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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Mario Tonigüzi and this is Calgary's podcast on Canada's podcast network.
[00:11] SPEAKER_00: Joining me today is Trish Tutton, who is speaker and mindfulness teacher based out of Bambe, Alberta. Thanks Trish for joining us today.
[00:21] SPEAKER_01: Thanks Mario for having me really thrilled to be here.
[00:23] SPEAKER_00: Let me just start Trish with this.
[00:26] SPEAKER_00: It's a wide open question.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: Just tell me a little bit about what you do.
[00:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32] SPEAKER_01: So I really help professionals, individuals and organizations to really manage the stress of work and life so that they can work and live happier.
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: We all face stress in our life and it can really, it can have the tendency to bring us down.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: It can have the tendency to pull us under in life and make us, you know, unhappy, unfulfilled, overwhelmed, burnt out, ineffective, not only at work, but also in our life.
[01:04] SPEAKER_01: So I really teach people the tools of mindfulness.
[01:08] SPEAKER_01: I'm a mindfulness teacher as you mentioned and I use those tools to teach people.
[01:11] SPEAKER_01: How can they manage the stresses of life so that they can be more resilient and they can actually move through life with happiness and fulfillment instead of getting overwhelmed?
[01:22] SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about mindfulness. What exactly is that?
[01:27] SPEAKER_01: Well, it's definitely a buzzword. Let's say that.
[01:30] SPEAKER_01: I mean, you heard me talking about stress and we know in the last two years with the pandemic.
[01:36] SPEAKER_01: I mean, stress and anxiety is just, it was already its own kind of epidemic and now it's just gone through the roof.
[01:44] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, with that, a lot of people know, oh, I've heard of mindfulness.
[01:48] SPEAKER_01: Maybe I've seen a post about it on social media. I've seen it on the cover of Time Magazine.
[01:53] SPEAKER_01: My colleagues, my family members are talking about it.
[01:56] SPEAKER_01: How it can help us to manage stress.
[01:58] SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, the challenge with mindfulness is that although most people have heard the word, the concept, many people don't actually know what it means.
[02:07] SPEAKER_01: And even fewer people actually practice it.
[02:10] SPEAKER_01: So as a really basic introduction mindfulness is a philosophy essentially.
[02:17] SPEAKER_01: And it's something that we can practice in our lives.
[02:21] SPEAKER_01: And essentially it goes counter to, I mean, you can tell the word mindfulness has mind in it.
[02:27] SPEAKER_01: It goes counter to our mind's habits as human beings, which is often to be thinking about the past and, you know, remembering things that have happened.
[02:37] SPEAKER_01: And why did they happen that way? And did I make the right decision?
[02:40] SPEAKER_01: And what if I had done something differently, you know, stressing about things from the past or our mind has a habit also of stressing about the future.
[02:50] SPEAKER_01: Our world is an uncertain place to be. And it, you know, if you work sure that the world was uncertain when the pandemic happened, now you're really sure.
[02:59] SPEAKER_01: So with that uncertainty comes, you know, this habit of our mind, thinking about the future, I wonder if this will happen.
[03:06] SPEAKER_01: Will I be okay? Will my family be okay? Will I be okay financially? What's the next stressful thing that's going to come?
[03:13] SPEAKER_01: And so as humans, our minds tend to do this more often than we would probably like.
[03:20] SPEAKER_01: And it's actually a really unhappy state of mind to be thinking about the future and worrying about thinking about past and worrying about the future.
[03:28] SPEAKER_01: So mindfulness as a, as a very basic descriptor, it helps us to bring our mind into really you could say the only time that our life actually exists, which is the present moment.
[03:40] SPEAKER_01: And beyond that kind of buzzword that you might hear of be more present, be in the moment mindfulness is really about accepting what's happening in the present moment, almost as if we've chosen it this way, knowing that actually there's no other option like reality is reality no matter what.
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: So we can actually use the teachings and as I said, the practices of mindfulness are practical applications for us to relax into our present moment experience.
[04:12] SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've come across, you know, I've read about mindfulness in the past and must confess I haven't been faithfully practicing it.
[04:23] SPEAKER_00: I'm very good, but one of the things I always remember about that is that it's kind of like a slowing down, right?
[04:31] SPEAKER_00: Sure.
