Show Transcript

0:00:00 - (Tessa Arnold): You. Wow. I need to continue to always propel myself into thinking about the future, right? No. No, we don't. We don't want to do that, right? We don't want to think about the past. The past is gone. The past is a dream. Right? We don't want to think about the future. The future hasn't happened yet. The future can be written in so many different ways. Why would we even fathom to think that? We know it's going to happen, right? And why would we try to control that?

0:00:25 - (Tessa Arnold): All we have is the present, the gift of the present moment. And that's where we need to stay.

0:00:34 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? And welcome to Grit, Grace, & Inspiration. I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery, only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself. And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

0:01:13 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? Welcome back to Grit, Grace, & Inspiration. This is Episode number 242, my interview with Tessa Arnold. Friend, I don't know if you are already on the newsletter list for the podcast, but if not, I'm encouraging you to jump on over and get signed up today. It takes literally two minutes. Go to gritgraceinspiration.com/newsletter or just click the link in today's show notes and sign up. It just takes your first name and email address.

0:01:49 - (Kevin Lowe): You then will get a weekly midweek pick me up. Consider it a boost to your week on Wednesday morning. Now, here's the thing. This is why I'm encouraging you to sign up now before it's too late. Because on January 1, I will be offering up my email list. An exclusive offer, something only available to those on the list. If you want a chance to get a little bit more of me while at the same time giving your 2024 the best chance at being the year that you've been dreaming of, then you want to get on the list, head to gritGraceinspiration.com

0:02:32 - (Kevin Lowe): newsletter to sign up today. So friend, I am so excited to be bringing you today's interview. My amazing conversation had with a woman named Tessa Arnold. I have been so excited to finally get to release this episode with you because Tessa is such an amazing woman with such a beautiful story. You know as well as I do that life is made up of the ups and downs. It's made up of the good times and the bad.

0:03:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Tessa's story is a beautiful example of it. She's also a beautiful example that where you are is not where you have to stay. She went from a high flying banking position to entrepreneurship, and she combined that with one heck of a personal story, something you're going to hear all about. Now. Here is what is powerful about her story is that we never realize how the events of today are going to impact our lives of tomorrow.

0:03:40 - (Kevin Lowe): And yet they do. Now, the funny thing is that at the time that it's all happening, we can't see it. We don't understand it. It makes no sense to us. We're too close to it. We're in the thick of it. It's only when we can travel down the road away and we can look back, and then we can begin to see and understand how all the pieces fit together, forming the puzzle of our lives, the beautiful, crazy, beautifully imperfect puzzle that they are.

0:04:16 - (Tessa Arnold): Life was full, in a way that I had a career that was really taking off. I had worked very hard within the commercial banking realm to network and to put in my time prior to having children and then into having children, and had propelled myself forward into a role of vice president and was looking to really extend and expand my career into executive director. And on all fronts, it probably looked fantastic from the outside.

0:04:45 - (Tessa Arnold): Here I am, a woman in a position, managing a team on a global division, working with counterparts, working with large companies on the go constantly. Two small kids, married, taking trips once or twice a year and smiling and being able to go and connect with these people and doing very well within the role itself. And, yes, it did challenge me, and yes, I learned quite a bit. And I feel so grateful for the experience that I have and the connections that I still have.

0:05:15 - (Tessa Arnold): But I'll tell you, on the inside, I would wake up and something was missing, a feeling that there was something else that I was meant to do, but I didn't understand it yet. Right. So you're getting up, you're going through the motions. You're waking up. You're taking a deep breath before you get out of bed, a deep breath before you walk into the office. You're bracing yourself. And while I knew that I could do it and I could continue to do it successfully, I didn't know that I wanted to, but I didn't know what that looked like, because the idea of leaving something so stable, something that I could project years out, what income would look like, what my family and I would be able to do.

0:05:57 - (Tessa Arnold): To go into an unknown factor of what my life would look like was terrifying. And I said, I don't know about this. I don't know if I'm going to entertain or look a little deeper into this idea just yet, but I had this feeling, and then I'll tell you, when I continued to damper down that feeling, suppress it, let it go. I stopped taking care of myself in a lot of ways because I wasn't listening to my intuition, I wasn't going within. I didn't even know necessarily what that meant.

