Ep 101 – Kyra Cavanaugh, Free Yourself – Workplace Wellbeing
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Featuring: Kyra Cavanaugh, Free Yourself
In Episode 101 of Agency Bytes, I sit down with Kyra Cavanaugh, a wellbeing consultant, meditation coach, and Qigong instructor, for a conversation that feels like a deep breath in the middle of a hectic workday. We explore what it really means to prioritize wellbeing—not just for ourselves but for our teams and the people we lead.
Kyra shares practical, down-to-earth strategies for finding balance in a world that pushes us to hustle nonstop. We talk about how small, intentional moments of self-care can ripple into productivity, creativity, and stronger connections—both at work and in life. From recognizing when a teammate (or you) might need a breather, to breaking the cycle of “push through and crash later” culture, this episode is all about giving yourself permission to slow down in order to show up fully.
If you’ve ever struggled with burnout, felt the pressure to always be “on,” or wondered how to create a healthier, more human-centered workplace, this conversation is for you. Take a pause and join us.
Key Bytes
• Wellbeing is essential for productivity and creativity.
• Connection and mental health challenges have been prevalent for years.
• Daily self-care practices can help mitigate stress.
• Leaders must model wellbeing for their teams.
• Emotional intelligence is crucial in leadership.
• Establishing boundaries is key to healthy workplace relationships.
• Investing in oneself is a necessary practice.
• Simple check-ins can foster team connection.
• Recognizing the impact of personal struggles is important.
• Human connection should be prioritized in the workplace.Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Wellbeing in the Workplace
05:55 Shifting Mindsets: From Work-Life Balance to Daily Wellbeing
11:48 Practical Strategies for Self-Care and Team Support
17:50 Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
23:50 Fostering Human Connection in the Workplace
Kyra Cavanaugh is a well-being consultant, meditation and healing coach, and Qigong instructor. She's worked with hundreds of businesses and thousands of leaders to improve personal, team and organizational well-being. She's an author, podcaster, speaker, coach and serial entrepreneur based in Asheville, NC where she loves to hike and listen to local, live music.
Contact Kyra on 15be.com, freeyourself.world, or on their YouTube channel.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:02.35)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. Today, my guest is Kira Kavanaugh. She's a wellbeing consultant, meditation coach, and Qigong. Yeah, I should have asked you how I say that. Qigong, right? Qigong. All right, see, take two.
Kyra Cavanaugh (00:20.442)
No? There we go.
Kyra Cavanaugh (00:24.56)
I it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:26.008)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. Today, my guest is Kira Kavanagh, a wellbeing consultant, meditation coach, and Qigong instructor who's helped thousands of leaders and teams thrive. She's based in Asheville, North Carolina, and Kira is an author, speaker, and podcaster who balances her passion for wellness with a love of hiking and live music. Thank you so much for being with me today.
Great to have you here.
Kyra Cavanaugh (00:57.638)
Thanks so much, Steve. I'm really excited to be with you and to be having this conversation today.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:02.946)
Yeah, me too. think it's a needed conversation in a series of needed conversations. know, the world, the country, things are always shifting. And I wanted to have an intentionally have conversations with resources and powerful people like yourself to help creative entrepreneurs kind of continue to thrive, find ways to thrive, deal with the things that are challenging them, whether it's
the economy or their business or families or government or whatever else is going on in the world. And so I know you've got some valuable, valuable resources that you can help us with. Can you start by just kind of talking about the work that you do and how it impacts people and teams?
Kyra Cavanaugh (01:51.832)
Absolutely, yeah. So I identified, I started almost 20 years ago helping people work remotely, ironically, long before the pandemic. And what I noticed was there are so many wonderful benefits about working remotely and a really serious challenge that I decided to focus on with my business, which is how to be well.
how to be well when we're spending long periods of time in isolation in our homes or in a coworking or outsourced space. And also trying to figure out what kinds of connections matter and how to be able to sense from each other when someone is doing well and when someone isn't. Because whether or not it's related to virtual work or whether it's just the evolution of us as human beings,
We're feeling more disconnected, more isolated, struggling with finding meaning and purpose, mental health, challenges, suicides, all of that has skyrocketed. And so it's really important to me to be helping individuals, to be helping people leaders, to be helping organizations and teams as groups, to really be able to solve for this.