[04:32] SPEAKER_00: And how difficult is it for people entrepreneurs today, people in general, our lives, you know, operate at like 100 miles an hour, it seems, every day.
[04:43] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[04:44] SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of difficult is that for people to slow down.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in our minds, you know, the quick paces often not actually what's going on in the world, it's what's going on up here.
[04:55] SPEAKER_01: And then I have this to do and I have that to do and this on my to do list in this and then that's next and it's never ending.
[05:00] SPEAKER_01: So it is tricky.
[05:02] SPEAKER_01: It can be tricky, you know, they say there was a term coined, I think it was in the late 1990s called time famine and time famine as your listeners might be kind of feeling now in their bodies like this experience of being starved for time.
[05:18] SPEAKER_01: It's when we hear ourselves saying things like, I'm so busy or I don't have enough time to do one more thing in my day.
[05:25] SPEAKER_01: And we try to solve that problem by using, you know, smartphones and smartwatches and all the latest productivity hacks.
[05:34] SPEAKER_01: And the science actually says that the faster we go, the more we feel time famine and that the cure for time famine is to slow down.
[05:42] SPEAKER_01: So to your question, how hard is it?
[05:44] SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, as I mentioned, mindfulness is a practice and you would be correct.
[05:48] SPEAKER_01: It does help us kind of slow down some of those incessant, you know, thoughts that are constantly almost like the ticker tape at the bottom of a 24 hour news channel.
[06:00] SPEAKER_01: Our thoughts are like that, just going by going by it can help us slow them down.
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: And it is tricky because a lot of people, you know, I teach this stuff in organizations for the most part.
[06:11] SPEAKER_01: I come into corporations and not for profits and teach folks and these people, you know, majority area in their 30s, 40s, 50s.
[06:17] SPEAKER_01: So they've spent that many years letting their mind run the show, letting that ticker tape go by they've been practicing thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts after thought.
[06:28] SPEAKER_01: So then when they go to practice something different, it's tricky.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01: And I often, you know, compare it to a little kid learning to walk, you're going to fall at first.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: This is going to be a little bit painful, right?
[06:40] SPEAKER_01: We're strengthening really our mindfulness muscle.
[06:45] SPEAKER_01: So the truth is it can be tricky, but just like anything that any human being practices, we get better at it.
[06:53] SPEAKER_01: Our brain is meant to practice things and improve and it does that really well.
[06:58] SPEAKER_00: No, right.
[06:59] SPEAKER_00: I'm recalling two different things here.
[07:02] SPEAKER_00: A few years ago when I was working at the Calgary Herald as a reporter, one of the areas I covered was health.
[07:10] SPEAKER_00: And I remember, you know, the D-packed Chorpra coming to Calgary for a big conference, a big presentation at the convention center.
[07:19] SPEAKER_00: And first thing he asked people to do is to close the rise, sit still and be quiet.
[07:27] SPEAKER_00: And then after a minute or so, he basically was saying how difficult it is for people to do that, right?
[07:34] SPEAKER_00: Then the second thing I recall is there's an old philosopher from way back a few centuries ago, Pascal.
[07:43] SPEAKER_00: And I think his line wasn't I'm paraphrasing, but his line was something along the lines that man's problems come from the fact that you can't sit still and be quiet.
[07:54] SPEAKER_00: Right?
[07:56] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[07:57] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, obviously, especially in this day and age and especially after the ups and downs of the last two years, you know,
[08:08] SPEAKER_00: the ability or the inability to do this has led to serious consequences, right?
[08:15] SPEAKER_00: We got the drinking problems, we got the mental health problems, stress, depression, etc.
[08:21] SPEAKER_00: So this has become increasingly and critically more important today than it ever was, right?
[08:27] SPEAKER_01: I believe so. And I think the pandemic, you know, I often like to look at things in life as neither good nor bad.
[08:34] SPEAKER_01: They're kind of a mix of both.
[08:36] SPEAKER_01: And certainly there's been massive tragedy through this pandemic.
[08:39] SPEAKER_01: But I also think that it's been an opportunity where we have seen mental health rise to the top of many people's and organizations priority list.
[08:50] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[08:51] SPEAKER_00: Tell me how you got into doing this.
[08:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
[08:54] SPEAKER_01: Well, I started really my mindfulness journey.
[08:57] SPEAKER_01: I would say in university.
