Self-care doesn’t just involve sitting around doing nothing. Listening to one’s own thoughts, absorbing, and analyzing all that occurred during the day are all parts of spending time with yourself.
In a day with 24 hours, we spend about 15 of them awake after deducting the hours we sleep. How much of it are we spending with ourselves? And what value do we place on ourselves?
In this week’s episode, YouAligned Founder and Content Director Ashton August delves us into mindfulness; taking charge of your mental health and well-being.
YouAligned is a resource to promote wellness of the mind, body, and spirit. Their mission is to provide insightful, motivating, and unique content on a wide range of topics such as wellness, spirituality, yoga philosophy, and more.
Listen to this podcast and develop a more positive mindset so you can truly thrive.
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Mindfulness: How to Connect with Yourself and to Others with Ashton August
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about connection because it’s ironic that, in the modern world, we have the most devices, the most means in which to connect, yet we’ve created a system where it is harder to connect with people, connect with others as well as connect with ourselves than it seems like it’s ever been before. My guest today, Ashton August, her business, YouAligned, helps you connect with yourself so you can better connect with others and it incorporates so many aspects of what we all need to do in this particular period of time to have a better image of ourselves and a better connection with who we are and become better aligned with what we want our lives to be.
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Ashton, welcome to the program.
Hello, thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation today.
I always love connecting people with this health and wellness sector because it is such an important focus right now, especially because I believe we are in a mental health crisis society wide right now and that we need any of these tools that we can get in order to just become better connected and better accepting of ourselves.
Well said and I am in full agreement with you. As a mental wellness advocate, I cannot emphasize enough how important our self-care as a means for supporting our mental health is and, you said it, unfortunately, it’s so true that, I agree, we are in a state of mental health crisis.
So, currently, right now, and we’re recording at the end of 2022, beginning of Sagittarius season, which we’ll probably get into later, me being a Sagittarius myself, but currently at the end of 2022, what is the main thing keeping people from being mentally well, being aligned with themselves?
I think that we are still rubbing up against the problem that we’ve had as a society for quite some time, which is this glorification of the hustle mentality. So even though we’re getting more and more aware of this being the state that we’re in and this perhaps being not optimal for our health, we are not really seeing a collective change yet. So I love that the awareness is there, like people like us are having these conversations and are dedicated to making this change, but I would say that at the end of 2022, society as a whole is still really stuck in “Go, go, go, do, do, do, get as much done,” and you and I both know that when we’re in the state of mind, I’m sure all of you tuning in know, when we are frenzied like that, it’s very, very hard to take a step back, take a deep breath, get present, and find that space for ourselves.
For sure, and one of the challenges that I’ve personally encountered is this feeling of guilt, this feeling of I should be doing something. What do you think is the antidote to that? Because there’s going to be a day when you’re just off, that’s part of the cycle of life, you’re just not feeling it today, whatever you’re supposed to be working on and maybe it’s a day you were meant to rest or do some form of self-care, as you advocate in your business.
I love that you bring up this question because it really is rooted in self compassion and I also can fully speak from experience as being a very type A individual, which I know so many of us are, where we hold ourselves to these high standards, and you know what, that’s okay, but it’s not okay when we then shame ourselves, guilt ourselves with the, “Oh, I should, I ought to, I needed to,” and it’s really just bring us deeper into this cycle of self-loathing, the lack of self-love and self-care, and so the antidote to that is to practice self compassion, which is really rooted in mindfulness.
And mindfulness is simply defined as a full present moment awareness of things as they are without judgment.” Click To Tweet
“Without judgment” being the important word, right?
Being the important word because we all have those days where we get everything on our list done and more, awesome, that’s not the day to day reality and, in fact, you and I both know, most often than not, something’s going to come up and change it. And that’s okay, that’s life, we’re gonna get back on the bandwagon tomorrow, but for today, please notice when you’re bumping up against the shame, the guilt, and try to just take a step back and replace that with self compassion. “You know what, I wasn’t able to get to it today, I’m not gonna beat myself up over it. I’ll choose to be kind to myself.” And we just reset the script. We reset the script. And sometimes our self-care can be as basic as that self compassion. That counts.
