Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Healthy Mind Healthy Lives. I am Yusuf, and this is the show where we have conversations that are real, demanding lives you actually need. My guest today is Rhonda Shayak, a former two-term mayor of Placenta, California, a small business owner running a local insurance agency, and a leader who has served on multiple community boards, including St. Jude Medical Center's Community Health Committee and the Orange County Human Relations Commission. Rhon has led at the highest stakes in public service and in business. And what makes her voice stand out is that she leads from experience, not theory. Today, we are talking about something every leader knows, but very few protect. The fact that you cannot deliver results, value, or vision for the people you serve if you are not taking care of yourself first. We are going to unpack what that actually looks like in real life. With that, I welcome my guest, Ronda to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Great. Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

Self-Care As The Leadership Baseline

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Perfect. So, Rhonda, before we get into all of it, I want to start somewhere personal to you. So when you look back at your years leading a city, running a business, sitting on boards, all of it happening at once. Was there a moment when you realized that taking care of yourself was not a luxury or a sidebar, but actually the foundation of every result you delivered?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yes, absolutely. And I think my journey to discovering what self-care meant for me and my body started when I opened my insurance business, which was 18 years ago. And I think every time I've added something, I've had to understand more about what that kind of self-care and preparation means for me personally, because I think everybody needs something different.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah. Okay. And there's this common idea that high-performing leaders are the ones who push the hardest, sleep the least, and you know, poured themselves out for the mission. So I'm curious, what do you think most leaders misunderstand about what it actually takes to operate at a high level over a long period of time?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah, I think that we miss that it is a discipline to learn how to rest and recover. And I think sometimes we take for granted that our bodies know how to do that. But I think the stress that we put on them, our bodies forget how to do that. And so we have to be very intentional about training ourselves how to do that. I actually had the honor of working for some very high-performing executives early in my career before I started my business. And when I looked back at them, I recognized that they had the ability to turn off and turn on. In other words, when it was time to rest, they had trained their bodies, their minds, their souls to really turn it off and to truly rest. And that is a skill set. And it's something that you have to learn. What is the process that I have to go through to make sure that I am doing that? Because just because we do an activity, for instance, going to the spa or golfing or something, and we think that that has restored us, it doesn't restore us if that's not what our body needed. And so I think that that is one of the biggest misconceptions is that you think that just by going on a vacation or something, that you're going to be restored. And that isn't the case. It has to be a daily practice and discipline that you're teaching your body and learning what your body needs to really recover from the stress that you put on it.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And do you think that misunderstanding is more about ego or about pressure from the system around them?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think it's I think it's everything. I think it's taking your health for

Rest And Recovery As A Discipline

SPEAKER_01 4:40

granted. I think it's um the demands of this world, the the idea that, um, for instance, in your intro, you covered like just our ability to work 24-7 if we want to, because we have it in our hands. It's available all the time. And just that temptation to continue to work and to be responsive um is absolutely the cause of it if we let it. But we control that piece. That's one thing in our lives that we can absolutely control is how we're gonna show up, how we're gonna respond, how we're gonna recover. And that's what I love about this conversation and about what you're doing here is this is something that is actually in our control. Um, when there's so many things outside of our control in our lives. This is one thing that is in control and that we should take control of because it's gonna help us in every direction show up more energy, more focus, more vision, more of everything, because we took time to pause for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah. And you know, that distinction is very important because one is internal and one is environmental, and the path back to sustainability looks different depending on which one is driving the burnout.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yes, absolutely. That's totally true. And it's also learning to listen to our bodies helps us know when to say yes and when to say no. Um, and I think that um that it's a journey for everybody. Um, I think I'm still learning about that, but I think over the past 18 years, I've had to refine it over and over and over again because recovery for me is a daily ritual. It's a, it's a, it's the in the way I go to sleep and it's in the way I wake up. So that in those hours when I want to be my best and give my best, um, I'm able to do that because I have the bandwidth inside me to do it at a very, very high level and to do the extra, right? To do more than just run your business, to be able to give back to your community. And that is not easy. It takes a lot to have that kind of capacity. And so if you want that, you have to learn how to get it.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And I don't know how the leaders who run themselves into ground really set out to do that, like it builds quietly, decision by decision, year by year. So, from your experience and the leaders

