Work Besties Who Podcast
Building a bold community of work besties 💼👯♀️ to bond 🤝💞, banter 😂🎉, and bloom 🌸✨
🎙️ Listen to the Work Besties Who Podcast: where workplace friendships get real! From tea spills to relatable laughs, we’re unpacking everything about work life's ups, downs, and unforgettable moments.
✨ Join us for candid chats, relatable stories, and a sprinkle of chaos—because what’s work without a little drama and a lot of fun?
💼😄 Hit play, and let’s dive into the messy magic of workplace connections together!
Work Besties:-)
Work Besties Who Podcast
Finding Purpose Through Adversity with Heather Stewart Life Coach
This week, Jess and Claude sit down with the incredible Heather Stewart, a former high-flying CPA turned life coach, who gets real about what it took to walk away from a corporate life that was slowly burning her out.
Heather shares how she hit pause on the chaos, learned to put herself first (for real this time), and now helps others do the same. This is the self-care convo your inner people-pleaser really needs to hear.
From breaking generational patterns of self-sacrifice to getting comfortable asking for help, Heather gives us permission to stop surviving and start thriving. Think of this episode as a warm hug with a gentle push to start putting yourself on the damn priority list.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why hitting rock bottom can be the start of something beautiful
- How to navigate overwhelm when life feels like too much
- The power of small steps (and why they matter more than you think)
- Generational beliefs around self-worth and sacrifice
- How changing your mindset can ripple out and change your community
- Why asking for help is a flex, not a failure
If you've ever thought, “I just need to get through this week,” this one’s for you.
Let’s keep the convo going — DM us your favorite takeaway @workbestieswhopodcast on IG or drop a review if Heather gave you a needed wake-up call
Contact Heather Stewart - https://heatherstewart.coach/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/heatherstewartcoaching/
FB - https://www.facebook.com/heatherstewartcoaches
YT - https://www.youtube.com/@HeatherStewartCoaching
You can watch the full episode on Youtube
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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband
Do you ever feel like you're constantly giving but yet never fulfilled? What if the key to more, more energy, more joy, more purpose was actually putting yourself first? Today, Heather Stewart shares the one mind shift that will change everything and, trust us, you'll want to stay to the end to hear what our final question is, because it might just be the wake up call you need.
Claude:Hi, I'm Claude and I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night and work besties for life.
Jess:Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos and thrive together in every industry Work besties. So hello and welcome to Work Besties, heather. We're so excited to have you.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Hey, this is going to be fun. I already know we're going to have an excellent time. Learn a lot as well.
Jess:Yes, yes, learn a lot. So, heather Claude and I have done a little bit of our own investigations of you, because you have a very impressive podcast of your own, and we noticed that you yourself have this very prominent ability to really help women who feel stuck in life. So I'm curious. I imagine that this journey of yours must come from something personal, perhaps. I'm wondering if you could share the story about how you got involved in this.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:I wonder if you could share the story about how you got involved in this Absolutely, and it's funny because I think that in my years and I used to do a lot of coaching of coaches that everybody will come. The things that they come to, that they flourish at, are the things they had to overcome themselves, which is like a perfect person to learn from right, because they're like well, they figured some stuff out and it doesn't mean that the exact steps work for you, but they might have some insights. So I did originally what people were supposed to do. You know the. You follow the path that is the success as defined by the world outside of us. So I went to university, I got my degree, I became a CPA, I did all the things. I worked for a big company, I balanced billion dollar budgets and I had the house in the suburbs. I could sit at a desk 12 hours a day, about seven days a week, and I still wouldn't have been done all of the things that I always needed to do. And a few things happened. This vice president that I was friends with one day said to me have you tried yoga? And I said oh, I've heard that's really good for stress reduction. I'm an accountant, what do I know. So he invited me to go and try yoga at his yoga studio and then, being the overachiever that I was, I was like I'm going to be the best yogi ever. It's like I'm going to go and de-stress five days a week and I'm going to blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to get a yoga butt.