In that hustle culture mentality where one of the things that sometimes has frustrated me at past jobs is this daily stand up and the daily stand up to me has always made me think of, okay, well, if I didn’t get anything done today, I have nothing to say today and everyone’s going to be judging me. Do you think that there’s an aspect of the external environment that people need to control for or that the main key is that self compassion and if you have enough self compassion, no matter what comes to you externally, whether it be a boss, whether it be a family member, or anyone else saying, “You should have gotten this done today, you should have gotten that done today,” you’ll be able to withstand it and just simply state, “Hey, I had an off day and that’s okay”?
Yeah, you just said it. We in life cannot always control our outside external factors and environment. What we do always have control over is the way that we choose to respond and notice I did not say the way that we impulsively react. When we choose instead a response, that’s also rooted in the mindfulness of taking a step back and realizing, “Okay, you know what, my boss might have some negative feedback for me today,” some other stressful factor might come in and influence my day to day but when we keep that one-step removal between us and those outside factors, we’re able to just take that step back and say, “Okay, there are things that are outside of my control but let’s get back to what I can control,” and this is my internal response. And I would like to also take that one step further and invite everyone to invite in this concept of the Jedi mindset. So the Jedi mindset is it’s a little self-explanatory. You hear it and you’re like, “Yes, I want this.”
If you’ve seen Star Wars, for sure, yeah.
Exactly. But also, I’ve actually been doing this work with my therapist, and my therapist is the one who’s like, “Ashton, we’ve gotta employ the Jedi mindset,” and this kicks in strongly when, you named all the triggering factors, boss, coworkers, family, holiday times, any of those heightened stress situations, these are opportunities to practice the Jedi mindset and the basis of the Jedi mindset is recognizing that every single experience and every single situation we’re in is simply an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to, in this case, practice our Jedi mindset. And some of the key nuances of a Jedi: mindfulness, presence, compassion, empathy, control, calm. When we’re coming from all of these places, whether it’s towards ourselves or projecting outward, doesn’t that feel like a nice, grounded empowered place to be as opposed to being left to the whims of whatever is thrown at us, which, hey, we’ve all been there too, but if you’ve got the choice between which you would like, being at the whim of the external factors or facing everything with the Jedi mindset, I’m thinking let’s go with the Jedi mindset, shall we?
For sure, and what is something that someone can do right now, say someone’s listening and they’re struggling with whether you call it the Jedi mindset or just any of the words underneath it being truly present, being compassionate, being compassionate to themselves, someone can do right now to start getting better at it?
Wherever you are, whether you’re driving, whether you’re seated, whatever you’re doing, just try to sit nice and tall or stand nice and tall, if your feet are touching the ground, feel them nice and firmly planted and we’re going to do three breaths together. So a deep inhale through your nose…and a nice gentle sigh. Good, nice deep breath in through your nose…nice, gentle sigh. One more time. So just take a moment to notice any shifts and it could be massive, it could be very minor, but when we take a moment to connect to the breath, it feels good but we’re also activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest state because when they’re talking about the go, go, go, do, do, do, this is our fight or flight. This constantly has us in a state of reactivity. Taking that moment to breathe is one of the most powerful ways to reset our minds. Now, Stephen, if I can, I would like to also add one more layer.
Okay.
I bet you a lot of your listeners, they’ve been listening to your impactful conversations, a lot of them already have sort of a breath practice or that initial point so for everyone who the breath was this amazing breakthrough first step, perfect, stick with that, use it, and then listen to what I’m about to share and see if that resonates too. For all of you who are like, “Okay, I know the first step but how do I stay in this mindset? How do I cultivate a deeper mindset?” next layer, then, is positive affirmation, because positive affirmation is an “I am” statement, and we say these “I am” statements to ourselves all the time, good or bad. Our brains can’t decipher between whether this is serving us or hurting us. Our minds just say, “Okay, yep, got it.” So if we’re constantly saying, “I am unworthy. I am so unlucky. I am this, I am that,” or, “I am in total control of my situation. I am the creator of my reality. I am present. I am grounded,” so notice the different energies that go with these different statements. One or two times of saying it, it’ll have a temporary effect, but you continue to solidify and affirm the reality that you would like to create, you’re going to create that reality and we all see it happen all the time. So think about a person in your life who’s the most negative person you know.
Okay.
Stephen found one, I can tell, he’s like, “Got it, found the person.”
I’m not going to say the name on this but, yeah.
Right, we all have them. We all have that person in our life and I’ll use my person as an example, it’s someone I love very much so I’m not going to throw them under the bus either, but she is constantly reaffirming her lack. She is constantly telling me and everyone else and herself, most of all, “I’m so unlucky. Nothing ever goes my way. I never win. I never get the promotion. I never get a good opportunity.” Can you guess what kind of reality has become?
