Julie Wald is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York, a wellness company that serves a vast and influential clientele of high-performing business leaders and celebrities in achieving their health goals. Join us as we unearth the steps necessary to achieve a more balanced life and gain "inner wealth."
EPISODE 07
[EPISODE]
[00:00:21] BA: Well, welcome to a conversation on Colloquium. Thank you for joining us. Today I’ve got Julie Wald. It's a real treat for me, one, because her book is phenomenal. And we're going to talk a lot about it. But two, she is one of my best friends and Nashville sister. So it's always kind of fun when you can combine business and friendship in one. So, Julie, thank you for joining us.
[00:00:41] JW: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:43] BA: I’m going to give a brief rundown on Julie. Then we're going to go right into it. So Julie is a wellness practitioner for over 25 years. She is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York. She has a bachelor's degree in social work from NYU. She began her career in 1995 as a clinical social worker treating adults, children and adolescents and inpatient-outpatient mental health settings. And in the process of building her mental health practice, she also pursued her personal wellness objectives, and in so doing became a certified yoga instructor along with a lot of other things. And the master of these disciplines has combined with an intense fascination for eastern wisdom and proven to be invaluable assets to professional path.
So that's a lot what. I really want to get into is when I was reading your book, and I’m a 38-year-old white guy who's in finance, and pre-COVID was grinding a lot, traveling, getting up early, trying to cram in as much as I possibly could in the day. I’ve got two little kids, a wife who works. The biggest thing that struck me right off the bat was talking about how abundance does not necessarily equate with success or wellness. And the realization and the self-reflection by me that even though I have really nice things, I live in a nice house, I belong to a nice country club, we don't really have any needs or wants. I often find myself thinking that all of these material things that I have or these memberships that I have, they don't really bring me much joy or happiness. And I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that because it makes me sad. But I do think it's a conversation that for people who are in that 35 to 55 year old demographic, it's a conversation that we should be having. I think it's important. So maybe if you could expound on that a little bit, that concept and how you fleshed it out with some of your clients and people in your network.
[00:02:43] JW: Absolutely. So it's really, really interesting, because back when we started our business, and this was back kind of in the early 2000s. Officially we started in 2003. I really ended up in living rooms, in offices with some of the highest performers, most incredibly brilliant and wonderful people in the world quite frankly. And one of the things that became really, really clear to me after sort of doing this work for a number of years is that again and again people would come and say, “I’ve achieved X, Y and Z. I’ve met my financial goals. I’ve exceeded my financial goals. I’ve gained all the letters and the titles that I want after my name.” All of these resume items that check the box and say, “But somehow I’m just not feeling as good as I thought I would feel.”
And this often time came particularly after sort of a hyper focus on that external achievement or external wealth for a period of time, which in many ways was the greatest strength of these people, this intense focus, this intense commitment, this intense drive, this intense intelligence. All of those things are huge strengths, but it was those exact same things that became liabilities in terms of cultivating what we call just like that internal resource. So they were really good at creating external resource, but in the meantime the internal resources were kind of ignored and under cultivated. And then at a certain point in life, inevitably, things get hard. Things get stressful. Either you're in the middle of a challenging time in your relationship or with a child who's struggling or confronting even a professional relationship that's not what you had hoped it would be. And all of a sudden that gaping hole, that space becomes a huge pain point in terms of those internal resources. And that was oftentimes when I would meet people. And sometimes it would be because these issues would manifest physically. Like suddenly there would be chronic back pain, or chronic migraine headaches, or insomnia and things like that. And other times people would just come and say, “I feel really good about a lot of things in my life, but I simultaneously feel like I lost the plot. And what do I do with that?
[00:05:20] BA: Yeah. I must admit reading the section about Ethan, which again I really encourage everyone to read this book. It's tremendous. The quote I wrote down on my outline is, “I have it all, but I’m not happy. Is this all there is? And when does my life begin?” And those thoughts go through my head a lot, because I’ve had moments myself where, to exactly your point, you internally have signposts that you say, “Once I hit this kind of wealth level or once I become partner or once I become managing director or once I do this big of a deal or once I have this much AUM,” whatever that accomplishment is, you store all this value in it. And some of the saddest moments of my life is when I’ve achieved those internal accomplishments, because I realize nothing's actually changed. And all that perceived value that I put into that accomplishment kind of evaporates.
So at least for me, and I think it's endemic within my peer group, is, “Okay. Well, then let's put another zero on it and go for that.” Because that's what's been driving you for years. And I don't think it's the healthiest way to live and it is what I’ve discovered especially after spending a lot of time reading material that you've provided, folks like Brené Brown. I just think there has to be more to it. And this book really details how you can gain that kind of inner wealth that you talk about in the book. So kudos to you. It really does speak to a huge issue I think that's within our population of people, especially white men who just don't have the vocabulary to explain some of the emotions they're experiencing. Has that been your experience as well talking to a lot of other people within the finance world?
