TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Kim Strobel and this is She Finds Joy. I’ve known what it’s like to feel knocked down by life, my friend. Questioning my worth and wrestling with fear and self doubt. But what I’ve learned is that inside every adversity lies the seed of something greater. What grew from that struggle was a mission to help others rise, face the hard stuff and step fully into their own version of greatness with joy and happiness leading the way. I’m a truth telling, real talk, happiness coach who believes in giving you zero fluff. No BS advice, just the tools and mindset shifts that actually move the needle. Welcome to the space where small steps lead to big joy.
Hey everyone, thanks for being here today and thanks for following the she Finds Joy podcast. Thank you for sharing it with your friends. I love seeing the feedback that’s all coming in. I’ve been on the road giving keynotes to schools, to businesses, to organizations. I did one for the FBI recently, five Guys Burgers. And it’s been thrilling to be out there. But a lot of that at times can also be overwhelming to me. And so in today’s topic, I want to talk to you a little bit about just reflecting on our life. Do you ever take the time to, to just reflect on where you are right now in your life? I know that last year I turned 50, I’m 51 now and I really took this deep dive into what are the transitions that I saw happening to me as a woman, as a 50 year old woman and what had those kind of looked like throughout the decades and what have I learned.
And so one of the things I want to share a few things that I learned, but one of those was the importance of investing in my marriage. Now I’ve been married to my husband Scott for the last, I think it’d be 24 years. I was married the first time for five years and went through a divorce. So I am not coming at this as the end all be all. I will tell you that Scott Strobel and I have had to invest in our marriage quote quite a bit. It is remarkable. It is the one of the biggest blessings of my life. But it is also the thing that we’ve both had to work really hard at over the years and we were very lucky. We had an amazing therapist who we did not hesitate to reach out to early on. That I think saved us in a lot of ways. And that’s why we’re getting to enjoy the magic of what we’ve built now for 24 years. But this is not to say that if you’re in a marriage that is depleting you, constantly overwhelming you, constantly never getting better. I’m not one that says just suck it up because it’s going to get good in the end. I’m not saying that at all.
What I am saying is if you want your marriage to be good, you have to invest in it, even while you’re raising young kids. I know for Scott and I, we were very lucky. We would, we took, we took trips together, just the two of us. We decided that, look, we’re more than parents, we’re more than mommies and daddies and our marriage counts even while we’re married, raising our children. Was it hard at times? Yes. But I will say that when our son Spencer finally left the home and went to College in 2018, I was left with somebody that I still know, that I’m still very familiar with, that I really enjoyed. That was my very best friend. And I know that I’m really lucky to have that. But this also means that you have to invest in your marriage. So that’s one of my tips to share with you today, is that if you really, I always ask people, who wants an exceptional marriage, a whole lot of the time and all the hands go up. But then I say, like, when’s the last time you had a date night? When’s the last time you took five minutes to connect with each other? Like, are you really making your marriage a priority? Because if the actions aren’t backing up what your intentions and your goals are, then then there’s a misalignment, right? You can want something all you want, but you aren’t going to get it if you don’t align yourself and your actions and your behaviors and your intentions to that. So that was one of my lessons that I reflected on, was the investment in my marriage.
The other kind of recollection that I had is that every single one of us is worthy of the goodness of our lives. We are worthy of good things happening to us. We are supposed to live a joy filled life. We are supposed to have abundance and beauty and love and kindness around us. But much of the time we have an inner part of ourselves that doesn’t feel deserving of that. I am listening to Viola Davis’s memoir. She’s the fantastic actress, I believe how to Get Away with Murder was the TV series that she was in. And her memoir is astounding at the trauma and the abuse and the hardship of her life. But she of course, is a black woman and she’s telling the story of her father. He, he was no longer a slave, right? Or his parents or family, they were no longer slaves, but he worked as a horse groomsman. And she would say that when the, the horse trainer or the owner of the horse would come in, she would watch her daddy just, just start to do four or five things at a time, just going crazy, trying to overcompensate for his work on the horse in front of the white man horse owner. And I just thought to myself, you know, deeply embedded in him is he. He was taught that the person of color was less than. She would say that he would even look at the horse owner’s eyes.