I mean, probably.
Right? And, unfortunately, it’s true. I recognize that. Often for ourselves, we have these blinders on and it’s so much easier to recognize these patterns in others before we can turn that light of introspection around to ourselves. So, inversely, now, think of the person in your life who’s the most positive, the person who, whether they’re a personal friend or family member or just someone that you look up to, a mentor, an author, whoever, think about the way that they present themselves, the way that they speak, the way that they speak over their lives. For me, my best friend is this person and the way that this woman speaks, it’s like I feel like I’m going to church. I’m just like, “Oh, please. I’m taking notes over here and I’m inspired.” And this woman is just constantly sharing her next success. She is constantly celebrating and uplifting others. She is constantly affirming all of the good and all of the power in her life. And, boy, does it show. And she inspires others to do the same. If we do the work, we can all be my best friend.
That feels good, and you say it every day, you say it before you go to that board meeting, you say it before you jump into that interview, you say it before you jump on your next podcast. Just think about results over time.
That is amazing, and for people who are more procedurally minded out there, do you take the deep breath in and then give the positive affirmations or are these just two different things that you just incorporate into your day at just whatever time?
Stephen, this is why you’re so good at what you do. You absolutely can combine the two and that’s the most powerful formula of all. And so, an affirmation does not have to start with “I am” but, personally, I always recommend they do because it attaches so much more power. So, yes, you can breathe in, “I am,” and then breathe out the intention. So, “I am,” inhale, “grounded,” exhale. “I am,” inhale, “supported,” exhale. So you can work the mantras that way. And how powerful is that? Because now we are directing the mind and the body and the nervous system to all work together.
So also you talk a bit about the people in your life and I think anyone listening can also relate to that really negative person and that really positive person. Is there an aspect of it where you’re controlling for your environment where you’re distancing yourself from the more negative people and you’re trying to get yourself to draw closer to the more positive people? Or is that something that kind of naturally comes about once you start doing the “I am” statements and affirming yourself, you suddenly realize, “Oh, wait, these negative people that were in my life, now that I’ve been doing the deep breaths, the mindfulness, the affirmations, I just don’t feel like I have that much in common with them anymore,” and you just naturally just go in that direction.
Yeah, you just hit it on the head and it’s really a chicken or the egg situation because I think there’s actually a combination of the two. But, to start with what you ended on, you’re absolutely right. The further that we go down this mindset empowerment practice, which I do want to give the caveat, we are not talking about toxic positivity here, where, “Oh, everything is right and love and angels and unicorns.” You’re just going to ignore all the bad.
Yeah.
No. What I’m talking about is the empowered positivity, that, you know what, things happen. We are going to encounter bumps in the road and challenges along the way. That’s okay. We’re going to learn from them, we’re going to grow from them, we’re going to keep moving forward. That’s the positivity I’m talking about. So, yes, when we are working on this empowered mindset, you are absolutely right that we are going to continue evolving up and into a more empowered and enlightened state of mind and some of the people who kind of are on that train with us, yeah, we’re just going to grow like this. Some of them might end up growing with us because we are inspiring others, but, yeah, you’re right, the people who are not ready, we’re going to begin to grow apart. The other piece that happens, though, is you do begin to notice when you’re doing the work that we are the summation of the five people closest to us in our lives. So, I was just having this conversation with my dad the other day, sometimes, you’re going to find yourself in a situation where there’s someone that you’re like, “Ooh, I just can’t. I just can’t put myself around this energy anymore,” and my dad was at this point with someone and he said, “What do I do? I feel so bad. I’m typically the person that accepts and loves everyone and just wants to include everyone and I just can’t stand this person’s energy. They’re so toxic,” and I said, “Well, then, Dad, that’s one of those moments where you realize you got to make that cord cutting for your own wellbeing.” So it always comes down to mental self-care. So, at the end of the day, if someone is constantly bringing you down, then, yeah, that’s an opportunity to say, “Maybe this person is no longer a good influence or a productive part of my life,” so you’re taking that inventory as you’re doing the work and then, as you said, you’re going to grow and evolve and, inevitably — I’ll say it this way, I love this saying: “People are in your life for three reasons — a reason, a season, or a lifetime,” and I love that. And it’s a beautiful way to look at some people come into your life for a reason, they serve that purpose, they’re gone. Some people are there for a season, a chapter in your lives. And then there’s the third set of people that can last a lifetime.