0:06:27 - (Tessa Arnold): And I was really putting out so much energy to everything and everyone around me that slowly, year after year, I stopped taking care of myself more and more, to the point where I was getting very anxious. I was having high anxiety, traveling, not sleeping well, my diet, nutrition was nonexistent at that .2 small children that I'm really trying to put my all into, but then put my all into work, put my all into my marriage, and then my marriage started to have some difficulties within it because we were navigating some difficult things and we really wanted to maintain that partnership.

0:07:01 - (Tessa Arnold): But on all fronts, I'll be honest with you, there came a time where I was like, I don't know what to do, but I can't do this anymore. Pretty much, it's all going to fall apart. We're going to have to have a complete breakdown to have a breakthrough. And it was terrifying and scary, and it was essentially a key part of my journey.

0:07:21 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, you had been in the banking industry, you said, for twelve years.

0:07:27 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes, twelve years, yeah.

0:07:29 - (Kevin Lowe): Now, what had you done prior to that?

0:07:32 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. So I was in school for Communication, and I had worked in retail stores. I had been in managerial roles and managed team for some time within retail banking versus the commercial banking realm. And I had been doing that and really building a strong network within the retail banking group, which then propelled me into commercial banking, which then propelled me into taking my career even further. So the irony of it is, nowhere in any of that did you have health or wellness or yoga or mindfulness.

0:08:06 - (Tessa Arnold): No, sir, there wasn't any of that. There was a human being going through life, right. And having dealt with circumstances, as we all do, right, we all are beautifully tied together and connected through our difficulties and our traumas. And I say that loud and clear because it's not a comparison of anything that we have going on. Right. But it's the human experience that can be very challenging and difficult that ties us all together. And I had experienced quite a bit already within my life, and I still have so much living to do.

0:08:39 - (Tessa Arnold): At young ages, I experienced very significant losses and my father at twelve, my brother in my twenty s, and then later on, my husband. It's been a significant series of different things within my life which have allowed me a time that I needed to reflect and decide what was I going to do? Was I going to become a victim of my past and situations, and was I going to maintain that mentality? Or was I going to rise to accepting what's happened and figuring out what I need to do now for myself and those around me?

0:09:14 - (Tessa Arnold): And a lot of that is the courage to have self reflection, to learn the lessons, to gain the strength to process through grief and to continue to work, to become the fullest expression of yourself, which I'm constantly doing and I will do throughout this entire journey till its end.

0:09:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, during this career in banking that obviously very successful in it. When you look back on it, what do you think? Was that first spark that made you think, for the first time, maybe I need to make a change?

0:09:52 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. I was sitting on a plane. I was going to visit one of my large corporate clients. I was sitting on a plane. It was an early morning flight. I had instead of flying out the night before, which I never did, because I wanted to put my kids to bed. Right, so you're trying to do it all, you're trying to be the superhuman, but then inevitably you burn yourself out. So I'm not flying in the night before. I'm waking up at 03:00 I'd probably done this already earlier in the week, and my anxiety was so high that I had to. I just was breathing through it because I was worried about things that were going on at home. I was worried about the children.

0:10:26 - (Tessa Arnold): I was preparing for this meeting. Nowhere I look back and I reflect, even through telling you this right now, nowhere was I concerned about me. Not a thing. All I knew is that I was feeling uncomfortable feelings. I finished the meeting. Meeting was fantastic, as it always was. I gave 110% because I could really turn off anything that I needed to and focus in that moment and be completely on. But what it did to me is it drained me. It drained my energy. I wasn't taking care of myself. So when I got back on that flight to go home, I have to tell you, the anxiety, the really depletion of anything that I was doing, the giving out of so much energy started to build up and resonate within my body, where I had tension all throughout my shoulders, my neck, stomach problems, headaches, couldn't sleep well. My skin wasn't at its best.

0:11:20 - (Tessa Arnold): I was a shell of myself. And it's interesting because my clIents, I'll show them pictures and I'll say, this is what it looks like when you start to embark on that self journey. And I share that in a beautiful way of grace for myself, saying, that was me then, when I needed to be right there, then and now. And this is me now, feeling so incredibly full and at peace with who I am. And you see the metamorphosis, when you start to care for yourself and start to make some difficult changes.

0:11:50 - (Tessa Arnold): But that was it. I had a moment where I got off that plane and I went home and I was done. I could not continue on like that. My body was going to shut down. I was going to shut down, and then I was going to let people down. And that just wasn't an option. And I put a call into my doctor and I spoke with her. I put a call into others that I could find support me. I took some time off of work. I was having some really hard look at my relationship to see what I could do for my partner, my husband at the time, to see how I could help support him.