[00:07:06] JW: Absolutely. In fact for many, many years, my company does both corporate wellness as well as we work with sort of high-performing executives. And particularly in the field of finance, that was sort of that prototype that we would see again and again and again, this theme that would come up again and again and again. And it happens in other industries, but I think when you're dealing for example with people in a startup world or they're more braced for failure and it's a different type of mentality. It's a little bit more if you're familiar with Carol Dweck's work. It's a little more of like a growth mindset. And whereas I found that oftentimes a lot of the clients that I would end up working with sort of had what's called a fixed mindset, which is they sort of believed that they came into the world with a series of strengths and capabilities and not other strengths and capabilities, meaning like maybe you fancied yourself to be good with numbers or have good earning potential or whatever it is. But maybe you never really thought about your capacity for something like empathy, or spirituality, or even something like athleticism. It depends on who you are and who you're talking to. Some people have spent their entire life just with their head in a book and they never thought that they could get joy from their bodies, for example.
So when we think of that mindset, you kind of come into the world and then you're constantly sort of up against what you come to the table with and the prospect of failure. And it's kind of like one or the other. And when you have a growth mindset, you believe that you are constantly evolving. And when we believe that we're constantly evolving, there's really no destination, but it's about that commitment to continually learning and growing. And I think that people who can approach their lives from that perspective just become so much more open and spacious to exploring and developing the different aspects of themselves that ultimately lead to the cultivation of inner wealth or that sense of inner abundance, if that makes sense.
[00:09:37] BA: It does make sense. Could you, for the listeners, define inner wealth and how that interlaces with this concept of the four pillars that you’ve spell out in the book?
[00:09:48] JW: Absolutely. So the four pillars are really the fundamental ingredients that we have found are sort of the baseline for a healthy, happy life. So meaning that without these four pillars, it doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of joy, but there's an imbalance. The foundation is – The fundamentals are not intact. And those four pillars are movement, stillness, connection and nourishment. So that's movement, stillness, connection and nourishment.
And really these are the fundamental ingredients that a newborn baby needs to thrive. And nothing changes throughout the life cycle. So oftentimes, and I see this with my own kids who are teenagers. Even as early as you know sort of grade school, parents forget that the importance of, for example, making sure that a child gets enough stillness, gets enough rest in their life. They're just going, going, going. They're running to school, to sports practices. Then they come home and they have homework and they're burning the candle at both ends. And even kids as young as middle school are struggling with an imbalance in these four pillars.
Fast-forward to college and working in banking or whatever you may find yourself, you're certainly not paying attention to the four pillars at that point. The foundation gets wobbly. And then you start piling stressors on top. And our ability to function in what's called our window of tolerance for stress gets weakened. So we're not able to find resilience around stress and it starts beating us down. That's when we don't sleep so well, we eat too much, all these other things.
So the four pillars are the fundamentals and they're really personal to people. So movement might look like playing tennis for one person. It might look like yoga for another person. It might like just look like doing some stretches in your chair at work for others. It's going to be different for all of us depending on our age, our stage of life, our interests. The same thing goes with stillness. Stillness might be meditation. It might be getting enough sleep at night. It might be just taking time to take a bath. It might be taking a moment to journal right before bed. But giving ourselves a little bit of spaciousness and time for reflection, it's really the other half of all of the movement in our life. It's that time to restore and process everything that we're doing, doing, doing.
Like when you were flying all over the country all the time, my guess is you didn't have a lot of time to process all of those experiences on any level. Physically, mentally, you're just go-go-go-go-go-go. The other half of all that going is that recovery time. Then we get to connection, which is really obviously all about our relationships and our ability to be connected to the meaningful people in our life, but it's really also about showing up authentically. So in order to really connect, you have to be real.
And then the fourth component is nourishment, which has a lot to do with food, but it also has a lot to do with all of the other ways that we nourish ourselves, through music, through art, through creative endeavors. Some people love to cook, or whatever it might be. But it's really interesting to see how when we fill ourselves up in these different ways we're coming with a fully loaded tank and our ability to manage stressors and difficult situations gets a lot easier. So those are the four pillars. When we talk about inner wealth, it's when the soil is rich with those, where you have movement practices that you call on. You're committed to stillness in your life. You're committed to staying connected. You're committed to nourishing yourself. And it's integrative. It's become habitual for you, because it's like really about a fundamental commitment to certain ingredients or practices because you know that is going to be a recipe for health and happiness. And when you have inner wealth, when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, you just open up your little tool kit. It's like a bank account of resources. And you know that, “Okay, I’m going to lean on my support system right now, because I’m connected.” Or, “I know that if I go out for a run, it's going to make me feel a lot better. Or actually if I just take five deep breaths before walking into this really stressful meeting, I will feel exponentially more prepared on a personal level to face the challenges that await me.”