Interesting, a reason, a season, and a lifetime, and that puts some things into context as well as far as I think we’ve all had at least one situation in our life where we’ve lamented a lost relationship, a lost friendship, a lost companionship, and part of it is that, at least what I lament is that, oftentimes, it’s not this blowout, it’s not this, like, “Oh, I had the big fight and I’m never seeing you again, blah, blah, blah,” it’s oftentimes just this drift apart where the effort just isn’t really made on either side and that’s the thing that’s for a long time made me really sad, to be honest. So there’s got to be a context. Do you think that people drift apart usually because it’s not a lifetime, it’s a reason or a season? Or do you feel like, nowadays, with the way the world is, the way we get all busy with our to-do lists and the persistent hustle culture and everything else, that people do still lose a lot of companions, a lot of friendships, for no good reason, that it wasn’t necessarily, “Okay, this person served their purpose, now they’re gone,” but because just our lives got so busy and we’re so distracted by our devices and television programs that we’re just not making the effort in the areas, the pursuits of life where we really should be, and community being one of them?
Oh, absolutely. While, of course, the reason, season, or lifetime reasons will continue to crop up throughout our lives with the relationship dynamics in our lives, I would agree with you, you make such an excellent point that more and more of these days, we are being pulled in a million directions. Not only do I have 60,000 thoughts a day, we are given, you probably know this stat, I can’t even remember the exact amount, but we are given hundreds of thousands, if not more, of stimulus, of outside advertisements and just everything’s trying to get your attention. I mean, have you ever picked up your phone to check one thing on social media for work and, all of a sudden, it’s 30 minutes later and you’re like, “What the…?”
That is that is literally the first line in the two-minute pitch for my upcoming screen time reduction business. I literally read, “We’ve all been there before, you pick up your phone to do something simple like check the weather, and before you know it, you spent over an hour scrolling through Instagram.”
Oh, terrible. It’s terrible. And we all do it and I’m not saying you’re terrible for it, I’m speaking from health experience. When I’m like, “Ashton, why did you just go into low power zombie mode and you’re just like…” And so I’ll be the first to admit it. And so you’re absolutely right. In the age of fast fashion and fast consumerism, everything is fast. And it’s hard. And not only that, but think 50 years back, how many friends did we have in our social circles 50 years ago? For most of us, it was substantially less, probably 20 to 50 friends, as opposed to now where everyone on Facebook will have thousands of friends and they don’t even know a lot of them. If you have a public profile on Instagram, you could have tens of thousands of followers that, sure, maybe you engage with them as your followers but you’re not personally going over their house and watching movies and eating popcorn. And so the relationship dynamics have changed and diluted and evolved and that’s part of society evolving, but I referenced fast fashion because it’s also like we have fast friendships in that sense. And I also think that when I say season, when we’re also going through seasons of our ourselves, which this all circles back to how we started our conversation about mental wellness and mental health issues, if we’re going through a dark place, we tend to withdraw from all of our friends, social and real life. And, again, I can speak from personal experience, I hit complete mental health rock bottom the summer of 2020. I know —
Like a lot of people.
On that statement, exactly, and so, during that time, I’ll tell you what, I didn’t reach out to anyone, I wasn’t on social media for months, I could barely bring myself to respond to text messages, and this is a part of depression and it is also a part of when you’re going through something, you tend to withdraw, and when you talk about society being in a mental health crisis, I think we’re experiencing that on a collective level, whereas pre-COVID pre everything that happened in 2020 and has happened since, we as a society experienced a lesser rate of mental health issues. Now, I think of a silver lining of everything with 2020 is that mental health has been brought to a much greater light and a state of awareness that we’re all normalizing talking about our mental health issues but I do think that that plays a major role in what you’re talking about here where friendships can more easily be neglected when we’re all just struggling day to day.
Yeah. I have a travel blog I don’t talk about as much but I posted a list of 2022 in 15 lessons, essentially 15 lessons I learned over the course of this year, and the first one was that when someone goes to you, it’s likely because they’re overwhelmed in some capacity. Now, there’s some other exceptions and I do agree with most people that ghosting is not the best way to go about something, I probably have inadvertently ghosted a couple of people and feel terrible about it, but with so much going on in our lives and so much happening, eventually, we all get tired and we all have to just rest a bit or, as I did last night, look at the stars because it is a new moon and now I’m up in Cheyenne today.