[08:59] SPEAKER_01: Now, I do have to say my mom used to tell me that I started much earlier when I was just a little, she says I was a little baby and she would practice yoga, you know,
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: in our living room to VHS tapes of any of your listeners remember those.
[09:12] SPEAKER_01: So she says I started then, but I really remember in earnest starting my mindfulness journey in university through yoga.
[09:19] SPEAKER_01: And it really was that I was sitting a lot in lectures.
[09:23] SPEAKER_01: I was sitting a lot writing papers.
[09:25] SPEAKER_01: I knew I needed to move my body.
[09:27] SPEAKER_01: And I had some stress starting to occur in my life more than I had had as a kid.
[09:33] SPEAKER_01: And I had heard that mindfulness was good for stress management, like a lot of folks do.
[09:38] SPEAKER_01: And so I started doing yoga classes that then evolved into just the last kind of, I guess it's been over a decade now that I've been practicing in teaching.
[09:47] SPEAKER_01: You know, I wanted to explore more about this journey.
[09:51] SPEAKER_01: And so I took some teacher training programs.
[09:54] SPEAKER_01: I always say I think the best teachers of anything are ongoing students.
[09:58] SPEAKER_01: So I'm always involved in some sort of training or study myself of mindfulness.
[10:05] SPEAKER_01: But it really, I think the catalyst for me to do what I'm doing right now really happened about 10 years ago.
[10:12] SPEAKER_01: I was working in a knot for profit organization.
[10:15] SPEAKER_01: And on the side, I was teaching a little bit of yoga and mindfulness.
[10:19] SPEAKER_01: And really suddenly my mom actually passed away.
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: She was just 55 years old.
[10:25] SPEAKER_01: And she just, it was a sudden case of breast cancer.
[10:29] SPEAKER_01: And she, it got bad really, really quickly.
[10:32] SPEAKER_01: And I think it was a, you know, I mean, Oprah has that saying like these aha moments, these light bulb moments you have in your life.
[10:39] SPEAKER_01: And I just assumed before that that we all get 70, 80 years, 90 years of life.
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: And that really shook me to my core.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: And it, it made me recognize that we don't have control over the quantity of our life essentially.
[10:57] SPEAKER_01: But what we do have control over is the quality of our life.
[11:01] SPEAKER_01: And the quality of our life is made up of our days and our weeks.
[11:06] SPEAKER_01: And all our days and weeks are just made up of little moments.
[11:10] SPEAKER_01: And I knew that mindfulness had already really supported me in living a better life and managing stress and being more resilient and being more fulfilled and peaceful in my life.
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: So that was really the catalyst that a helped me to really dive deep into my own practice as a student and B made me think,
[11:29] SPEAKER_01: if I want to do something good with my life, no matter how long I have left here, at the time I was around 26, no matter how many years I have left, I want to do something of purpose.
[11:40] SPEAKER_01: And I thought I have something here that I can teach people that can bring more quality to every moment of their day to every day of their life.
[11:50] SPEAKER_00: So Trish, you are an entrepreneur obviously.
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: Actually, two entrepreneurs right because of every all the different things that you've done, etc.
[12:01] SPEAKER_00: What's the best thing from your end of being an entrepreneur? What do you like about doing your own boss, so to speak?
[12:10] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have to say I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because as I said, I was working in the not for profit industry and I really, I just had this idea.
[12:19] SPEAKER_01: I also was seeing people around me really, really, really stressed out people taking stress leave burn out overwhelm at work and I thought these people need this.
[12:29] SPEAKER_01: I need to share this with them.
[12:31] SPEAKER_01: And so I just started putting together content, not even realizing, oh, I'm starting a business.
[12:37] SPEAKER_01: This is going to evolve into something that's a business. So I call myself an accidental entrepreneur.
[12:42] SPEAKER_01: What do I love most about being an entrepreneur?
[12:46] SPEAKER_01: I honestly have to say I love the freedom.
[12:51] SPEAKER_01: I've always kind of loved being independent and making my own choices and deciding which way to go and what to focus on.
[13:00] SPEAKER_01: So I really, really love that.
[13:02] SPEAKER_01: I also love the sense of accomplishment, I think, and actual self-esteem I get from doing things and making them happen and growing the business and seeing it grow over time.
[13:13] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I also, I mean, obviously the content of what I do is really, really close to my heart too.