And so when we cultivate these pillars or these ingredients in our lives, we end up with this amazing bank account of tools that we can call on that help us find resiliency. And not only that, but feel that sense of fullness and abundance so that if, God forbid, we lost our job, or our fortune, or who knows what's going to happen in this world, right? That we know that we have the internal resources to be okay.
[00:15:11] BA: It's really beautiful and well said. And I can see it in my son who is seven in second grade, and he has been taught, to your point. He has the toolkit of things that he can access when he's feeling overwhelmed when he's feeling stressed. He has a pre-sleep process that he goes through. And those just were never conversations that we had, right? It was if you weren't feeling well or you weren't happy, it was work harder. We don't talk about that. Go out. Make money. Money will make you happy. I don't ever recall really kind of talking about mindfulness or having kind of emotional vocabulary accessible to navigate all this. And it just kind of felt like you were put into the world, figure it out. And I love how you're giving people access to these tools.
My question is when you're dealing with this population that we've been discussing, how do you prevent them from approaching the four pillars the same way that they've historically approached their work and becoming obsessed with it where they have to achieve a certain pose in yoga or they have to do a certain amount of meditation a day? Do you bump up against that? And if so, how do you deal with it?
[00:16:23] JW: Yeah. No. It's a great question. And I think by nature of the way that the pillars balance each other out, if all of the pillars are being practiced at the same time, it helps manage that tendency towards the extremes, right? So for example, you may be a really intense athlete and want to achieve at a really high level in terms of your athletic endeavors, which is great. But if that's so overemphasized that your reflective practices, your stillness practices, your ability to stay connected. If those things are suffering, then something is out of balance. And this is very common. Usually we have one or two pillars that is more dominant than the other. Nobody's sort of evenly distributed between all of the pillars. We're just people and we have our preferences and our tendencies. But we find that when they work in synchronicity with each other, it tends to create more of a balanced approach to things. So that's the idea, is that they sort of have to make space for one another.
I also find that when we come to the table with intention around things, around what the purpose of these practices are, I think that's really, really, really important. So I think helping people get in touch with their why helps us manage that tendency towards overachieving. Because usually when we're talking about this demographic and we're talking about a goal or a focus on cultivating inner wealth, it's really oftentimes more emphasized around pillars like stillness and connection and the stuff that lends itself to perhaps if we're talking about like yin and yang. If all that achievement is kind of yang energy, we're educating people on the fact that they need more of that yin energy, more of that softening, more of that surrender, more of that slowing down that that's actually the missing ingredient in their world when we look at the four pillars. So oftentimes somebody comes and they say, “I’m not okay.” We start by mapping out the four pillars and seeing where they're inherently and naturally strong and where they're less strong. And that's how we figure out sort of where to begin.
[00:18:57] BA: I could use more stillness in my life, and I think a lot of us could. I want to transition into this idea of the art of living, which I spent a lot of time on this section. And I just want to read a quote which struck me, “That the ability to be on the journey itself as opposed to yearning for a past or future that doesn't yet exist makes every moment and every day the most important one.” And I know for me, nostalgia can be an extremely powerful drug. And it has a way of being warped pretty significantly when you look back at these various periods of your life. And relatedly, like we talked about earlier, you assign this huge value to things in the future. Life will be great once I have the beach house. Life will be great once I have this car, once I build this house, etc. But it's kind of a false promise. So how do you teach people to actually be present and to live that balanced life? Probably an unfair question, but I’m going to ask it anyways.
[00:19:55] JW: Yeah, two thoughts. Well the first thought that comes to mind first and foremost, a one-word answer is mindfulness, but we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And another sort of – What came to my mind as you were saying that as you were going through like, “Well, when I just have the beach house and when I just have that car,” because it's so common and prevalent. I had this thought of like, “How many things can I take away in my life and still be happy?”
Like so if you think about the opposite, like what if I took away my car and took away my big fancy house? How simple can I get and still be happy? That's an achievement. But meaning being able to think about it in that way, it's really about actually like the stripping off. How many layers do I have to peel off in order to get to an experience where I feel a sense of joy because I feel the feeling of my breath breathing and I feel the feeling of the air against my skin and a bird off in the distance? And when we can be fully present in that moment, the happiest people that I know are able to practice that presence really consistently. And the way
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