Steve / Agency Outsight (03:10.618)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (03:13.638)
And it doesn't have to be complicated. know, when I was inside of my corporate career, I used to think, well, I'm gonna get myself well on vacation, and then I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna push myself super, super hard and I'm gonna work really, really hard, and then I'm gonna take another vacation. And life just isn't always like that. We've gotta be able to find ways to be helping ourselves and helping each other. get goosebumps moment by moment, meeting by meeting, hour by hour, day by day.
And so that's really the work I do is helping individuals, leaders, and teams find those little strategies, those little moments. Vacations are awesome too. But to be able to check in on each other, to be able to care for each other, and to make sure that we're caring for the dynamic of how we're communicating, how we're allocating workload, how and whether we're delegating, all of those kinds of traditional leadership skills fall into this conversation as well.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:09.476)
To me, and maybe I just have had blinders on, like pre-COVID, I didn't know that this was, even as an agency owner, creative professional, I didn't know that this was a common theme. And you're saying this has been a thing for 20 years. Like I knew some people worked remote and I knew that it was like few and far between and some businesses were built intentionally to be remote. But the mental health.
strain and the checking in with each other like that just became such a skyrocketed theme during COVID that I don't know that it was even a blip on my radar prior to that. So yeah.
Kyra Cavanaugh (04:44.58)
Yeah, there was a, I totally appreciate that. I think, you know, for some of us, maybe it kind of crept up over time. It's the 20 year anniversary of, I forget the Harvard professor's name. We could probably put it in the show notes. He wrote a book called, Bullying Alone. It was 20 years ago now where he was, and he just published another book on this topic. He was predicting everything that's happening to us, the sense of disconnection.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:51.832)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (05:14.181)
the sense of polarization, the sense of isolation. so yeah, like researchers were paying attention to it, but so many of us were just heads down living our life, doing our thing. And so I think it has kind of caught a lot of us by surprise. Absolutely.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:32.014)
Yeah. And so lot of the work you're doing is how do we maintain kind of less hills and valleys between those summer vacation and spring break or whatever it might be and find more day-to-day check-ins with self, with peers, with family to try and even out those hills and valleys? I mean, is that a super simplistic way to look at it?
Kyra Cavanaugh (05:52.634)
I don't think it's, I mean, simple to me is beautiful. So yes, I love the simplification of it. Yeah, I think it's a shift in thinking away from this idea that there are times in our lives where we can relax and be well. And there are times in our lives where we have to push heads down and perform. And I see that, that sort of polarity as being a limiting mindset and a limiting belief.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:55.511)
You
Kyra Cavanaugh (06:22.352)
whether it's us as leaders thinking that the people on our team should be pushing, pushing, pushing all the time, unless they're on vacation, and still you should be available, right? That kind of old school mindset, or yeah, you're shaking your head. Or if it's that, well, if we sort of look at workload and delegation and availability, and if I get really transparent, then we're gonna turn into a bunch of...
know, softies who can't get anything done, right? This idea of this sort of black and white thinking around resilience and around wellbeing is just so antiquated. And we all can feel that and sense that and know that, but okay, Kira, what do we do about it, right? And that's the thing. Some of us may have a practice or we may have had a practice, but it's not really feeling right for us anymore. Maybe we feel guilty, maybe I...
I feel like I should be working out or I should have a meditation practice or I should go back to church or temple, but all this should isn't getting us anywhere either. So yeah, it's really about diving in and just looking at what's getting in your way of caring for yourself as a leader, what's getting in the way of thinking that it's okay that your team be caring for yourself and that you as a leader be caring for yourself. And then really what are some simple things we can do when we're really time pressed or we're really down.
or disconnected or feeling lost or super crazed because we're under a deadline. There are still things we could be doing to support ourselves.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:56.538)
So we're not gonna solve for dismantling and rewiring the US culture on toxic workplace overworkedness and feeling guilty about taking vacation time, whereas in Europe they're like, yeah, I'm off for the whole summer and I'm not gonna ever check your email so don't send it kind of thing. There's those memes of the auto responder when I'm on vacation in the US is like, I'm in the ocean on my laptop, I'll get back to you or let me get that done for you.
We're not going solve for that as a whole today, but certainly we can give some kind of tidbits on how leaders can encourage team members to take the time and what to do with the time and maybe some indicators on what teammates and leaders can see in each other. You know, indicators were like, Hey, maybe you need some time. You know, how, how do we encourage that sort of kind of healthiness in this, in the works, in the creative workspace, but in all workspaces.
