Damianne President: [02:10] One of the big reasons I wanted to talk to you today is because you have had such an amazing transformation journey with your health, your work, your family. When did this transformation start?

Diane Randall: [02:24] Oh, my, this transformation started I’d say almost two and a half decades ago when I was probably in my late twenties a single, divorced mom. I started having health issues, high blood pressure and high stress trying to balance life with two children, divorce, and a career.

What I recognized fairly quickly was that my success in my career was not going to sustain me. And the question was, how do I figure out how to take care of myself, be a mom, have a career and stay healthy at the same time. At the time, there weren’t podcasts where you could pick a show to listen to are a lot of easy access, focused magazines on health or workshops.

So it just took a lot of figuring out what I needed to do, what did health and wellness mean to me, and then finding those resources so that I could be more healthy because at the time I had no idea what it really meant. I thought I was healthy. I thought I was eating healthy and the stress was just not having any tools to really balance my life, tools like yoga, meditation. I knew how to walk and do exercise, but I didn’t even know about whole life wellness for the mind, the body and the spirit. That took a lot of soul searching, education and figuring out what is going to support me in my life as it existed at the time.

Damianne President: [04:05] How did you decide on what to do first?

Diane Randall: [04:08] I really just looked at the first thing I needed to do was relieve the stress in my life because that was causing high blood pressure. So beyond going to the doctor and just getting recommendations, I felt the stress was the most important thing that I needed to balance because my health was being affected and I was fairly young at the time.

I had stress overwhelming my life. At the time I had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and the doctor kept saying, you need to make some changes. I was afraid that if I didn’t take care of myself or figure it out, I was going to have a heart attack or stroke.

I read a lot of books at the time, and then I started meeting people that could support me. I started yoga. I started doing things to help release the stress and I started learning how to eat. What is healthy food? I really thought I knew, but I really didn’t. I was a technology consultant.

Damianne President: [05:08] Yeah, I read that you were you an SAP consultant, right?

Diane Randall: [05:12] Yes.

Damianne President: [05:12] So lots of people recognize that there’s something that they don’t like in their life, or they recognize that something needs to change, but then actually making those changes that sustain over time, that we don’t regress, is the challenging part. How did you make sure that you continue to make progress on your journey and that you maintain that the progress that you made?

Diane Randall: [05:40] Well For me, I started feeling better. I noticed changes in a good way and it was a process. It wasn’t like, Oh my God, I took this pill and I felt better, but I felt my life getting better. I felt better physically. I felt lighter mentally. I kept going for more because I felt good, I felt better. I felt like I was on to something. So that led me to eating better. I started sharing the information with others. So it just started very slowly with the health. And along the way, fast forward, 15 years later, I’m plant-based and I never dreamed in a million years that I would be plant-based and vegan for the animals. Never, ever saw that coming. But what I realized, when you set an intention on goals for yourself, whether their health goals or just feeling better, you have no idea what might change. So for me, the better I felt, the more I kept wanting more and more and more of what was this big thing called healthy lifestyle.

It it’s really been a journey. It’s a journey. It really is.

Damianne President: [06:59] Once you started making changes and you started seeing progress, were there any things that stood in your way or that made it difficult to continue to make those changes?

Diane Randall: [07:09] Of course it’s always been a challenge. I was a single mom with two children. finding the time, time management, working a lot and how do I fit that in? So along the way, I learned how to take the time I did have and incorporate something healthy, like maybe I have 10 minutes that day, or at that moment I can walk for 10 minutes. I can just sit in silence for 10 minutes. I can just listen to some soft music on the radio, just some nice music to bring the stress levels down, for example. So time had been the biggest thing. And then I reassessed my priorities as my life changed, as my kids grew up. 

I learned how to make changes. So let’s say they were in high school, I had more time. So it was just setting intention and being focused on goals that could and support me in being a healthier person.

Damianne President: [08:12] I think one struggle for many people, and definitely for myself, is waiting for perfect, like, I will do this when I have more time. I will do this when I’m no longer studying or when the kids are out of the home. We can get into the habits of putting things off. It sounds like you were really good at using what you had in terms of time and resources and saying, what can I do with what I have to make progress?

