just connect, we might sit there in silence, but it's time when we're just being together.

And letting our energy go wherever it's going to go, sometimes we have deep conversations, but it's really protecting that that time that we like to spend together and I do work long hours.

And that's kind of part of the thing about being an entrepreneur, especially in the beginning, you're going to work.

Some long hours.

But it should pay off in the end.

You shouldn't be going through the grind like forever.

Because then you may as well just.

Get a job.

Because, work less hours.

Yeah, absolutely, I agree 100%.

Yeah. And I think that's great that you understood that you and your husband's.

Time is precious.

Yeah. Yeah. And so you have some, some things that you can help people with. You have a self-care guide for calm peace and harmony. And you also have a community

Where you're all about collaboration versus competition.

And I love that I like ‘co-oper/etition’.

We're both part of a group.

And I really feel that way about the group that we're part of, that it's all about helping everybody else get to the next level and then you kind of get sucked along with it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think I think we can all be successful.

We can all be successful and cheer each other on to be successful.

There should be no reason for that and for something that's you know to be different than being able to support each other.

Community is really important.

We weren't born to go through life.

Alone, we weren't just born to find a mate, and that's it.

Just the two of us.

We're meant to be interconnected with one another.

And so I truly believe that it's important that we.

That we do support each other, being part of different communities and so I am part of a couple of the Community that we're part of, as well as a couple of other women's communities on Facebook, which are to me really important because they support each other. It is all about collaborating. It is about when someone needs help.

You're someone's willing to step up.

And say, hey, this is what you can do. So yeah, I I'm really all about that. I truly believe that my guide, the reason why I created that is cause that sometimes people don't know they look at self-care as all of the things like mani-pedis, massages, buying flowers, having lunch, buying themselves a gift.

But they don't look at the other essentials like, you know, as I was saying, the ones that protect your time to help you protect you and your professional life so that you're not always in the doing, but you're actually enjoying your life because we don't get into business to actually work longer and harder hours, sorry, harder and longer.

Ours, we get into business because we want to be able to have more quality of life.

So that means we get more done efficiently.

And so that's why I created the guide to help you know, show like there's different ways that you can incorporate self-care into your life. And like you were saying.

It doesn't have to look the same every day.

You can pick something that.

Resonates with you today and then maybe on like Mondays could be meditation day, you know, to start your day.

Tuesdays could be all about journaling to start your day.

Wednesdays could be all about getting out there and going for like a walk.

Or maybe sitting out in your garden and just relaxing and enjoying the peacefulness of it.

Having your morning tea, your coffee.

Whatever that looks like to start your day is again, it's attuned to you.

It doesn't have to look like everyone else, so that's why I created the guide.

That's amazing and people can find that on your.

On your website. You also have a community is that, is it a paid

community is that how you help people? Do you have one-on-one coaching? How does it look to work with you?

So I do have.

Coaching a program of right now, unfortunately I have somebody coming by and doing some lawn work, so I apologize but I live in a Community where this happens from time to time, so I.

Had a train going by earlier, so no worries.

So I have so I don't have a Facebook community I want.

I did at one point, but what I love to do is go inside communities and support them.

So I have a community that I support online, which is one that we're in together, but then I also have a.

Couple of other.

Women's groups that I support and I love going in and just being able to cheer other people on, you know, to help them if they're looking, if they're feeling like.

There's they're struggling with something.

I want to be able to support them.

You know?

It's not about me.

It's about them.

So it's not about me saying hey like to hop on a call with me, it's like if they're asking a question and I feel like I can add value, I'll do that.

So I love to be able to do that just to support them with no outcome for myself at all, except to help someone else but.

to work with me, I do have one-on-one coaching where you it. It is right now I'm transitioning into more of a group program.

And where it will be a six week experience group experience where I will take them through a six week of self-care and that's just to start to get yourself not only allowing yourself to.

Look at what you're doing currently, but making sure that it supports your lifestyle and making sure that you have things in your lifestyle such as your structure around your time, your calendar.

One of the things I work with is your calendar is just teaching you how to.

Recognize that you have things that you do daily that you can put on your calendar, which then allows you to see all the white space that's around, which is calming, and that white space will then allow you to say, OK, I have time to put this in for my self-care.

