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When I first spoke of the weight I lost, it was on the Dynamic Women Podcast and I had lost 20 lbs. That felt very vulnerable.
My weight is not normally something that I would broadcast in a public forum like this. However, there have been so many learnings. I feel like the vulnerability that it takes to talk about my weight, as well as these insights, can help you. Whether you have weight to lose or you don't, there are still some really great learnings that can be had here. Why I was unhealthy I have had a crazy few years. I know everyone has with COVID, but if you've been listening to the Dynamic Women podcast, reading my blogs, or watching my YouTube videos, then you would have heard some of the stuff that happened. When COVID happened, I had to cancel a whole week of work out in Ontario. It was going to be a multiple six-figure week. My kids were at home because of COVID and I had to completely pivot my business to be mainly online or only online rather than live events. Then my father went into palliative care, and passed away seven days later. I stayed in Ontario to support my mom, do the funeral arrangements and clear out my dad's stuff. Then my Facebook account was disabled. This is all while the pandemic was going on. I then had to redo so many things in my business because of my Facebook account being shut down. It was a stressful time and I gained weight. I went and saw my naturopath, and we determined that even though I didn’t want to be unhealthy, focusing on changing my eating habits at that point wasn't the smartest idea. There was already too much stress happening in my life that having one more thing to control, one more thing to focus on, another thing to be constricted by wasn't the right timing. Just to be honest, I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it. Those words, “emotional bandwidth” and “emotional stamina”, one of them came from the grief share program I did through my church. Side note: The program is amazing, and it's only $20 for the book. I took it twice, and it was really, really helpful. I didn't have the ability to deal with it. One more thing to manage wasn't possible in my life. I was overwhelmed. If you're wondering, “Oh, what do you do when I'm overwhelmed?” I just wrote a blog post about that. That's part of “why” I was unhealthy. There are also stressors and all that, but there were so many layers of stress that I just couldn't get around it, and the idea of having to restrict my eating felt overwhelming. It felt like too much. I was the heaviest I've ever been in my entire life, even heavier than when I was pregnant. This blog post is not meant to shame anyone who has gained weight, anyone who is at their heaviest, or anyone who's struggling with weight. This is just the story of my experience and what I went through. I didn't like how I looked. I didn't like how I felt. On the soccer field, it was really hard to play well. I felt self-conscious of myself, pulling my shirt down as I ran. I had many injuries at soccer. That was another reason why I wasn't at my healthiest because it's really hard to be fit when you have multiple injuries, one after another. I knew I wasn't able to drop weight like I did in the past by doing keto. It was really helpful, but it was also super restrictive. Previously, I had really great motivation and support, but it had disappeared with everything that was happening. What changed it for me Well, I eventually really hurt my knee playing soccer, back on May 3rd to be exact. It's a lateral-torn meniscus, and they're not going to do any surgery. There's no real way to heal it and fix it. The only thing I can do is be kinder to my body by reducing inflammation, strengthening and also by dropping some weight. I said to the doctor, “Oh, I know, one pound of extra weight is five pounds of extra pressure on the joint.” He said, “It's actually six”. I knew that I needed to drop weight at that point, and so he said, “You know, if that's something you can do, then do it.” I reached out to a nutrition coach who I know from my hometown. She's been a client of mine, and been in the collaborative books. She’s great at what she does. I've seen her results from when she worked with a couple of my rugby friends over the years (and yes, rugby friends. I used to play rugby, pretty high level as well.) I knew that she got them results, one for fitness competitions and one for just health and feeling better. I paid the money and signed up. I knew I needed the accountability. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I know how to eat. I know how to eat well. I know how to exercise. I know how to do all these things. But the truth is I wasn't doing it. Again, as I said, this doesn't have to be a blog post about weight loss. It can be about…