Diane Randall: [08:41] Because at that time, I knew there that that time would never come. So in my mind, I felt I had to seize the moment whenever it presented itself. That’s just how I felt my life was at the time. I had these kids 27/7. If I’m working and I come home, I have to take care of my children. So if I had 15 or 20 minutes, I would just focus on something for myself. I literally had to build that in and it changed as they got older, as my career changed. They’re grown now, they’re adults, so I still make time for it. I got so used to it and good at just taking the minutes in a time that I do have and making the best of it.

Damianne President: [09:23] When you think about the journey that you’ve taken, what were the milestones that you can identify along the way? And what did you learn that you still use today?

Diane Randall: [09:34] What I learned was that I can’t put things off. Now is all I have. I have to make the best of my time now. That’s the biggest thing I learned. I also learned that I don’t have to be perfect; there’s no such thing as perfection. As a matter of fact, I always use the term imperfectly perfect and knowing that and accepting that I make mistakes, I don’t always do the right thing, I’m not perfect. 

Sometimes I don’t feel like working out. I don’t feel like, you know, just staying so focused on what I’m eating and I’ve learned to take thinking out of the equation and recognize instead progress is am I moving? Am I on a path to feeling better? Some of the milestones are, yes, I’m feeling better. For example, when I became plant-based, I didn’t worry about losing weight; that wasn’t the focus, but guess what, it happened. I think that’s how I’ve been successful because it’s my definition of success and it’s those small, small, small steps along the way.

So if I just look at the whole week, for example, and I’ve worked out the whole hour, that’s a milestone. That’s a goal. And I think for people, your listeners, it’s taking the guilt out of the equation and the pressure to be perfect and do everything a certain way, the way that the commercials tell us we should do it. And I took some of the noise out of my life. I really cut down on social media. I’m not a big social media celebrity wanting to know everything about everybody else’s life.

What I’ve done over the years is I’m focused on my life and the people that I love and the people that I’m sharing with, because that keeps you focused too. And not go into comparing what I’m doing versus what you’re doing. It’s creating what’s going to work best for me in the long run and educate myself, reading, attending workshops, listening to podcasts like yours, making choices every day, myself.

Damianne President: [11:50] This connects right into the whole idea of self acceptance. And you write eloquently about the importance of loving ourselves. How do you define self acceptance?

Diane Randall: [12:01] How I define self-acceptance is looking in the mirror and learning to love the person that’s reflecting back, acknowledging that I’m not perfect. And I say this all the time. It’s also knowing that there’s no shame, there’s no guilt.

It’s learning how to release all those things that, make me feel bad about myself. We grow up with a lot of labels and issues that are accumulated throughout life. And it’s asking myself, how do I release them, not all of them, but the ones that I have really attached to myself that I believe for one reason or another, whether it’s getting some help and resources to really examine those things that I say about myself, being courageous enough to walk through all those things that I have accumulated in my mind. That’s where the shame comes from. 

Looking in the mirror and reciting affirmations about who I am. It’s learning who am I, but just accepting myself from the inside out as imperfect as I am. And those places that I feel aren’t developed or that I need to release, it’s really being honest with yourself about, okay, do I need to learn something? Do I need help to get rid of this childhood trauma that’s blocking me from really loving myself. It’s going in and being honest about those things that are in the way, that are barriers to me feeling love towards myself and forgiving myself for anything that I feel I have not done, or I did do in the past. And it’s letting go of the past, which is the biggest thing for all of us, holding onto things.

One of the things I say the past takes up a lot of space in the present sometimes. It’s how can you figure out how to look and go and focus on the present, what we have right now? Because if you can let that past go, there’s nothing there. You recognize that. Some people they’ll say, well, it’s a lot back there. But now is what you have. 

Damianne President: [14:19] So how do we leave the past in the back there because I think that’s the challenge for most of us. How do we leave the past in the past and come to the present? 

