Rebecca Asfour | How To Achieve A Strong Body And A Healthy Mind
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Having a positive and healthy relationship with your body needs to be a priority. In this episode, Rebecca Asfour talks about how she manages to make time for herself while running two businesses and being a mom, and shares her struggles with body image. Dial in and get tips on how to take care of your body and feel more comfortable in your skin.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
Tips to manage multiple tasks successfully
Setting boundaries
Benefits of moving meditation
Healthy eating habits
Rituals you can do to stay grounded
Disclaimer: All of the information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and they are not medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health professional for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Rebecca Asfour
Rebecca discovered the body (and life) changing benefits of Dailey Method classes after the birth of her second child in 2014. Rebecca's background in classical ballet training and long-distance running means she likes to push herself to the limit but always with a focus on alignment and grace. A lifelong dancer and runner, she is a certified barre and cycle instructor, and the owner of The Dailey Method studio in Lake Forest, IL and in Vernon Hills, IL. Rebecca also recently launched a clothing store Raleigh Bird filled with workout and lifestyle gear.
Connect with Rebecca
Website: www.the dailey method.com/vernon hills (Vernon Hills Studio); www.thedaileymethod.com/lakeforest (Lake Forest Studio); www.raleighbird.com
Instagram: @rebecca_asfour; @dailey.lakeforest; @dailey.vernonhills; @shop.raleighbird
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Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people awaken to their ultimate potential. She is a wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, Physician Assistant, & Reiki Master with the goal of empowering others to live their best lives!
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Episode Transcipt
Rebecca (Teaser)
If you're not comfortable with the size that you're in now. It's not that it's okay to be uncomfortable, but you can always do something about it. And it can always be either healthy thing or an unhealthy thing. And I always try to choose the spiraling up positive route,
Kristel (Guest Introduction)
If you’re looking to have a healthy, positive relationship with your body. You're going to gain a ton of value from today's episode with Rebecca Asfour
Rebecca is a wonderful friend, and she's also an expert in fitness and an Alignment. She's the owner of two Dailey method studios north of Chicago. And she also owns a clothing store, Raleigh bird, Rebecca and I are going to be talking about navigating being a working mother, how to make sure you're taking time for yourself.
She's going to be sharing how she's been able to set healthy boundaries and also how to have a positive body image and how to love your body. I'm so excited to welcome Rebecca to the show. So let's jump into it.
Rebecca:
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so honored.
Kristel:
Yay. So I'm hoping that we can start by you just sharing a little bit about yourself.
What's your all about so that the listeners can get a bit of a feel for all the things that you're into.
Rebecca:
Perfect! So my name is Rebecca and I am a fitness studio owner. I have two studios, we have bar and psycho classes, and we're a definitely a high touch in-person experience. Obviously COVID kind of changed things for us.
But I'm also, we can kind of talk about how we navigated COVID, but I'm a mother. I have two children. I'm a wife by, you know, I tried to be a good friend and a good sister and a good daughter. My background is a little bit different than most because my dad was in the military. So we moved a lot and I moved 10 times before I graduated from high school.
And so I always say that I'm from all over and I've lived everywhere and we've lived in the Chicago land area and the longest. So I've lived here for about, Gosh, 14 years. So this is definitely my new hometown.
Kristel:
And you're rocking it because the pandemic definitely was a challenge for you in so many other small business owners and you have navigated it so well.
And you're so optimistic and positive and, you know with E-learning and everything else, you just I'm so impressed with how you've handled it. And you launched your clothing line too.
You just have so many fun things, so many fun things going on. And I would love to just start by talking about how you are navigating all of these different things as a mom. And how do you do that and find time for yourself and your own wellbeing?
Rebecca:
I think that's a good question. And it's definitely part of my own personal journey of how do I do well. One thing I've really leaned in on during this pandemic is process. So I try to stay very organized with like, this is what I have to do for this business.
This is what I have to do for this studio. This is what I have to do over here for my personal life. And I really, it sounds robotic and I don't think it is. It's just, I try to make everything into a process. So on Sundays I go to the grocery store or I order my groceries online. And on Sunday night I plan my classes for the whole week and I sign up for my classes so I can take as part of my own wellness journey.
And I just tried to be really organized and methodical about my time. I have to say no a lot to things. If it's going out with girlfriends several nights in a row, like I can't do that. Like I honestly, I really particularly like to go out during the week at all, because screws up my sleep for the next day.
And then I'm just like that much more behind. So I think that it's just being really organized with our time. And I think we can think about time as a very precious commodity. We don't have a lot of it, especially as mothers and as women being pulled in all these different directions. If I have two hours of free time a day, How am I going to spend it?
