Day 267: Roxana Nunez
“You know how they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away? I say learning every day keeps Alzheimer’s away, and I believe that even if it’s something silly like playing Sudoku …”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Roxana, for agreeing to part of this Project toda,y and before we begin can you please introduce yourself?
Roxana Nunez: Thank you. My name is Roxana. I’m 43 years old. I am the Avid Diva coach, and I’m very happy to be here.
Toni: Can you please tell us what type of coach you are again?
Roxana: I am a procrastination coach.
Toni: A procrastination coach. Oh, that sounds very interesting. Well Roxana, when you think about that word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does it happen?
Roxana: I hope to inspire women my age. I am in my 40s, and I have noticed as years have gone by that we take care of the family, we take care of our jobs, we take care of everything else except for ourselves. We always leave ourselves for last, and I hope to inspire women to remember to take care of themselves first, and to stop procrastinating on their own things.
Toni: Okay, okay. Now can you give me an example of how that happens, you know, how do you help inspire others to remember that self-care?
Roxana: Well I’ll give you an example. I’m not going to use her name. I have a friend that happens to be a little overweight. She’s about 40 pounds overweight. She has the perfect family life. She loves her husband, has two children, she adores her kids, she has a good job, and everything comes first. And when I ask her, you know, “What about what you’re eating?” she would tell me “Well, I do whatever is faster so that the kids can eat.” “Are you exercising?” “No, because the kids have practice” and the kids have this and the kids have that.
And I keep telling her, you know, “You need to find even if it’s 15 minutes for yourself to plan your day or to do something that is beneficial for you, because if your tank is empty, they’re not going to get much from you. They’re going to have a mother that is not entirely happy. And through that I was able to get her to a point where she started out with 15 minutes. She’s doing an hour right now, and she just does whatever she wants for herself, be it yoga or exercising on a machine or whatever, but she is doing an hour right now.
Toni: Oh that’s fantastic. So how do you think by women, or just what you’re trying to do and live your life, how does it … how do you help people then to explore their potential?
Roxana: I believe that procrastination is not an issue of being lazy or being a bad person. I believe that we’ve equated procrastination with a bad quality trait, and I want people to use it as a tool, meaning you have to sit down and figure out why you’re really procrastinating. Once you figure out why you’re procrastinating, why you’re waiting for the last possible minute to do whatever it is that you want to do – be it fear, be it that you don’t know how to start – whatever the reason is, which is what I want to help you figure out.
Then we can come up with a plan, because there is a possibility that one of three things will happen – either you really want this and you just have an issue that you have to deal with to get to what you want to do; there’s the possibility that you start working on that issue and you find another avenue altogether; and there’s the third possibility, which is you really didn’t want to do this to begin with and you need to find out why you didn’t want to do it. You said you were going to do something and then you didn’t do it.
Toni: So really their potential may lie underneath the layers of denial that’s going on.
Roxana: Either denial or fear. There’s a lot of fear involved in this, and it’s not always fear. You know, people say it’s either fear of success or failure. There’s also fear of commitment. People … if you start doing something, then you’re committed to doing it, and a lot of people have fear of … real fear of commitment. They just won’t say it.
Toni: Right, right. So you … so you help them uncover what’s at the root cause of that procrastination?
Roxana: Exactly.
Toni: That’s how you will get to their potential to help them explore that?
Roxana: I hope that by working on that issue, they can release whatever it is that’s in their life that is causing them to stop short of accomplishing whatever goal they’re accomplishing then. Because once you deal with the issue, everything in your life starts falling into place.
It happened to me. Once I figured out what I really wanted to do with my life – and yes, I waited until I was 40 to figure it out – once I figured out what I really wanted to do, everything else started falling into place. I am exercising now. I am taking very good care of myself. I stopped smoking after like 25 years of smoking. So once I dealt with the core issue, which was my own personal fears, then I started … it’s kind of like, I don’t want to say magic, it sounds kind of funky. But the truth is, it is kind of like magic, because once you get one issue resolved, every other issue you deal with it in a different way. You start looking at things in a different way.
Toni: So Roxana, what inspires you?
Roxana: Wow. What inspires me? There’s a lot of things that inspire me, and I realize that a lot of people say reading good books and listening to good things and watching movies that are inspirational. I also believe that people inspire me. I love to watch people doing good things. I love seeing people that take care of themselves and not only taking care of themselves because they want to take care of themselves, but taking care of themselves so they show others how to live their best possible life.
Toni: You look for those mentors and those examples?
Roxana: I, you know, even if you don’t know … just the reason why mentors work is not just if you know them. It works if you watch them, and that’s really important, because some people sometimes say “Well I don’t have a mentor.” Well, yeah, you just go on the internet and look for a person that’s doing whatever it is that you want to do, and you follow their example. You don’t have to know the person personally for the person to be your mentor, and that is really … to me, that is really important, to have a lot of positive energy in your life and have positive role models and positive examples.