0:12:22 - (Tessa Arnold): Knowing that you are not the one responsible to change people, you can support them, but they have to want to make that change for themselves. And I knew within that moment that it was time for me to focus on me.

0:12:33 - (Kevin Lowe): That's powerful. That's powerful.

0:12:36 - (Tessa Arnold): And I did it afraid, and I did it in the bathroom by myself. So let's just say that this is coming to you from a very peaceful, powerful woman right now who can tell that story and hug that self, who was broken, right? Who was broken, and finding moments to release because I didn't want anybody else to see. Now I will cry whenever I need to, and my kids will be like, oh, Mom's crying. Why are you crying? I'm like, oh, I just saw this beautiful story, and it brought tears to my eye. And what a beautiful release of emotion, because now I show them that it's okay to do this right? It's okay to have big emotions. It's okay to share wonderful joy, sadness, expression, goodness, anger and frustration in a safe way. You have to let it out.

0:13:22 - (Tessa Arnold): For too long, I had built it up, hidden it inside, and it manifested in my body. And that's what happens. That mind body connection is so incredibly important.

0:13:34 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, absolutely. Now, from the time that you had that first initial spark that made you say, I got to get out. How long did it take then before you actually left that career?

0:13:47 - (Tessa Arnold): Oh, goodness, such a good question. So I took time off, and then I took an extended period of leave, and the company was fantastic, incredibly supportive when I found my voice. And I say that I needed to. Right? And that's the hardest part. We're scared of what people are going to think. We're scared to let people down. Please, please stop. Be scared that you're letting yourself down. Be scared that you're not taking care of yourself first and foremost.

0:14:12 - (Tessa Arnold): And then think about the other people. You can't show up empty and broken to support other people. Right? You've got to show up whole. You have to make yourself strong enough so you can lift up the ones around you and embody that. So I would just say that. But then I took leave. So I took leave for about a year, and I moved. I moved back across the country during that time. Back, as I call it, home, because I need to come home. And I had been gone for 16 years, and I never thought that I would come back here. But at the time, I was going through a divorce. I was trying to support my husband in every way that I could, but he needed to do some work on himself, and he needed to focus on his health and well being.

0:14:49 - (Tessa Arnold): I needed to focus on my children and myself. So we took some time, which worked for both. He would come back and visit. We ended up going through a very peaceful divorce and supported each other in a capacity that worked really well for us as beautiful people in each other's lives. And then I came back, and then I picked back up a year later, and I started working at another large bank again, right? Not knowing it any better, but telling myself, oh, I did some of the work, right.

0:15:16 - (Tessa Arnold): I've been doing this time to get back at it, not necessarily knowing key aspects. Like, is this fulfilling to me, asking Myself those questions, is this what I should be doing? Am I doing this? Because it seems like it's just the right thing to do and I'm very good at it. And I will say, I went back to work for two years then, and it was a beautiful experience, and I was doing very well. And the company was fantastic. The people are fantastic. But yet again, I'm waking up saying, wait, I'm getting back into that overextension of myself and not in a way that I feel like I'm using all of my gifts, right? We all innately have these beautiful gifts to put out into the world.

0:15:58 - (Tessa Arnold): You could say, but it's already been done. Yes, but nobody does it like you. Nobody has the thoughts you have. Nobody says the words that you say. Nobody has the ideas that come up in just the way that you have them. Have to express yourself. So I said to myself, okay, I'm not doing the thing. I have a company that I'm trying to get off the ground, but I've been doing that at the same time that I'm back within banking.

0:16:22 - (Tessa Arnold): I have to make a decision here. And it was scary. I made a decision to leave banking for good, and that was January of goodness. Just this year, I have to say, I was overextending myself yet again. So much working on getting my company off the ground. And since then, since leaving, terrified. Terrified in doing it. I have done so many things in this past year. It's been absolutely incredible. And I can't stop.

0:16:51 - (Tessa Arnold): And that tells me that I am doing the right thing. I'm on the right path, and I'm within my flow.

0:16:56 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I love it so much. I love it so much. APPLAUSE to you for recognizing the fact that the way you feel it matters. I feel like we grow up in a world that tries to tell us that. We graduate high school, we go to college, we get a career, and we stay in that same career until the day we retire.

0:17:24 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes.

0:17:24 - (Kevin Lowe): And the fact of the matter is, life just isn't like that anymore.

0:17:29 - (Tessa Arnold): No, it's not. No, it's not.

