Lisa Virtue

Here's that. And I don't know if you received my message. I sent it so late. I apologize.

Autumn Carter

You're fine.

Lisa Virtue

Catching up on everything, but yeah, just the general flow. I wanted to give you a sense of that so that when we start talking, you kind of know what to expect. But I just want to have a great conversation, too. So nothing really scripted. You ready?

Autumn Carter

I am. It's weird to be on the other side. I feel nervous when, like, what I do with other people. It's like, it's fine.

Lisa Virtue

I know. Isn't it funny? It's a control thing.

Autumn Carter

Maybe auto.

Lisa Virtue

I don't know. I won't diagnose it.

Autumn Carter

Well, it's also that I have to do more of the talking.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah, exactly.

Autumn Carter

Like, on the other side, you just go with the flow, and it's just. Yep.

Lisa Virtue

That's why I'm excited to be a podcast host. I've been a guest many times, and I'm like, oh, I like this. This is fun. Awesome. Okay, so everything. Do not disturb Zahn. I like to remind myself.

Autumn Carter

Oh, yeah, thank you. I was going to do that, and then it's like, I have a couple minutes. So I filled out the form, and that's when I had that, like, oh, right, podcasting. Okay, cool.

Lisa Virtue

And I think I mentioned this. It will be an audio podcast, but I might take clips of video if you're cool with that, just for promo purposes. We'll see.

Autumn Carter

If I had that last minute, I should have put makeup on today. Whatever.

Lisa Virtue

Now you look great.

Autumn Carter

Oh, well, that's what the filter thing is for, right?

Lisa Virtue

Exactly. It is nice. Get rid of some of the blemishes. Okay. You ready?

Autumn Carter

I am ready.

Lisa Virtue

Awesome. Okay, we'll get started. And by the way, I'll do the intro for you after the fact, so I'm not going to do all that at the beginning.

Autumn Carter

Oh, okay. I normally do it before because it's just easier.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah. I'm just going to go right into asking you questions. So wanted to prep you on that, too. All right, cool. Autumn, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time today, and I can't wait to dive in and have the listeners hear a little bit more about your story and your career journey and how you came to be doing the work you're doing today. So why don't you just start off by telling us a little bit about you?

Autumn Carter

Sure. Let me move that a little closer since I'm soft spoken. So I am autumn Carter. I am the owner, founder, and coach for wellness in every season. And I focus a lot on moms life coaching with moms. I've worked with men and other people, but I just. My passion is with moms because moms tend to put themselves on the very back burner. Like maybe not even on the burner right of the oven, the stove.

I am around moms a lot because I am a mom. I have four children, many playdates, many story times, pick up a drop offs at different places. So I'm around a lot of moms. And I really noticed that moms struggle to put themselves first. They struggle with guilt. And I think society puts too much pressure on moms, especially when we have younger kids. Moms with younger kids to, you should be working and you should work full time, but you should also be acting like you're a full time stay at home mom and just manage it all. There's no way.

If you're a stay at home mom, you have these expectations that you should be working. If you're working, you have these expectations that you should be spending more time with your children and you just really can't win. And there's so much burnout happening in motherhood and there's so much that, especially in social media nowadays, that it's talking about the. What is the wording that they use? I use mental bandwidth. They use a different word for it. But just not having the mental space to do all the things and how much time it takes and effort it takes to tell your significant other everything that they should be doing to help out around the house. That's. I've been noticing that a lot on my feed lately.

And there is also this notion that moms should be able to know what to do when the next phase of life happens, especially the big one, when kids are starting to leave the house or starting to become independent before they leave the house, mom should suddenly have it together and know what to do. And if they have been neglecting themselves for all this time, it's very difficult to figure out what to do for that next really big chapter of life. And that's where I come in. I really love helping moms when they are ready, if they've been a stay at home mom, if they're ready to figure out what does my next phase look like? Do I want to go back to work? And if I do, chances are I've changed enough that I don't want to do what I did before I had kids. Or it's so outside of what people are currently doing, like, just life has moved on enough that their skill set doesn't quite fit in that way. And they have all these managerial skill sets from being a stay at home mom that they don't realize they have. So I have a program that I developed for moms, and it was the very first program I developed, and it's called stay at home mom to dream job mom. So it's really coming up with your why and how to get in there.

