In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Janna Macik about her morning routine, handling a busy schedule, giving yourself more grace, realizing your emotions and much more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Janna Macik about her morning routine, handling a busy schedule, giving yourself more grace, realizing your emotions and much more.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, Janna, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?
Janna
Hey, to you. I'm doing fantastic today. So excited to be here with you.
Ryan
Yeah, I'm excited to speak with you. So my audience of Morning Upgraders knows who they're listening to. Let's kick off with you telling everyone you know who you are and what you do for a living, and I think give us a win happening in your life right now.
Janna
Yes, I'm so excited. So my name is Janna Macik, and a little bit about myself. I am a mom of eight kiddos. Okay. So as a busy mom of eight, I also run a business, and my business is advancing globally. I want to help people to relocate from feeling stuck, unhappy, and frustrated into internal land, a new land of empowerment, encouragement, and enthusiasm. And I do so by helping people strengthen their mental fitness. And that's really your capacity to meet life's challenges on a positive now, instead of feeling frustrated and upset.
Ryan
I could have a lot of questions about that. And eight kids. Wow, that's impressive. Three seems impossible. So what about a win happening in your life right now? What's the biggest win?
Janna
A win is I signed up three clients for my new group. I'm running group training for six weeks. So I reached out to some people I knew, and the three of them said yes. So I did a little happy dance this morning. And my kids said, Okay, well, now that you've got the weigh-in, let's go get Chick-fil-A. So I've got Chick-fil-A for all of them for lunch.
Ryan
Two wins. That's excellent. My kids love Chick-fil-A too. Actually, we had it yesterday for them. I never understood that place. I mean, there are always lions like they're giving away gold booleans or something I don't understand. It's chicken. I don't get it. But obviously, they're very popular for a reason.
Janna
My kids love it. So they get a treat once in a while.
Ryan
Good. So what is your morning look like? How do you start off the day?
Janna
Yes, my mornings are usually hectic because I got a different range of ages to get ready for school. And what I find is important for me to integrate is a few moments to myself before I hit that crazy day start. Part of it is a prayer as a Christian, I believe in fellowshipping, with God with my Creator, my Savior. So I would, I would spend some time and just gratefulness expressing thankfulness and happiness that I'm alive today. I'm happy being here on this earth. And then the second part of it is to do a little mental exercise. And that's really centering and feeling your body, noticing what you're noticing in your body, you know, keeping attention to your breath, it really helps you center your brain and give you that self-command or self stamina, mental stamina that then can you can meet the life challenges it's going to come upon, and hey, there's a lot in the morning, there's always someone upset, someone didn't want the breakfast that has served, and they wanted something else or whatnot. I think it's important to have a routine, and you know, sometimes a simple routine helps and goes a long way.
Ryan
What are the ranges of your kids?
Janna
So my oldest is 23. She's a special needs adult, and she stays with us, and she's a phenomenal gift. And then my next oldest is going to be 15 in a month. And then we have two years apart from now. So 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 10 months old. So there's an array of ages and an array of temperaments. So we have four boys and four girls.
Ryan
I like to ask about habits and, you know, trying to pull from the routines and my guests. Just wondering, I'm just thinking, like eight kids, how do you in terms of time management? How do you juggle it all? Like, is there anything you do that's like a process, like a special process that you follow to manage all that coming at you?
Janna
I would say is a process of giving myself grace, embracing that I'm an imperfect human and that I have great capacity and great wisdom at the same time, and I have flaws. So my process is really figuring out the inner game of how I learn to be in the moment, be in the flow, be happy and be present with my children in my family. And that I feel is giving also yourself permission to pivot and adjust. You know, sometimes we set too much of high unreachable expectations for who we want to be, you know, professionally or personally or as parents, and then we beat ourselves down for not meeting those expectations. So you know, I'd say, as a parent, as you're listening or as a professional, maybe aspiring parent, give yourself grace, don't be so harsh on yourself, give yourself some love, you're doing awesome, you're doing great.
Ryan
It takes you a while, personally, to get to that point where you can have grace for yourself.
Janna
It took me a while of self-bidding, it took me a lot of self-defeating, guilt, blame, and then a lot of unhappiness, and then seeing how this all spreads in my life and coming into the person I'd really did not like the mom that I did not want to be, you know, running professionally, I've always in my corporate life been high achiever, got rewards, recognition, and then burn myself so hard, then there was the hardest step, but I just had to say, okay, something's wrong. But it's a lot of times we feel that it is external circumstances that are gonna make us happy, it's externally My husband has to change and, you know, do this and that, or my children have to behave and be this way, or that way to make me happy, or my job or my boss. So my compensation and all of these external things are good and important, but yet, they're not the core of your happiness, your happiness comes from within, and you gotta be intentional to start working on it. So you can have the life that you love. And it comes from within.
