Episode 115 – Unstoppable Growing Nurse with Samantha Rawlinson

Regular listeners of Unstoppable Mindset have heard me a number of times talk with guests I met at the Podapalooza event. Podapalooza is a quarterly event to help new and regular podcasters, people who want to be interviewed on podcasts as well as podcasters who want to find guests to interview. I have met a number of guests through Podapalooza including our guest today, Samantha Rawlinson.
 
I describe Samantha as a “growing nurse” because “growing” mentally and workwise is exactly what Samantha is doing. She has been a registered nurse for more than 30 years. As you will hear, now she also is the CEO of Samantha Rawlinson Coaching. She formed this company to help women deal with chronic illness. This choice was not something she chose on a whim. She will tell you all about it. You will hear about the kind of work she does as well as how she does it. I find her efforts inspiring. I hope you do as well.
 
By the way, if you have an interest in attending the next Podapalooza event, please visit https://mikehingson–checkingout.thrivecart.com/podapalooza-aff/. The next Podapalooza event takes place on April 26, 2023. I hope to see you there.
 
 
About the Guest:
 
Samantha Rawlinson is a Registered Nurse, Health & Wellness Coach, Speaker, and CEO of Samantha Rawlinson Coaching. 
 
She helps women to resolve or control their chronic illness. She also helps women prevent chronic illnesses such as obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, Fatty liver disease, and arthritis to name a few. 
 
With more than 30 years as a Registered Nurse, she has seen how these diseases take over a person’s life. Samantha developed a program that involves nutrition, mindset, and lifestyle to help women take control of their health by nourishing their mind, body, and spirit so they can live their best life yet!
 
How to Connect with Samantha:
 
Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1015212306038416
 
Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076500090740
 
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/samantharawlinsoncoaching/
 
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-rawlinson-380841a/
 
 
 
 
About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
 
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
 
https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
 
accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
 
 
 
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Transcription Notes

Michael Hingson  00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
 
Michael Hingson  01:20
Well, hi, once again, thanks for being here with us. I really appreciate you joining us and we have a wonderful guest today on unstoppable mindset. Samantha Rawlinson, who has been a nurse for 30 years has done a lot dealing with especially women’s issues, and she’s going to talk to us about chronic illness and chronic kinds of issues and nursing things and she’s going to tell her life story as well. My gosh, that’ll take us a while right. Anyways, Samantha Welcome to unstoppable mindset. We’re really glad you’re here. And I should tell everyone, I met Samantha through the potter Palooza program. We’ve talked about that a number of times before. And we’ve gotten some really wonderful interviews out of that. And I know we’re going to have another one today. So welcome to unstoppable mindset.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  02:05
Thank you for having me.
 
Michael Hingson  02:07
Well, let’s start as usual, can you just tell us a little about you, maybe your life story growing up or anything like that, that you think we should know? And? And anything we shouldn’t know? You can add that in if you want.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  02:18
Okay, well, I think people will be surprised to know that I have wanted to be a nurse since I was nine years old. And school was not always easy for me. So it was a it was a journey. But I did it. And I was very proud of myself that I was able to do that. As for how I got to where I’m at right now is I actually had a back injury back in 2001. And I’m working as a nurse, which is very common working as a nurse. I can’t tell you how many back injuries there are.
 
Michael Hingson  02:55
Exactly, you have to lean over a lot, and so on Exactly. And
 
Samantha Rawlinson  02:59
that’s exactly what mine was, it was leaning over, it wasn’t even picking something up in after it happened and went to physical therapy. And about a month later, I was in a car accident, and it felt better the next day. And so fast forward to 2005 and we had just moved in. So my back hurt in a specific area. It wasn’t like it was lower back pain. I knew it was this specific injury because it was in the scapular area. So it’s not an area you really enjoy very often. And since then, from 2005 on, I have tried everything out there and I basically got sick of the traditional health care system and took things into my own hands. And during all of that, I’ve tried everything from traditional medicine to over the counter medicine and even some of the woowoo stuff is what some of the people are calling it nowadays, the energy healing and that type of thing. And I really truly believe a lot of that does work. But what really got me here was, I’d say three years ago 2020 i The literally January 1, I watched the game changer show on Netflix, and learn how bad heart disease was and how animal eating animals how bad it is for our hearts and for diabetes, and I literally stopped eating meat the next day. So during COVID I learned how to eat vegan my daughter already was and we that’s where my my real journey began with trying to fix my back pain and trying to prevent heart disease was how I was eating. I learned how to meditate. I learned how to do what I like called Emotional Freedom Technique is also called tapping and journaling. And I had an epiphany that I wanted to teach women how to take control of their life and how to take control of their chronic illness. Because it can be done.
 