0:17:32 - (Kevin Lowe): No. And it shouldn't be because we grow as people and evolve as people. So I think that's a beautiful example of it.

0:17:39 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. And I have to say, I have shared that, what you've just said. I've shared that with people. I said, we're told. We're told after a certain age, and it's so key for early development from birth. And they say age seven, some people say age 14. For your preconceived, just notions by the people within your life. Right. Your environment, what you're told should do what you can't do. Don't do that. It's not safe. Yes, you should. Okay.

0:18:04 - (Tessa Arnold): Can't do that anymore. You're getting older, right. You've got to be more responsible. You have to make decisions. And my children are in school and they're being asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? And that question, who knows what they want to be? I'm still a kid. I'm going to just stay a kid. That's my answer. Well, right now, I'm a kid. I'm in the present moment. Let's not fast forward to the future.

0:18:27 - (Tessa Arnold): And that is where it starts. That's where this mental switch goes on to say, wow, I need to continue to always propel myself into thinking about the future, right? No, we don't. We don't want to do that, right? We don't want to think about the past. The past is gone. The past is a dream. We don't want to think about the future. The future hasn't happened yet. The future can be written in so many different ways.

0:18:51 - (Tessa Arnold): Why would we even fathom to think that? We know what's going to happen, right? And why would we try to control that? All we have is the present, the gift of the present moment. And that's where we need to stay. So then we went through school, right? And then you get into, okay. Prep for college. Where are you going to go to college? Great. Okay, now declare your major. Declare your. Pretty much write it down, commit to it for the rest of your life. You've never worked before, really, but, hey, why don't you get out there and just decide? It was so difficult for me, and I think at an early stage, I learned pretty quickly I wasn't good at any of these questions.

0:19:28 - (Tessa Arnold): And people are like, she's a little off, that one. And I'm like, why do I need to know? I'll never forget my college Guidance counselor was like, Tessa, you have to declare a major. And I go, how am I supposed to know what I'm supposed to do or what I like doing? I haven't tried all these know? And it's like I'm just at this point in my life where this is the capacity of what I know and I want to keep learning.

0:19:51 - (Tessa Arnold): And then you get into work, and just as you said, we're meant to just stay, but we're also meant to constantly evolve and grow and change and how uncomfortable to be kept in the same structure and confinement and embodiment, right? Our environment has to change. The people around us need to change. Right? We need to continue to grow. We need to continue to adventure and explore and get excited and bring things into our life. Right?

0:20:20 - (Tessa Arnold): Otherwise, are we truly having that full life experience? I don't think so.

0:20:24 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I agree completely. I love it. Now, you're going to have to help to fill in the gaps of this timeline of events. But I know at some point, obviously, we are talking about your marriage.

0:20:36 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes.

0:20:37 - (Kevin Lowe): That you separated, you moved, but there's also a sports drink involved somewhere there is.

0:20:45 - (Tessa Arnold): And then enter stage left. This is life. This is life, which it all makes sense in a very strange way. Things happen, right? And you decide how you're going to grow from them. And my husband had decided he wanted to start a company. It was a drink company, it was an energy company. It was called by a completely different name. And I supported him through that. That's great. And I helped support from a just wife perspective, a partner perspective.

0:21:22 - (Tessa Arnold): And then when he couldn't, he stalled it for a little while. He left it, and then we picked it up jointly with others that are still involved with the company, our founders. And we decided to change. And then when I became, he brought me in when the Founders did, to become more involved because of my project management experience and my global banking experience and the fact they are all veterans. It's a beautiful gift, the persistence, the tenacity, the grit, the passion they're bringing into it. They asked me to come involved from more of a corporate perspective, of getting to point A, to point B, to rallying the troops and making sure we got it off the ground, which we did.

0:22:03 - (Tessa Arnold): As I'm doing that, I can't get involved in something and not give my all. So I became very much involved with it. I assisted with the formulation of what is now a powder supplement that you take daily. It's called Snapback Energy. I'm assisted with coming up with the name. Now. At the time, my husband wasn't able to participate in the business as much. He had to take a step back. And I said, well, goodness, I'm not going to let this fall. This is a dream that you've had for the longest time.

0:22:31 - (Tessa Arnold): I'm going to step up to the helm, not having any entrepreneur experience, not having come from the food industry like a few of the other co founders. But I'll tell you what, through grit and grace, I learned. And I said, well, we're going to get this off the ground. So we got it off the ground. And he saw that my late husband, and then he, unfortunately it was very difficult for us, passed. He passed away sometime after that. But he saw this company get off the ground. He saw an idea that we had all developed together that was originally from his idea come to fruition and get out there. And what a gift.