Kyra Cavanaugh (08:52.446)
It really starts with you, with me, with I. So it starts with what are, just ask yourself, what are my beliefs, my thought systems, my habits, and the reinforced behaviors that have formed my attitudes, the words I speak, the choices I make around well-being. We have to start there. Now,
Steve / Agency Outsight (08:55.876)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (09:21.304)
You might say, Kira, that's like a big existential sit on top of a mountain and I don't have time to do that kind of response. And it's not. It's when you wake up in the morning and you choose not to go for a walk without your headphones on for five minutes, even though you said, I've tried that before and it feels really good, I'm not doing it today. Stop and just ask yourself why. Not to make yourself feel guilty, not to overanalyze, but just ask why.
The why for me is I don't have time for this. I have to get to work. Okay, we'll just stop and really ask yourself, do I have a meeting I have to be at where I can't take the five minutes? Maybe. Do I have a 9 a.m. deadline? Maybe, but maybe not. And so what is it that you have learned is wrong about taking care of yourself? So it starts there. So now I'm a leader who doesn't value that.
I'm a workaholic, I'm a perfectionist, I have a particular way of working that has always delivered amazing results. I'm not really interested in evaluating that or changing that. So I'm bringing that to my agency. I'm bringing that to my team. I'm bringing that to my clients, whether I realize it or not. So now, non-verbally, I'm conveying to you, we have mirror neurons in our brains. Neuroscientists have proven in less than a second, we can read each other.
and this has great evolutionary benefit. Whether you're saying it or not, the people around you are sensing your value system. They know without you even saying it that you did not take five minutes to yourself this morning. You're showing up that way whether you realize it or not. So then they're gonna follow you, do what I say, not what I do. We do what you do, not what you say. So I'm gonna follow you and very quickly we form a team dynamic that says we don't take time to ourselves.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:11.162)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (11:18.426)
So it's that simple, that quick, and that easy. The moment you interrupt that habit, that thought, that belief, that behavior, now you're giving yourself a pause for a second to ask, well, I actually don't have a meeting. I don't have a deadline. Maybe I'll go ahead and do it, see what happens. Then we have to take a second to register what did it feel like for me to take that five minute walk around the block with no headphones in.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:18.671)
Hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (11:48.666)
Huh, I kind of noticed there are leaves on the trees, you know, in springtime. Or, I noticed there weren't any birds out this morning. How did that feel? That felt pretty good. Okay. Because the other thing that happens is we'll have this really amazing lunch, but we're watching a YouTube video while we're doing it and our brains don't even recognize that we ate. That's actually a thing. So we've got to take a moment and recognize how did it feel when I did care for myself, because that starts the virtuous cycle of self care.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:18.456)
Yeah, I love that you point out how it's such a, you know, do what I say, not what I do culture and the expectations of what will they think if I take this five minute walk for myself or midday, I'm just going to go for a walk around the building or like, what will they think? And that, that whole, you know, toxicity. I'm a big fan of just get up that much earlier and carve out the time. We never find the time, but if we make the time.
to meditate, run, go to gym, walk in the park, whatever that thing is, that to me, it's intentionalized, it's prioritized, and you can't take it away from me as opposed to, I'll see if I can fit it into my schedule.
Kyra Cavanaugh (13:03.524)
Yeah, yes, I agree. And that can also feel super intimidating. Like, okay, I'm gonna get up early tomorrow, but what if I get up and I can't get out of bed? Like now the judgment cycle is gonna form, and then it becomes more more difficult to do it the next day and the next day because now I'm beating myself up. So there's an awesome body of work that shows that change starts with.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:18.074)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:23.876)
Yeah.
Kyra Cavanaugh (13:31.482)
the most minute thing you could do. So you might get up early so you could fit in a half hour workout or a five mile run. Well, I could start by saying, I'm gonna do one jumping jack every morning before I get in the shower. And the idea is you reinforce the one until it becomes so silly that you don't even think about doing it. And then you might decide to do two. Well, before you know it, you've built yourself a movement routine.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:00.26)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (14:01.006)
And it's a way to kind of fake out the resistance in the brain. But I think it's awesome that you have the discipline and you have recognized the value of carving out that time. That's wonderful.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:13.454)
Yeah, and it's not a 4 a.m. thing that starts with a cold plunge. That's not my lifestyle. I don't understand that. But for me, so I keep, I have a meditation practice that I've had for many years and I started keeping track of it 1,704 days ago. And so to me, it's not competitive, but I like the consistency of it. And I wake up.