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:And one day I was driving from the office to yoga and I'm in a hurry because I've got to get to yoga, to de-stress, and I'm driving through this very busy intersection to rush hour and there's a lady crossing the road in front of me and I'm like what the blah, blah, blah, bleep it all out and are you trying to get killed? And I looked up and my light was red and I was just like my God, I almost killed this woman. I'm driving through the red light and I'm looking in and those people almost killed me because the cars are coming from both directions. So I was like, oh, okay, this was the first time I'd gotten a big wake up call from the universe. Well, the first big one. I was like wow.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So a little while after that I was in my office and I was trying to balance this budget and I have the radio on behind me and I'm trying to find. This sounds ridiculous. I'm trying to find another million dollars. So, moving things around, trying to find a million dollars, and the radio was on and we were publicly traded, but the man who owned the majority of the shares the radio came on and said how much he was worth. And this voice in my head said this is BS. This man does not need another million dollars. Why am I doing this? And I kind of went. I don't know why I'm doing this.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So I mean, it wasn't instant, overnight, that you know, I ran a red light and then I quit my job. But that, I feel like, was the beginning of me starting to pay attention to my health, my stress levels, what my life was structured like. I just had this realization. It was like this isn't what I want. This wasn't what I wanted when I was a little kid. I needed more space to be able to step into that kind of life.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So the final job that I was in was a special project and it was like the timing was perfect. It was coming to an end and the next step was going to be to start running that division and I was going to probably be the controller. I mean, I shouldn't say they were definitely going to make me the controller, but I had been there from the beginning and I was talking to one of my colleagues. I said you know, I don't want another promotion. She started laughing and she's like why? So? Well, yeah, it's money, it's recognition, it's climbing the corporate ladder, but the currency that I want is time, and it's going to take more of it and I don't have any more time for them.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So I, as it was coming to an end, I went to my boss and I said I'm quitting. He said you seemed a bit disengaged the last few months. I said well, you know, yes, and we had a nice conversation. He was a really nice guy and I quit my job and I got divorced and I sold my house and I went to India. I promised my grandmother, who was alive at the time, that I would come back for Christmas. So I was gone for three months and no agenda, no plan.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Did you know anyone there? No, but interestingly, I took a yoga person with me who I had met in yoga classes, because, talk about the universe, it was a he. Well, he still is a he. He was working in a job and he was about to take a leave of absence because he wanted to go back to India, because he had been there once. One day in yoga, I said, can we just have coffee and can you kind of like give me the lay of the land if I just pick up and go? So he remember photo albums. He brought a photo album with him to show me pictures, tell me about his trip. And I told him what my plan was. He's like shut up. I'm like what he said. I'm taking a leave of absence from work and I'm going to India, and I'm like shut up. So we went together, yeah, and we're about to have our 20th wedding anniversary this summer.
Claude:To us.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:What a magical story Right, it was not planned. It was just kind of like the universe went oh, here's someone to go with you.
Jess:And, by the way, it's your soulmate.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:But don't worry about that till later. That's very fascinating. So you packed up, went to india. What was your intent while you were there? What were you thinking? I wanted some time away from everything, like everything here. You know canada I'm in canada, cities, family you need. I just wanted what made me happy and what made me excited and what I wanted to do without stepping out of the everyday. I'm a kind of go all in kind of person, obviously. So I said well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all in and I'm going to go to a country where nobody can find me. And when I came back, just really briefly, I started teaching yoga. I opened my own yoga studio. But I also went back to school for two years, because where I am, it takes two years of school to become a massage therapist. So I became a massage therapist.