0:23:10 - (Tessa Arnold): And I know without a doubt in my mind that he is so incredibly proud of us, especially since then. And in his passing, snapback energy sort of became my lighthouse and the storm and a gift for myself and my children that we put so much beautiful energy around it is in his memory. And I have really changed and developed the brand to be a wellness, to be a health supplement to support you in so many different ways, from a liver support, a full body powerhouse support and all of those wonderful things.

0:23:40 - (Tessa Arnold): And I know without a doubt in my mind how proud he is of this. But, yes, that's how Snapback energy really came to be. And since then, I've even launched another. You know, I thank him for setting the stage and setting off and lighting that fire to really go into entrepreneurship, too.

0:23:58 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, that is just crazy. Now, at the time that you really were involved in the company, in growing it to what it was. Had you guys were already separated?

0:24:16 - (Tessa Arnold): No, we were together.

0:24:18 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay.

0:24:18 - (Tessa Arnold): We were together at the onset of this. We were still married. And then it was only towards the end, right after the launch of the business, that we had been separated and then divorced, but still very much partners within this business. So I was the CTO, he was the COO, and we were working together. We were very close. I think there's very much ideas of what separation and divorce looked like. But as you mentioned earlier, and we mentioned, you grow and you change and people have different needs.

0:24:48 - (Tessa Arnold): And while marriage wasn't something necessarily that was going to be what we needed at the time, the support and the love was there regardless, because that was the experience that we choose to have for our children. So we were very much still involved in each other's lives, but he had quite a bit that he had to work on from his health and within his life. And so I decided to pick it up and I wasn't going to let it go. And I still am very much changing and developing and working with others with Snapback energy and really getting it out there as the powerhouse supplement that people don't realize they need and really want within their lives.

0:25:27 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. Now, at the same time that you're going through all this, you're also a mother.

0:25:35 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes.

0:25:36 - (Kevin Lowe): Would you mind just kind of touching on a little bit of that aspect of we hear about your career, we hear about building a business. At the same time, we're talking about your marriage. And even though the two of you maintained a friendship or whatever we want to call it partners in business, you're also trying to be a mom.

0:25:58 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes.

0:25:59 - (Kevin Lowe): And I would love to hear more about that.

0:26:02 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. It's interesting. Parenthood and motherhood. There's no handbook how to be the best mother you can be. Right. Here's a guide for everything that you will walk through and note cards with talking points and don't worry, you've dealt with some trauma in your life, too, so you're going to have to deal with that. It's interesting because being human in itself can be challenging. I tell people all the time, I'm like, just come be human with me. Let's walk this experience together.

0:26:30 - (Tessa Arnold): Right? It's a gift of grace. And being a parent and a mother, as I can speak to, is part of my purpose within this experience. It's part of my life. They are my North Stars. They are my heart. They are my teachers, these children. And I didn't realize it until a few years ago that they are so much so my teachers. Actually, I was at a Deepak Chopra retreat and he said, I think it was Roger, one of his meditation head, meditation coach. And he's up there speaking, and he said, don't look for your guru. Don't look for your teacher. They'll find you when you're ready.

0:27:09 - (Tessa Arnold): My daughter comes into my room a week later and says something so profound. And I was like, you found me, my little teacher. And I look at that all the time and I'll say to her, sometimes I'm like, how old are you really? How many times have you done this? Your soul is so beautiful. And so it's a gift. And I take that deeper. But just in the basic things in life, right, the unconditional love, the gift of reflecting on how you want to show up for people in your life, it was extremely challenging. I will tell you that as a mother, a young mother, and trying to navigate raising my children through moving across the country with two small kids under the age of six, to just talking with them about what separation, divorce looks like, what health looks like, and then navigating the loss of their father with them, there's definitely the moment. I'll tell you where I sat with my children, having delivered that message to them that their father had passed.

0:28:10 - (Tessa Arnold): And the moment I closed my eyes right before I said it to him and the day leading up to it, because we had been traveling and we were coming back home, I closed my eyes and I pictured myself in the hospital when that News was delivered to me as a twelve year old that my father had passed in a boating accident. And I said, well, who better equipped to sit here, cry with them, hold them, not know how this is going to look, how it's going to feel, what this grief is going to look like, but know that I can get them through it.