[13:19] SPEAKER_01: But I do love the freedom. I mean, I have to say it took a little while, but I now have gotten to the point in my business where my income has surpassed any income I ever made as an employee.
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: So that's great.
[13:32] SPEAKER_01: And, and I would say 95% of the year, I take three day weekends.
[13:37] SPEAKER_01: I take Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. So you can't beat it.
[13:42] SPEAKER_00: I'm the same thing.
[13:44] SPEAKER_00: You know what I've gone through my head, what you're talking about because before we had this chat, I went for a long walk.
[13:50] SPEAKER_00: And the ability to do that and often what I try to do is I try to get as much.
[13:58] SPEAKER_00: I'm an early riser, right?
[14:00] SPEAKER_01: Me too. Me too.
[14:01] SPEAKER_00: I'm a 5 a.m. club, but I was 5 a.m. before that book was even written.
[14:06] SPEAKER_00: But I like to say stop things at 9 o'clock on a Friday for the most part.
[14:13] SPEAKER_00: And then it's will accidentally enjoy it. How important is that?
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm going to ask you the flip side of that question is what don't you like about being an entrepreneur?
[14:24] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[14:25] SPEAKER_01: Remember how I talked about our mind not being present.
[14:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[14:30] SPEAKER_01: Thinking about the past worrying about the future, I have to say I don't know how other entrepreneurs do it without practicing mindfulness.
[14:40] SPEAKER_01: Because not only do I know that what I teach helps, you know, all the people who I work with, but it helps me big time.
[14:48] SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is kind of this idea, I think an entrepreneurship.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01: It's like you own your own business. You're kind of always on.
[14:54] SPEAKER_01: There's always that ticker tape I talked about in the news channel is kind of always going in the background of your mind.
[15:00] SPEAKER_01: What should I do next? What would be the next move?
[15:03] SPEAKER_01: Who, you know, what's the next sales tactic? How should I market?
[15:07] SPEAKER_01: What's the next social media post? What's the next piece of content?
[15:11] SPEAKER_01: And I'd be lying if I said to you that doesn't happen for me and it does.
[15:16] SPEAKER_01: But what really helps me to is my practice of mindfulness to notice, you know, I just was on a ski trip last weekend with some friends finally, finally we missed a couple, a couple of winters, but finally we went back.
[15:28] SPEAKER_01: Did our rapid tests before we headed out for the weekend, but, you know, the moments when I notice, okay, here I am.
[15:35] SPEAKER_01: I'm on a vacation weekend. I'm skiing down the hill and my mind goes, oh, maybe you should do this for business.
[15:40] SPEAKER_01: At least I don't get carried away in it. At least I have the mindfulness tools and techniques to go, okay, there's a thought that's going by that thought has nothing to do with what you're doing right now, bring your attention back to what's happening here.
[15:56] SPEAKER_00: You know what's interesting.
[15:58] SPEAKER_00: What you just mentioned, I find an even young this morning I went for my walk and boom, boom, boom.
[16:07] SPEAKER_00: Yes, he just came to mind about work. It wasn't that I was I was consciously thinking about work.
[16:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all of a sudden, you got a creative idea. Yeah, and I find that's that's quite important for people to step aside some sometimes and things will come right.
[16:29] SPEAKER_01: Definitely, definitely. I mean, yeah, there's two kind of experiences. There is sometimes when you're not working and you just get a hit of creative insight. That's amazing.
[16:39] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you could have spent the whole rest of that walk just turning it over and over and over and over in your head or using mindfulness.
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: We can go like, okay, what's Mark that I'm going to come back to that when I'm at my desk later and right now I'm going to enjoy the fresh air, the sun, whatever it is.
[16:55] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I have sort of early signs of dementia. I kind of laugh about that right there. So I need to I go out on my little walk and that comes in brain stop.
[17:07] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, take a note and text.
[17:09] Speaker UNKNOWN: I'm going to take a note.
[17:10] SPEAKER_00: And okay, I'm going to carry.
[17:14] SPEAKER_00: When you you look at business in general, like what is what is some of the biggest challenges you think you've faced in being a business owner.
[17:29] SPEAKER_00: And is it working in particular? Obviously you do it at a band, but is there anything in particular about where you do business that has presented any challenges for you?
[17:42] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think and I've seen this, you know, the first time that I spoke at a conference was now six years ago.