Michael Hingson  05:17
Obviously, being a woman, you’re going to focus on women, I appreciate that. But do you? Do you help men as well? Or why do you focus specifically on women?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  05:26
Why I chose a woman was because women do not realize it. Heart disease is the number one killer in women in the United States. And it’s often overlooked in women. Whereas men we we see it in with women, it occurs like a lot later than it does in men. So it’s overlooked and kind of pushed aside. And I really thought it was important to teach women to take control of their health and to look for the signs and symptoms.
 
Michael Hingson  05:58
But I just want to follow through on it, because I’m just Just curious more than anything else. Don’t men basically behave the same way?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  06:08
Yes, and no, their symptoms are different. They tend to have things checked out. They don’t overlook certain health problems, like women do that like chest pain to them, they’re gonna go check. Women are like, Oh, I’m, I’m anxious. I’m, you know, they kind of brushed it under the rug. And so to your other question, yes, I will help men. My focus is women, but I’m not going to turn anybody around if they want to fix themselves, I will definitely help.
 
Michael Hingson  06:40
The reason I kind of asked about men is that I hear the whole concept of men are macho, and they kind of ignore things a lot of times too. And that’s why I asked the question, but what you’re saying is typically speaking, and maybe it’s because of all the publicity and all of the, the visibility it’s gotten, men have been a little bit more programmed to to check it out. But it just seems to me there are a lot of people, a lot of men that also tend to ignore things because they’re supposed to be tough.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  07:12
Yeah, I think with men, it is very obvious when they’re having a cardiac event, it’s really pronounced, whereas women, they don’t get it as pronounced as a man would. It’s subtle, it’s quiet, and they don’t always catch it.
 
Michael Hingson  07:30
So what happens when you let’s say, you’re having a heart attack or cardiac event with women, as opposed to what we typically see with men and so on.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  07:39
So with, people don’t realize this, but a lot of times the pain in your left shoulder can be a sign of a heart attack, and we disregard it is oh, I hurt myself or, you know, also indigestion is another one, and that goes for men to men. And on that one, they’ll they’ll push it aside and take all these times and all these antacids, and here they’ve been having many heart attacks for who knows how long
 
Michael Hingson  08:13
the acids have been helped. And they just think, Oh, they’re not really helping all that much. But as you said there, something else is really going on.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  08:21
Right, and they don’t check it out.
 
Michael Hingson  08:24
Well, in general, so you’re talking about heart disease and so on, but what, what overall is the whole concept of chronic illness?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  08:34
So that’s a very good question. So chronic illness is typically a long term condition that doesn’t have not it doesn’t always have a cure. It’s something that lasts more than three months. So chronic pain can be a chronic illness because if it doesn’t go away, it’s something that’s with you. So it’s chronic. A lot of times chronic illnesses can be I think are controlled but not cured. But in sometimes it can be reversed depending on what the chronic illnesses a lot of times chronic illnesses, inflammation in the body. And once we treat that inflammation, sometimes we can actually either reverse or at least control that chronic illness.
 
Michael Hingson  09:21
How is Western medicine overall dealing with chronic illness? I’ve interviewed a number of people on unstoppable mindset and a number through PATA Palooza who talk a lot about how they’ve also embraced some of the precepts and concepts of Eastern medicine that made a whole lot more of a difference than Western medicine and dealing with theirs and other people’s issues.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  09:45
Well, I think we tend to give too much medication and then you have side effects from that medication so you give more medication and that seems to be the fix whereas we’re not that And in all fairness to doctors, they don’t have the time because of the way our system is set up. But nutrition and meditation mindset can make a huge difference in controlling a lot of illnesses. Nutrition alone can it can reverse things and control a lot of what you have.
 
Michael Hingson  10:29
So talking about meditation, and so on brings up the whole concept of stress and just dealing with our mental well being, and so on. And I would presume that if we could work to cut back stress and put it in perspective, as opposed to letting everything stress us out, that ought to help a lot as well.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  10:48
Oh, my gosh, yes, it would. So it’s interesting that you bring up stress, because I just read a I guess, not a survey, but a article, Carnegie Mellon University discovered, there’s a link between chronic psychological stress and the body’s ability to regulate inflammatory responses. So that being said, the body responds to stress and not all stress is bad. I know it sounds crazy, and there is a YouTube video, and I wish I would have looked it up for you, on this lady who used to talk about how terrible stress was for you. And then she has totally reversed her take on it. Because some stress can be good. It’s when you let all those stressors add up. And they build and build and building note take care of them. That’s when they become bad.
 
Michael Hingson  11:50
A lot of what I see when I discuss stress and talk about stress, and also experience it, although I tried to work on this, what I see is that stress is mostly, at least in the beginning, self imposed, we, we worry about so many things, we don’t stop going back to meditation, we don’t meditate. We don’t take time at the end of the day to look at the day and analyze what happened and say to ourselves, gee, this happened that wasn’t great. Rather than beating ourselves up over it. How do we improve it in the future? We don’t we don’t deal with mindfulness. I guess that’s maybe the best way to put it. And so as a result, we promote the stress.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  12:38
Yeah, yes, I agree with that. Totally. I think we don’t take time to stop and take care of ourselves. And self care is so important. And like you said, at the end of the day can be something as simple as watching the sunset or journaling, reading a book doing something for you in this society right now. I think we are always on the go. And we go all day till we collapse.
 