Kyra Cavanaugh (14:18.086)
f-u-p, thank God.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:36.898)
earlier than I need to prepare my day and start my day and get to my first call or be with my fiance or whatever because that time carved out is sacred to me. And I know if I don't start the day with that part of the day, I walk a little bit more crooked or I'm a little edgier. so I haven't had that in a long time. but so it's to me, it's gotta be intentional. And I was taught carve out the time and carve out the space. And you know that, like you said, it starts with the one so that
start a habit, it starts with one day or one activity or one foot in front of the other or whatever. So you talk about how the connection to how I'm feeling and how I might be productive in the workplace or how my leadership or I might be as a leader is impacted by all of this. Can you dig into that a little bit and leadership styles?
Kyra Cavanaugh (15:27.398)
Yeah, so from the perspective of how it impacts wellbeing for yourself, give me a little bit more.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:34.23)
Yeah, I mean, so if my team or the team that I manage or the team that I report to, if wellbeing is off, body, mind, spirit, all the above, how is that going to impact productivity of the overall team, delivery to clients, and what are just some signs that leadership can look for?
Kyra Cavanaugh (15:54.586)
Yeah, absolutely. So again, I go back to this idea that many, many, many, many, of us have been trained to think that well-being is this soft thing that has the gets in the way. It's an obstacle to all the things that we're trying to manage for as leaders. And in fact, scientists have been studying for over 20 years, again, this 20 year mark, that it's actually the opposite. So well-being improves client and customer service.
Well-being improves innovation and creativity. Well-being improves interpersonal relationships, which we all know we rely on to be able to do our best work. It improves our focus. It improves our ability to sleep, which then improves our productivity. So pretty much every measure, everything that we rely on as humans to be able to do our job.
is improved when, like you were just explaining, Steve, when I feel better. And so the way that I think about feeling better and a way that leaders can think about checking in with themselves and checking in with their teams is really threefold. It's head, heart, and body. And that sounds very cliche, but I'm going to go deeper. What are the quality and quantity of your thoughts today? You can ask yourself that as a leader.
You can go around at the beginning of a meeting and you can just check in. Let's do red, yellow, green. How are our thoughts today? And you can even get more specific. How are we feeling about this project right now? Or our progress on the project? Or one big obstacle that's really bothering you? And you go around and you're just real quick. Everybody's just checking in. And you have a rule. It's one sentence or it's 30 seconds or whatever. So you can get on with your meeting. But you're just doing a quick mental check-in.
You could do it as, how are you doing personally? How are things going personally? How are you feeling about your career? How are you feeling about your personal life? You can ask any question you want and what you're trying to get at is the quality of the quantity and quantity of thoughts. Are there a lot of thoughts? Are there a lot of worries, a lot of concerns, a lot of judgments going on in our heads? That's gonna get in the way of creativity. We all know, right?
Kyra Cavanaugh (18:18.348)
Is there a whole bunch of safety and security needs that are going on in our body? Our bodies are in stress response mode, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Like we are not going to be creative and we're not going to be terribly productive. So what are you seeing, which is harder to do when you're managing a remote team, but you can still see it. I'm making eye contact with you right now. If I were kind of fumbling around or looking around or sort of slumping down, you can sense that.
So what's going on physically with your team and what's going on physically with you? If you're coming out of a sickness or you've lost a loved one, you're going to take a beating physically for weeks and weeks and weeks long past when people think you should still be feeling it, right, in your body and you still are. Is anyone checking in on you three weeks after the funeral, six weeks after your leave, or are they just glad you're back and you better be working hard?
Right? And then what's going on emotionally? And in all of the topics that I work on with individuals and with teams, especially in the context of work, emotions is the difficult one. It's the one people are most interested in. And it's also the one that people feel doesn't really have applicability in the workplace. And yet, we're the makeup of those three things. So if we are unwilling or unable to
even build a life, an emotional life, an understanding of the emotional burden that we're carrying around, we're certainly not going to be able to connect with each other on that. And yet that is the heart, no pun intended, of human connection. So what kind of space can we hold for our emotional lives, for ourselves and for each other? That to me, I get goosebumps because
That's where the goal is and it's the place that can be most difficult for us to enter into.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:17.338)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:25.7)
think it's a touchy area that people are afraid to even tiptoe into in the workplace. Am I crossing a boundary? We say, let's not treat the business like a family because I want to be able to fire you or whatever, but I also want to be able to connect with you on a level so that we can be human together and have feelings together and are you okay? so, yeah, I know that there is trepidation around that from leadership to do that with their team members.