Ryan
And it sounds like you're in a much better space now. But obviously, as you said, we're all imperfect human beings. So you run into challenges, you have setbacks, slumps, funks, whatever you want to call it; how do you? How do you personally recover from that when you're in a slump or a funk?
Janna
Yeah, it's a work in progress, Ryan, and I feel as though as you're listening to tune into this today, and you, you know, maybe you had a setback, maybe you had, you know, a challenge and a big mistake, I'd say, give yourself grace, look at yourself, and something that has helped me to get a perspective and I want to share a little story. So here's a little exercise with you could do it, find a picture of yourself or five year old or younger, and look intensely into that beautiful, innocent, amazing person, little by a little child, that who you were, you know, when you were younger, just look at that person, look at the child and see, what are the feelings, the emotions, that that, that that picture that face exudes? You know, for me, it was sassy, fun, joyful, you know, happy exploring. And, as you will, looking at this picture, realize, just feel like you're hugging want to hug this little child, and this child is really you. And realize that all of these things, all of these emotions, all of these fun feelings, they're still in you because that child is you. And love yourself and embrace yourself as that child; we all make mistakes. And we as adults get too harsh, too hard on ourselves. I think as parents, it's easy for us to relate to that. Because we love our children unconditionally, but they also have flaws, and they drive us crazy sometimes. So giving grace to yourself and finding that balance of peace and harmony and feeling centered is so important for us than to extend that to our children and to those who love because if we are internally in turmoil, if we are internally criticizing and judging ourselves and beating ourselves down, I guarantee you're most likely going to come across harsh with the people you love. And it's just not the kind of legacy I believe we can leave behind in our lives.
Ryan
I love the exercise of looking at a picture of yourself when you're five years old; it reminds me of I'm reading a book by Robin Sharma right now called everyday hero manifesto. And I'm gonna butcher it, but basically, in some of the chapters, he just talks about how you know as a little kid like you're saying five years old or whatever age toddler you're full of life you're full of curiosity full of energy, you're full of zest like you say sassiness and but eventually life whether it's through expectations or hard things you've gone through or whatever the case is, you just become you lose all that you know and so but it's like you said still inside you it's just takes intentionality and focus on bringing it back out. Yeah, right for yourself. Like you said.
Janna
Right. Yeah. And we need to reignite that we need to reignite to have more fun and joy in life. I think as adults, we take this adulthood thing too seriously; you know, we rush too much. We try to, you know, do so many things, and you know, try to survive this sometimes is, you know, the hardest sometimes a lot of people are struggling right now, the food on the table, you know, it's tough, but We kind of have to wake up and remember, there is joy in life, let's pray up, find this joy. Let's reignite this joy. And let's create more fun in life, put some joy stuff on your calendar. For me, I was challenged to say, What are the five things that bring you joy? And are they on your calendar? I had to sit and think, to say, Well, what really brings me joy, besides just doing things that I feel I need to be doing for everybody, as a mom, as a spouse, you know, as a business owner? It's it takes intentionality to dig that and to say, Ah, maybe I want to go and just sit in the backyard and look at the squirrels jumping around on the train; it will bring you some joy. And I did that. But put that in your calendar, whether you want it by yourself, or do it with your loved ones, or with your kids. Go do some joy this weekend, and make some joyful moments and memories.
Ryan
Yeah, I love that putting you on your calendar is another great takeaway. I want to hear your perspective on the meaning of life. But I want to go; I want to take a turn and go to business for a second. Because I have to ask you, you run your own business. And you have obviously a very busy household with eight kids, and a lot of them are young. So how do you do it in terms of time management for the entrepreneurs listening? How do you manage your schedule? How do you get your work done with all your other responsibilities? I want to pull some nuggets out of that.