He would put his head down and he would work ferociously to try to prove himself. And it just reminded me that we, we all have in us downloads that were probably formed between the ages of 0 and 6 because we know that most of the beliefs that we hold about ourselves are formed between the ages of 0 and 6. And that we carry those beliefs with us now and even now, with having more confidence now than I ever have had as a 51 year old, way different than the young, shy, broken 22 year old that I was. Even now, I at times have to remind myself that I’m worthy of having goodness in my life. As I speak to you right now, across from this computer screen, there’s a sticky note that says, you deserve this. And that is to remind me of that I deserve to have the business that I have, which is constantly growing and constantly leveling up. And sometimes when it levels up, I get scared that it’s all going to go away or that I’m not as good as what I really portray myself to be, or that I’m not deserving of all that’s coming at me. And so I had to write myself a sticky note that said, kim Strobel, you are deserving of this. And this is your visual reminder.
So that was another of my lessons, was understanding folks that just the deep recesses of who you are, regardless of your mistakes, regardless of, regardless of where you went wrong in life, you are all born with the divine light. You are all worthy of goodness. And many times that goodness starts with loving ourselves. So that was my second tip. The first one was invest in your marriage. If you have a marriage, if you have a partnership, you don’t have to. My friend Dixie is one of the happiest people I know. She’s divorced, she’s best friends with her husband Bill, and she loves life and never wants a husband again. She Jesus has a very full life. So I’m just saying, if you have a spouse, invest in that spouse if you want that relationship to feel good now and years later, regardless of what stage you’re in. And then the second one that we just talked about is understanding that you are truly deserving of goodness in your life. And there’s this quote that says the world can only give you the amount of value back that you give yourself. And so if you don’t value yourself, if you don’t value your time, if you don’t value your skill set, your expertise, your contribution, then the world can never show you that back. So it starts with you. All right? The third thing that was powerful to me was taking care of your body. And I plan to do many, many, many episodes of on this.
Most of you who know me, you know that exercise is simply a part of who I am. That every single day I’m going to move my body. I’m either going to go out and take my run, I’m going to do my weightlifting in the basement, I’m going to do my cardio workout in the basement, but every single day I’m going to do my run. And what’s really interesting is a lot of people say you’re such an extremist. Kim I’m an extremist because so many people are not moving their body. Folks, I gotta tell you, this is how you will feel good in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, and your 70s. You have to make time to prioritize yourself and move your body. Exercise changes the mitochondria of your cells. Exercise gives you an extra seven years of your life. For every hour that you exercise, you. You buy yourself three hours of life, okay? And that accumulates to seven years. And in fact, you actually look seven years younger when you have an exercise routine. Now, I can hear some of you right now, Kim Strouble, you don’t know my life. I barely have time to breathe. I can’t even make it to the restroom to pee. My day is, you know, from the get go. I’m packing kids lunches, I’m getting them in the car. I’m taking them to school. I’m doing my job. I’m taking them to soccer practice. I’m doing the laundry, I’m doing the groceries. We got a lot to pack, unpack, and all of that. But what I want to say to you is that this is about loving yourself enough.
So we’re going to go back to that second principle. Loving yourself enough. Knowing you are deserving of it to allocate some time. And here’s one activity that I want to do right now with you. I want you to get your phone out, and I want you to go to your Settings app. I’m not doing this to shame you. I’m not doing this to blame you. I’m doing this because we must bring light to where we are spending our time. And if we’re choosing activities that drain us or that fuel us. And many times, Kim Strobel, she spends time with activities that drain her. So this is the work I’m doing on myself, too. But this particular activity relates to you moving your body in some way. 30 minutes a day. First of all, it’s one of the top five happiness habits, so it’s going to elevate your happiness levels, okay?