Jess:How did you get from being a massage therapist then into life coaching?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So it's kind of funny because I was teaching yoga, I also became a personal trainer and I'm doing massage therapy. When I first started, I was working in a clinic and they knew my old life, so they would come to me with letters. Heather, the government sent me a letter. You have to help me. So I started business coaching, started business coaching for health and wellness because yoga teachers, massage therapists, personal trainers all these people they're lovely souls, they're amazing people, but you have to send an invoice if you want to get paid and they feel bad about invoicing people. I'm like, oh, my goodness, let's talk about it, like let's build this business so that you can actually pay your rent. So I started doing business coaching. When I'm massaging people, they spent more time with me than their doctors, unless they had a therapist. I felt like I was a bartender. You know, they're asking me questions. I'm like I'm not qualified to answer these questions, but I'll give you my opinions. They would just ask me all these questions and I felt like I was coaching people while I was massaging people and then, in 2021, I had a stroke. Yes, I did. I saw your eyeballs go. Wait a minute, now what? So it was COVID. This is a rollercoaster. This is my life.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:It was Friday night, it was Halloween weekend. I was watching TV and one of my eyeballs went kind of sideways and I couldn't see properly. And I stood up and I'm like, I'm really tired, my eyeball's hurting, I can't see straight. I said. I actually said I don't think I'm having a stroke, I'm not slurring, I'm still cognitively aware, I still have all my strength, I'm just going to go to bed. And I went to bed.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So the next morning I got up and it was still there and we have a thing called telehealth here. So I phoned and I said this is what's happening. Came and she said okay, you've had a stroke. And I'm like whatever. I didn't believe her and she said we're admitting you. So I was in the ER for three days. I couldn't see properly because when my eyes did eventually straighten out, but if I put on my glasses I got super nauseous. So I couldn't do the escape into the scroll that people do when they're trying to avoid stuff. So the universe ensured that I had nothing to do but lay there and watch what was going on outside, I think yeah.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:I think, and I kind of at one point went okay, I'm in the hospital, that's great, that's perfect, this is a good place to be. I'd actually had two strokes. I said, okay, so they're looking after me, good. So what's this all about? And I meditated a lot because what else are you going to do? I said okay, and the message was business coaching is too small, you know, massage is too small, personal training is too small, yoga is too small. These are all just pieces. You need to be looking at the whole person.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:The life coach thing came in. It's like the whole person. You need to help them, because everybody who has a little struggle, it's impacting everything else and the little struggle might be actually a symptom of something else. So we need the whole picture to come in. I'm like, okay, I got it. And while I was laying there, that's where my podcast came from as well. I mean, it's called Back to Me on Purpose, the Back to Me podcast, because it was like, okay, so I need to help people figure out how to get back to themselves so they take care of themselves.
Claude:Take care. It's like with all this life that you had, like you had 500,000,. There's always this positivity and that is so, so nice to hear. You know that you say the universe talked to me. It was, I was there for a reason, because you could have gone the other way around, and just to hear that positivity is just incredible thank you, and it's funny because I feel like that's a choice.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Right, that is a huge choice and it just popped into my head. So I just in December of 2024, I was contributed a chapter to a book and it's called. The book is called Finding your Value, but my chapter is called Life is Suffering Unless you Choose, and it's about making conscious decisions about how do you want to be. I mean, you get you actually get to choose. Someone can't make you unhappy. They can do things and you choose to be unhappy about it, or you react in anger or you choose. Yeah, that's, you can be like that, but you're not going to interrupt my awesome, my awesomeness today.
Jess:Sorry, so it sounds like, across each of these different parts of your life, what you did is you almost took the effects and slowed down to figure out what was really going on or what was really meant for you. I feel like that's a key lesson for a lot of people. Right Is the slowing down, because a lot of times something bad happens, or or good, and you're like just gone to the next, maybe not even like taking the time to reflect on what happened.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Right.