Ah, yes. We are in two places that have very little light pollution. I’m in Tucson where they actually have a law for no light pollution because we are an astrology and astronomy stronghold down here. So it’s lovely and what a great reminder, wherever you are, even if you live in the brightest city, get outside tonight and just see what stars you can find in the sky. That is such a lovely beautiful grounding practice and, yeah, you unpacked a lot there.
Yeah. You talk about things like nutrition, fitness, lifestyle, and how that all connects together. What role does all these other things that you talk about beyond just the standard mindfulness of presence play in helping people become more self compassionate and better aligned with themselves and eventually better aligned with a community, hopefully?
Yes, absolutely. Compassion and self-compassion even applies to what we were just talking about with ghosting, as a quick sidebar to that, because going through it, it’s having the self-compassion to say, “It’s okay, you’re going through it, when you’re in a better place, reach out, reconnect,” let them know, hey, and vice versa. Like you said, if someone else is ghosting you, it’s probably because of what they’re going through. And I just want to end with this. Most often, whatever someone else has done to you, whether it was directly at you or more like a passive ghosting situation, has nothing to do with you. It is rarely about you, it is most always about that person, and what they’re going through or their perceptions so my favorite mantra for that is, “Not me, not mine.”
Just try not to take things personally, especially these days with what we’ve all got going on, “Not me, not mine,” practice compassion, let it go.” Click To Tweet
Thank you for letting me get that in there, wanted to get that out.
That’s important.
It is important and it also connects with what we’re talking about now which when we talk about wellness, that is a huge umbrella term, and at YouAligned, our mission is to empower our readers and our students to thrive through mind-body-life wellness. Mind-body-life wellness encompasses all the aspects of nutrition, how are we feeding and powering our bodies? Of fitness, how are we moving and taking care of our physicality? Of yoga, which is this beautiful practice of uniting the physical with the mindful and the spiritual. And so all of these factors come together as the pillars of our wellness. Mental health, a key central pillar in our overall wellness. And so it is my belief that a holistic or a comprehensive approach to wellness is the best way to nourish and fortify ourselves for living in the time that we live. Fitness alone is not enough. Eating healthy alone is not enough. All of these practices are so important but this is like we got to triage guys, we’re in a crazy situation right now so we need to just break out all the resources we can.
Yeah, for sure. A little bit earlier, we alluded to these to-do lists, which is a major aspect of hustle culture and having compassion in the cases where we don’t get to our to-do lists. Is there a different approach to to-do lists that you would recommend for us to be less likely to shade ourselves when we see this list and we see the four things that we didn’t get to and we’re like, “Oh, wait, I had seven things on my to-do list, I got to three of them but I didn’t get to four, oh my gosh, I’m a failure because the education system taught me that less than 50 percent is an F in every single class I’ll ever take”?
Oh, nice little jab at how that message has really hurt us all. That’s a great point. That’s a really good point. Yeah, you’re absolutely right and I felt like you were just reciting my old mental scripts that I would say to myself, because type A, list creator to the fault over here my whole life and, yeah, it was like, at the end of the day, if not everything was checked off the list, I might as well not have done anything. And that is a ridiculous mindset. I want you to instead think about the way you treat yourself as if you were treating your very best friend that way or your little sister or your favorite dog. Would you do that? Would you talk to them that way? Would you shame them? Would you talk down to them? No, I don’t think so. I read this line in a book once and it was a woman who was riding to yoga with her friend and she was literally just body shaming herself on the way to the yoga class and she was like, “I can’t stand my thighs, blah, blah, blah,” and her friend is driving getting more and more upset and, finally, your friend looks over at and says, “Stop talking about my friend that way.” I loved it. I was like, yes, that’s so important so I whip that line out all the time if I encounter someone kind of degrading themselves, but I’ll also do it to myself, like, “Stop talking to my friend that way,” I know that might sound cheesy, but it’s true. We can’t talk —
Well, if it works.