So I really, that was my very first thing. As soon as I figured out who I wanted help within my life coaching program, I realized I wanted to help this specific subset of moms, the ones who are stay at home. And then through that program, I backed up and I realized I want to help moms who really struggle with time management and feeling like they don't have enough time for self care. So that was my second program. But everything that I do is really towards moms, but it fits towards everybody else. I've had several people that I coach who are women who don't have kids. They're single, and I had a lot of fun coaching them. And that was just general life coaching sessions of where you feel like you have blocks in life and how can I help you? And that was a lot of fun to just go unscripted and just go based totally off of their needs and what they want and their desires.

So I just. I really love what I do, and it's such a fun way to connect with other people and help them. I love being a helper out in this messy world.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and as a life coach, time management skills definitely can apply to anybody. Love that you found a really heartfelt niche that you also relate to. And I'm curious, has it always been easy for you as a mom of four and time management? Tell me a little more about.

Autumn Carter

You had a breakdown last week. What are you talking about? I had everything set up in my business, and I thought it was flowing right. And then there was this big part that just as the more I tried to fix it, the more it fell apart. I'm just like, I'm done. And that was after having a weekend alone with the kids. My husband was out of town, and I have four kids, so just a lot. Meltdown.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah, we definitely need those days, too, don't we?

Autumn Carter

Well, I feel like there's. There's a really good part of the meltdown of it's kind of like when a kid takes away. I don't know if you ever played with legos. I did, and my kids are really into them.

Lisa Virtue

I've also done many girl. Oh, yes, Stephen.

Autumn Carter

Mine's when you're like, volcano. Everything's cleaned off the floor now, right? Yeah. Those are the worst to step on. But it's kind of like tearing it all down and then analyzing each piece. Does this fit in still? Do I still want this? Does this need to somehow change? Do I need to redelegate it? Does it just need to go away? Why? Why do I want this? Am I just. I just finished a positive intelligence course, so I'm going to use some of that language. But is this my stickler coming in where, like, it has to be my way and it has to fit this way. When you're over there, think of those little kid toys where you had the puzzle and they had to fit, and you're trying to fit the wrong piece in, and you're, like, trying to shove it in.

We do that in life, right? Like, am I doing that? Like, that's what I like about the meltdown part. I don't like the actual meltdown, but it's the reconstructing again of, like, how does this fit? How do I want this to fit? And I want to hopefully help people get there before they have the meltdown. Like, let's get, like, where you're stuck and, like, let's help you there. Of course I'll help you after the meltdown and during the meltdown, but I try to catch myself before the meltdown as well, because it's just a lot more draining to put things back together afterwards. I'm realizing after last week. But, um, for me, I went back to school as a mom. And when I was doing the math, I thought he was seven months old. But it doesn't work out.

It works out better if he was 17 months old because I had a year. Um, and towards the end of the program, I had to go there in person for a year. I got pregnant with my daughter, and there's a three year gap, so. And, you know, sleep deprivation, it's hard to remember how old the oldest was.

Lisa Virtue

In high school, and they grow so fast, so you can't.

Autumn Carter

Right. But it was when he was just starting to sleep through the night and I was just stopping nursing, but he had that one last nursing before he went to bed. And it was that hopeful, like, I hope you sleep through the night. But I went back to school during that time because I had lost myself and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And it was just such a huge adjustment going from. I worked since, well, I started being paid in 8th grade, but I was working before then. My dad had his own business, so sometimes parents decide everybody in the family has to work, no matter what. That was my dad, so I worked and that was my identity since I was in 8th grade, right? At least since I was paid.

Autumn Carter

So going from that to becoming a stay at home mom was a huge adjustment. And then there are some postpartum complications. I don't want to get into it. For those who don't have kids, I want you to be able to have kids and want to want to have kids. But there were some postpartum complications, and I had anemia because of it. And just a lot of adjusting and adjusting from childbirth. Childbirth is very traumatic. You're using all the muscles in your body to eject a baby that shouldn't normally fit out of your body, but somehow does science magic.

Anyway, so I had this huge adjustment period, was just starting to get myself back together, and decided, with my husband's encouragement, to go back to school. He's like, you helped me through school, now it's your turn. I had an associates, and right as I gave birth to our oldest. So my degree is in medical billing and coding, and it switched from ICD nine to ICD ten, which was a huge change. And they'd been trying to roll it out for at least the last three years before they did. So my degree was useless. I didn't really feel like I had an identity outside of motherhood. So it's like, okay, it's time to get an undergrad, like a bachelor's.

