Welcome to Moments with Marianne.This is your host, Marianne Pestana.
And we're here today with special guest Rina Vakone, who's here to share with us her new book, The Wellness Evolved Woman, embracing your authentic self throughout your passion fit life.
So are you looking to make life changes that also empower you to grow and evolve?Well, today's guest is going to share how to do just that.So Rina Vakone is the founder and CEO of PassionFit.
She's an entrepreneur, award-winning author, TEDx speaker, marketer, media spokesperson, TV host and contributor, and certified consumer and corporate health and wellness expert.
After years in marketing, sales, and business development leadership roles for Google, Yahoo, Reebok, CNET, GE, and many more, she took a step back from her corporate life to build her own holistic health brand, PassionFit.
Serving individuals, companies, nonprofits, schools, and universities, PassionFit transforms lives through a focus on fitness, nutrition, mindfulness, work-life balance, productivity, and healthy lifestyles.So welcome to the show, Reena Vokone.
Thank you so much for having me, Marianne.It's great to be here.
Oh, my goodness, what an honor it is to have you here and to talk about this book.So why don't you share with us a little bit about your background?I found it to be so fascinating.
Yeah, I guess I have kind of an interesting background in the sense that I spent about 16 to 17 years of my career actually working in corporate America after studying marketing, management, advertising, and communications in college and graduate school.
And I had worked for Fortune 500 companies like Google and Yahoo. Reebok, GE, and a few others.
And about 10 years ago, I decided to take a huge leap of faith and follow my passion for health and wellness and leave my amazing job at Google and walk away from my corporate career to become an entrepreneur and start my company, PassionFit.
And yeah, this year I celebrate 10 years and it's been quite an exciting and fulfilling journey ever since.
Oh, I can only imagine.Congratulations on 10 years.What an accomplishment that is.
And it must have been when you first made that transition.I know a lot of women and just entrepreneurs that look at making transitions. That's a really scary time.
It was.It was probably one of the most difficult decisions that I had ever made in my career, especially having been on a trajectory for so many years.But deep down, I think I always knew that I wanted to do something with health and wellness.
I was actually pre-med. when I went to college and then I did end up switching to business my sophomore year.Part of that was not because I didn't want to enter that field of study.
It was more about I didn't want to take that risk of losing patience to be completely candid.The thought of that seemed a little bit unbearable to me when I really thought about the profession and what it would entail.
And in many cases, you are dealing with disease after the fact, not always.Obviously, a huge role of physicians, whom I respect very much, is to help preventatively.But later in my career, I decided that's really where I wanted to be.
I wanted to focus on preventative
health and well-being holistically in the areas of things like lifestyle medicine so fitness and nutrition and mindfulness and how you manage stress and how you manage your mindset and how you approach different life situations and if that could be a way to help people to live healthier happier more productive lives and help with disease prevention and even management.
To me, that was something that would be even more fulfilling.And it honestly took my own experiences with burnout.My husband and I both lived and worked in Silicon Valley for about 20 years.
And he also worked for Google at the same time that I did, and he's still there to this day.And once we had both of our sons, we were this dual career couple. in this fast-paced world of technology and digital media and then had these two young boys.
And for me, you know, it was tough because I really wanted to be a hands-on mom, but I also have always been very ambitious and still wanted to have the career.
But, you know, when you're trying to balance all of it and do everything and be a people pleaser and a recovering perfectionist is what I classify myself as, I think at some point you burn out and your health starts to suffer.
And that is what happened to me, my husband as well.And that's where I decided, you know, there's probably other, not just women, but definitely women and moms who are probably going through these same struggles that I am.
And I wanted to do something about it, not only for myself and my family, but for others as well, which is really what led me to make that, you know, very scary decision at the time.But looking back, I think
Had I not made it at that time, I would have always regretted it and always wondered if I could have had an impact like I wanted to have.
Well, thank goodness you chose the career path that you did.
And it's interesting, you look back and my goodness, it took you having all the skill sets and all the interests that you did to bring you to the point where you're the expert that you are today in what you're doing.
So I'm so grateful that you are doing the work that you're doing because you come at it from so many different angles.
Yeah, you know, I do try to look at it very holistically.