Are there some, I guess, best practices or key ways that people can do it without overstepping, without, I don't know, interfering or getting in trouble or whatever the concerns are?
Kyra Cavanaugh (21:08.954)
Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you asking that question. There's one word that comes to mind right away, which is boundaries, which is another hot topic in organizations. What are your personal boundaries? What are your professional boundaries? Do you even recognize that it's okay to have them and it's okay for other people to have them? Because when we're gonna start talking about emotion, if I tend to be boundary-less,
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:17.113)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kyra Cavanaugh (21:36.28)
as a leader, as a team member, if I think anything goes, I'm gonna go to places that I don't even know are emotionally sensitive. That's gonna turn a whole bunch of people off. That's not having boundaries and respecting boundaries. If I'm a very boundary control oriented person, I'm gonna presume your boundaries are so high, you don't want me to talk about this. So again, we're gonna approach it through our own lens. It's how we love.
It's how we lead, it's how we connect with each other, it's all through our own lens. So respect and understand that you are who you are, but not everybody's you. So that's when we get into the cool, curious nature of human connection. So if I recognize that you have boundaries, Steve, and you recognize that I have boundaries, now the fun begins. I'm not gonna cross your boundaries, but I can say, and in fact I did ask you before we got,
started today, I said, how are you feeling today? How are you showing up today? And you can, I mean, you could be honest with me, did I cross a boundary for you when I asked that question?
Steve / Agency Outsight (22:45.728)
No, but I'm very open. I'm very, I mean, I could have answered that question for an hour with you. You know what mean? But in a workplace, I feel like, and I've had people that have reported to me that, you know, I've checked in with and they're like, I don't want to talk about that with you. You're my creative director, not my therapist. You know, those kinds of responses. And so, you know, I want to encourage people to check in with their teammates, but establish boundaries.
Kyra Cavanaugh (22:52.71)
You
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:12.478)
And on in both directions to know that hey, I'm open if you need something, but if you're not comfortable with that, I understand we there's a boundary here for you, right? Is what you're getting at.
Kyra Cavanaugh (23:21.26)
Yes, and a lot, I so appreciate that, and a lot of it has to do with trust. So you're absolutely right. If I haven't spent time with you, if I'm not investing in you as a person, then why on earth would that person wanna share their, you know, what feels really personal with you? Of course they don't, and it's not personal necessarily, it might be.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:27.62)
Hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (23:50.544)
But it may also be that you haven't kind of earned that sense of permission or right to go there. So how about we start with easy stuff? How about we actually just start by seeing each other? Hey, how are you today? Or how was your weekend? And stop. Hey, how you doing? And then what are we gonna do? We're gonna delegate a task. No, how you doing? Let's just stop.
I saw some really awesome music this weekend. tell me about it. It doesn't have to take a ton of time. If we define human connection as part of work, part of our to-do list for the day, then we're gonna naturally invest those few moments day by day, week by week, so that when someone is clearly different, they're showing up different than they did yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, or now it's week two or three or four and they're seeming.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:26.959)
Hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (24:47.248)
really detached and that's not regular for them. Now perhaps you've earned the right. Now perhaps there's enough trust there. But see, if we're just cruising about our day, just seeing each other as robots who are productivity robots to get work done, then you're absolutely right. We may be crossing boundaries left, and sideways and coming across as really disingenuous that now I'm going to take the time because
you're not showing up in a way that's productive. Now that's not even feeling authentic and sincere. And so you're going to absolutely get that kind of shut down response.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:26.296)
Yeah, you need me to get something done to make a client happy. So you're going to check in with me because you see, see that I'm off a little bit, but do that on a regular, you know, random Tuesday or whatever. Yeah. I also think most people, my perspective, most people just throw the word fine. Like, how are you fine? How's everything fine. They, I'm probably a trap. Don't ask me that I'll open up to a complete stranger. Do you know what I mean? And so most, I don't think most people are of the nature of
You know, it was a really hard weekend, know, so and so we had to put Fluffy down or like whatever the thing is. I, I saw a movie that was triggering and you know, so I have to book a session with my therapist. I don't think most people will, will open up like that to non-family members or they're not their bestie or you know I mean? And so, you know, maybe we have to figure out how to make that more of the norm of being more honest and open in our secondary circles or something like that.
Kyra Cavanaugh (26:24.932)
Yeah, until we're gonna let people see our own humanity, they're not gonna let us see theirs. And why are we not showing each other our humanity? For a whole bunch of reasons. For a whole bunch of reasons. And we don't even have to delve into the reasons to your point. We don't have to delve into the reasons, we can just acknowledge they're there. Wow, life is kinda hard right now, huh?