I decide I want to go and do this on Tuesdays.

Maybe that's going to a local yoga studio, or maybe that's doing it online.

Maybe that's allowing yourself to have Wednesdays where you take the morning off because you don't have anything until 11 or 12.

So I think a lot of the time when we say a lot of people say we don't have time to do anything, it's because they haven't looked at what they're doing already and filling in their calendar to see what it is already taking up time and then they can say, oh, I do actually.

Have additional time.

I just thought I didn't have any.

Because they didn't really know what they were doing and they were doing maybe a lot of things.

The second, the second part to that too is.

That it allows you to see that maybe you're doing too many things.

Every day, so having more structure around the things that you do and your especially for your business, you don't need to do all of your things on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, you need to be able to look at like, how can I structure, say, for my social media content creation?

Or networking or client calls.

They don't.

They're not.

Every day, everything shouldn't all be blocked on the same day, because then that over that can be overwhelming.

So it's like learning to like, look at your time as again as I said for me it was a game changer.

When I actually started looking at my calendar and started seeing what I do and then being able to structure it a little bit more effectively.

And seeing all the white space was so calming that if someone said, hey, do you have time for a call and I would look on that day and say, you know what, I do have time and it's not gonna overwhelm me and.

I can say yes to it.

When I started using my calendar to just look at how my day was going to go and you are so right, the white space is just like it's the breathing room and it's it allows you to look at your week as a whole and say OK, this is manageable.

Rather than trying to think.

Ohh I've gotta do.

All of these things, but I'm not really sure.

I used to be like that and it caused me no end of anxiety like I was keeping everything in my head instead of putting.

Down in a calendar and you know I use Google calendars because they give me reminders so I don't forget things.

But yeah, the calendar using the calendar and you.

Can you know?

Chart out the time that you're going to spend on self-care activities. I put my walking time is blocked off on my calendar and I know what time we're going to go and when to wake my husband up so we can walk while it's still cool.

But yeah, that that's a really big thing, so.

What's the one thing you would hope that the audience would take away from this discussion today?

I think what I would love for them to take away is that #1 self-care should be non-negotiable and #2. It doesn't have to look the same as everyone else, and it doesn't have to be the same every single day and.

Three is, I think, really look at your if you're worried about not having time.

Just start writing down on your calendar or putting into your Google Doc.

If you create a Google Doc calendar, however, you decide to do it and see what your days really look like, and then you'll see all the white space and you'll be able to be feel a little bit more at ease and then start looking at like maybe your structure you're.

You're blocking too many things together that could be stretched out through the week and don't have to be every day on the same like every single thing on every day and then start looking at how you can structure your time a little bit better, we'll give you.

That freedom to do things more effectively and get things done more effectively than to, you know, not know what you're doing, not know what's on your calendar.

And then maybe at the end of the day, feeling like, what did I even do?

And I don't know about you.

I've had those moments before, like, I don't even know what I did today.

But if, but because I've learned to structure my days and I can see it, I can I mark it off.

Ohh I got this done.

I'll even mark off.

I went for a walk or I did my exercise or I spent time with a, with a friend of mine or on a call, whatever that looks like.

So that's what I would suggest.

So the three things.

Those are amazing things and they really are like the starting point for incorporating self-care into your life and still having a business. So how can people get in touch with you, Leslie?

I think the best way would just.

I'm on Facebook.

That's like Facebook and Instagram are really the two places that I call home.

So on facebook

You know you can just follow me.

You can come on my if you pop on to my profile picture right in there.

I have the links directly to my free self-care guide, so you can you can get access there. You can also book a free self-care assessment if you like. So how I can go through with you to see what you're currently doing.

And help you find the gaps, help you figure out what works for you or on Instagram.

I do spell my name a little bit differently on Instagram because I was.

I thought I was being cute in the beginning when I created the account a few.

Years ago. But it's you just dropped the E in my first name. So at the end, so the LESLI instead of LESL i.e. So it's LESLIGAUDET on Instagram.

And I have a link to you there as well.

So get you'll get access to anything that I have going on.

perfect. And we will make sure we put those links in the show notes below.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been a really a great time.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

I'm excited for you.

What you're doing, and I can't wait to see where the podcast.

Goes! Me too.