And, you know, after my formal education, I knew that even though I've been teaching fitness classes since college, I was always certified and trained in the areas of fitness and anatomy and physiology, but I wanted to go deeper.
So then I obtained a health coaching certification. And then I got deeper into a certification for nutrition specialty and behavior change specialty and yoga and mindfulness.
And then because I worked in corporate America for so many years, helping with employee wellness and corporate wellness initiatives is very near and dear to my heart because I experienced and also saw with my peers and colleagues, how much burnout can exist in the workplace.
So then I went back and got a certification through Gallup for employee wellbeing as well.So I work with individuals, but also companies, nonprofits, universities, schools, and the media on this sort of holistic form of wellness.
And for me, it was very important to get that proper education and also, you know, keep focusing on continuing education because the world of. health and wellness and medicine is always changing and evolving as the human race is.
And so how can we continue to keep up with scientific developments, medical developments, and then how that affects people in different places in their life.
So let's talk about PassionFit for a moment.So why did you decide that this was a time to go ahead and start the work that you're doing with PassionFit when you did start it?And how important is it to have it within our communities?
Yeah.So PassionFit's mission is to empower women to flourish personally and professionally through wellness.But obviously, the goal is to empower everyone, especially when I'm working at an organizational level.
But I had decided to build this company.We have different products, services, and content that, again, can serve individuals, but also organizations, things like online courses on work-life balance and
personal and professional development, coaching and consulting and health coaching and consulting and, you know, transformational women's wellness coaching programs.Um, we offer live stream and in-person fitness and yoga and dance classes.
Um, I do a lot of speaking engagements and again, consulting for different organizations.And then we have an active wear line and healthy lifestyle accessories in our online boutique and then the books as well.
So, and then lots of online content that's available for free. So it was important to be able to kind of serve a dual purpose, you know, pre pandemic passion fit was already hybrid.
Um, we definitely had online offerings so that we could reach people nationally and globally, but then in our local markets, then we would do coaching and consulting and events and retreats and things in person.
Um, and so obviously we had to go completely online during the pandemic, but it was, you know, a fairly, um, easy sort of transition back into the world of hybrid.
Once the world started opening back up and my husband and kids and I live in San Diego and we moved here from Silicon Valley about three years ago.
So from an in-person perspective, I had been building a community in the San Francisco Bay area and Silicon Valley area.
And now over the last three years, I'm trying to continue to build that community here in Southern California, not only San Diego, but orange County, LA, and the sort of greater Southern California area as well.
And I think it's just important to have that local community where people can feel like they have a place to go.They have people that are like minded.
There's different offerings to bring people together, but then you also want to be able to reach people wherever they are.And that's where the online component really comes into play.
Can we live this like passion fit life during different stages of our life?
Yeah, that's a fantastic question.And that really is the premise of my women's wellness book series.The first book, The Wellness Empowered Woman, I published and launched that in 2021, June of 2021.
And that was really all about how do you realize the importance of wellness in your life in the first place?
Because really the foundation of my work, and I gave a TEDx talk on this as well, it's called Why Wellness is the Secret to Personal and Professional Success.
And it's that when we do take care of how we're eating, how we're sleeping, getting movement in every day, how we manage stress, our outlook on life, all these different things, that not only helps us personally, but it can help us to excel professionally as well.
So that first book, again, was how do you understand the importance of empowerment and how do you get empowered in those different areas of wellness?And I like to call them the four pillars of wellness.
You know, mental health, physical health, emotional health, and spiritual health.And that was really, you know, that first book was female empowerment, professional development, and health and wellness.
With this latest book, which is launching on November 1st, The Wellness Evolved Woman, to your question exactly.Once you're empowered and you understand the importance of wellness, that's kind of the first step.
But as you evolve and change and your life situations and circumstances evolve and change, it's also easy to kind of let some of that go out the window, those wellness practices.
And I myself experienced it when I became a working mom of not one, but then two children.And I being somebody who had always valued health and wellness and was so passionate about it,
kind of lost sight of it myself and i saw my health suffer as a result of that and so i really wanted for myself and for my clients and the community for passion fit and anybody that i serve to kind of learn from my mistakes and also just remember that you know even though your life gets busy or it gets complicated or challenging or difficult,
one of the best things that we can all do for ourselves is to focus on those wellness practices and in whatever ways work for us so that we can stay strong and stay healthy through those different life stages.