It works, and so, first, again, practice the self-compassion. Second, I love humor, I feel like laughter is the best medicine and I saw this meme the other day and it was, “Oh, okay, so here’s me at the end of my day rewriting my entire to-do list for tomorrow since I didn’t get a single thing done.” I just loved it because you know what it was? It was this person practicing grace in the moment and saying, “You know what, I’m gonna try again tomorrow and, in the meantime, I’m gonna bring some laughter into it because it’s just a to-do list.” It’s just a task. So those are little like self compassion tips to get you going, but the real thing I love, and this is more rooted in psychology, is writing down three of your most important tasks of the day. Just three. And, at first, when I read this, I was like, “Just three? Well, what am I gonna do?” Sometimes, it’s going to take you all damn day to get just those three things done because you know —
Yeah.
Other times, you’re going to get three more things done and then you’re going to feel extra good because you surpassed your expectations instead of falling short of them, like you said, the 50 percent. Finally, these are not three giant things like, “I’m gonna write a book today. I’m gonna repair my car today. I’m gonna paint my house today.” No, I’m talking manageable tasks. “I’m gonna do my podcast with Stephen today. I’m going to respond to the top five party emails in my inbox and I am going to write an article.” Attainable. The second step of this two-part series is eat the frog. I love this phrase, don’t worry —
Eat the frog.
Yeah. Don’t worry, Stephen, I’m a vegetarian so I don’t eat frogs and I’m not asking you to eat a frog either.
Okay. I was like, the first thing I thought of was like the one time I was at a restaurant and they served frog legs.
Yes, and I have seen those on the menu, so you know what, for any frog eaters out there, no judgment if you do eat them, but we’re not actually eating the frog, this is a proverbial frog.
What this means is the most daunting task of your day is your frog so what we’re going to do is we’re going to tackle the most daunting task first because human nature is most of us tend to procrastinate.” Click To Tweet
I’m a procrastinate cleaner. If I have something to do, I’ll just clean my kitchen first because that sounds better than doing the big task. Don’t be me, just get it done first. Just get your cup of coffee, do your morning routine, whatever it is, sit down and get that first big task done first. Eat the frog, and then your other two tasks, they’re going to feel so much easier, you’re going to be motivated and excited to get them done. It’s just a fortifying mindset hack to start your day off on a high note and that’s what I included in my book of A Year of Self Motivation for Women because that is such a motivating approach to starting your day.
That’s a good segue. So your book is titled A Year of Self Motivation for Women and your website is youaligned.com, just in case anyone listening out there wants to read your book or get a hold of you, subscribe or get any of your content.
Yes, thank you so much. Definitely come check out our website, youaligned.com. It has over 3,000 articles of everything wellness based to help you thrive in life. And then you can find both of my books on Amazon.com or at Target, A Year of Self Motivation for Women and my first book is Learn. Grow. Shift. 30 Days of Personal Growth.
Oh, wow, 30 days of personal growth so is that like each day, there’s a thing you do? If someone were to just take out a month and say, okay, March, I’m just gonna get out of the New Year’s resolution shaming or whatever people feel about it and say it’s March and someone says, “I want march to be my personal growth month as I get ready for spring and rejuvenation,” if you’re in the northern hemisphere, that is, then it would just be like March 1st is that first chapter, March 2nd is that second chapter, and you can just kind of go through the program?
Yes, exactly. What I love about the way this book is set up is that it’s not date specific so you could do it year after year, you could do it any month, you don’t have to start on the first of the month, it’s just whenever you do begin, you are given 30 days’ worth of guided practices and so every day starts off with an affirmation because now you know how important those are to me, and a little guided journaling session and then one guided practice, whether it’s breath work, which we did today, whether it’s a yoga pose or a nice nourishing stretch, meditation, all of these tools to help us just really solidify the practices that we’re going to be taking out of this book. So personal growth and self-motivation are two things that I’m so passionate about because these are the two ways to really get clear on all the concepts that we’ve talked about today and to really put them into practice so we can have a more empowered approach to life.
And then the last thing I want to make sure we cover is your business story, starting your business. So you originally were YogiAligned, right?
YogiApproved, yes.
YogiApproved, sorry, YouAligned, YogiApproved, wow, that can kind of get in that — I’m sorry, originally YogiApproved. What made you start that business and then what made you shift from being focused mostly around yoga to this broader mindfulness wellness approach?