Let's go for this, the four year instead of two year. So I went back and had three more children while getting my undergrad. And so I had to put a lot of systems in place. And this is where my other program comes in with reclaiming time. And this program would work for anybody that they don't have to have a child. It is geared towards mothers because that's where I work. But there's so many things that suck up our time that we don't really think about, such as. And I'll introduce it for those.

If you ever show this off, it's the fair play method. I really love this book, and this is the card deck version of it. And it's. It took me a little bit to dig into the book. Like, once you get through, like, the changing your mindset around work, around the house and everything, it's really important to talk about and to research because I researched it in my undergrad and then read this book later. But same sex couples. So gay women, the one who is more masculine, typically does less household work and childcare if they have children than the one who is more feminine, more feminine energy. And in opposite sex couples, it's the female who does.

And it's hours more. Even if they work the same amount of hours a day, whether or not they have more kids, they do more of the work in and around the house, while the other one gets more tv time. Feed up. Like, I'm already feeling envious, like I want that rest. So that is where my program talks about this and how to put in.

Lisa Virtue

You froze for just a second. So you were at. My program talks about this and that's where it got cut off.

Autumn Carter

You're good at catching that. So my program talks about this. It talks about, um, a little bit about habit stacking, about block scheduling. What I really like about block scheduling and I really dove into during my degree, and then again after, because we have different seasons and we have to readjust, um, is you pick, you can, you can do it three different ways. You can pick the like things and have them layer on top of each other and you can. Or you can pick things based off of energy level. I try to do both for myself, and then you, um, I forget what the third way is, but it's so similar that I put all of it into my own block scheduling. And then I have a worksheet for it if anybody is interested.

But you are then taking the natural breaks in your day and figuring that out. So that is one of the first things we do in my program. And we talk about meal planning, so that as many things as you can automate and kind of repeat so you don't have to use as much of your mental energy on, then you can use it on the things that you want to do, like hobby the creativity side of you. And there is so much science behind for you who are more analytical, like my husband, there is so much research behind using that other side of your brain that's more creative and how good of an outlet it is and how it helps you when you are more analytical, to think creatively through solutions. So I really like using that, creating that space and that time through all the different ways. Those are just some of the ways in my program to allow you to then if you want to go back to work, or maybe you need the space and time so that you can further yourself on your career path. Or I just have time for self care or a hobby or just to breathe. Sometimes we just need to have that chance to exhale.

Right?

Lisa Virtue

Yeah. Allowing space, too, in our time blocking is so important. I find that that's what gets neglected most. It's allowing that breathing room, for sure. What you're describing reminds me, a lot of systems is something that the boss Babe founder Natalie Ellis talks about a lot, and she describes it as your personal operating system. And I really like what you're talking about, which is creating those systems. Like, we are well oiled machine as much as we can be, because motherhood, we're constantly learning, every day changes so much. And the same at work nowadays, things are just constantly changing.

So like you're saying, whether you're a mom or not, just our lives, technology, industry, job market, all these things are changing so rapidly that where we can have things be consistent, gives us our amygdala and our brain so much peace, right? So that we can be able to ebb and flow with all those other changes that are out of our control. What is in our control, what can we manage at home that can really help us thrive in those changes, especially when it comes to career, our livelihood. And sometimes, maybe it's not the livelihood driving us to go back to work, but it is finding that purpose or getting out of the house. I find that, too, with a lot of stay at home moms are like, I need to talk to some adults. I need to be around my people. I want to do something fulfilling, but right now, I just need a job. Right. And how can I market myself in a way that I don't know what's going on in my industry? You mentioned that your associate's degree was no longer viable in the market, and you're wanting to go back to work.

And so that can be very shocking for a lot of women, too, who had a career, and now it doesn't look the same. The landscape has changed. So I like how you're describing. Take the things you can control, figure out how to control them so that we can have room for everything else.

Autumn Carter

Well, I'm a very big advocate for even if you are a stay at home mom, you should have some type of degree or something that trade that you can fall back on because you, if anything happens, you want to be able to hit the ground running as much as possible if you need to be the breadwinner suddenly, because it can be very painful, and I've seen it firsthand, if you can't. So that's why it was very much that push of, okay, I want to get my degree, and, okay, I have my degree now I want to use it in some way. And that is, I was. We talked about this before when we had our pre meeting, but, um, about two semesters, maybe I'll do the math and find out. It was three. Who knows? But it was about two semesters before I graduated, when I was like, what do I want to do? I had applied to a public, a master's in public health program, and I hadn't heard back, but I felt very like, this feels like it could be the right path. I took this class called the helping relationship, and it was how to coach people through who had dealt with, like, a natural disaster, like something just super catastrophic, and, like, they lost their house. Like, something happened to a family member, like those type of things where I'm not being a counselor or a therapist.

