“Climb the moun­tains and get their good tid­ings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sun­shine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own fresh­ness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” ~ John Muir

Today, it is an honor to share with you another inter­view with one of our reg­u­lar read­ers here at the Jun­gle of Life — Stacey Ship­man, whose blog, Let It Flow, is a source of much inspi­ra­tion in the areas of health, well­ness, and per­sonal growth.  What I par­tic­u­larly like about Stacey is that she is not afraid to express her opin­ion, and often that leaves me with much to think about as I read the words she shares — both in her own blog posts, as well as in her well thought out com­ments she leaves here.  She writes from the heart, and isn’t afraid to open up and really share her­self and her expe­ri­ences.  A recent exam­ple is, Mind vs. Body: Never Give Up and Adven­tures in Rock Climb­ing.  Stop over and check out what she’s talk­ing about!

And with that, please help me in wel­com­ing Stacey here today!

I ask her the tough ques­tions, and Stacey answers them with poise and grace…

1. Tell us a lit­tle bit about who “you” are (fam­ily, career, any spe­cial life expe­ri­ences you’d like to share, etc.)

I am a Mass­a­chu­setts native cur­rently liv­ing 12 miles south of Boston with my hus­band Michael and my two “boys” — Mr. Bob and Habibi (our cats).  I spent 10 years as a mar­ket research pro­fes­sional before leav­ing the cor­po­rate world to start my own “thing”.   I spe­cial­ize in mak­ing stress relief easy and prac­ti­cal.  I still very much use my mar­ket research skills and am grate­ful to have them.

Every expe­ri­ence is an oppor­tu­nity to learn about myself, and some of my most mem­o­rable expe­ri­ences include run­ning marathons in Boston qual­i­fy­ing times, hik­ing and camp­ing in the Grand Canyon, zip lin­ing in the rain for­est of Costa Rica and fire­walk­ing.  Each of those adven­tures helped me develop the belief that I can pretty much do any­thing I put my mind to.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: You’ve had some very excit­ing expe­ri­ences — fire­walk­ing, that one sounds painful!  The Grand Canyon trip — that one’s on my list of things to do.

2. How long have you been blog­ging, and what led you to start writing?

I’ve been blog­ging for almost 2 years, although blog­ging with pur­pose for almost 1.  I started blog­ging to:

1) Increase web pres­ence for my business

2) Get my thoughts out.  I have a lot of infor­ma­tion that can help peo­ple and I wanted to share it.  Now blog­ging helps fuel my pro­grams, speak­ing top­ics and prod­uct ideas.

3. Health and well­ness are a big part of your “story”.  Can you tell us about your journey?

My well­ness jour­ney started in col­lege when I gained the fresh­man 15.  I was shop­ping for jeans one day and the Levi’s sales­woman said to me, “Let me get you a pair of our 550s, they are a lit­tle fuller through the hips.”  I started exer­cis­ing 60 to 90 min­utes, 5 to 7 days a week, and car­ried a calo­rie counter with me. I lost 30 lbs and ended up with mono.  The ill­ness led me to seek out infor­ma­tion so I could more effec­tively man­age my weight and my health.  My pas­sion was born.  I became an aer­o­bics instruc­tor and fit­ness trainer part time and in 2005 became a cer­ti­fied yoga instructor.

The jour­ney hasn’t always been easy or healthy.  With the pas­sion came the obses­sion.  I worked out 2 hours a day, and changed or declined plans in order to fit in a work­out. When faced with fear pro­vok­ing sit­u­a­tions, I exer­cised to avoid it.  Only within the last cou­ple of years did I real­ize this obses­sion was a problem.

I remain active daily and now I am more in tune with the needs of my body.  Some­times I need a run and some­times I need to relax.  That aware­ness has made all the dif­fer­ence in my health and well-being.  My expe­ri­ence cou­pled with edu­ca­tion is the basis for my pas­sion of help­ing oth­ers live life well, bal­anced and less stressed.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: I love your hon­esty here Stacey.  It’s not always easy for any of us.  Hear­ing what oth­ers have been through to get where they are is not only inspi­ra­tional, but gives hope.  Thank you for being so open about the jour­ney you’ve been on.

4. You’ve made the switch from the cor­po­rate world to work­ing for your­self.  What advice would you give some­one look­ing to make this leap?

Based on my own experience:

• Work on your­self first — I needed to fig­ure out where my fear came from
• Get rid of the F word — Fail­ure.  It’s a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, not a failure.
• Be resilient — when you do “fail”, you have to pick your­self up and keep going.  Don’t get stuck in what went “wrong”. Learn from it!
• Have patience — Prob­a­bly the most chal­leng­ing!  We all want imme­di­ate results.  Slow and steady…
• Get sup­port — Even if you are start­ing a busi­ness on your own (like me) there are sup­port net­works avail­able — coach­ing, net­work­ing groups, friends, advi­sory boards.