Diane Randall: [14:28] The first thing is acknowledge whatever that is in the past that’s really present with you. We all have those things. Nobody gets out of childhood without something. So it’s examining those things that I am carrying forward that are manifested in different ways in my present life. I’ve had to get help to figure out what exactly are we talking about, you know, those issues that are manifesting in my present, getting help to really identify and walking through that trauma that is still in me from my past. Getting help and being honest, honest and authentic about how I’m feeling.

A lot of times we’ll hold it because we can go on. How effective and efficient it is, that’s beside the point because we all can be successful and still have those issues in the background. But it’s really being honest about what’s going on and how do we clear that? How do we clear the past from our present. You can’t do that without walking through all the upsets around it, everything that’s coming up around that everything. And it’s a process. It’s a process.

 I’ve done a lot of personal work on that. I lost a sister when I was 19 years old and not even realizing what I was carrying in my life. I think a lot of it is unconscious, but recognizing, you know, why am I so sad? Why am I so depressed? But not even realizing what the source is from that. But at least being willing to explore those things that may be in the background and just being honest about what that’s bringing up, it’s walking through those things.

 Damianne President: [16:22] I guess it’s different for everybody, how they need to move on from the past, how they can find themselves to the present. 

Diane Randall: [16:29] It’s different for everyone. You may not know, and that’s why I say it’s good to reach out to someone in mental health or mindfulness to help you figure out what’s going on inside, because sometimes we really don’t know what it is. For me, for example, it’s being triggered by something that upset me in the past that reminded me of my sister or something like that; that would be upsetting. So it’s really working with someone to go in and say, what is this about? What is so upsetting? 

And what I learned was I have not dealt with that past. I had not acknowledged how I really felt about my sister passing. And it’s revisiting those things. In this instance, it’s not simple, and talking through what that felt like, my true authentic thoughts about my sister passing away. I didn’t get closure, a lot of stuff came up. Once I started talking about it was just as real as in the past. But what I can tell you today is over time, I don’t carry that anymore. Along the way I released it by just being honest about my feelings and really acknowledging how I felt about her passing away at such a young age. So I felt lighter because I felt I was releasing my own childhood trauma or whatever I had in my past. And I just started feeling lighter and happy and feeling joy and just feeling things that I had never felt before. Just being able to feel loved, feeling lovable. In the past, I guess I didn’t even think about it. I’d say I didn’t know what it really was.

Damianne President: [18:21] It sounds like it’s really about recognizing what have we carried with us from the past in order to be able to heal those spaces, to be able to move on without that trauma and pain and the blockages to some extent,

Diane Randall: [18:38] That, and a lot of times we get triggered by other people, sometimes, a look, something they say can bring up something in us. And another thing is examining those things as well. Why am I so upset about what she just said?

Damianne President: [18:54] Right. We can follow the breadcrumbs to see what’s going on.

Diane Randall: [18:59] Follow the breadcrumbs, because that is a clue into what we may be feeling or experiencing to our past. And lot of times we don’t even know what’s our past. Once you become aware, once you understand, it’s just staying with that and just kinda thinking about that, what is it? And sometimes you’d be surprised that it’s really not about that other person.

Damianne President: [19:22] Probably most of the time.

Diane Randall: [19:25] Yeah, It’s like what’s going on here. I remember practicing that and wow, it’s so incredible that when you look at yourself from the inside out, you start getting answers. You start getting answers.

Damianne President: [19:37] I remember listening to this podcast and the woman said, if you’re mad at somebody they’re not making, you’re mad, you’re making yourself mad. And I was like, what? My initial reaction was, what do you mean? And then over time learning more about this space and listening to her podcast, then I’m like, Oh, there may be reasons that I feel the way that I feel and of course it’s in interaction with all the people, but I’m still telling myself a story that leads to how I respond. And if I tweak that story, then I can respond in some other way, even though the situation is the same. So the context we add, the details we add, our reflection of the situation really impacts how we respond to it.

Diane Randall: [20:31] That’s right.