Well, personally, I know that I'm a better person if I work out. So I'm gonna try to squeeze a work in, and then I'm a better person. If I spend some alone time and I read, I do a lot, I read a lot. I read a ton of books and I read all sorts of genres, but for me, I've just found those little things. It's like, these are two things I have to do every day.
I make a trade off. So I don't watch a lot of TV and I don't do a lot of socializing because I know that I'm better if I work out and I read rather than go party. But for me, I just, I really just try to be very specific about what I do, especially during the week. I'm so busy.
Kristel:
Right. And I know you're right, but you know, you know what you need and you figured that out.
And for me, it's, I have to get my own personal time in for working out. And even if I do a group class, which I love group classes, but there's something for me about that alone time that I got when I run outdoors, that then I need to go for a walk outside, or I still need that alone time just to process.
And I think to just calm down all the stimulation from being on all the time as a mom and running a business and everything else. So, right. So that's great that you have, you have that time and you know what to do with that. And it sounds like you're really good at managing that. And one thing you said that stood out to me, You're saying no.
And you are comfortable, it sounds like or maybe you're not, but we'll get into that with saying no. And I think as women, it can be a challenge sometimes to set healthy boundaries. And for men too, I mean, this is not just specific to women, but I'm wondering how you have been able to navigate that because as a business owner, you've you have, you're hiring new people.
I'm sure you're going to have to let people go at certain times. There's all these different things you're navigating with your studios. So how have you, I guess, like built up that muscle of being comfortable with setting boundaries and like getting out of the people pleasing territory?
Rebecca:
Well, I wrote about this in an Instagram post recently because I celebrated this milestone as owning the studio here in town.
And six years for me, it was a long time to have this one same job. And I reflected back on my time and realized in the beginning, I wasn't very good. I wasn't a good leader. I didn't say no, I didn't set boundaries. I tried to make everyone happy all the time, which never works because you know, if one person wants X and one person wants Y and you do X and Y then neither one is really getting what they wanted.
And so I feel like over the years I've had just to figure out what works best for me personally and what works best for the businesses. And I think of the businesses as like little individuals, like what does this studio need? Let's serve her. And what does this studio do? Let’s serve her. And in that process of navigating these little silos, I've learned to say no to things to say yes to things.
Hopefully I'm saying yes more than I say no, but it really is a process of you being confident and being able to make decisions that serve that studio or me or that business best. Um, rather than just trying to make everybody happy because you're never going to make everyone happy. That's the thing. That’s just realization.
You're just never going to make everyone happy. And so you just have to do the best you can. AndI think the big thing about it is if your intentions are good, then even if you say no to someone, they can't really be mad at you. Right? Like you're like I'm coming from a really good place. Like, I really just want the best for you.
I really want the best for everyone truly. And so, you know, if I make a decision that makes people in that moment unhappy, at least I know that like I'm being authentic and I'm kind, and, and eventually I think they see that. So I think that it all kind of works out in the end, but you just have to be okay saying no to things.
Kristel:
Yeah. I think, um, what I have found myself is I can't overthink it. Like I have to just go with what feels right. And just let it go. You know, if you start overthinking it that's for me, when I've gotten into trouble, that's the right call. Should I have said yes? Should it's like, you know what? You got to go with what feels right. And like you said, you have good intentions and if people are going to get upset or you can't control that, you know, so really coming back to what you can control and training your mind to not get into that loop of overthinking things that you don't have control over.Right.
Rebecca:
Right. And I think that training your mind is really what, what I have focused in on in my adult life. This is not like in the last six years, I'm thinking about this. This is the last 20 years of how do I train my mind to spiral into a positive place, to be happy to be like root for people, right.
Instead of being jealous and negative or Gosh, this pandemic, like really, it took a beating to my businesses. How do I spiral up and train my mind to see the good and lead with these positive emotions rather than the negative? Because I think we're all coming from a place of, gosh, we lost something this year.
I mean, we all did. And so we can choose to be negative about it. And it's pretty easy to be negative. If you look at anything on social media, usually it's always negative. Or if you look on anything in the news, it's always negative. But if you can train your mind to see the positive, to see the good, to see the opportunities, then everything just kind of like goes in a better direction in all fronts.
Personal life, professional life, you know, all the things.
Kristel:
Right. And it just feels better. It feels right. And I, what helps me a lot is looking at, um, I allow myself to be disappointed or upset and to feel right with things happen. It's not about acting like that's not occurring, but it's feeling it. And then for me, it's okay, well, what can I learn from this?