And it will make those life stages even more rewarding because we'll have a very different perspective if we're looking at it from the perspective of wellness.
I'm sure that there are so many people taking a big sigh of relief that this is something that they can take with them throughout their whole life.Well, on that note, we're going to pause here for a quick break.
We've been speaking with Rina Vukone in regards to her new book, The Wellness Evolved Woman.You've been listening to Moments with Marianne.We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
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We're here today with special guest Rina Vakone, who's here sharing with us her new book, The Wellness Evolved Woman, embracing your authentic self throughout your passion fit life.
Change is not easy, and many of us actually recoil from any change that happens.For those folks that have a really difficult time making changes, what would you say to them?
Yeah, I mean, I empathize with those people because I think for any of us change is difficult.
Upon writing this second book, I even write about it, I'm experiencing change in my own life in the sense that my husband and I have been married for over 20 years.I've been an entrepreneur now for 10 years.
Our sons who were baby and toddler when I started PassionFit are now both teenagers and our older son is applying to colleges for next year.So there's so much change that's happening even just in our household.
You know, I think we all kind of sometimes resist change.We have fear of change, and that's natural, and that's not something to, you know, beat yourself up about.
I think it is something to just understand and accept, but the more we can, you know, get to the place of recognizing that change is inevitable, that there's only one way to go, and that's kind of through that door of change.
Life is going to keep moving forward.We can't go back, and so what can we do to learn from the past, really appreciate and be grounded in the present, and anticipate the future with hope.
And that's really, again, what the premise of the second book is about.And I think a part of it, too, is having a sense of self-love.In my first book, I talk a lot about wellness practices that really revolve around self-care.
But I think what most of us will find is that we don't prioritize our own self-care if we don't have that deeper
element of self love so i really wanted to dive deeper into people's emotional health and mental health and get into you know their past experiences where they are in the present what is it about the future that excites them but also scares them and how can they sit with that and really you know there's reflection questions at the end of every chapter and i really want the reader to
or any clients that I work with to really kind of have that sense of self-awareness.
Because I think when you sit in those feelings of excitement, hope, fear, all the different ranges of emotions that we can have, then you can really just understand them better and understand yourself better.
And when you get to that place of self-love, which is not easy, it can take years to get to that place.But when you do have that sense of self-love, you will prioritize taking care of yourself and being empathetic with yourself in those
ever-changing situations in life that can be challenging, but then also appreciate and have gratitude for all of the wonderful moments in your life as well.
It's interesting how we look at self-love.And there's a quote in your book that really stuck with me.And it says, it's an act of self-love to discover and pursue interests that light you up.
And a lot of times people don't even look at self-love in that way.And I was, I felt that it was so profound.
Thank you.Yeah, there is the whole chapter in the book about that, about, you know, understand, and even in the first book, you know, the whole point is to focus on your passions.The motto of my company is pursue your passions, be fit.
And I mean that physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and the rest will follow.
And I think too often in life, we put our passions and our interests and those things that light us up on the back burner because we think, oh, well, that stage of life has passed and now I'm a parent or Um, I have aging parents of my own.
So as a, as a son or daughter, I need to focus on that.And not that you don't need to focus on caring for your loved ones, but you know, you also have to look out for your own.
you know, self, your interests, your passions, the things that give you joy, because the more you light yourself up and fill, I know it's a cliche, but fill your own cup, the more you're going to be able to do that for others.
You know, the basis of having healthy, loving relationships in our lives is, starts with, you know, the one that we have with ourselves.
So I do think that that sense of self-love, which does include pursuing those things that light you up, is really important.
Well, your book covers so many things and we, we won't go through all those today because I know people want to pick up their own copy of the wellness evolved woman, but one was finding meaning in your life experiences.
Cause a lot of times I think we just think like life happens to us and all it's just this, uh, accumulation of things that we're not even sure what to do with.
You're right.And I think sometimes if you can take a look at it from a more intentional perspective, that can really make the different experiences make sense.And oftentimes they don't make sense until you're looking at it in retrospect.