Yes, I created YogiApproved back in 2015 and, at that point, the name itself came from the premise of what we focused on, which was product reviews. And so we were like the Consumer Reports for all things yoga, so product reviews of mats and different yoga brands and things like that, while also being an online magazine for resourceful articles, like how to do a yoga pose or a yoga sequence for back pain or a guided meditation for stress relief or for better night’s sleep. And the reason I created this was because I had my master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing so I loved to write and edit and work with other writers but I was also teaching yoga and I was — and still — am so passionate about spreading the gift of yoga so I wanted to find a way to merge the two passions as a way of being of service to the collective community. So that’s how YogiApproved began. And we quickly grew, bigger than frankly I expected to grow. I thought this would be sort of a fun side project, I was an English professor at the time. Quickly grew to the point that I realized I had to pick one or the other so I made the scary leap to go full time into my new company and I shortly thereafter created YA classes, which is our online yoga and fitness membership platform. We were already creating videos through these product reviews so that’s kind of how I fell into, so to speak, the video side of things. And back when I created YA classes, there were only a few other platforms that were offering online yoga and fitness so most people when they heard about it were like, “What are you doing? Online yoga, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of,” so this was way before COVID and way before everyone was doing yoga online. And so we did that for quite some time. Now, around 2019, 2020, we started to really evolve into wellness because just like a yoga practice can often evolve from a focus on the physical poses to expanding into spirituality and nourishing your body and meditating and all of these deeper practices, that’s kind of what happens with wellness too. You kind of start with the gateway drugs, so to speak, of yoga or meditation, but then, all of a sudden, you want more, and now you also want to nourish your body, you want to explore other forms of movement, you want to work on your mindset, you’re evolving, and this is what happened to the company. And so the baby that I created of YogiApproved had now matured into this beautiful young adult and the young adult was no longer being served by the name YogiApproved because we had become so much more so that is when YouAligned was born because we are now helping you to align yourself through mind, body, life, wellness and yoga is one of those key pillars of wellness, as is nutrition, as is mindset and mental health and fitness and all of the other aspects that we include, right down to travel. So we would love to have a guest post from you on the travel front, if you’re open to it.
Oh, I would love to do that. I’m going to Cancun next week.
Yeah. Well, let’s get a Best Places to Visit in the Cancun area or something fun like that.
I mean, travel is wonderful. I’ve had previous episodes of this podcast where we talked about travel and how it opens your mind up to other possibilities. For everyone out there building a business, do you think it’s a good idea to generally think about starting off small and then expanding like you did or starting off with a specific niche and expanding or is that just like one of many paths that people can take?
It is one of many pads because — in fact, if you speak to a business coach, they will often tell you to do exactly the opposite of what I did, frankly. They will tell you to niche down and stay niched, so in that sense, what I’ve done is a little counterintuitive but it works for me because of our evolution that I just explained. Meanwhile, though, as a general rule, I would always recommend to specialize. I’m also a yoga teacher consultant in all of my spare time and so when I’m working, I yoga teacher clients, what they are trying to figure out is how can they position themselves to be of a unique service to their specific demographic, so the answer would not be to teach every single format and to cater to every single age group and every single need. Instead, the answer would be, “Well, what is your biggest passion? What is your why that really lights you up? How is what you’re offering unique from what anyone else is doing?” and that is how you really position yourself in that niche so that would be my general advice. And then, over time, perhaps, you do expand as you evolve. But for the most part, I would say get really, really clear on your why. From there, discover who exactly it is you want to serve and that will lead you to your specific niche.
I love the leaving space for everyone to have their own path because there are some general paths and I think a lot of people who are successful will often tell you to follow their path, which is oftentimes not bad advice, except for the fact that what works for one person is not always going to work for another person.
Exactly, and I would even take it one step further and tell you to beware of the people who are saying, “My way is the way so you better follow me,” because exactly what you just said, there’s a million ways to find a solution to a problem and so what serves one person is great and can be inspiring to you but might not necessarily serve you directly. And my husband is an entrepreneur as well and he loves listening to this guy’s podcast, I can’t remember his name, so my husband would be like, “Really, can’t remember his name?” but loves this guy and this guy is in his late 20s and he has made hundreds of millions of dollars and so my husband loves like the overarching themes of what this guy shares but the nuances of everything he says is so specific, it doesn’t really apply to most people, if that makes sense. So he’s not listening to it and taking verbatim notes and saying, “I gotta follow this guy’s formula down to the tee,” it’s more of like the overarching principles that you pick and choose what resonates with you.
Yeah, and there are some overarching principles, generally being open and curious minded, wanting to learn, accepting the nonlinear way of solving problems, being okay with the idea that your reward will come significantly after your effort, more so than like your two-week pay period. Some of those things are pretty universal.