Damianne President: [20:32] So that was very revealing for me.

Diane Randall: [20:35] And the time we spend listening to the noise in our heads, you know, about a certain situation and what I’ll never forget, I was really young, Byron Katie who’s been a spiritual teacher forever. She said that you don’t have to believe every thought that comes into your head.

And that blew my mind. I just said what? What do you mean? But that started a journey. That started something for me because yes, I can hear those things that come up, but I don’t have to believe them. I can even shift the story and I love how Byron takes you through four steps. Is it true? You know, what proof do you have examining that extra noise that comes up instead of believing it and flying off and going with it and going with it? It’s really analyzing that self-talk because self-talk is with us, it’s our mind, but we don’t have to listen to the things that come up and sometimes something crazy comes up, it’ll pass. It really will pass. 

 Damianne President: [21:50] What are some of the crazy things that come up that try to slow down your progress?

Diane Randall: [21:56] For example, working out. I still go through this. I’ll wake up knowing that, you know, I’m going to work out and I swear to you, I will talk myself in and out of it in probably an hour. And then I’ll push it aside. I still do that. It’s common for me to still do that. It’s like you worked out yesterday, you know, you can take a day off and sometimes I just have to push past it or sometimes, you know, I listen. And another thing is when someone says something, I don’t have to believe what they’re saying about it. 

I’ll start going down that path and the beautiful thing is I can catch myself now. But I will start that initial feeling but the beautiful thing now is I catch it. I don’t believe it, I catch it. But sometimes, you know, in the moment you’re working, you’re talking and that may have been something that would have really triggered me in the past, but now I’ll experience it and I don’t even have to respond to it cause it’ll it’ll go away, but it will start. I do feel that sometimes. And I don’t know if that’ll ever go away, but probably the things that really used to get me going.

Damianne President: [23:12] What about the working out one? How do you decide when to give in, when to push through?

Diane Randall: [23:17] I don’t have a special thing. Most of the time, I can push pass, but sometimes I won’t. But I’m very consistent with it. Now I have tools like a watch that I have so many minutes a week that I do. And if I don’t do it that day, it’s okay. Because guess what? As long as I accumulate my goal by the end of the week, that’s good. So I will get to my goal. So the tools help. The tools really help.

Damianne President: [23:48] What other tools do you find to be helpful? 

Diane Randall: [23:52] Just having to watch for structure to see the data, so that even if I’m in my life and not wanting to get up to work out, it’s like, okay, I still have two days to get there or one day. I realized for me, I need that kind structure.

Damianne President: [24:11] It sounds like you can think about the overall goal and this moment, I can choose what I’m going to do this moment, but I know I’m going to get my goal done within the span of time that I’ve given myself.

Diane Randall: [24:22] That’s how I operate.

Damianne President: [24:24] And so, if you get to the end of the week and it’s your life day, it’s getting done that day. Is that basically how it works?

Diane Randall: [24:29] It’s getting done that day. Yes. And I have four to five days that I work out, but I don’t put the pressure on me that it has to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Sometimes I do five days.

Damianne President: [24:41] It sounds like that works for you.

Diane Randall: [24:43] It really works for me cause I’m not good with a lot of rules and I need that flexibility, but I do stay in tune with my overall goals and I break them down into as many steps as I need to be successful. And I don’t look, I just keep doing the small steps. I know if I do four or five days, I got my goal but I don’t put pressure on myself to do one thing or another cause that’s where things didn’t work out in the past for me.

Damianne President: [25:12] It sounds like you really know yourself well, and that’s an important thing too. Gretchen Rubin talks about the four tendencies, where if you’re a rebel or not, the methodologies that will work for you, it sounds like you might be a little bit of a rebel.

Diane Randall: [25:28] I’m a little rebel, yeah. It’s absolutely true. What’s so beautiful is over the years I discovered what works for me. I discovered what wellness means to me. I discovered how to accept myself and love myself for who I am. It wasn’t always this way, when I was younger, but it’s part of the journey and it’s a process and one more important thing and not letting others define what that is. You should do this. You should do that. Or I want to look like that person. It’s letting go of all those false illusions that have nothing to do with me, and really tuning in and knowing that I matter. What I feel about myself matters, and it’s letting go of the notion that what I do, everybody else has to approve of it. That’s a big one. 