It's more like in the applied health, public health realm. And I enjoyed that class and worked my butt off for that. A minus when I normally get an eight blast. Like, it's like, really? I'm that close. But at least it ain't gonna be, because at that point. At that point, I was starting to, like, rate my self worth off of grades. And I finally, like, unlocked this thirst for learning that I didn't have before when I went to college. And when I was in, it was about towards the end of high school where I finally, like, was like, okay, I'm ready to get good grades, but, like, you know, those.

Those younger years that didn't care as much about grades. Anyway, tangent. So I was taking this class, and I realized I had a really big desire to fix people, and that comes from my past trauma. But when I started letting the people, like, really say what was wrong and, like, share with them, some of they call it blind spots, the things about yourself that you don't realize, but other people do, like, gently sharing that, and I was realizing how much I was maybe not as natural with it because of my fixer, but how much I had a passion for it and how much I enjoy helping people. And this was just like this moment. I reached out to a classmate who I became friends with, and she was the one who led me on the life coaching journey through her sister. And it was. It's been an amazing journey.

I ended up taking a. The same course that her sister did, which aligned perfectly because I'd already started researching life coaching programs, and I didn't like them for various reasons. And this one, as soon as I saw it, started looking into it, it was another one of those, like, yep, this is the one. And I was all signed up. It was about two weeks before I was going to start the life coaching program that I finally heard back from the master's program saying, you got in. We forgot to tell you. Oh, well, I'm not doing both, so I guess no for you for now and continue with life coaching. It's very annoying when that happens where it's like, well, okay, well, I know my path then, but I wish I didn't have to like wonder for all that time anyway.

Yeah, so I really enjoy life coaching. And my focus most of all is the reason why I named my business wellness in every season is I want to. We have seasons right in our life and sometimes the seasons can go by years or months or even moments in a day, but we have these seasons and my name is Autumn, so I kind of had to tie that in in a way. But wellness, I really wanted to focus on wellness in my undergrad program is probably the second semester in I don't even know what class it was because there are several classes that talked about different points, but it talked about the five dimensions of wellness. There are now eight as of today. I'm sure it's going to grow again. But as we focus on one area of wellness, the other areas grow, which is amazing. And the way it was first shown to me, we watched it through a video.

I would have to really dig through my YouTube history to find it, but they were talking about it as a way of age preventing aging. If you are focusing on your mental health, your emotional health, your social, your all the different, any of the dimensions you can prevent, help prevent dementia. And they talked about Alzheimer's and my grandmother and grandfather were alive at the time, two different sides of the family and one has had Alzheimer's and one had dementia. And so it's like, you have my attention, how do I prevent this for myself? How do I prevent this for my family? So I really enjoy taking the things that I learned about wellness and putting them in wherever I can while I'm coaching moms and other people. I done career coaching for different men and helped them to get back into the job market and get their dream job too. So I, like I said, have passion for moms, but I've helped many others. I helped somebody else who she was in a relationship and she thought it was going to end up in marriage, but I was able to gently show her things that were red flags, quite a few red flags. So she was able to have that conversation with him and end it and felt so much relief after.

And now she's getting engaged or she is engaged. She's getting married to a guy who aligns perfectly with what her dreams were when we mapped out her dreams, which was, it's so exciting, and I'm so excited. I've been invited, so I'm really excited. Yeah. And I've helped out other people with different things, but it's just, there's so much joy in cheering other people on and helping them discover what their light bulb epiphany moments are and helping them to see, okay, this is how you're stuck. But what if you look at it this way? Well, what do you think about this? And just kind of letting them just kind of unfold their own flower, so to speak, like, just giving them those little promptings to think about without telling them, I think you should do this, because if you're like me, the first reaction is going to be like, no, because it won't work for this, this, this. But if you're really diving in and allowing just that openness and that air, it's so fun to see you're a coach as well. Just.