Second of all, it’s. I don’t care what you do. You don’t have to be a runner like me. You can. You can do Pilates, You. You can do yoga, you can dance, you can walk, you can stretch, you can lift weights. But you have to move your body, folks. This is one of the most important things that you must make time for. So all of you who are fighting with me right now, who are saying, kim Strouble, I do not have time for this. Get your phone out. Because here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go to the Settings app. So click on Settings on your phone. Looks like this. If you’re watching, right, go to the Settings app. Some of you are like, oh, God, I’m not going to do this. I know what she’s doing. She’s setting me up. And I want you to scroll down to. Oh, it’s way down now. It’s about. It’s probably the 14th one down. Okay? You’ll see notifications, sounds, focus, and then you’re going to see screen time. And I want you. If I can get it with the light, I want you to hit screen time right there. Now stay with me again. I’m not doing this to blame you. I’m doing this for self awareness. If you go to screen time, it’s going to show you a daily average. Okay? My daily average says five hours and 29 minutes. But if I click on that graph where it says see all app and website activity, I want you to click on it now. It says, Today you’ve had 3 hours and 22 minutes on your phone, Kim. Now what I want you to do is under that graph, scroll up, and it’s going to see. I’m Embarrassed, folks, it Sundays, I spent 46 minutes on Facebook today.
I’m going to tell you right now that is a draining activity, not a fueling activity. I spent 23 minutes on Voxer. That’s talking to my team. So that’s work. I’ve spent 15 minutes on my email app, on my phone, I spent 15 minutes text messaging and on and on and on and on. Folks, if you look at that, it’s going to show you where you’re spending your time. Now, the reason I want you to see this is if you’re telling me, kim, I do not have time to exercise, but you’re, you’re spending 45 minutes, an hour, two hours, three hours on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, then I want you to see that it’s not that you don’t have time to move your body, it’s that you’re choosing to do other activities than the activity that would fuel you, the activity that would raise your happiness levels, the activity that literally changes the, the mitochondria of your cells, your vitality, how you feel in this life. And so again, this is not to lay blame. We don’t know better, we don’t do better until we know better. I do this activity so much of the time when I’m keynoting because I tell people, look, time is a social construct and many times we make excuses for, for not being able to do the things that make our life a little bit better. And exercise is one of them.
For me personally, I have a dopamine addicted brain. I am an addictive type of person. Okay? So for me, I knew that I was spending time on social media apps doing my post to Facebook and Instagram and most of the time they’re business posts, but still it’s post. And then I’m checking it to see how many likes it gets. So I actually set up screen time. And this is what you can do, folks, to get some of your time back. You’re going to go to that Settings app and you’re going to create screen time limits and you can click exactly which apps you want to have a limit on. So for example, I clicked linked, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and I said, look, you give yourself whatever, 41 minutes a day to be on that or 27 minutes a day. And what it does is it gives you a five minute reminder and says, look, you’ve almost used your allocated time. So you get to make a decision if you want to ignore this today or if you want to adhere to what you committed to, to what you promised yourself. And when you start to create those limits in your life, it helps you become more aware and go look, I told myself I’m not going to spend that much time on social media so that I can go take my 15 minute walk or go down to my basement and do an exercise video, whatever it might be.
It’s simply knowing, folks, that we are responsible for ourselves and we have to continually ask ourselves, are we choosing things that drain us or are we choosing things that fuel us? Okay, Those are just three of my big tips. Those were some of my AHAs as I transitioned from 50 or actually from 49 to 50. But I’m 51 now and so just to review one, I want you to think about if your marriage is important to you. Investing in your marriage. That was a big aha. When I turned 50, I was so glad that we had done and do the hard work of making our marriage better. The second thing is understanding that you are good. You are worthy of goodness in your life. You are a worthy human being of being blessed beyond extraordinary in this life. But it starts with you understanding that and loving yourself. And thirdly, get your body moving. Let’s choose activities that fuel us rather than drain us. Those are your three quick tips. Today I want to make this podcast episode short. I want you to share this episode with a friend. Forward it to them. Copy the link. Let’s get the conversation going. I’ll see you next time.
Thank you so much for joining me on the she Finds Joy show today. I’m truly honored that you chose to spend your time here with me. My dear friend, if this episode brought you encouragement or a fresh perspective, I would be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a review. Just head to kinstrouble.com review and what it does is it helps more people find these important conversations. Don’t forget you can also subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Thank you again for listening in. I am so very grateful, my friend, to walk this journey with you. I also want to encourage you to share this episode with everybody in your life you care about. We all need encouragement in real talk. Thank you for listening and watching. I believe in you for being able to create a life that feels good from the inside out. Remember, you are deserving of joy and happiness.