I knew, I needed someone with a no BS approach to be able to hold me accountable. I have coaches in my life: mentors, advisors, people that I go to. I call them my team who support me, guide me, keep me accountable, and help me be committed. In another blog post, I talked about how having a coach really helped me to get serious about soccer again. I also needed to be serious about my weight loss journey, so I dove in with a specific eating plan.  I’ve had great success, and it’s interesting how people feel cautious about asking me about it. People who know I’m on this journey will compliment me, and other people who don't know I'm on this journey feel awkward about saying something. It's okay to say something to someone who has lost weight. They never said like, “Whoa, you lost weight!” They'll say, “Wow, you look great.” Then I share about the journey I've been on. I dove in headfirst into the program. Having the support has really helped, and it was something I was craving. I'm on a six-month journey, and I’m at almost the 5-month mark, and I knew that I'd be able to drop about 20 lbs in 3 months and in another three months, I'll be able to drop another 20 pounds. Then I know I’ll be at a point where I can manage it.  Why does this matter to me It's funny when I told my team, we were having a potluck party and the socials, there's always alcohol. There are always yummy appetizers. I sent them a message I said, “Hey guys, I just committed to working with a health coach. I am not going to eat a lot of your delicious food at the potluck. I'm not going to be having any drinks and that includes straight-up alcohol or zero-calorie/ zero-sugar drinks.” I'm having none. It's not about having a summer body for me. It's about having a soccer body - a body that is able to play soccer. I'm happy to say that in July and now into October, I have been able to do some soccer. Not at the level I want. I'm still not 100%, but I'm able to actually be on the field. Did the doctor say I should do it? No, he said, I should stop soccer, but if it's a joy for me then do it, but just realize that I'm aging my knee, and so I'm taking that responsibility. Well, this is where I'm at. Wrapping Up If you have any questions, if you have any comments, go ahead. As I summarize, I just want to let you know that if you think you want to make a change, but you feel like it's too hard, that's okay. Spend some time just reflecting on “What would help me?”
Whether it’s in business like writing your book, launching your podcast, or having a new team member like a VA on your team, what's going to help you get there? Or in your life if it’s to decorate your home like you want, to get over an addiction, to parent better, just ask yourself that question, “What is going to help?” If you have Dynamic You book, look in the pillar that has the five stages of change, and you can learn more about that. The other thing I want you to know is if you see someone around you changing their behavior for the better, can we please applaud them? Similarly, if you have noticed a difference in me, applaud me and acknowledge it. I have had people at soccer acknowledge me because they know. People at my church, my neighbors, my friends and even acquaintances. It is encouraging, and it is motivating because I look at myself sometimes, and think, “I'm still not where I want to be”. Having that external acknowledgment and feedback is so encouraging. You don't have to say, “Wow, you've lost weight”. You can just say,
Whatever it is, you can say those things, and it's okay. It doesn't have to be a secret, but encouraged. On the flip side, I wish people wouldn’t push things. For example, I went to another event with food that I couldn't have, with alcohol I couldn't have and when I said “No, thanks”, people pushed it on me, “Would you like a piece of cake?” “No, thanks”. “Oh, come on. It's delicious.” “No, thanks. I'm not eating cake.” “Oh, just a little piece? “No, thank you. I am not eating the cake because I’m focusing on losing weight to make my knee better.” Don't make me have to say ”no” so many times. I know some people will say, “No is an answer, you don't have to say more.” But when they're people that are pushing, pushing, pushing, the best thing to stop them is a reason. I am unapologetically saying no to things. I showed up at the potluck with my own chicken thighs because I knew I would not get enough protein and my potluck item was a platter of vegetables, so that I knew I was covered. Be unapologetically yourself. Please be supportive of others because I tell you, this is one of the hardest challenges that I've had to deal with. Even saying yes to it was extremely hard and emotional. Maybe some of this resonates with you regarding your weight, your health, and maybe some of this resonates with you in another area of your life. No matter where it is, I'd love to hear from you. Diane P.S. Are you looking for some common tasks that can be delegated to your virtual assistant? Knowing which tasks to assign to improve efficiency and productivity can be a challenge, especially if you are in the early stages of starting up your business. Grab your copy of “The 229 Tasks You Can Delegate to Your Dynamic VA.” Read my other blogs here:
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Have you been feeling overwhelmed recently? One of the women in my Dynamic Women Global Community asked, “What are some ways to prioritize during overwhelm?” So that is what I’m going to cover today.  What overwhelm could feel like Overwhelm can feel like there's so much on your plate. You don't even know where to focus, where to start, like what's even the point. All you want to do is scroll on your phone or go to sleep. I’ve felt like that at different points in my life, maybe you’ve been feeling:
The issue in these overwhelming times is you can't focus. You’re not going to be able to be at your best to utilize your skills properly. What I'm going to do is share three different ways you can prioritize during overwhelm so that:
First Way: Brain dump You've maybe heard this expression before. I encourage you, if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, do this process. Take a piece of paper, a notepad, or whatever you’ve got, and a pen and write down all the things that you have on your mind. Now, these can be two categories, so make a ‘T’ shape and on the top of the left column, you're going to write “things to do”. On the right side, you're going to write “things on my mind”. The things to do can be obvious that are in your life like:
And some other things to do in your business would be:
 There might be really specific goals or they might be more obscure, and you're not sure how to do them like lose weight, or gain confidence. It’s ok, just write them down. You're not going to judge anything. You can start with two minutes on the clock and just dump everything down that's on your mind around things to do and a whole bunch of things that are on your mind. Maybe they're worrying you, and you have to deal with them or focus on them at some point. You can pause reading this blog and take those 2 minutes (or five minutes, however long it takes) and brain dump. As you're writing these things down, you're not thinking about, “How am I going to do it? When am I going to do it?” The only job you have right now is to write them down. Once that is done, we're going to put that aside because we just wanted to clear our minds. It's like closing all the open tabs when you have a browser open, or quitting all the applications you have running. Second way: Get a bird’s eye view of your life I encourage you to get a bird's eye view, which is a higher view of your life. You're going to do that by using a tool I call the ‘Wheel of Life’. It is a professional coaching tool that I use with my clients. If you want me to help you take you through this, then I can. If you want to have a copy of three simple steps to get ahead or get what you want, just shoot me an email at [email protected]. We do the bird's eye view of your whole life to see your level of satisfaction in each area because when you intuitively answer what your satisfaction is in each area, you’re going to start to see where the problems are, where the dissatisfaction is and then where the lack of alignment is. A lot of times this is really eye-opening for my clients because they don’t realize those areas are high, but other those areas are low. It really helps them to see where the issue really is. You may have lots of stuff to do, but that's not the issue. The issue might come from a lack of satisfaction in your relationship or could be with your health. It could be something else that's causing you to not be able to handle life's tasks or business activities that you normally would do. By the end of doing the wheel of life, you're going to be able to see where the changes need to happen, and then you'll use that awareness to decide, “Okay, if the number is here, where do I want it to be in 6 to 12 months?” That'll help you to know where the difference is between where you are and where you want to be. We're not going to focus on what made it low, but instead focusing on where you want to be, and then see about helping you to get there. Third Way: Going into maintenance mode In order to be able to kind of move forward at this point, we move into the third way, which is going into maintenance mode. I talked about this with clients who have something that's been sprung upon them, like:
In those moments of something coming up surprisingly or it's a busy time in the business, there are lots of things happening, or you're traveling a lot and there are a lot of responsibilities on you. So I encourage you to go into maintenance mode, as a way of just maintaining the basics of where you need to be. You can think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's not just taking care of the basic needs like food, water and shelter, but it's taking care of so many other priorities. You may be like, “What are those?” Well, when you have the Wheel of Life, you can see where the priority is like your Health, family and finances. Then, when you go into maintenance mode, you're also going to go back to your brain dump, and you ask yourself,
For the other pieces, you could delegate, or pass the work off to someone else. I know that when I get super busy and overwhelmed, I look to my two main virtual assistants, Kristine and Karissa. They are just such a blessing for me in my business. I know when I'm overwhelmed, I can pass things off and have them figure it out because a lot of times when I'm overwhelmed, my ability for my brain to compute high-level things is just not there. Delegating is great. Deleting is great. Everything else left that you're not going to reschedule, do later, or put on hold for now, you need to be focusing on just those pieces. Maybe if we look at the Wheel of Life, the most important areas could be your health, your children, your clients, and your business.