Michael Hingson  13:07
Yeah, it’s interesting. I, I have been using guide dogs since I was 14. And one of the things that I’ve learned about having a dog’s both lab and Golden Retrievers is that they can be very stoic, they can put up with an awful lot. And you never know anything is wrong. Until they drop, they will work till they drop. They’re there. They’re committed. And clearly, the stress that we experience doesn’t tend to be with dogs. And maybe there’s something to be learned from that. The other side of it is that they don’t necessarily easily tell us when they’re feeling not well. And so we get surprised when suddenly they can’t work anymore. And I think that’s true of, of a lot of dogs. I had one dog that in 1996, we moved to New Jersey, and she was bitten by a tick and hyperbole early. Well. It had to be in spring of 1997. And two years later, we had flown to Southern California for a meeting and came back and came in on Saturday. And she was she seemed fine. But Saturday night she couldn’t even get up and come down to eat dinner. And we learned that what happened is that she had contracted Lyme disease that morphed into glomerular nephritis. And so literally, she was starving to death because the kidneys were passing out all the good stuff along with the bad stuff. She had to retire, but gave no real clue. And there had to be some symptoms or some things that she was feeling. But she was so focused on pleasing and working that she never really gave us an indication of it. And so they don’t deal with stress the same way we do by any means. And there are pluses and minuses to that. That is so true. And so the thing that we have or ought to develop is the ability to analyze and become more aware of us and our surroundings and what goes on inside of us, which is, I think what you’re really saying,
 
Samantha Rawlinson  15:23
yes, and even during the day, if we learn the tools to help us even throughout the day, for one, recognizing, Hey, I am stressed right now, pull yourself out of that situation and just do a simple breathing technique, breathe in for four out for four. And it just taking that time, can like decrease your stress enough to be like, Okay, I’ve recognized this, I feel better, I can continue, we just let it build and build to the point that we get sick.
 
Michael Hingson  15:59
As much as anything dealing with stress is a conscious kind of a process. And we can deal with most stress. It’s like fear. And I’m in the process of writing a book about fear because having survived being in the World Trade Center on September 11. I’ve talked about fear a lot. But what I’ve never really done is taught people some of the techniques that I have learned throughout the years, and that I learned on unexpectedly about dealing with September 11. And so when the the terrorist attack, I was able to focus, because I had developed a mindset that told me that I knew what to do in an emergency, if there was the ability to do it, as opposed to if the building wasn’t crashing down around us, which wouldn’t have mattered anyway, then. But the fact is that you can control fear and fear can be a good thing. It’s all about how you choose to deal with it. And I think that’s so true, whether it’s fear or stress, which are related, it is all about what you choose to do about it and how you choose to prepare to live from day to day.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  17:09
It is that is so true. Because your mindset can really just can make your day good or bad.
 
Michael Hingson  17:18
But that is a choice that you can make no matter what’s going on.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  17:21
Oh, exactly. But people have lived in that stressful state for so long. They don’t know how to reverse it, and how how to get back to a normalized state. And I know for me that I, I learned that during COVID, whereas a lot of people were panicked. I, I actually embraced it and and learned a lot about myself and how I want it to be
 
Michael Hingson  17:57
well, and COVID is a perfect example of that a time when so many people went into a fear response, because they had to experience an unexpected life change, and didn’t have any control over it. And our problem also is we think we have to control everything. And so as a result, we don’t deal with things very well.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  18:21
Isn’t that the truth? Yeah, I is funny, because I’m somebody who’s always wanting to control things in AF over the last few years. I’ve just kind of I mean, there’s still aspects of my life, I want want some control over but I’ve learned to just relax. And if things happen, I can’t control everything. I’m not going to make myself sick over it.
 
Michael Hingson  18:47
Right? It’s it’s important to learn what you can control and what you can’t control. And don’t worry about what you can control because it’s only going to cause you Here we go again, stress and fear.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  18:58
Exactly. And the other big thing that I love to tell people I learned this, probably way too late for one by I learned this when my kids were a little bit older is to learn to say no. Because I would do anything that came my way, Mike Yes, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. And I was always involved in their school stuff. And at one point I said, I can’t do this anymore. I’m making myself tired. And you have to know when to say no.
 
Michael Hingson  19:32
And you’ve got to take time for you to write, do you go to church or do anything in the religious world?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  19:40
I don’t go to church i i journal I am more spiritual. And I like to I love my morning nature time. I like to sit outside morning and just connect with nature.
 