Just see people flourish in that way.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah, I definitely can relate. And when, you know, everything you're saying completely aligns with the mission of this podcast, which we focus on one dimension of wellness, which is your career, your vocation, where you're going to get your resources so it can support the other areas. But as we know, when there's something going on at work, typically there's something else going on in life, too. If you're having trouble with boundaries at work, most likely there's trouble with boundaries elsewhere in relationships. Maybe it's communication, standing up for yourself, just trying to get out of a job because of an environment. Maybe you also have trouble getting out of an engagement you're talking about. Right? So, yeah, that's why we're talking about thriving at work and giving tangible examples of how to do that in the workplace. But how it is so that you can thrive in life because there really is an intersection and a Harmony to it.

I have removed the word work life balance from my vocabulary because there's no such thing as balance like you're talking about. There's different seasons, there's different times. We hold space, space for different things. We should really be fully present at whatever we're doing. And let's face it, most of us have to work a lot during the day, whether it's for the house and the household, or whether it's for money to come in to support that household. And so instead of balance, it's about harmony. How can we create Harmony where, you know, you're not off pitch, you don't have this screeching in your head going on when you're at work or when you're at home and something is just amiss. How do you find that harmony so that you can thrive at both? Um, yeah, so I have the same experience with clients that it's like, what? We're talking about a job, but what else is going on? What's going on over here? Let's talk about these goals.

And you're totally right. That's the beauty of life coaching, is we don't have the answers. We have the right questions.

Autumn Carter

It's so fun when the answer comes out of, like, they have the answer. And because there's times where I've been nervous to coach somebody, like, I don't know that I know enough in this area to coach them. And then you start coaching them and you realize I just have to have the right questions or not even the right questions. There's so many times where I'm being coached and I just need the space held, and I just need to, like, kind of word vomit and then see all the puzzle pieces, and then I start to put them together, and then both of us are like, we get it. I understand. Like, you see both of us light up on. Yeah.

Lisa Virtue

Super fun. Yes. And having someone unbiased. Having someone who's unbiased. Right. Because our family and our friends, as well intentioned as they are, there's always something behind it.

Autumn Carter

Yes. It's so much easier to coach people that I don't know, like, don't have the friendship with. But there's so many people where it's like, can we be done coaching so we can be friends now?

Lisa Virtue

Well, we love that, too, when our clients turn into friends afterwards. Yeah.

Autumn Carter

The person who designed my website when she was done, I'm like, can we be friends now? I love you. I really like you. So it's super fun.

Lisa Virtue

See, even as business owners, even as business owners, we find friends at work, in quotes, at work.

Autumn Carter

So true. What I thought about so many times when you were talking is, have you heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? So I learned about this in my undergrad, too, but I never really heard about it before my undergrad. So I'm sharing it with my husband. Like, oh, my goodness, isn't so cool. And he's like, yeah, I've heard about that in his undergrad. But I really, if we aren't having our most basic needs met, it's really hard to have that higher thinking. And once we have that need met, it's kind of like stair stepping. Right where, okay, that one's met.

Then what's the next one? Sometimes we get that break of like, okay, I feel peace, but usually it's like, okay, what's the next thing? My next need. What's my next need? And that happens with coaching. Like, once you have your career sorted out. Okay, now that that fire's put out, what's the next thing? That's kind of bothering me. How can I? And yes, it can feel exhausting, but there's the other side of it where you. You get to feel more and more peace as you are aligning yourself, aligning your life with what you need it to be. So that's what I thought about old times when you were talking about just having your needs met. That just popped into my mind.

Lisa Virtue

Oh, sorry.

Autumn Carter

Hold on 1 second.

Lisa Virtue

Be right back. My daughter is leaving to go to grandma's cause it's spring break and she was sneaking a very noisy note under my door. Well, give me 1 second. Speaking about being moms. Awesome. Okay, I'm back. She wrote me a note on styrofoam that was like, could barely fit under the door, so she was trying not to disturb me, right. So it's like I'm recording podcasts.

Be quiet.

Autumn Carter

And she went, that noise is the worst, too. So bad.

Lisa Virtue

Oh, my gosh. Hilarious. Anyway, it's very.

Autumn Carter

If you have a journal, you need to write that into, like, reminder of later.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah, I'm glad we're recording this.

Autumn Carter

You can, like, take out that snippet and, like, leave it for.

Lisa Virtue

I love it. At our wedding, remember when you used.