Jess:And then a lot of people don't do it because of the whole feeling guilty about taking care of themselves first. So what are some of the things that you do, or or even maybe to your, your clients, that you life coach to really help kind of overcome that guilt?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:And it's funny because people understand intellectually that it's important for you to be your best self. Every time you get on an airplane, put on your mask first, like I know it's very cliche, but it just makes on your mask first, because if you pass out, you can't help anybody. But when it comes to life, that's not how we operate. We're like, yes, yes, I get it, totally get it, and then you don't follow through and do it, and for me, that speaks a lot about your value. You value the people and the things outside of you more than you value yourself. Yeah, and people get upset sometimes when I tell them that you say that, yeah, because they're like I love myself, I love myself. I'm like no, you do, but you don't put yourself first. So everything outside of you is outside of you. Well, we could go into the whole world of energetics where everything's connected, but let's stay in our 3D bodies right now.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:You are the only person who will always be here and you are the only person who will always advocate for you and always take care of you. And that's not to say that there's people out there who don't love you and won't take care of you, but they can only take care of you to the extent that they have capacity, and that's not to say that you are a bad person for wanting to be taken care of. Like come on seriously. But we are taught, and we are taught by our mothers, who always put the children above themselves. You know, the martyr thing is so glamorous and it's like this. This ingrained understanding of you have put other people above you Especially your kids, yeah.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:People will even put their pets above themselves, and I mean, I've had pets, I get it, and this is a hard pill for people to swallow is you are the only person who you should put first. Everyone else can be second, but you should always put yourself first.
Jess:And are there like practices or things that you do? To help people, because you can't just say that to someone and have it.
Claude:I know turn a switch right it's like the day I walked, break this visual circle, right it is.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Sometimes I just say which exit will you choose? Like you're driving on the highway of everybody else. Which exit will you choose? But I just sneak in little things because one of the easiest ways to easiest, simplest ways is to get to know who you are, because a lot of people like you were saying they want to move past something, they want to move past an experience, good or bad, because staying in the experience means you have to experience it. Like I'm saying, we don't live in pleasant, no bad things will happen and it's okay that they do. Like I'm saying, we don't live in pleasant, no bad things will happen and it's okay that they happen. It doesn't make you a bad person.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:And I have one client who's like I just like to tick things off my to-do list. I said okay, but do you stop and go and enjoy the feeling of having something ticked off or do you just go to the next thing Because she just wants to tick? It's a little dopamine. But if you don't take even those little moments good, bad feeling, the experience you never have the opportunity to know your inner, inside self. And we don't teach kids maybe we do now understanding who you are Because we always tell them what to do. You're going to go to this grade, this is your teacher. You're going to this party, this is what you're going to learn.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So when they get to teenager which is how I probably became an accountant you get to teenager and you're like I don't know what I like, when I started realizing what actually made me happy. You know people the follow your passion, like I. I'm not a fan of cliches and overused things, but people like them, so follow your passion. I would always go. What? What does that mean? But I just follow where my curiosity takes me, what seems interesting, what makes me excited to go and do. And what happens to me is when I learn something, I want to teach someone else how to do it, and that is my driving force.
Claude:So how do you learn, like, how do you teach someone to one? First take a step back, find a passion, because sometimes it's not easy, you don't have the time to look what is my passion, so how do you put in someone's mindset that it's okay, stop and look around and it's and Jess had mentioned too like how fast people are going.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So don't look outside of you for how to slow down, because nothing outside of you is slowing down. Everything is going faster and faster and faster. So I usually call myself a real life coach, because what I want people to be able to do is whatever they find is going to help them. It has to fit into their life as it is right now. So I'm not going to say, well, you have to stop doing that because that's not practical. So we find small little chinks to start to create some space. So one of the things I ask people to do which sounds funny, is daydream, because your problem-solving brain is very logical and linear. You have to find the solution. This is the accountant brain, right. But your creative brain that can make connections that don't seem to make sense or can come up with solutions that are just kind of off the wall or speak to you about what you dream about, it gets shut down when you're always in that spreadsheet mode.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:I mean, I meditate every day and I have for a long time, when I first started, five minutes. People say I can't meditate. I'm like it's because you don't know what it is. That's why you say you can't meditate. Anybody can meditate, and now I do longer. But I'm also practiced and meditation practices like yoga are good. Tai Chi is good Anything that involves some kind of mindfulness. And some people need movement, which is why Tai Chi and yoga are good.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Some people are good just sitting, but before I tell them to go into, like when people used to come to take yoga from me, they wanted a yoga but I didn't tell them that that's not what they were going to get, that what they were going to get was a chance to be quiet and listen to the inside of their head, because that would scare people away. So instead I say stare out the window and daydream for five minutes, set a timer if you feel you really need to. If you daydream longer, it's okay. Giving yourself that time for the thoughts to be unstructured and flow and just watch them. That's how you're going to start to get to know yourself.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:And when you've noticed starting to notice how you speak to yourself, so you'll notice how other people speak to themselves. Like I was talking to a lady the other day who kept calling herself an idiot, I've said I don't think that's the best way to talk to yourself, you know. But we do it and don't even realize it, because it's so common, so it takes some time. Nothing's instantaneous, you know. You can't go to the gym once and expect to have a six pack.