Michael Hingson  19:59
The reason I asked that Question is that you probably then wouldn’t be familiar with a with a program that the Methodist Church began called the walk to Emmaus, which is an outgrowth of a Catholic program called crucio. It’s a short course in Christianity intended to develop people who are Christian, into Christian leaders. It’s, it’s a program not to indoctrinate, if you will, or to bring somebody into a church, but to help develop leadership. The program is a four day program where you go to a place and a number of other people go who have never been on this, as the Methodists call it walk to Emmaus before. And it’s called a walk to amass, because if you’ve read the Bible, there was a time after Jesus arose from the grave, where he walked on the road to Emmaus and met some people. They didn’t know who he was. And he went with them to Emmaus, and they sat down to eat. And it was at that point that suddenly he revealed himself and they realized who he was, and he disappeared. So this is a journey to if you will amass, and what they do when you get there is they take your watch, and they tell you right at the outset, you don’t have to worry about anything here, you don’t have control, you don’t need control, everything is taken care of. If you have any questions or concerns, you can ask, but we’re telling you now that everything will be done that needs to be done. Even your families have people checking in on them, you don’t have to worry about having control over anything. So I went on the walk. And then later I was a director of one of the walks. And it’s interesting to observe the people who couldn’t let go. And it’s even more interesting to observe the people who really could let go and embraced it, and how they progressed, Christianity or not how they progressed in their own lives, because they learned that they really could let go of so many things. Wow. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, it’s a very powerful program. It is a really cool program. And the whole idea is that you trust you learn to trust, and we, we have so many challenges with trust. Well, I went to that program in. I think it was 1991. And it was a challenge at first to give up my watch, because I’m used to looking at my watch and the time, I don’t need to do that. But I like to just keep tabs on things. It’s like, if I had to shut down and not use a computer for a day, I could do it. And I know there are a lot of people who can’t. And like I realized fairly quickly Yeah, I don’t need my watch. Not gonna worry about it. They said, don’t worry about it. I’m going to try it. And it was really a great experience all the way around.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  23:00
Yeah, I know a lot of people who would not be able to get through that.
 
Michael Hingson  23:04
Well, you remember the the the device, the Blackberry? Yeah. And Research In Motion one day, lost their servers and lost communications with blackberries. And I think it was like about 12 hours, blackberries didn’t work. And I understand that this was fortunately more at night. But I understand that even some people committed suicide because they didn’t have access to their BlackBerry’s
 
Samantha Rawlinson  23:26
what that is crazy.
 
Michael Hingson  23:29
We get so locked into doing things a certain way that we don’t work on figuring out alternatives. I have been a member of the National Federation of the Blind for many years, it’s the largest consumer organization of blind people. And a gentleman named Dr. Jonathan Lazar, who worked at the time at Towson University, came and spoke to the Federation and said, one of the interesting things that he has found about blind people who interact with the internet, is that blind people tend to be a little bit more patient, and a little bit more persistent about dealing with a net, especially when things aren’t working quite right, because we’re so used to not having full access, that we in fact, will work harder at trying to get access. And if we can’t, you know, we can’t. But we, we do that, and I think it’s changing as the internet becomes more accessible. But it is it is interesting, how many of us recognize that we don’t have the same access to computer information that other people do. And while it’s frustrating, we can control our mindset about that and we go on and we look for other ways to get the data. Right but you know, when I when I hear about kids in the backseat of their parents cars texting each other right Other than talking, I know sometimes they don’t want their parents to hear what they’re saying, but gee, you know, aren’t they taking things to a limit? Or beyond a limit? So that’s for sure. It’s an interesting evolving world. So how does chronic illness affect people’s lives? What? And how? And what kind of advice would you give to somebody who’s got something that, that maybe they discover? Or how do they discover that if they have a chronic illness?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  25:29
So people with chronic illnesses? Look at for I’m trying to figure out what part of that to answer first. So I’m going to start with just listing a few chronic illnesses that way you listeners know kind of what I’m talking about when it that’s affects their life, and things that are listed under chronic illness. And this is just a few there’s a lot. obesity, heart disease, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, that can be very debilitating for some people, fatty liver disease and chronic pain. And those are just a few. There’s a lot more than that. These people that have these chronic illnesses, they are on a roller coaster, they can feel guilty because they haven’t been taking care of themselves. They’re distressed, they’re hopeless, they’re frustrated, anxious, angry and depressed, so that they can go through all these emotions in one day when they’re not feeling well. They are individuals who have chronic illness also have to face the worry of money, because they have all these doctor’s appointments and medications and time off from work. So they’re dealing with a lot, a lot of emotional, physical, and social issues having a chronic illness. So that they have days where they just can’t get out of bed, they they have days, when they’re, they’re feeling good, they feel great. And then they wake up the next day. And they’re like, Well, what did I do yesterday to feel so bad. And it depends on the chronic illness, an example of diabetes, these people have to watch their glucose levels on a constant basis, they have to be very consistent with their diet and exercise. When they don’t, and they slack off, their chronic illness gets out of control. So it can affect your life in so many ways. And somebody who has a chronic illness knows what I’m talking about, what is the
 
Michael Hingson  27:42
best thing that people can do in general to if they are if they do have a chronic illness? What what’s the best thing for them just normally to do about it?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  27:52
For one, get your nutrition under control, which is a hard one for especially here in the US, we are very bad about picking something up and eating it. Um, nutrition exercise, your mindset can make a huge difference. Your lifestyle, sleeping, we already talked about stress, all these things all work together, and we are really bad about not regulating them all.
 