Autumn Carter

To do these things or just save it? Here you go on your wedding cake.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah. So back to the Maslow's hierarchy. I think when we talk about moms or anyone who's in a caregiving situation, we tend to know and focus on other people's hierarchy. Right? So again, it's that taking it away from us and applying it to other people in our life. Like, okay, do my kids have everything they need? Have they booked their doctor's appointments? How are they eating enough greens, whatever that thing is, and the basic needs, and then do I have a job to pay for their bills? Versus am I taking care of myself first, making sure my needs are met so my bucket is filled so then I can turn over here and help others. Just the proverbial, you know. Are you putting the mask on yourself first and I don't know if this is your experience, but I tend to see and have experienced myself where it's no, I need to take care of all these other things for other people first. And I'm constantly reminded, take care of yourself first.

But it's such a shift and even culturally with that, like you were talking about the beginning, we can't win, so why are we worrying about it? We're not going to win anyway. Why don't we do what we know intuitively? Women's intuition especially. Right? We really need to do what's blocking us. What do you think, autumn?

Autumn Carter

Oh, man. So I. I scheduled myself thinking that I was going to have space because I. Some of my under my lower level classes were easier than my upper level. And I thought, oh, this semester is going to be easy. I'm going to take on scuba diving. I almost drowned as a child. So this is like a big deal, taking out scuba diving.

Lisa Virtue

I used to be a swim teacher. This is the beginning of my career. We could talk all day about that. Oh, I can't wait to hear this.

Autumn Carter

Well, I. We had Covid before this and I was under so much stress with school. And then I'm going and taking a full weekend away from my family. Um, I had stopped nursing, so I was able to do this, like, just stop nursing. Well, I did not realize because I was under so much stress that I had a sinus infection.

Lisa Virtue

Oh.

Autumn Carter

So I ruptured both my eardrums while trying to scuba dive in a pool.

Lisa Virtue

Oh, gosh.

Autumn Carter

Trying to get to 12ft. Like, I could barely get under the water. And they're like, trying to, like, here, we're going to make you pass. I ruptured both my eardrums. So that was like the biggest aha. Awakening moment of I really need to take care of myself and I need to. Now we're going to use the car analogy. I really like analogy.

Sorry for you guys that don't. Um, but have any of you driven stick shift and you can see where the gauge is going and when you need to shift gears or you can see where the temperature gauges. Everybody's at least, hopefully old enough to, like, be able to have cars that are older. You could actually have the gauge where it tells you and it's getting to red. But we need to be more aware of ourselves to know when we're getting close to yellow. Me, I was all the way in red. I mean, come on. That was so stupid.

Like, it was long. Covid. So, like, Covid was a month before like, I just. I thought it was stress. I. Yeah, no, it was way more than that. So I felt very embarrassed going to my doctor. So this happened, right.

Lisa Virtue

Well, and I think that's the key to just women's healthcare. Another topic we could talk all day about. And from some healthcare background, I do nice to see that there's some mini shifts going on within, especially mental health care right now, actually evaluating and researching with women, but it still has a long way to go. And I think one of the complicated factors is each woman's hormonal cycle can be so different that even for ourselves, it can be hard to know. If something's changing, like a new season of life is happening or something shifting with us, then we don't even recognize our own body or what's happening. So being able to be really super aware of when are there signs that I'm at burnout level? When am I at that stress point? When can I ask for help? You had mentioned earlier on social media all the trends of how to ask your partner or whoever's living with you for help around the house, things like that, which I highly believe in. And that's something I think every couple, when they move in together, regardless of when they get married or not, should really have that conversation. However, it's another thing to add to our plate.

Right? Like why is it the woman or the. The more feminine partner that tends to do all these things has to be the originator of it? So there's this cycle there too, but back to just women and understanding. Like some days we feel we can do it all at the expense of. What is the expense of this? Do we need to be doing it all? What can we let go of? What can we say no to constantly have to remind ourselves of that? Or what can we ask for help with? But if they don't help, it's okay, just shedding those responsibilities that are not the primary needs being met.

Autumn Carter

Yeah, exactly. And there's so many things where we should on ourselves, which is very similar to a certain cuss word, but we'll make sure that this is kid friendly for the people who listen on car drives. But when we are shooting on ourselves, we really are, you know, doing the other on ourselves as well, because we are locking ourselves down. The creativity is gone at that point, so we can't creatively think about how do I work around this? Is there another way to look at this? Or maybe this is something that I don't even need to do. Maybe it's just society telling me, or I feel like my in laws are telling me or I feel like work expects this of me. But when you are doing the, how does Brene Brown call it? I love Brene Brown by the way, when you are putting it as I feel like you're often projecting things that aren't actually real. Right. Sometimes they're from our own baggage, our own history, when in fact your employer doesn't actually mean for it to be to come across that way.