But one other kind of core component of this book is I had written
a personal miss mission statement when i was a sophomore in college i was nineteen years old and i wrote it in such a way where it wasn't about sort of material goals or anything like that i really wanted to strip down to the deepest parts of myself and what i hoped
to experience in life and give to others in life.I wanted to be able to write it in such a way that I could look back at it decades later and hopefully those values and those meanings and those elements of who I was then were still with me now.
And I can tell you decades later, obviously my life has evolved and changed since then, but it is really neat to look back at that and see how much I'm still the same person and how much that mission is still very much alive and very relevant to my life today.
And i want to encourage the readers to be able to do that for themselves if they haven't already i'm so that's another core component is to be able to after going through the entire book i actually share my own personal mission statement and i want others to be able to spend some time writing bears because then you can not only find.
meaning in your previous life experiences, but you can look at, again, all the things you're currently experiencing and then look to the future with anticipation in a very positive way because you're being very intentional about it.
Now, earlier, you mentioned you're just this phenomenal background that you have.How can we look at holistic health and its importance for disease prevention?Because I know a lot of times we're looking at
you know, different levels of disease, like after the fact.
Exactly.And I think, you know, the more we can. understand the importance of, you know, we think about exercise, exercise.I, I not once talk about exercise as a means to look a certain way.
Um, I think it's more about how it makes you feel, how it makes you function and how it does help with prevention of diseases, like lowering your blood sugar, right.For diabetes to help you to get stronger, to protect against things like
Cancer and obesity and heart disease by doing cardiovascular activity all of those types of things strength training really helps with bone density building and helping with your metabolism and
fat burn and those types of things, which are all towards helping to prevent against disease.
But even if you have unfortunately been inflicted with disease, there are things you can do to manage them and to help you to prevent any of those diseases from getting worse.
A lot of that then stems back to your nutrition and eating whole and plant-based foods and
making sure that you're watching your saturated fats and your sodiums and sugars and things that you're putting in your body because that can also impact you know again you know potential diseases or diseases that maybe you already have that you're trying to manage but i think one of the most important things that i've learned in my research and in my certification
Is the concept of genetics and and again that lifestyle medicine concept which really means that we're not always you know gonna fall victim to any sort of genetic predisposition that we may have yes there are certain things that are out of our control and if.
You know breast cancer since it's october and breast cancer awareness month but that's something that runs in your family all the more reason to get your mammograms and do self checks and focus on early detection and not smoking and eating healthy and getting the exercise and all those different things because then you could you know help to prevent it or better manage it.
So what I want is for people to look at health and wellness practices as a way of empowering themselves and not feeling like they're doomed because generations before them maybe had certain diseases.
There's so much that we can do in our own lifestyle choices every day.
And now with modern medicine and alternative medicine and technology, there's so much out there that can really provide us with more data and information to help us better manage our health.
to really that education and your book is such a great place for people to start, to start feeling better about themselves and to find a direction, which I think is so important.
Marina, where can our listeners connect with you and be part of your community and learn more about your work?
Absolutely.I'm always open to connecting with others.I want to help in any way that I can.So you can visit our website, passionfit.com.That's really the hub of everything.Um, you can connect to us on social media.
We're on Instagram, Facebook, um, you know, threads, uh, what else?Twitter X, YouTube, um, and more.And my email is Rina R E E N a at passionfit.com.So if you have any questions at all, feel free to shoot me a note.And again, more than happy to help.
And I just wish everyone health and wellness as we're getting into the end of the year, we're getting into the holiday season.
It's an important time to maybe, and then of course, getting into the new year, it's important time to take stock of our health and our life and our own sense of self-care and self-love.So I just wish everyone good health and happiness always.
Well, Reena, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show with us here today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you, Rena.It's been such an honor to spend this time with you and to talk about your new book, The Wellness Evolved Woman, embracing your authentic self throughout your passion fit life.
The Wellness Evolved Woman is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere books are sold.And remember, support our indie bookstores.If you don't see it on the shelf, just ask for them to order it.
Make sure to connect with Rina on her website, passionfit.com, to learn more information about her work and to be part of her community. Well, we're at the end of our time today.I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in.
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