Michael Hingson  28:28
One of the things that we tend to do when we feel it seems to me anyway, when we feel that something is bothering us is that we kind of go on to our shells, we don’t move, we don’t do anything. That doesn’t seem like it’s a very healthy thing to do either.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  28:46
No, it is a terrible thing to do. And I’ll be quite honest. You know, just because I’m a health coach doesn’t mean I’m perfect on days that I’m having pain, I have to physically remind myself and I’ll have my husband Tommy, okay, you need to walk you need to go stretch. I may not feel like it. But I know I have to do it because if I don’t, I’m just going to be in more pain. And when you’re in the midst of that chronic illness, you you need that support system or you need a way of learning how to cope in the Emotional Freedom Technique. It’s also called tapping that is one thing that has really helped me but movement is very important, whether it’s exercising if you’re able to because we exercise is good for us. It decreases our chances of having heart disease, strength training, especially for women. And when I mean strength training, I don’t mean you have to go and lift a huge amount of weights. lightweights on a daily basis are really important especially for women because women over 50 during menopause, get osteoporosis. So strength training is really important. And then flip, everybody needs to do flexibility. And that’s just stretching. And yoga helps with that significantly, because you can find on YouTube, just light yoga things for anybody.
 
Michael Hingson  30:21
Tell me more about tapping, if you would, please. Yeah.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  30:24
So now I’m not somebody, I’m not a practitioner. But it’s something I discovered, right around the COVID. Time. And what you do is you tap on meridians and your meridians go through your body. And the places you tap are like your head, your eyebrow, the side of your eye, under your eye, under your nose, under your chin, and your collarbone. And your meridians run all along these lines. And with tapping, you start with the negative and you you go through these tapping points and talk, you talk through the points of all the negativity that you’re dealing with right now. And then you go back through the points, and you talk about the positive in and bring the positive around in. I can’t tell you how much it has helped me with pain because it can bring my pain level from an eight down to a four in one session.
 
Michael Hingson  31:28
That’s pretty dramatic. It really is. Why does that happen?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  31:34
Our bodies have energy, we’re, we have energy all around us. And this is something that I think we need to look more and more into the eastern medicine really looks into the you know, does this type of stuff more than we do here. And energy healing is a real thing. It helps. And when you put that positive energy into it, it just, it turns things around for you. And you can use tapping for anything, you can use it for anxiety, depression, I’m having a bad day. I’m just trying to think of some of the you can use it for anything, you name it, you can use it.
 
Michael Hingson  32:19
It’s it’s all about it seems to me once again, redirecting what is going on in your mind. And it’s getting you to refocus, and deal with against stress or whatever is happening or the the illness and taking away from the negative aspects of it. So it’s all about a mental adjustment, it seems to me,
 
Samantha Rawlinson  32:44
it is it’s hard to change your mental mentality all on your own. I know because I’ve really worked on it. And I work on it every single day.
 
Michael Hingson  32:55
Yeah. And it’s, again, all about what we’re taught, how do we how do we start to get our overall environment to change the way we deal with stress and all of these things to make all some of this go away? And that is I guess what I’m getting at is, collectively we’re teaching ourselves to be so stressed and to be so frustrated and to have so many challenges. How do we deal with that?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  33:23
I think we need to as human beings, we need to come to that point of Okay, enough is enough. I’ve had it. I need to either learn how to do this on my own or find somebody who can teach me because we always we all get to a breaking point that we just can’t do it anymore.
 
Michael Hingson  33:44
So growing up so you’ve got children, how do you help your children maybe start out, not going down that same path of negativity and stress,
 
Samantha Rawlinson  33:57
teaching them from the very beginning, which is very hard. If you’re somebody who’s already in that space and are able to learn this at an early age, teaching them at an early age is also very important. I’ve always been in the self discovery since I was in my 20s. And so both my children have always kind of been in the same thing. One of my children has anxiety very badly. And she she does a lot of these things to help control her anxiety. And it’s not a it’s a hormonal anxiety. It’s something she inherited. So you can learn these things, but you have you have to want to learn them and so as a parent, I would teach my children then because you’re giving them an advantage.
 
Michael Hingson  34:53
I was happy working for you with your children.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  34:55
It my Yeah, my oldest child. She’s 25 And let me tell you She is far better at this because she’s learned it from an early age.
 