Bonus:  Be flex­i­ble.  The only thing I know for sure is that change hap­pens.  I am not in the same place I was 3 years ago or doing the same things.  I have done noth­ing but evolve and change — per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally.  Allow it to hap­pen, it’s actu­ally very freeing!

5. One of the things I know you’re pas­sion­ate about is yoga.  In a few sen­tences, can you tell us the real ben­e­fits we can achieve by adding yoga into our well­ness activities?

Yoga is a prac­tice you need to expe­ri­ence your­self to truly under­stand. (5 or 10 min­utes a day is all you need to real­ize ben­e­fits).   That said I’ve expe­ri­enced the fol­low­ing ben­e­fits:  Peace of mind, less stress, less phys­i­cal and emo­tional ten­sion, a more pos­i­tive way of think­ing and liv­ing, a new per­spec­tive, greater con­fi­dence, greater strength and flex­i­bil­ity (both phys­i­cally and mentally).

I’ll be writ­ing more about yoga on my blog because I really believe in the practice.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: Stay tuned to her web­site, Let It Flow, this will be good stuff!

6. What do you see as the real pur­pose of your blog (in other words, why do you write)?

I write because I have some­thing to say and I write with the pur­pose of help­ing peo­ple think in a way they may not be used to.  Whether online or in per­son, I love to chal­lenge peo­ple.  I don’t nec­es­sar­ily want peo­ple to agree with me. I do insist, how­ever on mutual respect, espe­cially when it comes to any differences.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: I recall being chal­lenged by you on more than one occa­sion.  And it’s all good!

7. Tell me one unex­pected thing that has hap­pened because of your blog.

The com­mu­nity of peo­ple I “met”.

8. If you had to pick one thing as your great­est achieve­ment, what would it be (and why)?

I was recently asked about my proud­est moments and I rat­tled off 5!  If I have to choose only one…

The risk I took when I quite my cor­po­rate job and the fact that nearly 3 years later I’m still going strong.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: There is a def­i­nite risk in leav­ing some­thing that is steady, for the unknown of being out on your own.  I com­mend you, Stacey, on mak­ing this leap, and con­grat­u­late you on the suc­cess you’ve expe­ri­enced.  This is a great exam­ple to all of us on what is pos­si­ble if we believe in ourselves!

9. You’ve done sev­eral pieces of work using both audio and video.  Can you tell us about this, it’s ben­e­fits, and what you’ve learned along the way?

• My ulti­mate goal is to be a media per­son­al­ity — TV or radio — I enjoy both!
• Allows me to share infor­ma­tion to a wider audi­ence.  I espe­cially love inter­view­ing other people.
• Nice sup­ple­ment to my writ­ing and serve as a great cre­ative outlet.
• Great way to make busi­ness and pro­fes­sional con­tacts.  Look­ing for­ward to shar­ing more with a new web­site in 2009.
• Great busi­ness mar­ket­ing tool allow­ing you to show­case your exper­tise and abil­i­ties as a prac­ti­tioner, speaker, etc.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: Once you’re famous and have your own national TV show, remem­ber you got your start right here!!  Okay, on a more seri­ous note, you are dream­ing big.  And what bet­ter way to achieve what you really want than to dream it, and then share it with oth­ers.  Go Stacey!

10. It’s good to sep­a­rate from work — and do other activ­i­ties.  What are your out­lets?  What do these other activ­i­ties add to your life?

I feel for­tu­nate that I love well­ness — as work and as a per­sonal activ­ity, but well­ness aside.…

I love jig­saw puz­zles, watch­ing Will Fer­rell movies (affin­ity for Old School!), Latin and belly danc­ing, rock climb­ing, cook­ing, adven­ture travel, spend­ing time at the arcade with my niece and nephew, and more recently tak­ing stand up com­edy classes.

My favorite activ­ity is sit­ting on the deck or by the fire (depend­ing on the sea­son) sip­ping a glass of wine and have great con­ver­sa­tion with my hus­band, Michael.  Or kick­ing his butt in back­yard badminton!

Lance’s Com­men­tary: The next time we’re in Boston, I’m com­ing over!  Since my wife likes to “beat” me at all things sports (my claim is that I let her win, but maybe that’s an exag­ger­a­tion) — we’ll play men vs. women dou­bles bad­minton — that way I’ll have some­one to com­mis­er­ate with!  And we can close with a good Will Fer­rell movie — I’m think­ing “Kick­ing and Scream­ing”… which I might be doing after the bad­minton tour­na­ment!

Clos­ing Thoughts: Stacey, it’s been a plea­sure hav­ing you here today.  You did fab­u­lous, and it’s been great to get to know you bet­ter!  You are a real source of inspi­ra­tion, have a heart of gold, and have been a great addi­tion to the won­der­ful com­mu­nity we have here.  Thank you, again, for shar­ing your­self with all of us!