It's like, flipping it. Like, what can I gain? How can I grow? What am I thankful for? So it's just, it's that perspective shift for me makes such a big difference. Even with those perceived failures or setbacks as a business owner, it's all like, okay, well maybe this is preparing me for. You know, where are my goals and my visions, and it's helping me have patients, or it's helping me helping me build resiliency or healthy, you know, all those things.
So I totally agree that, you know, we do have control over how we perceive things and it is training our minds to be able to shift it. And I know in the studio. You, and I don't know if you're doing these now after the pandemic, but you were doing a lot of mindfulness classes. So if you could share a little bit about that and how you incorporate mindfulness, I know I've done some of your spin riots that I love the, I forgot what it's called meditation.
Rebecca:
The moving meditation.
Kristel:
Yeah. The moving meditation. Cause I'm always like, I'm like, I'm going to close my eyes and just do my thing. So yeah, I would love to hear a little bit about that.
Rebecca:
So I think it's one of the most important parts of our studio. And I think that it's a really, it's a kind of a signature piece of both the bar classes and the cycle classes, because I think that mind is critically important to our health and wellness.
I think you really have to let your mind go. And if you take a cycle class with us, like you said, there's one song in every class that the teacher, the instructor is quiet and she lets you ride the song how you want to. So you can just listen to the words and go slow.
You can listen to the words and go fast. You can listen to the words and just barely move your legs at all, but just kind of be really mindful. In the bar class too, our bar class is a lot of talking. The instructor talks a lot during the class you've been in my class. It's not that I'm chitter chattering, but I'm, I'm queuing 20 things for one exercise or more like I tell you to come into a plank.
I don't say come into a straight arm plank. I'm going to say spread your finger pads wide and pushed down into the earth, open through your collar bones and draw your shoulder blades down. You know, like it's like I go on and on because I want you to not even have a second to let your mind wander to a, to do list or what you're going to do after class, or like who said what to you?
Like, I want you to clear your mind and just be very present and focused. Because if you give yourself that time to be very present and very focused in the exercises, it really does feel like you've meditated. So you walk out of class and you're like, oh, I have this lightness of spirit and this like beautiful, positive energy in you because you allowed yourself to meditate.
And I think people don't understand meditation perhaps, or are scared of it, or think it has to be this quiet thing. And I say, It can be, and it can also be during this really hard bar class where you're shaking in your legs or like, you know, out it feel out of control. But you are really mindful. And I think that mindfulness is something that we all need and it just helps us sleep better, attack the day better, like conquer our to do list and helps us compartmentalize all the things that we have to do.
And just think very clear about this life that we're living. So I love mindfulness is it's a huge part of all of the classes.
Kristel:
Right. And that's incredible. And I want to segue a little bit into talking about body image and specific to women. You know, if you've had babies and you know, your, your body can change.
And it's what I really would love to know from your perspective is how can women really embrace wherever they're at and love their bodies, post children, or even pre pre-children wherever you're at and plus post pandemic, because, you know, if maybe you weren't eating the best during the pandemic or things shifted during the pandemic, I would love to hear your insights into that.
And I think, did you, were you into ballet? You work, right. And I would love if you could share a little bit to just in your, what you've seen and experienced in the fitness world and, you know, talking about body image.
Rebecca:
So, from the beginning. I started dancing ballet when I was three and I stance through high school.
So I was very much into ballet and in ballet and most dance formats, there's a specific body type they're looking for, which is long and lean with legs or days. And I'm five, five and a half on a good day and I'm curvy. And I just couldn't will myself to have a dancer's body. And ultimately, that's why I stopped.
I mean, I was just like, okay, I'm mean I'm 15 years old and all of my peers have the dancer's body and they're going on to professional companies in the summer. And I'm like, no, I'm going to, you know, this is how it happened for me. So I have this background of understanding that you don't have the perfect body.
And I think it was really hard for me. You know, after I stopped dancing until really I found far to kind of come to terms with a body that I was comfortable in. And so I've seen it all. I know what it all feels like. I know what it feels like to not like your body. I know what it feels like to know a size that's comfortable to you, or, you know, to not eat a lot or to eat too much or to, you know, work out really hard to lose the weight or to, you know, not work out at all and not lose weight.
So I've seen it all. And I think my takeaway now with a lot of perspective is your body is your temple and you get only one. And you just, it is going to serve you. It is going to, if you're a woman it's going to carry babies for you. If you're Eddy a person it's going to literally walk you through this life, perhaps you're going to run a marathon on those legs, but you only get one.