Michael Hingson  35:08
are better at it than you, huh?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  35:10
Oh, yeah. Yeah. But that’s because, you know, I was able to figure it out and go, Okay, I don’t I don’t want to do this. I don’t I didn’t want to teach my kids in. Do they have bad days? Yes, we all have bad days. But I know she’s able to control herbs. My, my younger child who’s 20? She’s still she’s still working on it.
 
Michael Hingson  35:36
Yeah, it still comes down to how we allow our surroundings, our environments to affect us. And it sounds like your, your older daughter is has accepted the fact that we can deal with this a little bit more in your younger one, it sounds like is still sort of not totally the point of saying, I can separate myself from a lot of this materialistic stuff.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  36:02
Right? She’s still maturing, and she’s in college, which makes it hard to separate do that separation?
 
Michael Hingson  36:09
Yeah, it is one of those things that that again, is all about choice, we choose to do it or we choose not to. And that is up entirely to us.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  36:22
It really is.
 
Michael Hingson  36:25
So you mentioned movement before and you mentioned exercise, is there a difference between just movement and dealing with chronic illness and exercise?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  36:35
So yes, there is. So we are bad, especially right now, because a lot of us are on Zoom calls, a lot of us work from home or work. Even people who work in the office, were bad about sitting at a desk for eight hours, that’s a long time for your body to sit. Movement, you need to get up and move. And I don’t mean you have to go run for 30 minutes, I mean, every hour, you need to get up and move your body, I don’t care if it’s walking down to the bathroom or walking outside for five minutes, we really should be moving on an hourly basis to keep the body moving. Because it prevents you. It helps your body from getting stiff, it keeps you flexible. And it just keeps you healthy.
 
Michael Hingson  37:28
I will say my Apple Watch yells at me because even when I get up to 4000 or 4500 steps, it says you don’t take enough steps, which is probably true. But I do believe in moving around. And I do mainly work at home and from home. And right now especially my wife has been dealing with some medical issues with a serious wound from probably a pressure sore in her wheelchair. And it got so serious that it actually went to the bone and chose he was in the hospital for a month. So I keep a close eye on her. And we have caregivers that are that are now helping. But still moving around is important because as I’ve heard a number of times over the years people and talking about caregivers, and family members who are caregivers, you’ve got to take time for you too. Because if you don’t you’re not going to be a good caregiver and you’re gonna eventually have your own serious issues.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  38:30
That is so true. Caregivers are the worst about taking care of themselves as our nurses. Because we’re caregivers.
 
Michael Hingson  38:40
Yes. Yeah, by any standard you are. Yeah. And COVID. Again, and we talked about it earlier, has offered challenges, but it has offered opportunities. And I think there’s a lot to be learned from doing more work ins, doing zoom calls, doing zoom meetings, we’re finding out that you don’t have to necessarily be in the office for eight hours a day, five days a week, you can and there’s a lot of potential and being more productive by having time to work at home. But, but you also have to be disciplined enough to take advantage of the opportunities that that brings you. That is so true. So it is a major issue that a lot of us have to learn to give ourselves permission to make choices. And maybe that’s the real issue is that we don’t choose because we don’t give ourselves permission to make choices.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  39:40
Right? That is so true. And we don’t make we don’t give ourself permission to make the right choices. Yeah. For some, for a lot of people. The easier route is the supposedly the better but I don’t know where we got into that because it’s not always better. Tell me more if you With, well, for instance, food, that, you know, we think, Oh, it’s so easy just to run to the store and get this and this and that I don’t have to make dinner. And I had that mentality. And I realized, oh my gosh, I can make a meal and 30 minutes, a healthy meal in 30 minutes. Whereas running to the store, getting the food coming home, that was 30 minutes, right there. Yeah. And, and when I cook at home, I, I spend like a fraction of what I would going out, especially right now with an economy. I think that’s a big thing.
 
Michael Hingson  40:38
We used to go not go out a lot, but we would, we would use GrubHub or, or especially during the pandemic, and we will get stuff maybe twice a week. But now we don’t, especially with Karen, my wife being the way she you know, she is she doesn’t get up much or she doesn’t certainly go out. And we’re eating just fine. Thank you very much without going out without even ordering in from GrubHub or other services. And there are a lot of things available. But the fact of the matter is that we can produce things at home, and we can be a lot more creative. And it also gives us the time in being creative and being industrious enough to do things at home. It gives us the time to do something that allows us to get away from stress to
 
Samantha Rawlinson  41:30
Oh, yeah, definitely. And, I mean, there’s days I don’t feel like cooking, but then I have leftovers and I’m like, hey, I can just throw this together. And I just try to keep the you know, the certain foods in my fridge all the time. And and, you know, once you stop eating things like fried food, you don’t want to eat it because it doesn’t taste good.
 