Janna
I say be creative. At one time is important for you to find what's the return of your current life, your citizen, and your household. Okay, because the writing of having teenagers is differently written from having babies, right? So you may want to push yourself so hard. But I say learn how to move from the push, push, push, which is associated with a lot of negative for me, it's anxiety, you know, frustration, guilt, not doing enough move from that state into a state of pooling and uplifting. You know, pull yourself from funk. uplift yourself, encourage yourself, and say, maybe in this season where you are right now. And if you have a newborn or a tiny baby, maybe this isn't where you are right now, business is important, but it is not the most important. And what is most important for you is to really take the best care of yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and take care and enjoy and savor this moment with your little child. And maybe the business needs to be there maintained, but not in the hyper mode growing it. And that's exactly what I did. So I feel it's really, for me, the advice would be to examine an audit and maybe help someone to audit if you have challenges. Sometimes someone from outside can help you, you know, gain a different perspective. So audit where you are in your system, and then say what are your priorities Do you really need to have the priorities that you have in front of you are they truly the priorities in the season of your life, and then do your best schedule things in that area, then also realize that can move around and be flexible, and give yourself consistency that you want in specific areas. And the most, above all, is discipline. And I say as much as we want to apply discipline to growing our business, being present in building our brands online. And you know, finding clients serving clients, is very important. But at the same time, get disciplined to rejuvenate, to pour back into yourself to take those joyful moments to celebrate your wins. I love that you started this podcast with wins. Because we don't do that enough, and the more we do discipline in those areas of our lives, the more we will find ourselves in the flow mode instead of push mode in a mode where you put pulling ourselves up. And as we pull ourselves up, and we are growing and maturing in this way in this balanced way or harmonious way, then we find that we can help others, and we can pull more others more people around us up as well.
Ryan
One of the key takeaways I'm pulling from that is or reminds me of one of the masterminds I'm part of we were talking about work-life balance and is it really possible, and he was saying he looks at it more as I think this kind of resonates with what you said it's not really work-life balance, it's more of a rebalance. So like, maybe your life is your kids need more attention versus your business or vice versa. And it's rebalancing where your focus needs to go based on what's happening in your life. I think that's yes; I like that kind of mindset shift.
Janna
Yeah, so, and I would add a little bit to that is to me, it was balancing is good, and I think it's a good place to start. But then Consider balances. If you're walking on a tightrope, and you have a huge burden in both of your hands and on your shoulders. How easy it is to balance. To me, it's tough to work to balance. So what I heard from this perspective on harmony, you find yourself in harmony, then you learn that. Okay, a quick story. Thermostat versus thermometer, the thermometer measures the temperature and figures out that you have a thermometer within your measuring Where are you are you in a funk? Are you in this push, push, push, go go go? Or you are in a pool and steadiness and harmony. So your thermometer is a measuring where you are. But instead of having a thermometer for yourself, set up a thermostat, and the thermostat is going to be you want to set the set thermostat on peace, joy, flow connection, so set up the thermostat on those emotions that you want to experience. And then anytime it goes down, then you realize, oops, I need to reconfigure it, I need to get back to be in that state to be experiencing those emotions. So the thermostat and your internal awareness can help you realize where you are and then find ways to bring yourself back to where you want to be. And the best way to do that is through mental fitness, mindfulness, and doing some three-centering exercises.
Ryan
I love the thermostat analogy I think that's a reality because it works both ways to a few; you find that sometimes if you're doing too much, and you're out of your comfort zone, sometimes you can self-sabotage without even noticing that even recognizing it, bring you back down to a temperature that's comfortable. So I'm glad you mentioned that, Gianna. So I've got one last question for you. And then we're going to wrap up with you telling everyone how we can get in touch with you if you want to learn more. My last question is, through your lens, okay, and experiences thus far, what is the meaning of life?
Janna
I can give you the answer that is based on my faith. For me, the meaning of my life is to be connected with my Creator God and see that he wants to be one with me and express his love and light and grace and hope and faith as a channel on this earth. So that other people can see that there is much more and much bigger love and light in this dark world. So for me, it's really manifesting what I believe God has created me for in this life, to live the best to my ability to do the best work I can do on this earth to play all these roles that I have in my responsibilities that I have but much more importantly realized that I am the citizen of Heavenly Kingdom. And I have eternity ahead of me. And I think that perspective of eternity gives us a different shift in the way we approach our day-to-day lives.
Ryan
Thanks for sharing, Janna it was a great conversation. I appreciate everything you shared I definitely learned a lot, and for those that want to reach out, where should we send them?
Janna
Absolutely! So, the best place to find me the most active is on LinkedIn it's my first name and last name, Janna Macik. You can type it in the search, and I ask you to connect with me. It let's, you know, lets us cheer each other on this journey, and then you also can find me on my website, it's my first name and last name, jannamacik.com. There are going to be a lot of developments happening there in the next several weeks and months. So come check it out subscribe to my newsletter; and I can't wait to chat with you, converse with you, connect with you, and support you in any way I can.
Ryan
Thanks for your time.
Janna
Thank you, Ryan.
Announcer
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