Jess:Wish.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:I know me too.
Jess:I think you're bringing up some really valid points. It's like it does take time. There's a lot of mini steps to get you there, let's say right, but most people get so overwhelmed by it and they kind of get to the point of like I don't even know where to start. What's the best way out of this? So what do you do when somebody is almost like in that frazzled state they're not right quite yet to like?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:be, silent be in the moment, yeah, and the frazzled state is I had this great visualist explain to me one day because I was frazzled myself that day and it was my chiropractor of all people. He said, heather, it's like you're juggling all of the balls. He said you've got them. You've got them. You're freaking out. If I throw you another ball it's going to crash. So it's like this oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So he said why don't you put some down, like, take a really close look at your life. Is there stuff that you're doing that you don't need to be doing? You know, I know, if you have kids, if you have jobs, but there are probably. I mean, mark Manson wrote a book the Subtle Art of subtle art of not giving a f but. But don't be a, don't be a jerk about it, but it's like we, we pile things into our life because I feel like personally, because there's too many beer commercials out there telling us how fabulous life needs to be at every moment. So it's like you need to be having fun with your friends, you need to have the epic job, you need to have the cafe lifestyle, you need to have the clothes, you need to be epic and that takes too much energy. So when people are feeling overwhelmed like I've actually had a couple lately who were just like losing their minds I say get a giant piece of paper and write down everything that's in your head, because your head is a factory, it's not a warehouse.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:You can't store all of the things that are going on and swirling around in your brain, in your brain. You have to get it down on paper or some way out of your head. If you like typing it into something, you can do that. I'm old school, I use paper and I have a big old white board that I use and it's like I need to do this. I have to make sure I remember this. You know I'm supposed to be doing this. I'd like to be doing this. I'd like to lose 20 pounds, but first I need to do this, but I need to make dinner for the kids. Next week it's somebody's birthday. Like, write it all down. Sometimes I'll use post-it notes because then I can move them around. So I'm like okay, these things kind of go together and you can start to get some organization of what's actually priority, what is actually important. Sometimes, when you say stuff out loud, you realize that sounds stupid when I say it out loud. It's actually not that important and you can throw it in the garbage, right.
Jess:Yeah, because I think that that helps cut the clutter.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Right.
Jess:A lot of times when you are overwhelmed, it's because you're thinking about more of the like here and now versus the longer term things, and that would help you compartmentalize, like what's really the things you have to focus on when you get everything out of your head, because we do sit in these thoughts, we let them kind of like this tornado over our head and we're trying to make sense of it.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:And you can't make sense of it when it's blowing around in your head. It's like you need to give it a form out on paper and when you see it you're like, okay, I got this, I can manage this.
Jess:And the other thing that people often don't do is they don't ask for help. Right, I was going to, I was going to ask you one of the things cause I've seen that a lot of what you do is you navigate? People through, like major life transformations. Right, and what is I was. This is probably what it is Like. What's that one bit advice that you would give someone that's trying to make those big changes?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Big changes Does it have to do with?