Michael Hingson  41:58
Yeah, it’s been not very hard for us to not eat a lot of fried food. And we got an airfryer earlier this year. So that makes the concept of fry food better.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  42:09
I know. I love my air fryer. So little side note here. My husband has a travel nurse and we we are sometimes in a hotel for weeks on end. We’ve lived in a hotel for three months at one point in their little kitchenette stuff is to be desired. Let me just say, I have learned how to cook everything out of the air fryer. I’ve even learned how to make cookies out of an air fryer.
 
Michael Hingson  42:39
So do you take your air fryer with you to the hotel? Oh, yes. Do you?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  42:47
Yes, I do. So I’ve learned how to make a lot of different things. In the airfryer it’s kind of comical.
 
42:54
Well, we have one of these, the airfryer that has a lot of different functions. I have not made cookies. I’ve been given gifts of cookies that are frozen that you’re supposed to. They’re partially baked and you put them in and they’ve come out really well. But I I use it for a lot of stuff. And there’s a an accessibe customer accessibe is the company that I work for us. It’s a company that makes products that make websites more accessible. And through accessibe I discovered a company called Wild grain. And we did a podcast with the owner of wild grain. They make breads, specifically sourdough breads and very healthy kinds of breads. They started at the beginning or near the beginning of the Pong pandemic, it’s wild grain.com. And so they ship nationwide. And the way they actually do it is they create the breads, they par bake them, they send them to you frozen, and then you put them in the oven on and finish the baking. And they’re wonderful because the breads come out fresh. And and again, it’s also completely healthy, no preservatives compared to other kinds of things. And I have found using the airfryer to create them and to bake them has been a wonderful tool. I’m gonna save some energy to Oh yeah,
 
Samantha Rawlinson  44:18
I’m excited. I wrote that down. I’m excited. I’m gonna check that out.
 
Michael Hingson  44:24
It’s, uh, oh, it’s great. It’s a wonderful place. And it’s absolutely worth exploring and getting their stuff from In fact, we’ve got to do an order a little bit later in the month. Yeah.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  44:36
And actually sourdough bread is actually really good for you sourdough bread, whole grain or whole wheat are the three to look for.
 
Michael Hingson  44:46
We haven’t bought straight white bread for a long time. We we get whole grain bread or now we’re really spoiled by the sourdough. And so he We get that in there. Dinner Rolls are wonderful. I haven’t tried. In the first box, we got the Sena some sticky buns and I haven’t tried them yet. I’ve got to do that. But I haven’t found anything there that we really didn’t like at all. It’s absolutely scrumptious stuff.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  45:16
I’m gonna check it out because I love having avocado toast and sourdough. That’s like one of my favorite practices.
 
Michael Hingson  45:23
Now, where are you located?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  45:25
Right now I’m in Tennessee. I’m originally my husband and I are from Texas. But he says, But yeah, we’re in Nashville right now.
 
Michael Hingson  45:33
Oh, well, the neat thing about wildbrain is what they have done is partnered with bakeries all over the country. So they’ve given bakeries, their recipes, and they’re under contract so that the food is prepared, much closer to you than Boston, where wild grain is located. And it shipped from the closest bakery to wherever you are. So that also helps. Okay, awesome. At the end, if you go, if you go back and look at all of our podcasts, you can find it and you can find the interview with with him and learn his whole story. It’s a fascinating story.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  46:06
Wow, I’m gonna do that. Thank you.
 
Michael Hingson  46:09
One of the things that I wonder about is you we’ve talked a lot about food, what are good foods, and not necessarily so good foods for dealing with chronic illness.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  46:20
So the foods you want to avoid are foods that cause inflammation, so we might as well start with the bad, right. So red meat is red meat and processed meats are not they’re very inflammatory. And they really can cause somebody with chronic illnesses, a lot of problems. So I would totally avoid those refined refined grains, white bread, white rice, pie pasta, white pasta, you can get whole wheat pasta now so that that would be a better choice. sodas, it doesn’t matter if it’s sweetened or unsweetened. I just actually read something with diabetics that unsweetened sodas can actually caused their blood sugars to spike hours later, which I had no idea. And then fried, of course fried foods. So those are the things you really want to avoid, avoid. There’s a lot you can eat, that are anti inflammatory. Of course, most of your fruits and vegetables are very good for you. Fatty fishes like a salmon, trout tuna. And talk about anti inflammatory meal, you can take your you know fish like salmon, or trout or tuna and put it on a whole wheat tortilla and add your veggies on it and you have a whole anti inflammatory dinner or lunch right there. So it’s super easy to eat that way. There’s a lot of herbs and spices that you can use avoid salt at all cost. I think here in the US were really bad about not using spices and herbs and they can make such a difference in your meal. And then I really recommend staying away from the vegetable oils do things like olive oil, avocado oil, those are so much better for you. And then nuts and seeds are really that that’s an amazing source of not only protein, but they’re anti inflammatory and a great snack.
 