That's your own interpretation of it. Worrying that I was trying to get to. Going back to what you were saying before, really quick rewinding. You were talking. It made me think about hormones. There are so many times since this is for women, there are so many times where you feel off and you get your hormone levels checked and they're within normal ranges for the average person. If you were feeling off, dig into that and there are coaches out there. And even better, there are healthcare practitioners that are holistic that will go over what your hormone levels for you in particular as an individual are supposed to be.

Yeah, because there are so many times where, oh, it was, this hormone level was off because I'm really sensitive and it's supposed to be here when the average is here. So I just wanted to get there and had that. My mind reminded me.

Lisa Virtue

I highly recommend, and if you go to your medical practitioner, most likely they will not do anything about hormones, especially if you are not at menopausal age. So we know premenopause can happen from like your thirties on, right. It can be all over the place. So yes, finding the practitioners that are out there doing this work and this research so that they can dig in, I highly recommend that too. And I've. Yes, um. And then making sure you're informing your practitioner. I recommend that, but I'm not a healthcare professional.

But I have definitely had my journey with it and yes, highly recommend it based on myself and others I know that have gotten breakthroughs from that.

Autumn Carter

Well, I had fertility issues and come to find out I ovulated a different time than most people see, I had very regular periods had. Because I had. I no longer have periods and it's the best thing ever. By the way, if you have very heavy bleeding, I highly recommend looking into vaginal ablation. Best thing ever. Seriously new life. But anyway, that's an aside but really paying attention to, and this is what I firmly believe with thinking of holistic and wellness, which really are very similar. It's looking at the whole picture of you.

You are an individual person. What science is looking at is averages. You are not the average, not everything.

Lisa Virtue

And they're only looking at what they've studied.

Autumn Carter

Yes. Even better. Yes.

Lisa Virtue

Yep.

Autumn Carter

And chances are higher that it's men that have been studying more than women. So let's just take.

Lisa Virtue

Exactly.

Autumn Carter

Yeah. Let's just put that out there. But really being in tune with yourself and your own needs, and when you are doing that, you will prevent so much burnout. You will prevent so many of your own blind spots. You will prevent staying stuck in a career that you hate just because you know that it pays the bills. What if we can get you a career and Lisa can help you with this, too? A career that you love and that pays the bills. You can have both together. I promise you can.

And it is so much better when you have something that is fulfilling, especially because here in America, we work more hours than in a lot of other countries. So that is a lot of time away from home, a lot of time of passion. So what if we can make your work and your passion the same or very similar? I have an offer for anyone listening, and it goes in with my reclaiming your time. And it is a worksheet for having a morning and an evening routine because those are the bookends for your day. And I will give it to lisa so it'll be in the show notes for anybody who's interested. Another way to find it is it's wellnessineveryseason.com, free resources, and it's the second one in there. So beautiful.

Lisa Virtue

Thank you for that.

Autumn Carter

Yeah, of course. Are there. Do you have any other questions for me? Because I feel like I've just blown away the whole time.

Lisa Virtue

Wonderful. No. I think putting that mentor hat on and sharing your experience is beautiful. The fact that you had four children while going to school, I know that's not for all moms out there.

Autumn Carter

No.

Lisa Virtue

And you might not recommend it for a lot of moms.

Autumn Carter

No.

Lisa Virtue

But I am curious how, looking back, is there anything you would have told your younger self about your career journey in particular? What you would have suggested? Like a couple takeaways that our listeners, if they either don't have kids or they're in that situation where they're thinking about having children or they're thinking about career transition, or maybe it's a stay at home mom figuring out what am I going to do next? What are those takeaways that you have?

Autumn Carter

I think it's really getting out of. I haven't thought about this. I've started to go down that journey within myself, and then I started to feel that guilt for taking so long to finally get my undergrad. But I realized how much I learned along the journey, like, because it turned out the way it did. So that was where the sigh comes in. But it's really taking the time to discover yourself and your passions. I finally, because of trauma, and I did not cut off the negative people in my life who were still traumatizing me and causing abuse until my second was five months old, for like, the biggest abuser in my life. And that's when I was able to finally shed all of that.