Warning Signs And Avoiding Health Crises

SPEAKER_00 7:35

who have watched up close, what are the deeper patterns underneath self-neglect and leadership?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Well, I think a lot of people that I've recognized in my life, um, if we don't take the time to learn this skill early in our careers as we go along, and to respond to what season we're at in our life, where our bodies are at, what happens is we usually end up with a health crisis, right? In other words, I've seen people turn their life around only once they had that heart attack, once they had a stroke, once they had some sort of debilitating disease, they realized, oh, wait, my body's not gonna just go on forever, right? Or they have some sort of like, I think you referred to burnout, which is more of like a mental health break where you're just so overwhelmed that you can't take it anymore. And you've not learned the skills and the habits for you to keep yourself out of that. Like I have warning signs now. I know the minute I feel overwhelmed, or to your point earlier, when I get short-tempered with people, or I feel like I don't have enough time to even address anybody properly, I know that that's a trigger for me that I'm either overscheduled, I'm not sleeping well, I'm not eating well, I haven't had enough rest. There's something going on that's causing me to react that way. Um, and so, you know, that I think, you know, to answer your question is, you know, what you want to avoid. You want to avoid that big health crisis, right? You want to do whatever you can to avoid that because then you're completely taken out of the game. You're no longer effective if if your body isn't working for you, right? That becomes all you can do at that point.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah. And you know, that order matters so much because by the time the vision blurs, the rest of the team is already feeling it. And the leader is usually the last one to notice.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, because we're swimming so hard, right? We're still trying to make it happen. Um, yeah, I have a great partner in my life, my husband. Um, and he is very generous. Um, and I listen to him because he can start to see it in me. And he can make um that suggestion. I know when things start not going good at home, if they're not going good at home, there's a good chance they're not going good anywhere. So now my uh one of my warnings, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, wow. And that brings me a question that what is the role of the partners, the home, the close people that you have

Partners, Boundaries, And Protecting Sunday

SPEAKER_00 10:40

in that particular moment? Because I think we cannot see ourselves in that position because we are in so much stress of the business, but they can. So, can you tell us any incident or a story that can help us figure out that out?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Sure. I think it's respecting your partner's opinion on what you're trying to do, because some people are just going to be driven to do more, right? It's naturally inside of us. And so I'm driven to do a lot more uh than my partner is. And so when I add something and I mention it to him and we talk about that, sometimes he'll make make a suggestion or an ask that I not do something else. So, for instance, when I was running my business and I decided to join city council and become the mayor of my city, he asked me if I could protect Sunday. He said, Could you, could you please protect Sunday? Could you, in other words, he knew I needed a day of rest. And he knew that we needed a day together to rest. And so he said, You know, you're driving really hard. Can we try to protect that one day? And I heard him. And for the last 10 years, that's something that I've tried to do. Um, it's very rare that I do something other, um, like an activity or um a give back on Sundays. I usually use that day to recover, to rest, and to be with my partner. And it has really helped. In other words, by Saturday, sometimes I my stress is peaking and I've given a lot. And I, but I know Sunday's coming and I know I'm gonna have that rest, and it helps me get through it, and it helps me recover and get ready for that new week so that I'll be equipped and filled up to give more. Um, and so that that has been a generally healthy pattern for me personally to do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

No. And most leaders listening right now, they aren't thinking about energy, focus, and vision in the abstract. You know, they are thinking about the meeting they have at 9 p.m. They the team members who's struggling, the budget that is tight, the inbox that has so many messages to answer.