0:28:40 - (Tessa Arnold): I can. And when you say to your child, I know how this feels. And you truly, down to your core essence, know how it feels because you've been that child. Wow. There's no words for that. And it chokes me up now, still. But to say that this has been challenging and that we'll still navigate the beautiful challenges of motherhood and parenthood is an understatement. And I will falter and I will fall, and I will have moments where I apologize for my kids because I overreacted, or I was impatient, or I was just human.

0:29:14 - (Tessa Arnold): And I say it just like that. I'm sorry. I had a human moment. It wasn't my best moment, wasn't my finest, but I can do better. Let's try that again, or I'll go put myself in time out. Mom needs to go. Take ten minutes to breathe, meditate, decompress, and I will come back to you and I will answer that question. And these are just things, skills that I've learned. I haven't always done that. Right. For a long time, before I started taking care of myself, I was in total sympathetic nerve reaction. So I was in that flight fright freeze, right?

0:29:45 - (Tessa Arnold): My anxiety was higher. I didn't know how to manage it properly. I didn't know about breathing exercises. I didn't know simply that I could lower that just by taking a longer exhale for five minutes. Right. I hadn't begun practicing my ayurvedic coaching, so I was just showing up to the best of my ability, as we all do. But then when I started working on myself, I realized there is this peacefulness coming about me, which then went out to my children. I'll never forget.

0:30:13 - (Tessa Arnold): I was sitting at dinner. My daughter looked over me and she goes, mom. She goes, you're just like. And it was just a sound. It was this relaxed, comfortable, just like. Yes. Feeling. She goes, yOu're just like that now, right? And I was like, yeah, honey, I feel it. She goes, is it the yoga? I said, it could be. She goes, is it the work? Is it because he left the bank? I said, I don't know, honey. I said, it's all of these things. She goes, it feels good and that I'm doing it. I'm doing the right thing. And they're going to show me.

0:30:47 - (Tessa Arnold): Right? They're going to be my barometers. They're going to be the ones in the storm, my light showing me the path that I need to take. And I want to leave this world a better place than I found it. And I want to leave the people in my life better than I found them or anybody. I come into contact with. And that's just simply my goal.

0:31:04 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I love it. As you speak to that, I can't help but think, like so many times, society again tells us to discount children. They're children.

0:31:16 - (Tessa Arnold): No.

0:31:16 - (Kevin Lowe): What do they know? And yet, if you really know it, you will know that the people running this world, running our lives, should be children.

0:31:24 - (Tessa Arnold): Yes, please.

0:31:27 - (Kevin Lowe): They have that unfiltered truth of just love and life, and instead of hear that about your daughters. I think it's just beautiful.

0:31:37 - (Tessa Arnold): It is. My son does that, too. The simplistic way that he looks at life and the way that he lets things go because he doesn't attach. Right. He's got a detached, beautiful grace about him. They both do, where it's like, yes, they'll have their moments as they get a little bit older. My daughter's ten and my son's about to be nine. But the gift of realizing that at one point we were children and then to not want to rush through childhood and as you just said, leading with love, leading with light, leading with unbridled fun.

0:32:08 - (Tessa Arnold): When were we told we had to stop having fun? Because I'll tell you what, we got that wrong. We got that way wrong. Life is meant to be fun. And that's the end of the sentence right there. And I will put it on a billboard. Right? It's meant to be fun. This summer, I've had more fun than I've ever had because I said, what am I doing? As I was sitting on the beach, I had just signed my kids up for a surfing lesson, and I was sitting on the beach watching them smile and laugh, and I was smiling and laughing. I go, what am I doing?

0:32:40 - (Tessa Arnold): And the next time we went out, a week later, I was out there with them, surfing, taking a surfing lesson.

0:32:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Amazing.

0:32:46 - (Tessa Arnold): I'm not going to stop having fun and I won't be apologetic for it. And I want to bring out that child. I would love to bring out the childlike qualities within myself again. And I very much can. Right. And it's in the simplicity of going within, finding the peace within, realizing life's meant to be lived through the experiences. It's a culmination of experiences. It's meant to be fun. It's meant to be beautiful, it's meant to be hard. It's meant to be all the things I am going to. Just not adult as much.

0:33:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. No, I love it. Oh, my goodness. I love it so much. And the other thing I wanted to reference to what you shared is something that I say often. Is that we never understand how the events of today are going to impact our lives of tomorrow. And we can never really understand the deeper meaning of why this is happening right now. And I can't help but think to you, being a child losing your father and how that prepared you without even knowing to be a mother to your children when they're going through the same thing.