Damianne President: [26:24] The people pleaser, the desire for people pleasing. 

Diane Randall: [26:25] That’s right. That’s right. And especially letting that go.

Damianne President: [26:32] That’s a losing proposition for sure because impossible to please everybody. 

Diane Randall: [26:38] Well, and that’s why I want to show up for my clients. I wanted to do my best. If I’m helping you, I want to really show up and help you. But what I learned is if I’m not showing up for me, I really can’t help you in a big way. I have to put myself first, not in a selfish way, but in a self honoring way.

That’s another thing, learning that it’s not selfish to focus on myself, self-honoring and really embracing that.

Damianne President: [27:05] That’s really a great mind shift because often we get called selfish when we try to what’s right for us. 

Diane Randall: [27:13] And I believe society plays a big part in that. You know, we always look outward, not inward, look, outward, look outward. You’re not enough. You’re fat. You’re skinny. Buy these products, do all this. We have those constant messages of that. So I’ve learned how to take some of the noise out. I don’t watch a lot of TV. The beautiful thing is you can stream your release and be done with it. So consciously and intentionally, I leave a lot of that out. I don’t pay as much attention to the commercials as I used to but just listening to them, you get those subliminal messages. So I really try to keep a lot of that out as much as possible. And I feel all that has really helped.

When did you realize that you’re living the life that you envisioned.

Oh, when I felt more happiness and joy than pain and sorrow, and when I got a career that didn’t feel so hard anymore. I think there’s a building phase, there’s a getting to know phase, but when life just felt easier, even with the challenges. Yes, it’s challenging. This thing is happening, but it doesn’t feel as bad as it used to when it would come up. That’s always been an indication that my life is getting better is that when I get a challenge, even if it’s a challenge I had a long time ago and it comes up again, it really doesn’t feel inside as bad as it did 10 years ago. It probably felt like the end of my life 10 years ago, but today it’s just something that’s happening and I need to find a solution. That’s when I knew that that life was getting better, when I didn’t have all the emotions going in one thing that’s showing up in a challenging way. Now I just live.

Damianne President: [29:03] And as you talk about now just living, then what I also want to know is how do you make sure that you stay on that path, that you remain in a place where you continue to live the life that you want.

Diane Randall: [29:15] It’s staying in my work, supporting people on their wellness journey. I teach college self-improvement courses, health and wellness courses that I design. I tune into my favorite spiritual, health, wellness teachers. And I surround myself with people that are on their own journey and that supports me. I can learn from them. They learn from me. But really it’s the people I meet along the way that come to me for support. They’re like a mirror in my face that keeps me true to myself so that I can be true to them.

Damianne President: [29:52] Yes, that’s a really good point because if you’re reflecting, then you continue to see where you are and you can make sure that you are in a good place for self acceptance and journey that you want to be traveling.

That’s right. And learning what does that mean to me, not your definition, but what does it mean to me? And knowing that it’s no one fit all solution or no place you have to be. It’s really starting where you are, right where you are.

 That’s a good place to mention that if listeners visit your website, dianerandallconsults.com, there are three complimentary wellness assessments that are very helpful. They’re do I know me, stress coping skills, and right life balance. And those three are really great for helping people get to know themselves better because a big theme in your work and from our conversation today is that people have to find what’s right for them, that it’s not a universal solution.

 Diane Randall: [30:57] Right. You are so correct. Yes. Yes.

Damianne President: [31:00] Having said that, are there habits that can help people benefit from at least exploring the commitment they have to living life on purpose and creating a rewarding life.

Diane Randall: [31:15] Well, one of the habits, and this is an easy habit, is looking at where you might want to be. A lot of us have a vision, whether we have made choices to make it real or not, but it’s identifying those things that you want to create in your life. And it’s also looking at those things you wanna create and aligning the choices you make on a daily basis that you want for yourself. So every day, what did I do? What’s one small thing I did to create what I want for myself, one thing, even if it’s making a phone call.