We want to think of it as if you were juggling balls, and the balls are the priorities in your life. If you have too many things going on, you're eventually going to drop the balls. The trouble with that is you end up dropping the glass balls, the priorities, the things that really matter.  You start burning the candle at both ends. You're not sleeping as much. Furthermore, you're eating poorly, and your health declines. You get sick, or maybe you have an illness that's been triggered. Maybe you drop a glass ball, which is your clients, and they are angry at you, and then they stop working with you, which means you have an increased stress now trying to bring in more clients. Or another glass ball might be your children, and you know you have to care for them, and you have no one else to support you and you throw them in front of the TV and your relationships are broken or things don't go well for a longer period of time. You have to think, “What are my glass balls?” What are those areas in your Wheel of Life that are super important? Go back to your brain dump. “Which are the things you need to be doing?” Those are the glass balls you want to keep juggling and at the same time letting the rubber balls (the ones that don't matter as much right now, like maybe the clean house, preparing your own meals, you being the one creating social media graphics), pass off, delete, delegate, postpone, push all those aside, or just don't worry about it as much. Those balls can drop and bounce and when you're ready, you can scoop them back up later, but for now, in maintenance mode they’re not as important. Wrapping Up Try the steps I suggest, but if you prefer to go through it with me and/or you want to go deeper that’s when having a conversation would make sense. If you want to do the Wheel of Life to see where your satisfaction is where I can support you and reduce your overwhelm, let's have a discussion. Email me at [email protected]. This question did come from the Dynamic Women Online Facebook community. If you're not a part of it, I invite you to be. I like to jump in there with really great questions that are thought-provoking. Also, some tips and tricks, as well as me doing some live training, plus there are a lot of cool women. I invite you to join that group. It is a free online group for you! Read my other blogs here:
5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark (Part 2)10/11/2023 In my last blog, I share the first two pieces of advice for aspiring female business leaders looking to make their mark. Four of these pieces of advice came from the women in my Dynamic Women Global Community while the last one is from me. Let’s continue! Advice #3 “Look for ways for others to shine in your light. At the core of success is fostering long-lasting connections, be a known collaborator and build strong community!” - Jeanette  In my Dynamic You Program, in order to unleash yourself as a dynamic woman, there are nine pillars and Jeanette actually pulls out three of them: Shine, Collaborate, and Connect. Let's look at each piece. She says, “Look for ways for others to shine in your light.” That means that you yourself are shining and others can glow because of you. I speak of this shining piece as if you're the lighthouse. You're the beacon. You’re calling people in and when they see you're shining, they want to be in your presence because you're positive, uplifting, and energetic. I'm sure you know when you're in those moments with people. When you shine, and then you look for ways to help others to shine, to bring out the best in them and empower others. That is a great way of building group around you of great connections, where when you go up, they go up and vice versa. It's just amazing. It's like being on a sports team, and you support another player to do well. Rather than always taking the ball in soccer and shooting yourself, you pass to someone else. Your ability to make the pass and have them score helps them to shine. Doing this in life and business means they're going to win alongside you. They’ll be grateful you gave them a good pass. It's the same in business. If you want to make your mark, it's not just about making your mark by yourself. It's bringing a group with you. That comes into that next piece around long-lasting connections. At the core of success is fostering long-lasting connections. There are so many ways to connect and have connections with others, but at the heart of it, it's around vulnerability, authenticity, and being in alignment with your values and your core competencies. Then you're going to build these strong connections with people because you're being real, and hopefully, they're being real. The last one is collaborating. In the Dynamic You Program, we talk about 16 different ways to collaborate. You may wonder, “How do you even have 16?” If you have the book, great, you're going to be able to look it up. Working together with others on projects, or cross promotion are a couple examples. Advice #4 “Think outside the box, ensure your creative path works with your personality, principles & goals, seek advice for your weak areas (know your weak areas), and, if something doesn’t work, try a different approach.” - Susan I love that and let me unpack each piece here. Think outside the box. There are so many people that just repeat what others have said, or worse, all their ideas are coming from ChatGPT. It's a great research tool, but if you want to think outside the box, you’ve got to come up with something unique. When Susan says, “Try a different approach”, that's also