0:33:59 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. It's something I wouldn't wish that on anybody, and I would never wish that on my children or for us to have experienced that. But we did. And that's it. You stop the thought right there, right. Because it happened. And then I have to think about that. And instead of dwelling on why has this happened to me, right. Why did that happen to me then? Why is this happening to me now? And that's not conducive, that's not helping, right. None of that is productive in that thought for me.

0:34:30 - (Tessa Arnold): So I decide to change that thought to say, well, I can have this conversation with them. And in a way it is a very hard, and I hesitate to call it, it's not so much a gift, but a silver lining that I can sit there with them and say, no, I know. I know what's going to feel like when you walk into school that Monday and feel a little bit different. Am I different now because my father passed? How do we navigate those conversations? So it was a gift in a way that I could speak to them on such things that I knew that they were going to feel, not all the things, and it's a unique experience to everyone.

0:35:09 - (Tessa Arnold): But goodness, I know what I wish, the support that I wish that I had that I can now offer to them in different aspects. And the conversations that I was scared to have or didn't want to bother my mother with or didn't want to make her sad, those are all things that you think about as a child. And so I'll bring them up now and I'll say, hey, let's talk. Let's share what you're feeling right now. What are these emotions that are coming up for you?

0:35:33 - (Tessa Arnold): You can focus on what's transpired in your childhood, or you can do the work to uncover that, right? Understand how it made you feel, understand how you're now showing up within your relationships and from a day to day basis and realize, are there areas where you're uncomfortable that maybe you want to take a deeper look in and change, because you are the agents of your life and you can do that. And when you realize that and do the work, which I'll tell you is very courageous.

0:36:02 - (Tessa Arnold): I don't know that there's anything more courageous than doing the work on yourself. Right. And when you do that, though, you give yourself a gift of the experiences within your life that you wish to have. Right. And that's beautiful.

0:36:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. So kind of going back to where we were kind of talking before, because there's these two facets that we're kind of covering here. We're talking about your personal journey, the journey of being a mother, but we're also talking about this professional journey. Talk to me a little bit about you. You basically took over this company that was your late husbands. You're growing it. Where is it today?

0:36:46 - (Kevin Lowe): What does the business look like today?

0:36:48 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. So snapback energy. Now we have two flavors. So we had our kind of flagship flavor, the grape supplement, that was out there, and it's fantastic. Since then, we've launched another flavor, which is our orange flavor. We've also since patented the formula. So it's a scientifically based, formulated, patented five ingredients that really support the body and the overall health. And we've picked up a lot of just, I guess, awareness from different media outlets. We had a beautiful article published in medical Daily in regards to the liver support, the call to action on a liver support. We give 2% back to our veterans and first responders, which I think is a beautiful thing, coming up on Veterans Day and having that every year, and speaking to our veterans and just the beautiful support that we can give back to them based on the heroic and beautiful efforts they've given to us and for their country.

0:37:42 - (Tessa Arnold): And we continue to get out there. We continue to do sponsorships. We are looking to expand our co packing production down the East Coast. So I was just in Florida last week looking at a beautiful co packing facility so we could continue to expand and really be able to support all of our customers and clients who are coming back. And at the same time, we are looking at a third flavor, which we have the samples and we've agreed upon, which has adaptogens and greens. So again, we're getting into a beautiful synergy of that body mind connection, taking care of your body and really listening and saying, what do we need to add into people's lives that will really help them feel their best?

0:38:27 - (Tessa Arnold): And that's hand in hand with work that I'm also doing from my ayurvedic practice. So it's beautiful, the synergies between other things and other businesses that I'm getting off the ground, as well as snapback, which is great.

0:38:41 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Okay. I am not even going to try to repeat the word you said. What was that word you said?

0:38:49 - (Tessa Arnold): Yeah, Ari Veda. So it's. Ariveda is a 5000 year old body of knowledge. Simply put, it's from the Vedas, right? The Vedas were also bodies of knowledge that predate medical science, predate anything that we know and they're probably even much older than that. But what it is, it is the science of life. Beautifully put. And what it does is it covers really the composition of your body through doing profiling, doing guided sort of talk throughs and sessions with an Ayurvedic lifestyle coach which would be myself.