And really, what do I want? I'm no longer pleasing. I'm no longer going through the trauma cycles. And once I was able to do that, I was really able to dive into what are my desires? What do I want for myself? What do I want for my family? And it sounds selfish, but you should think of yourself first, because your children are only with you for a short amount of time compared to how long you're with yourself. So let's make sure you're happy. Otherwise it's going to show up in everything. And if you're happy, you get to spread that like glitter. And we all know that glitter is hard to get out, even if you don't have kids. We know how.

We all know amazing and awful glitter is. Have you ever gotten a birthday card? And there's. You still find glitter, like, you opened it one time and you threw it away, but you still have glitter, like, on your face, and you find it, like, it's weird.

Lisa Virtue

All the ants out there that are giving their nieces and nephews glitter. Stop it.

Autumn Carter

If you don't like your siblings, glitter it up. But your happiness can spread like glitter, right? I love that.

Lisa Virtue

Yeah.

Autumn Carter

And so if you are truly happy with what you're doing to, and you're able to spread it to other people, do it. There's so much joy in that. If it's selfish and it's just this, the other direction, right? You're just enclosing, and that's a different topic altogether. But let's make sure that you're doing something that is fulfilling and brings you happiness that you can then share with your family. You can then share with the world, your community, bring it out here. Let's. Let's light up this world with that.

Lisa Virtue

I love that. Think of it as glitter. Um, two things really resonate with me. What you said, too. One is it's not regrets, it's what did I learn? Shifting that mindset, instead of going, oh, I should have, oh, I should have. Because we do that. We do that shouldn't. Like you were saying all the time.

Autumn Carter

Yeah.

Lisa Virtue

Instead, look how much I learned along the way. And then second, I highly believe in this, too. You know, I'm my one and only daughter at the moment and she's fantastic. And when I thought going through my certification programs and doing a lot of my own soul searching and also working with coaches when I was in my first career, first half of my career journey, working with coaches was so key because, like you're saying we go so fast being able to discover for ourselves what is it that I really want? What is it that will help my family? Because I'll feel more fulfilled and whole when I show up to help them. And thinking about my daughter, one of the exercises one of my coaches had us do is draw stick figures, whatever. It doesn't have to be fancy, but just draw something that is the first image of you think I succeeded in my goal and I feel fulfilled. What does that image look like in my personal life? And mine was drawing my daughter, saying she was proud of me.

Autumn Carter

Oh, I love that.

Lisa Virtue

So thinking about what are your kids going to see? Because when they're out of the house, they want you to be busy. They don't want you knocking on their door all day to keep them, to keep you busy. So what are you going to do when those kids are old enough that they're taking care of themselves? Yeah. Right.

Autumn Carter

And I know many moms who ended up on antidepressants or didn't know how to talk to their significant other anymore. And what are you going to do if you don't like yourself and you can't stand to be around yourself? You can only fill your space up with people for so long. You're going to have moments where you're by yourself. So let's work on yourself now so that you enjoy yourself and so that your children, when they're older, they want to be around you when they actually have the choice.

Lisa Virtue

Exactly. Yep.

Autumn Carter

Yep.

Lisa Virtue

Beside, you know, you've got multiple careers. I wrote a book about this. We're raising our children. That is like a career. It's a huge, beautiful portfolio of our work. But then what else are you doing as you. Because like you said, it's temporary and maybe it's not. Some women out there.

Maybe they foster, maybe they do other things with children. That's amazing.

Autumn Carter

But just a second career.

Lisa Virtue

Exactly. Know what it is that you're going to do? Yeah. I love that. All right, Adam, thank you for sharing your freebies with us, too. I really appreciate that. So wellness in every season.com, resources. Yeah. And that's how people can.

Autumn Carter

Free resources.

Lisa Virtue

Yes.

Autumn Carter

Sorry. Free resources.

Lisa Virtue

Amazing. And if people are ready to just reach out and contact you, is that where they should go to wellness and every season.com?

Autumn Carter

Yep. Best place.

Lisa Virtue

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I know it's precious. You've got a lot of kiddos.

Autumn Carter

I'm good.

Lisa Virtue

Good for you. See, swimming is so important.

Autumn Carter

Yeah. Husband took them, too, so. Bye.

Lisa Virtue

Wonderful. Well, I hope that we get to talk again soon. And thank you so much. Enjoy your day. And spring break.

Autumn Carter

Yes, you, too. Bye.