Jess:like asking for help.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Asking for help. But it's also being really clear on what you want and what do you want your life to look like after the change is done. Because if you're stuck in the middle of the chaos of the change and you don't have a clear image of what it's going to look like when it's done the mama who comes from the kitchen what's that song from the seventies I can make the bacon and bring it home and cook it up in the pan and blah blah. It's like really no, you can ask for help. You can get the dude to make dinner. Like seriously.
Jess:Yeah, and I think you bring up a good point. I think generations were raised a little differently. The good news is, a lot of us are now educating our kids that it's okay to ask for help. You should be asking for help. You should put yourself for yourself first. So hopefully, some of these hurdles that I don't want to call us the older generation, but some of us that have experienced generations. Some of us experiencers will hopefully change some of that, but I do think it's value added to your point to reinforce those things.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Well, and the thing, sometimes, the resistance to self-care, taking care of yourself, is you feel like it's taking away from someone else, right? So if I do this for me, I'm stealing something from someone, or if I do this to me, I'm being selfish, and we look upon selfishness as as bad yeah, it goes back to one of the earlier questions guilt right right as a selfishness or top thinking about yourself is like a bad thing and there there are people who do it that like, to that extent
Claude:do you think that it's more women than men? Oh yeah, because men, I don't think they have that guilt. They don't. It's like different right, they are fine doing it. Yeah, I'm not doing it.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Good friend, who's a coach, a gentleman, and we had this conversation one day, the difference between men and women. He said men just go in and fix it and do it and don't worry about it, and women worry about this and that and it's everyone being taken care of and and it's just conditioning really. And I brought up the selfishness part because it's not a blanket if you take care of yourself, you're not being selfish. It selfishness part because it's not a blanket. If you take care of yourself, you're not being selfish. It's the energy behind, it's always the energy behind. So if I'm doing it and I'm being selfish about it, then it's going to be selfish. If I'm doing it because I know if I get eight hours of sleep tonight, that's my favorite self-care thing, by the way, if I get eight hours of sleep tonight, I'll be a great person tomorrow.
Claude:Right. I think it's also society that makes you feel guilty. Yes, right. So it's almost like how can we even change the society? I guess it's like really listening to ourself more people to be able to do it.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:That's why I talk on so many podcasts, that's why I coach people, that's why I have my own podcast and I'm in some groups that, like I'm in this group called the High Vibe Soul Tribe, which I love, and it's about, you know, paying attention, paying attention to your inner voice, and sometimes your inner voice is telling you to go and do something for someone because they need that. Sometimes it's understanding the dialogue that you have with yourself and the dialogue of who you are, and it's not the voice that criticizes you Like that's somebody else's voice that you've installed software on so you can take that software out. Software that you have is supportive and wants you to be your best.
Jess:So it's starting to be able to recognize those different voices that speak to you inside your head and not saying that you're crazy, you know so either we kind of touch on it too, though, like I do think there's an element of generational, so the experience, the experience ones that have gone through it, so I agree with you, it's we need to be the ones that are sitting there and talking to what's going on in our heads and re-reminding ourselves of unconditioning those conditions.
Jess:But at the same time we should be thinking about how what we say and do not just what we say, but what we do is what the future generations will enact upon. If we don't do it, if we just say it, then then you're kind of still that's.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:That's like saying, saying, oh, I understand how to do self-care, and then sitting at your back desk for 12 hours. You're not demonstrating, you're not walking the talk, you're saying, you're just giving it lip service, right, so that's not. So it's doing, saying and doing I always. You know, people ask me what my goals are in life. I'm like I've got to change the world. And if you can shift one person like I don't even care how many people listen to the podcast I was like if one person hears something that changes them, they're going to change how they are in their community and they're going to change how they interact with their community, and then it's going to be like that shampoo commercial.
Jess:And they told two people. And they told two people.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:That's I mean in fairness that's what we, why we build podcasts is for communities, right right.