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:37.626)
episode 2
Kyra Cavanaugh (26:52.568)
It's not even a question. It's just me saying it, right? And someone can choose to agree or not agree. They can choose to turn around and walk away. It's all right. But what if I'm really, really, really lonely? What if I feel like there is literally not a person and the percentages are shocking? The number of people who do not believe that there is a person in this world that cares whether they walk this earth?
And your moment of connection with them might make all the difference. It may be the only human interaction that they have all day. So are we really going to continue to be about productivity and about that drive and about getting stuff done? I understand it served us all and our profits very well for a long time.
but at what cost. And I don't ask it to be, you know, some softie again. I ask it because I honestly believe that that blind spot is going to cost. Cost business, cost leaders, cost profits. The longer this continues, there's a direct connection. We're all seeing people coming into their voices as employees, as laborers, as workers.
saying enough is enough. So as leaders, it doesn't matter what your motivation is, you don't actually have to care about people. And there are plenty of leaders out there that actually don't care. And they'll say, I don't care. And I'll say, I get that. I get that you don't care. Guess what? Then do it for some dark reason that you don't share any, you know, with anyone, that it's a profit-based reason or a world domination reason. I don't care.
I don't care what your motivation is to see me as a human being, but can you take that moment? Can you take
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:43.406)
Yeah. And please take that moment. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyra Cavanaugh (28:47.622)
Yes, please. Yeah, our world is counting on it, you know.
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:52.088)
Yeah, yeah, powerful stuff. I'm really grateful for your insights there. think it's super powerful and very helpful. A couple of random quick rapid fires just to kind of lighten it if we need it lightened, whatever. what's something that you are binging these days, a hobby, a show, a book, a podcast that you want to share about?
Kyra Cavanaugh (29:11.826)
Thanks for asking. So I'm in Asheville. So we got hit by the hurricane and jigsaw puzzles have been my beautiful distraction and therapeutic activity for months now, along with volunteering and all the other good things that we as a community are doing to help each other and come together. I found out a pro tip about jigsaw puzzles, which is that goodwill or whatever your local consignment charity shop is.
Steve / Agency Outsight (29:28.762)
Hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (29:38.766)
Mm-hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (29:41.23)
sells really good puzzles with all the pieces in them for a dollar, two dollars, three dollars. So I got a whole stack of them at home that I'm working through.
Steve / Agency Outsight (29:50.65)
I was gonna ask if you have a puzzle exchange started in your community yet.
Kyra Cavanaugh (29:54.278)
We don't, I should start one. We have one in our building and I think it's just using a third party to be doing the exchange right now.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:03.288)
Yeah, yeah. What is a tool that you recently integrated into your life that you look back and say, how did I get by without this whatever, physical, digital, personal or professional?
Kyra Cavanaugh (30:12.762)
Mmm.
Yeah, so I bought a set of electric, I guess you'd call them electric gongs. And I thought at the time they were very overpriced. But what I love about them is you hit the button on each of them, you set them down and they time you. It's either two minutes or three minutes. And I use them every morning to just sit. It doesn't even matter what you're doing while you're sitting. But I just listen to that music. And so now my body knows.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:37.114)
Hmm.
Kyra Cavanaugh (30:43.588)
that my body hears that sound, it's like, I get my two or three minutes, whatever it is, of just sitting. And so, like, I used to think that a sitting practice had to have some, like, tradition or some mantra or some whatever attached to it. And I've just found the joy of a couple minutes of sitting is incredible.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:06.266)
I love that. And then finally, what is just an invaluable piece of advice that you can share with listeners?
Kyra Cavanaugh (31:13.262)
Hmm, an invaluable piece of advice.
Just recognize that investing in yourself, giving yourself whatever it is that you wish someone would tell you or give you or say to you, just recognize that you deserve that and that you don't need any justification to go ahead and be kind to yourself, to be understanding, to be compassionate. I spent a lot of years of my life waiting for people to...
see me or to thank me or to say something nice to me. My whole life changed a number of years ago when I realized I can just give that to myself and let that expectation go. So I wish that for everyone who's listening.
Steve / Agency Outsight (32:03.642)
Kira, thank you so much for that and for all of your wisdom you shared with us today. I appreciate you.
Kyra Cavanaugh (32:08.89)
Thank you so much, Steve. It was a pleasure being here.