Time Blocking For Realistic Self-Care

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Right. So, what does taking care of yourself actually look like in that particular situation or kinds of situation?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah, so what I've learned how to do, like practically speaking, um, and that was where I started out was the overwhelmingness of what was coming at me. How do I handle all of it? And that's when I started doing like time blocking. I'm sure you've probably heard of that, to where I do certain things at certain times. So, in other words, I'm going to be addressing emails at a certain time of the day, um, professional and personal emails, or like city emails, professional emails, personal emails. And then I'm going to make sure that I have regular contact with my employees. Um, and the other thing on meetings, if you're in a position to do it, and I know a lot of us are because we can all block our schedules because all the meetings right now are done um electronically, right? Like we just send meeting requests. So you can actually block time to give yourself time for meeting preparation, for research and reading. So you have to make sure that you're giving yourself bandwidth in your time to be the best you can be in that nine o'clock meeting. If you have a nine o'clock meeting, then at some point in the 24 hours before, you should have had time to prepare for that nine o'clock meeting. Even if it's 15 minutes, just give yourself time to think about what you want to accomplish in that meeting. And I know, like I have friends that work for corporations where there's multiple meetings going on, they can't always control it, but they can control their schedule. And so a lot of times, right, on your calendar, you can block and just act like you're in an official meeting, right? So there's ways to do it to get creative, you know, when you don't have full control of your calendar. Um, and it's I would just add one more thing being hyper-focused on what's most important, like what is the true priority? Because sometimes things will conflict, and you have to be crystal clear on what matters more than the other thing. Because you'll want to do it all, but you can't always do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

I love that because you know it tells the listener that this is not about some massive overhaul of their life. It is about the you know, unsexy daily choices that no one applauds, but that quietly shape every decision they'll make this week.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yes, no, and there's it's kind of I always say that you know, changing your mindset and caring for yourself and having a healthy mindset is mean you're always working on it, you're thinking about it, right? It's a priority for you. Because if we don't have our health, we don't have a healthy body and a healthy mind, we can't do anything. If those fail us, everything else is gonna fall apart. And we have to remember that. We have to remember to take care of ourselves so that we can

Two-Minute Resets Before Meetings

SPEAKER_01 16:40

do the next thing. And so that has to be at the top of your mind. So, what small thing can I do today to feed my soul, to feed my mind, to make sure that I'm in a good mindset to come after the the next thing and the next thing. Um, I even did for a time, um, I I don't need any more, but I was so on the edge that two minutes before every meeting, I was doing a meditation um on an app on my phone because I was reeling so bad that I had to stop myself just so that I could be productive on that meeting because I could feel that that I couldn't even focus. I couldn't stay with what was going on. And so I would just stop and do a meditation and get myself straight. And it was literally two minutes max. Um, so you can pause, you can breathe. So there's there's all kinds of practices available today. And I love that you have a podcast doing this because I I hope it's reminding people that you know we must care for ourselves so that we can give back, right? It's like the whole airline thing. Put on your face mask first before you help the person next to you. Um, and that's what we're doing. It's really all about giving back to people and adding value to this world. Um, but we can't do it if we're not equipped to do it, right? If we're not ready to do it ourselves.

How To Connect And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah. Rhonda, for people who want to connect with you or want to learn more about your work, where can they do that?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah. So my great work right now obviously is running for Senate. And that can be found at shaderforsenate.com. Um, and of course, I have all my socials at Shader for Senate. Um, and then my personal is my name, Rhonda Shader. Um, would love to hear from anybody. And I wish um you and everybody well on their journey to keep their healthy mind and healthy body the top priority in their lives.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Thank you so much, Rhonda, for the depth, the honesty, and the lived wisdom you brought into this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And to everyone listening right now, maybe at the end of a long day, maybe between meetings, maybe lying awake thinking about tomorrow's responsibilities. I want you to hear this. The world does not need a more depleted version of you. It needs the more uh well-rested, well-nourished, and well-anchored one to protect that person. They are the ones delivering everything that matters. This is healthy mind, healthy life. I'm Yusuf. Take care of your mind, take care of your life, and we'll see you in the next one.