Absolutely, I agree with that. I think it’s so important to stay grounded in some of those realizations that you might not make money, you might not be profitable the first year or for many, many years, but the payoff and the reward is different, like you said. So it takes a certain type of person for sure that is willing to take that risk, but through the risk lies the ultimate reward and I think it’s so worth the journey. It’s such an exciting and rewarding path to embark on, for sure.
Well, I love the reward that you have in being able to do something that’s really aligned with who you are and serve people the way you want to serve people and have the impact that you want to have doing what you want to be doing. And I always thought of that as being the main benefit of it all.
Thank you, thank you. And, yes, it’s true. It’s also really helpful to stay really grounded in the rewards that you are receiving from the work you’re doing as a way of staying in your lane because I think another big issue of social media is the constant comparison trap that you fall into. And you can see someone and be happy for their success, and still in the back of your mind be like, “Well, how did they get there? I’m never gonna get there,” and it’s really easy to look around and say, “Ah, how am I not as successful as all the other people?” but we need to remember, we’re all on our own journey. All of our paths are formed by different steps that take different lengths of time and take us in different directions and just because someone else’s chapter 20 looks amazing doesn’t make your chapter 1 wrong. So it’s just so important to stay in your lane in that sense. And the other piece of that, we kind of got back to before on this, is mindset. The beginner’s mindset is so key. Maintaining that sense of curiosity, like you said, maintaining that open mind, like you said, and being willing to learn and being willing to make mistakes, because it’s the experts’ mind that is open to only a few possibilities, it’s the beginner’s mind that says, “Anything is possible.” Which mindset would you rather have?
Oh, for sure, and it reminds me even of how, given that it’s the holidays and we’re all going to have some sort of family encounter.
I was like Jedi mindset, that’s your opportunity. Use the Jedi mindset.
Exactly. Use the Jedi mindset, take that deep breath, give yourself the affirmation, and this realization that not everything, or, well, most things are not about you anyway if someone responds to you, it’s usually more about them than it is about you but it sounds like the overarching theme here is not self judgment, avoiding the self judgment, whether it is looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, “Oh my gosh, I need Botox,” something I get yelled at for saying, or something along the lines of, “Oh, I’m never gonna succeed, I’m not enough, I’m gonna fail at this,” all the things that we often say to ourselves, to avoid that self judgment and to allow ourselves to be where we are and then approach ourselves with love and then the quicker we approach ourselves with love, the quicker we approach others with love, and then when we approach others with love, we’re more likely to draw others in and have an impact on other people in our lives.
That was a beautiful summation of everything that we discussed because you’re absolutely right, it starts with our mindset and it ends with the entire reality that we experience around us.
Definitely. Well, Ashton, I want to thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes and sharing your story as well as so much of what we can do to improve our mindset at a time when there are so many external factors in the modern world pulling us in the direction of self judgment, in the direction of these toxic comparisons and excessive hustle culture where you can be productive for 22-1/2 hours of the day but you’re still going to shade yourself for that 90 minutes you weren’t. I’d also like to thank everybody out there listening today, wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, even though it’s going to be after that by the time this episode comes out but I love the spirit of Thanksgiving, the idea of gratitude, the idea of focusing on what you’re thankful for, as opposed to what you’re pissed off about and I would like to encourage you to check out YouAligned as well as Ashton’s books and just be gentle and kind with yourself and do the things you need to do to improve your life, your wellbeing, and your mindset out of love for yourself, not out of pressure to match anyone else’s expectations.
Again, amazingly said and thank you so much, Stephen, for having me and for all of the amazing impact that you are putting out into the world through this podcast, your travel blog, and soon to be everything else you’ve gotten started.
Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving and have a wonderful day.
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About Ashton August
Ashton August is the founder of wellness website YouAligned.com as well as YA Classes, the top-rated online yoga and fitness platform where every class a member completes helps plant a food-producing tree.
As a motivational author and speaker, distinguished yoga instructor and wellness entrepreneur, she believes that cultivating empowering self-talk and a healthy mindset opens the door to living an abundantly fulfilling life! Ashton has been offering live and virtual classes, events, and workshops for the past decade and has had the privilege of reaching millions of students worldwide.
A Denver, Colorado native, Ashton now lives in sunny Tucson, Arizona with her husband and their two rescue dogs. Connect with her on social: @iamashtonaugust and practice with her on www.yaclasses.com.