Jess:The intent is obviously, can we make a shift in general? But how do you talk to even just those few people? Who then will talk to more people? Who will talk to more people so that the movement occurs?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:it's not something you have to talk about, it's living, but being the living example.
Jess:Right, yeah, yeah so our podcast is about work besties. We've yet to ask you any questions oh, my god work bestie um, from whether a life coaching aspect or even just maybe from your prior working time frame. Did you have a work bestie that helped you at some point, or vice versa?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So I've had lots through my careers Like I'm thinking about, you know, when I my the last, the last job I had as a CPA. I actually still have dinner with some of those people on a regular basis. And one of the gentlemen who I talked to every single day while I was at the office, he was in Winnipeg and I was in Toronto. We called him my Winnipeg husband because I had to talk to him. He managed some of the aspects of what I was looking after. So we talked every single day and we still have dinner. Whenever he's in town, we have dinner.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:But my current work bestie even though I work for myself, my current work bestie her name's Jenny and she is the Akashic Nomad. She's an Akashic records reader and I met her in a networking meeting and we became instant besties. I actually flew down to Florida to visit her because I'm like we have to meet in person and there's a message on my phone right now from her. We message kind of every day or two. What's going on? I saw this, you're doing this. Okay, let's talk about this Like it's.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:It's being an entrepreneur and being at work. Even at work, you can feel and lonely especially my, especially as women. When you're in a corporate world, you can be feel really lonely because not only is it highly still highly male dominated, but sometimes the women in there are trying so hard to climb that you don't connect in a way that feels authentic. So finding a bestie you can hang with oh my gosh, it makes work worthwhile. I would have stayed in that old job if I hadn't found a new direction. I would have stayed in that company simply because of the people that I got to work with, not because of the work.
Claude:That is really difficult too, right. I know the younger generation that I manage, or whatever. Sometimes you know when they quit or and they leave and they feel bad and I'm like you don't stay for people. You know your people will always be your people. And look, jess and I are work besties. Right, we have each other other work besties from all our career before that become your friends. Yeah, that's where you have to be careful, though.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Yeah, and it's interesting now with remote and hybrid work, I find it's kind of harder. People are feeling more separated.
Jess:So, heather, if someone's listening right now who feels completely drained or overwhelmed or stuck, what's that? One thing that they need to hear today that could change everything for them.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So the one thing they need to hear is that it's not forever right and if you can look past the current situation and trust that it will, maybe there's something in it for you to pay attention to. Just pull yourself out of it. Just pull yourself out even for five minutes, minutes, and just sit back for five minutes. You've got five minutes and just see if you can observe it without getting caught up into it, because then you're going to see you will. You will feel better, even if you don't have a solution, it doesn't matter. You will feel better just by stepping out of it for five minutes. And people get caught in that stuff.
Claude:Like before you say, the ripple effect, that five minutes. Once you see the benefits of it, you know that five will become 10, minutes will become 15, you know.
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:Yeah, over time I'm up to 30 now and sometimes I'm like, oh, that was too short.
Jess:So if you've been waiting for permission to put yourself first, this is it Work Bestie community, you. So if you've been waiting for permission to put yourself first, this is it Work Bestie community. You've heard it from Heather. If you need more, definitely go and follow her on her podcast. So do you want to share with us, heather, how everyone can find you?
Heather Stewart, Life Coach:So the easiest place to find everything, including the podcast, is on my website, and it's heatherstewartco.
Claude:Great, thank you. I thank you so much, heather. It was really so enlightening. A lot of quick steps that we can start with. So to our listeners, work besties. If this episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself and, of course, don't forget to hit like and subscribe button and stay connected and see you next week. Thank you, bye.
Jess:Remember whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad, so keep lifting each other.
Claude:Personal hype squad, so keep lifting each other, laughing through the chaos and, of course, thriving Until next time stay positive, stay productive and don't forget to keep supporting each other.
Jess:Work besties.