[17:49] SPEAKER_01: So I've seen a bit of an evolution. One of the main things I think I saw at the kind of start of things was having to have, you know, quite a bit of knowledge and information to have sales calls around like why?
[18:06] SPEAKER_01: Why would I bring you into my organization? Why would I let my staff take a 15 minute break to close their eyes and practice a breathing exercise when they could be productive.
[18:16] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that has been a little bit of a hurdle, but I will say that it's gotten easier over the years more and more people know the value of wellness.
[18:25] SPEAKER_01: They know that the well being of their employees has a direct effect on the well being of their business because their employees are the ones that run it.
[18:35] SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and, you know, using kind of unique ways of describing it, you know, saying things like, okay, does your organization offer, you know, free coffee at work?
[18:47] SPEAKER_01: Why do you do that? Well, you know, it increases energy, focus, productivity.
[18:52] SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the data that I can share with you that practicing mindfulness does the same thing.
[18:58] SPEAKER_01: If we see in all this research that's come out over 30 to 40 years, so that's been something that I think was trickier earlier and has now gotten easier.
[19:06] SPEAKER_01: Certainly the pandemic through a total wrench and everything.
[19:10] SPEAKER_01: I was having, I was kind of set up the spring of 2020 to have like the biggest quarter of my business yet.
[19:18] SPEAKER_01: And I was going to be traveling all around speaking at different conferences and then of course all the calls kept coming in, you know, everything canceled.
[19:26] SPEAKER_01: So that was really, really tricky and in hindsight, I look back and I recognize, you know, that was a really low moment for me.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01: But what I know is that a lot of the practices I do around mindfulness actually set me up to keep going, set me up to be resilient, set me up to pivot well.
[19:46] SPEAKER_01: And to actually now what I've seen is I've been even more successful in these years during the pandemic than I was prior.
[19:54] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think, you know, just a couple of the challenges that I've faced that maybe some of your listeners can can resonate with, but there's lots of course.
[20:03] SPEAKER_00: So step aside from your business and your work for a second, Trish, tell me what you're passionate about what your interests are beyond that.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. Well, as I just mentioned, got back from a ski trip. So I wouldn't, you know, why do I live in the mountains? If I don't ski, so I'm an average Rocky Mountain skier. I would say I grew up in Ontario.
[20:27] SPEAKER_01: So I kind of hit my skiing peak there at about 13 years old did all the hardest runs and then took it back up when I moved out here about 13 years later at 26.
[20:36] SPEAKER_01: And I've slowly gotten better. So yeah, love to get out on the hill, get out in nature. My husband and I in the spring and summer, we do quite a bit of camping, whether that's now.
[20:47] SPEAKER_01: So if anybody is listening who's not from Alberta, you might not know this distinction. And I didn't before I moved here, that there's actually two kinds of camping.
[20:55] SPEAKER_01: You can go camping, what we would call it Ontario here is called car camping, meaning you drive your spot up your drive your car up to the spot. There's a picnic table there. There's other people around.
[21:08] SPEAKER_01: That's called car camping in Alberta because it's distinguished from that country camping, which is you don't have a car. You put everything on your back and you hike everything out.
[21:19] SPEAKER_01: So what you're freeze dried food and everything. So my husband and I have done a ton of that country hiking and camping here in Bamp National Park and, you know, some of the parks and BC and things like that.
[21:31] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, being out in nature is something that fuels me that brings me that sense of presence and mindfulness. I'm a big reader, voracious reader. I read a lot of, a lot of nonfiction, a lot of things related to mindfulness and yoga, which I really love.
[21:47] SPEAKER_01: And then I, yeah, that's those are the main things I also I have a lot of plants and I love to kind of take care of my plants. That's kind of my passion as well. So, I do too, but they're fake plants.
[22:01] SPEAKER_01: That's okay. I won't judge you.
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I know I understand exactly what you mean. Well, that was super. I appreciate your time, Trisha, taking the time to do this. And, and he doesn't hear.
[22:13] SPEAKER_01: It feels good. Thanks for having me, Mario.
[22:16] SPEAKER_00: All right, super. That was Trish Tutton, who is a speaker and mindfulness teacher based out of Bamfalberta. I'm Mario Tonoguszi. And this has been CalGrees Podcast on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us today.