perspective work. That's the R in SMARTER. We evaluate, and then we redo it, or we reset. It can be like, “Okay, this isn't working, no problem. Let's go and try this way.” One thing that I want to speak on next is she says, “Ensure your creative path works with your personality principles and goals.” That's coming back into the connection piece around being authentic to yourself and your personality principles and goals. If you can continue to be in that way, you'll be in alignment, and you'll have energy. You don't want dissonance. You want resonance. You're going to make your mark because you're going to be so passionate about what you're doing, and people are going to feel that oozing out of you positively. The last piece is to seek advice for your weak areas and of course, first, you need to know your weak areas. Something that I do to know my weak areas is called the 360 Feedback Survey. I have a bunch of questions that I send out to people I trust. It might be people I know really well, might be people I don't know as well, but I still trust their opinion. It can give you an idea of:
 I always have a question in there around the weaknesses so they can point things out to me. What I found in doing this for myself and for my clients is, there's such a cool opportunity here to learn new things about yourself. When I did this earlier on in business and I had some people from Toastmasters and soccer even fill this in because I didn't have a big business network. The response I got was, “Oh Diane, you have presence when you walk in a room”. I was like, “Oh, really? That's kind of cool.” I wonder:
What is it? I got to really dive into that, and it was actually part of what brought about the nine pillars of being a Dynamic Woman. This 360 Feedback Survey is something you send out to maybe 10-15 people. I like to have someone else do it on my behalf, so I do that for clients as well because then I can then filter it for them and give them the insight. Then you can use that for branding, marketing, and for product and service generation, which is really cool. Advice #5 “Say ‘Yes’ before you feel ready and then act.” - Diane Rolston Now, I've had opportunities in my career where I haven't done a corporate keynote, but said, “Yes, I'll do it.” I haven't been knowledgeable about affiliates or even before I did the podcast, I said “Yes”, and then I acted and figured it out after.
 When an opportunity comes, say “Yes”. Put up your hand, as long as it is in alignment with your goals, where you want to be, who you are, your principles and all that. Just say “Yes” because those opportunities might not come again. This can be God's way of pushing you in the right direction. I've had opportunities that I've said no to, and I reflected and thought, “Man, like, why didn't I say Yes”, and the thing was, at the time, maybe I didn't feel ready, and I didn't have the right mindset. But I know that if I have it in alignment with my goals, if I have the right people around me, the right coaches around me, if I can collaborate with other people, and I can try a different approach if it doesn't work right away, kind of the things that Kathy, Paula, Jeanette, and Susan said, I know I'm good. A lot of people have asked me, “Diane how have you had success?” A lot of times it's implementation. I just implement as fast as I possibly can. In the beginning, it was always me doing it, and when I realized that I just can't stay balanced by me doing it all, and I really should be leveraging the skills and the passion of others who are better at other things than I am, and I started to have an assistant in Canada here. Then over the years, other assistants, and then now for the past two and a half years, Kristine and Karissa from the Philippines. It's so much easier for me to say “Yes” because I don't think about how am I going to do it. I've got people I know can support me. If you want to talk about the VA stuff, shoot me a message at [email protected]. I’m happy to talk about how that can work because I do have a team now of 15+ virtual assistants who can support you. Wrapping Up Which of these five pieces of advice are you most excited about? Which of the pieces do you know already but are not actually doing it? I encourage you to just take one little piece of this blog or the last one, save it, re-read it, whatever you need to do so that once you've successfully put that one piece into play, you can pull in another piece. I say there are only five pieces of advice, but each one actually has multiple pieces of advice. A piece of advice is only worth something when you actually put it into play for yourself. Once you do, let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear about it! Read my other blogs:
5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark (Part 1)10/5/2023 In my Dynamic Women Global Community (it’s a free-to-join Facebook group!), I ask some thought-provoking questions, and I get some really amazing answers because I'm not the only one who can give great advice. Most of the ladies that I am sharing their answers with below have been clients of mine and women I know in the community.  What does it mean to make your mark? I see it as “people know you”. That you've left an impression on because you're doing great work in your industry. If you're a leader, then others are looking up to you. Maybe you're implementing some things that are really helpful to your industry. With people knowing you, it's probably because you're a good person as well. There are many ways and pieces of advice that I could have pulled from, but I'm going to pull these four that were given by the women in my community and give mine last to fill in any gaps that were left because these are four really amazing ones. Over this blog and the next one, I will cover: 5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark. As you read through the blog, I hope you're thinking about:
Then get a little bit of a game plan going, so you can leave your mark in your industry, and be the female business leader you're looking to be. Advice #1: “Be intentional to reach your goals that you set each day, week, month, and follow through and if it gets stuck, ask for help. There's a lot of good help and advice out there.” - Kathy Wonderful advice there, Kathy. Let’s first talk about setting goals. We all know that we need to be setting goals. Have you set goals that are SMARTER goals? Are they Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely? Then the ER, are you Evaluating and Reviewing or Resetting those goals? We all know this, but are we actually implementing it? I think that's the key thing. When you set it for a day, week, and month, the cool thing is you actually can break it down into smaller pieces. It feels more manageable. You feel more confident you can actually achieve it, which is kind of a big deal because a lot of times our mindset is going to mess with us and say, “This is too big, I can't do it”. Or you start procrastinating. But when you break it down into daily goals, you can see, “Okay, I meant to read 10 pages of this or watch one video”, and the next day, if you haven't done it, then now you know you have two videos to watch or now you have 20 pages to read. You're going to see when you don't reach that goal and how every day that you don't do something towards it, it compounds and makes you even busier. A way to make sure this is happening is to have some accountability. Kathy says, “If you get stuck, ask for help, there's a lot of good help and advice out there.” Yes, there is, but having some accountability set from the beginning is really helpful. For me, I'm going on a health journey. You may have heard me talk about this before, but I wasn't fully ready, and I'm ready now. When I was thinking, “Okay, I want to be healthier. I want to drop some weight to make my knee function better because of less inflammation and less weight that it's carrying around,” I knew what to do, but was I being accountable for that? No, not at all. Oftentimes, we're not accountable to ourselves. In this case, I hired a coach to help set my meal plans for me. She checks my accountability because I have to log every single meal and every single amount of food I eat. Am I making progress? Oh, yes! (If you want to talk about that separately, just message me. I’m happy to share more about her.) Then mark milestones. Celebrating, “I achieved this! I'm here now! I'm at this point.” Have some sort of way to celebrate your milestones, and then make adjustments as you go. Having coaches, having a group you do it with, and having an accountability partner will be really helpful. Actually, I have multiple coaches. I have a counsellor for my life. I have a coach for my life. I have a business advisor for my foundational business. I have a marketing strategist coach, and I have a marketing-speaking business coach. It's not like if you reach a certain level of success, you don't have coaches anymore. No, you just have more of them, and that's the thing. I can remember reading a quote from Oprah where it said, “When I became successful, I didn't stop having a coach, I had more of them”, and I was like, “Yes!” That gave me permission to have more, too.  Advice #2 “Trust yourself, and importantly not to consider setbacks or mistakes as failure but to embrace the learning as a gift.”- Paula What a fantastic perspective shift here, Paula. Trusting yourself maybe will come a little bit more when you do not like to set yourself up for failure by saying, “If I mess this up, I'm done. I'm no good.” Those mistakes don't change who you are as a person. In the Dynamic Year Program, we actually go back through all the things from the past year. All those disappointments, frustrations, things that didn't go well, and we grab the learning from them. Even those disappointments, the things that you're like, “I’m so embarrassed by that” or “I didn’t reach that goal”.  By grabbing the learning, do you know what the cool thing is? You probably won't do the same thing again. It's not just learning from the mistake, but it's then being able to apply what went well in the positive areas. If you look and go, “Wow, I did these amazing things and this was my learning. I worked well with a team, or I do better when I have accountability, or I really enjoy having a beautiful spreadsheet with colours in it that helps me to do better." Learning, as Paula said, from the mistakes and setbacks, and also learning from the positive things. If you don't have a Dynamic Year Journal yet, please do so. It's going to help you to be able to reflect every week on those learnings because the key problem I hear with people is at the end of the year when they do this, they go, “Ah, I wish I knew this in January when I was making this mistake or having this success, I could have repeated it, or I could have stopped doing it.” Yes, trust yourself. But most importantly, let the things that don't go your way, be okay. In the next blog, I will cover the other 3. Let me know in the comments what you will implement this week! Read my other blogs:
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