0:39:23 - (Tessa Arnold): And what we do within that is we really evaluate the six pillars of health within your life, which is a beautiful practice. And it's interesting, had I had somebody talk to me about this when I was sitting, when I got off that plane that day and I made that decision, I don't know how much sense it would have made to me but it would have started to really clarify the areas within my life that I needed to take a look at so much sooner than I realized on my own.

0:39:50 - (Tessa Arnold): So what's happened is through my journey and I'm not surprised. I found this Ayurvedic practice and I found it almost about a year ago and I thought this was so interesting. I was getting into mindfulness, I was getting into nutrition, I was getting into health. I had been on that journey anyway. And this sort of was the missing piece of the puzzle that made too much sense that I couldn't let it go, right. So I started to embody this within my life. And the changes that started to happen were profound.

0:40:21 - (Tessa Arnold): The way that I felt, the way that I showed up, the amount of energy, how my body was looking and changing my strength, my mental health, right, my ability to find peacefulness within myself. I was like, this is too good not to share. So I created a business where I do coaching and consulting and really guide people through other individuals and my clients through the six pillars of health.

0:40:47 - (Kevin Lowe): Amazing. I love it. You know what I love about this story is just the beautiful, just evolution where everything just kind of flows into one another. And yeah, life is crazy, it's chaotic, but yet it all kind of fits together in the end.

0:41:10 - (Tessa Arnold): It does. And you don't realize that. I'll tell you in all fairness, it seems it's like I have a moment now where I'm like this was meant to happen. I had to get to this point because there were moments where I was sitting at my desk and I was sitting in different places, and I'm like, I must be crazy, and what on earth am I doing and what's going to happen? And that's where you got to just let it go. You got to lean in.

0:41:34 - (Tessa Arnold): Lean in and just let the idea that you have to know what's going to happen go. Because when you do that, life gets a whole lot easier and you start to see the pieces fall into place. When you have hope, when you have faith, when you have a feeling that I know that I'm doing the right things because it feels good for myself and the people around me, and it's for the higher good, that's when it's going to happen. You got to have hope in that.

0:41:57 - (Tessa Arnold): But I'm not going to say that there were moments where it wasn't pretty and I was feeling lost and afraid, but I leaned in and I had the hope. And now we come out at this point in time where I just can't stop. I'll tell you, I've begun this journey. And then I went on and got certified and then I started a business. And the certification, the business have all transpired in under a year. And then I went and got my 200 hours yoga teacher certification because I wanted to deepen my Practice. And now other things are coming down the channel and it just feels really good. And I say yes when it feels. When my intuition speaks, I say yes.

0:42:34 - (Tessa Arnold): And I can have doubt, can creep in later. And my ego, which is going to come from a place of fear, right? Not a bad thing, but it is a place of fear. And it's just trying to protect me based on what it thinks that it knows. I tell it. Thank you. But I've got this, and this feels too good to say no to.

0:42:51 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, my goodness. I love it. I love you. I love your story. For my listener today, who wants to dive deeper into your world, who wants some more Tesla in their daily life, where is the best place for us to send them?

0:43:08 - (Tessa Arnold): Absolutely. So you can find me. So my company Websites are Snapbackenergy.com and balanceofyou.com. That's the balance of you co, you can find me at balanceofyouco on Instagram. You can find me at Tess Elizabeth one on Instagram. You can find me at Snapback Energy at all those places because I'm doing all the things. I share quite a bit of my experiences through the six pillars of health on my personal page and my work page, which the company just launched last month.

0:43:39 - (Tessa Arnold): So we're getting up and running. I have some wonderful clients I'm already working with and sharing their experience. So, yes, please reach out. Please do. If you have a thought, if you want to share anything, if anything inspires you, if you have a question, if you're in a moment like I was at different times where you're like, this is terrifying, I promise you we can have that conversation, right, that we're going to lean in a bit because it feels too good or maybe you're just too uncomfortable not to make a change.

0:44:03 - (Tessa Arnold): And, yeah, you can become the agent of your life and create a life that you can't wait to wake up to. We all have that capacity.

0:44:10 - (Kevin Lowe): Absolutely love it. Tessa, thank you for being here today.

0:44:14 - (Tessa Arnold): Thank you. This was such a joy and what a beautiful way to start the day. So thank you so absolutely.

0:44:21 - (Kevin Lowe): And for you, my listener, thank you, as always, for being here. My hope, my prayer, is that something said today can leave a positive impact on your life today to make tomorrow even a little bit better. Remember, this is your life, so get out and live it. This is Kevin Lowe with Grit Grace and Inspiration. Enjoy the day.