Toni: What else do you tend to look for and do when you are needing to be inspired? Are there certain tools and resources that you consistently reach for?
Roxana: I would have to say that one of the interesting things about this whole process has been that eating well and making sure that I sleep eight hours a day has been very inspirational. It refuels you. I’m not going to lie to you. I do like my chocolate or my chocolate with caramel, and I do have it every once in a while. Instead of taking that completely off my diet, what I did was I added fruits and vegetables. I make sure that I have at least three or four servings of fruit and at least three or four servings of vegetables every day. That fuels me.
I have actually … you know how sometimes people tell you, well you have a rhythm in your life; you’re either a morning person or a night person, and some people don’t believe in this. I have noticed that after 2 p.m. I’m a nutcracker . And in the morning, I’d rather do exercise or reading something that has nothing to do with what I work on and that sort of thing, because I’ve noticed that my energy and my ideas usually come in the afternoon. So I actually follow my heart on those and that fuels me.
As far as other tools, I do guided meditations, because I never knew how to meditate, and for some reason guided meditations work for me so I have a couple of them on my iPod. I just go ahead and listen to the guided meditation and make sure that I have at least 20 minutes to myself. I am Catholic, however, this works for anybody on any religion or any faith that they have — spend a couple of minutes saying thank you every day.
Toni: Roxana how did you come to … you said you finally … you made this choice in your 40s to do something like this. Where did you get the courage to do that?
Roxana: I got the courage to do that because I was not happy with myself and I have a daughter. She’s 18 years old right now, and I did not want my daughter to grow up thinking that being a mom or being a wife or being whatever was the source of my discontent. I wanted her to know that I was working every day to be a better person and to be happy, and seeing the reaction before I was 40.
I was very miserable, and I’m not a … I’ve never used drugs. I never drank alcohol, so I’m not the kind of person that will go into that sort of thing. My thing was eating, and I love eating, and I’m not going to stop eating because I found happiness. The way I eat, and the things that I eat, and the life that I lead right now is a lot happier than the one I had before.
I’ve always believed that it’s better the example than whatever you say to your kids. You can talk until you’re blue. If they see you having a change in your life … like right now we’re eating really healthy. I don’t even have a microwave anymore. I took the microwave out because it makes it too easy for me to buy the frozen whatever.
So when we moved to Florida ten months ago I said “You know what? No microwave. If we don’t cook, we don’t eat.” And we … it’s simple meals, it’s not like … wow, I’m not a chef. It’s a matter of showing her by example that I am making better choices and I do have my treats. I try to have better choices most of the time, and then every once in a while I can have a cookie.
Toni: Oh, I see, that’s great … that’s a great example. So Roxana, what do you do now to continue to explore your own potential?
Roxana: I learn, learn, learn. You know how they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away? I say learning every day keeps Alzheimer’s away, and I believe that even if it’s something silly like playing Sudoku or however you call it, I call it Sudoku. Or in my case is I’m starting a business now learning WordPress. I know how to blog. I just didn’t know how to use all the other tools in WordPress, so I’m learning that. Every day I learn something new, and that keeps me sharp, it keeps me focused, it keeps me going.
Toni: So you are just learning, learning, learning. That’s what you’re doing so you can put all that learning into action?
Roxana: I believe that the more I learn the better I can serve people. And if I still … if I think I know everything, I’m dead. That’s just reality. Once you think you know everything you’re dead. You’re not going to be very good to anybody around you, and you’re definitely not going to be able to coach people, because every day we learn something new. There was a time when sugar was not that bad and now sugar is not exactly the best thing for you, so things change with the times, and the more we learn, the better we are as people.
Toni: There are certain words that come to me when I listen to these interviews, and the word that I’ve written down a couple of times during our interview is the word “choice,” and that’s how this is coming across to me. Others will have their own perspective of your interview, but I hear you not only having made choices in your own life, but it’s all about choices for you, including helping people see that procrastination is a choice. There’s a reason why you’re choosing to procrastinate on something, and so that’s what I’m hearing, you know, that it is all about choices and you trying to help others to see that everybody as well has a choice, so that’s what’s hit me with your interview. I think it’s pretty cool.
Roxana: Thank you.
Toni: You’re welcome.
Roxana: I agree with you.
Toni: Well Roxana, thank you so very much for agreeing to be part of this Project today, and we will have a link at the bottom of the transcripts on how people can see your blog, and we wish you the best of luck with your business.
Roxana: Thank you very much, Toni.
Toni: You are welcome. Take care.
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For more information about Roxana Nunez: www.aviddiva.biz
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