Michael Hingson  48:38
Yeah, I I know that I have not used a lot. I’ve never used a lot of salt. Sometimes I over salt by accident. I noticed. And I noticed that a lot. You you can’t go completely in your life without salt. But you can certainly you can certainly determine how much you need. My brother was a big salt eater. And I know that wasn’t necessarily a good thing to do at all, but it still happened. Yeah, my
 
Samantha Rawlinson  49:07
husband’s terrible with the salt and Mike Pina at least tasted before you salt it.
 
Michael Hingson  49:12
Yeah. Well, that’s it. I mean, yeah. So you need enough salt for cooking. But right now on the other hand, the exception to that rule is popcorn at a movie theater. But that’s another story.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  49:24
Yeah, well, as long as you’re not eating it every day, and popcorn is actually one of my most favorite snacks. I just don’t put butter on it. And I I do put salt but not a lot.
 
Michael Hingson  49:37
Yeah, we don’t we don’t eat that much popcorn. Not as much as we should. But the point is that we don’t as a result have a lot of butter on it. But that’s pretty cool.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  49:45
And actually, you know what you can do at home you can put your nutritional yeast you can sprinkle that on it and it tastes like it’s it tastes like cheese on it. Yeah, it’s very good for you. Cool. Yeah.
 
Michael Hingson  50:01
So, I would assume that sleep is also something that can help with chronic illness and, and in general, I mean, the things that we’re talking about are not just things that work for dealing with chronic illness, but things that give you a better life and help you anyway,
 
Samantha Rawlinson  50:17
exactly in these things prevent you from getting a chronic illness. So it’s important that you start doing these things before you get to that point that you have something that now you have to control. So, yes, sleep is so important for so many reasons, your body really needs that rest, it needs six to eight hours of sleep. And these people who say all I need is four hours of sleep, I’m sorry that you can tell yourself that, but your body needs it.
 
Michael Hingson  50:46
Yeah. And it has like eight hours asleep.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  50:50
Oh, same here, I know, when I don’t get sleep, I’m not a nice person. So sleep is very important to me. And I know people have a hard time either falling asleep or staying asleep. And with that, I suggest make sure you have a good nighttime routine. You know, turn off the lights, I like to read before bed. So just don’t use a bright light or on my Kindle, I turn it to that dark level. So the I reduction, isn’t it that I whatever they call that doesn’t disturb me. And just have something that relaxes you that you could do before bed if your head if you’re if you have a lot going through your head, keep a pad of paper or journal right there at your bed and write things down. That way it you can get it off your mind and be able to relax in in to sleep.
 
Michael Hingson  51:52
Have you written any books or done any writing to make all of this more widely available to people?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  51:58
I have not. I’m starting to work on this. Yeah, I’m pretty new at this. But yes, something to work on.
 
Michael Hingson  52:08
Something definitely to do. Well, I would gather so. So today, are you still nursing? Or what do you do with your world?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  52:18
So I am now a full time health and wellness coach in helping women but I helping anybody. At that point. If I can help them change their mindset and change their negative behavior behaviors into positive behaviors. I find that it’s a success. So no, I’m not working in a hospital or anything like that. But I’m using nursing in a different way right now.
 
Michael Hingson  52:50
Well, if people want to learn about you, and maybe take advantage of your skills and your services, how do they do that?
 
Samantha Rawlinson  53:00
I actually have a website. It’s SamanthaRawlinson.com. I made a spell please. Yes, it’s S A M A N T H A R A W L I N S O N.com. Okay, and all my information is on there. My Facebook group is on there. I did think that Instagram is on there, not that I really get on Instagram anymore. That’s become more of a hassle. Yeah, and my emails on there also, and I on my website, there’s a place where you can make a direct link to make an appointment for a third free 30 minute call just to see if I can help you.
 
Michael Hingson  53:49
You have people all over that you work with clients all over? Yes. Great. Well, I really appreciate all of the knowledge and the insights that you’ve given us and I hope that you who are listening out there, appreciate them as well. I’m sticking with wild grain and good sourdough bread. But that’s another story. And I would suggest though, that anyone wants to reach out to Samantha please do so. I don’t think we really talked a lot about the fact that I owned I don’t know whether I even mentioned it at first that we met Samantha through Podapalooza, again, pata. Podapalooza is a fun program. And it is you have to start a podcast, Samantha.
 
Samantha Rawlinson  54:34
I guess I do.
 
54:37
Well, thanks again, Samantha for joining us and thank you for listening. We really appreciate all of you being here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments please reach out to me via email at Michaelhi M I C H A E L H I at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. Or visit our podcast page www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and Michael Hingson is M I C H A E L H I N G S O N. We love to hear your comments and your thoughts and we certainly ask that you please give us a five star rating wherever you’re listening to the podcast. But let us know your thoughts. And if you know of anyone else, including yourself who might want to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please reach out to me via email. I’d love to hear from you once more. Thanks for listening and we hope to see you again next time.
 
Michael Hingson  55:35
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.