 Let’s say I want to move to another country; it’s a goal down the road, but did I do some research today? Let me start my research on what that would look like. One thing. And then collectively over time, you look at everything you’ve done, and at some point you realize the time is right to make this move. Your choices make up your life. So if you want to change something, then you work for that one thing.

Damianne President: [32:28] If somebody’s listening, and there might be people who are listening who are thinking I don’t know what I want. Your assessments will help with that. But also, do you have any other invitation or challenge for listeners to help them with living the life that they want?

Diane Randall: [32:44] It’s sitting with yourself in complete silence away from the noise, maybe on a park bench but someplace really quiet, no radio, no phone to distract you, but just really sitting with yourself in silence. I feel that today I get all my answers from silence, from just no extra noise in my head. For example, I said, I want another master’s, but I don’t want a traditional master’s.

And I knew I didn’t want the traditional master’s so I just said that and I didn’t try to research it or anything cause I had no idea what that’d looked like. Fast forward a year or two down the road, I saw a speaker, she mentioned a college and that resonated with me. Next thing I know I’m in the program where I’m flying from Chicago to Santa Monica, California to get this master’s. So I feel that you can realize what you want, but you can just sit still with it as well to get the answer. That’s not a challenge. That’s just being quiet and allowing what’s true to come forward.

Damianne President: [33:54] So it really sounds like slowing down and you say it’s not a challenge, but it is a challenge for many of us to slow down, to be quiet.

Diane Randall: [34:04] You know, I’ve taken it so far before COVID I would go to silent retreats for four days. I never imagined that I could be quiet for four days, but I love it. So what I’m saying is, my point is once you practice, it’s a practice. Maybe you last for 10 minutes, but the next time you come back and maybe it’s 15 minutes or maybe it’s 10 minutes for six months, and then it’s five minutes. It’s a practice. It’s a practice.

Damianne President: [34:35] Let’s end with five quick questions. So each question you may answer with one word or one sentence.

 You have a high power meeting coming up. What are you doing the 12 hours before that meeting?

Diane Randall: [34:52] I’ll say for six of those hours, nothing toward the meeting, but for the other six, I’m starting to process how to prepare for that meeting and what I need to do.

Damianne President: [35:02] Do you have a phrase or a pep talk that you give yourself for motivation?

Diane Randall: [35:07] What I say for myself when it’s something really important is I want to show up in the highest light. I want to show up 150% today to support this client in doing their best work.

Damianne President: [35:28] Where do you live, and if you are having guests, what is the first thing that you show them or the first place you take them to?

Diane Randall: [35:36] When I’m having guests, I don’t build a script. What I like to do, we may go to a nice restaurant or to a play, but I don’t have to plan a whole lot.

Damianne President: [35:44] Which city are you living in? 

Diane Randall: [35:48] Chicago, Illinois.

Damianne President: [35:49] What’s the thing that’s guaranteed. to recharge you and increase your energy.

Diane Randall: [35:54] What recharges my energy is when I laugh.

Damianne President: [35:59] I love it. And the last question is you’ve been given the gift of time. So you have a free day for some time affluence. What are you doing with your free day?

Diane Randall: [36:10] I’m going hiking. I’m going to be out in nature. 

Damianne President: [36:13] And because you mentioned earlier favorite teachers, do you have any book recommendations or any media, podcasts, movies, anything that you would like to recommend to listeners 

Diane Randall: [36:24] Well, I have a book called Jumpstart Your Life: Finding Your Motivation to Change your Life One Step at a Time. And it’s actually all the things I’ve learned and what we’ve talked about, to some extent, to actually lead to the life you really want for yourself. 

Damianne President: [36:46] Wonderful. And I’ll definitely add a link to the book and to your podcast. You have a podcast Balanced Living for Busy Professionals. People can find the links to both of those in the show notes.

That you so much for chatting with me