And so I just really think that it becomes it's body image or not. You just have to first start with just like appreciating that, like, literally this is all you have, so let's start there and then let's talk about, okay, if you're not comfortable with the size that you're in now.It's not that it's okay to be uncomfortable, but you can always do something about it.
And it can always be either healthy thing or an unhealthy thing. And as I was saying before, I always try to choose the spiraling up positive routes for me, that means moving my body because I get an endorphin rush. I get a mindfulness,I'm happier. And then, oh, by the way, I have burned a ton of calories.
But at our studios, we don't talk about burning calories. We don't say, you're going to get skinny. You're going to get a bikini body. Like I don't think that's helpful. And I don't think that's what we're rooting for in this life. I think move your body every day. Try to sweat, get your heart pumping. And then over time, you'll start to see real changes. But I do appreciate when people.
Especially now we're coming out of the, COVID kind of sweat pants, sedentary life, and they're intimidated to come into a group class. I totally get it. I think that if we, I think at our studios, I'm not going to speak for other studios because at our studios, we are not judgmental. We are never going to.
The one out for being so thin or look at you're burning so many calories. Cause that's not what we care about. You're going to get that anyways. I'm going to tell you right now, like I'm seeing it happen. If you come to the studios a lot, you're going to get it anyways, but we don't really, that's not where we're leading with.
And so I just try to tell people, appreciate where you are, because this is the life you're in and this is the body you're in and this is the stage we're in and we're all coming out of a pandemic. And then once you can just say like, okay, this is where I am. Let's just move forward. You can find a place, hopefully if you're local to us at that one of our studios and just have fun moving your body, and it's really mindful and it's going to be great.
So I don't know. That's like a roundabout way of saying like, you just have to gonna take the first step, take the first step and move your body and you'll feel better across the board.
Kristel:
I love that. And I think, um, a really great intention and challenge that I'm going to set for the listener is to set a goal for yourself.That's an empowering goal.
So no like, I want to lose five pounds, but more, I want to have more energy. I want to feel stronger. Um, something that is going to make you feel really good. So not about the weight, not about the size, but again about, um, like strength or energy or maybe, you know, better, um, my mood. But I think that those goals are more tangible and they just feel better.
Rebecca:
They do. They feel better and more productive and more obtainable than I need to lose 10 pounds.
Kristel:
Right. Right.
Rebecca:
Cause then what happens when you lose 10 pounds? Like, I don't know. Maybe you want to lose more.
Kristel:
Right. It's loving, like loving your body where you're at and giving your body what you need.
Fitness movement definitely is a huge part of that for mental health or physical health for all of it. And then also nutrition. And I'm curious, what do you, um, what type of nutrient do you have? Any certain diets that you follow? It's more of like, um, what type of things do you like to eat and then what types of things do you like to drink during the day?
Because I think a lot of people sometimes maybe gravitate towards the wrong things that they're drinking and they're not really realizing it.
Rebecca:
Yeah. So. I'm a pretty avid follower of Sakara. I'm not, I don't actually get like an affiliation with them or whatever. I'm not a brand ambassador. I just love it.
And I get it. I it's one of my self-care techniques of like, during the pandemic, I realized I was taking care of everyone and not myself. So I order Sakara and I get it delivered to the house once a week and I eat it for lunch and dinner. That's true. I ordered the lunch and the dinners because I think they're the delicious meals that they choose.
And then I kind of spread them out as lunches. Mostly lunches drink. So like I get a little delivery, I spread it out because I like to have dinner with my family. And Sakara is, it's a meal that's delivered, but it's, it's plant-based so it's no gluten, no sugar, no dairy, no animal proteins. And it really like, I mean, it's just a ton of vegetables and I do it because it makes me happier.
And then, I mean, I truly, like, I just feel this incredible energy and was like, wow, I feel so good after I eat it when I don't eat Sakara because it. I'm actually entering into a phase where I'm not going to have to car deliveries and traveling, and I'm like, oh gosh, what am I gonna do? I'm going to avoid gluten and dairy because those things kind of make me not feel good.
I try to avoid most meats. I eat fish. I'll eat chicken, but if there's a vegetarian entree on a, on a menu, I will order it. And I, I never was the person before this last year who had ordered vegetarian because I felt like it wasn't enough protein for me, or I wouldn't be full enough, but it is. And I am.
It's awesome. So I tried to eat as much vegetarian as I can, and I drank water, water, water, water, water, and then coffee in the morning.
Kristel:
You put something in your, in your water or you just do straight water.
Rebecca:
I just drink my water straight up. I'll drink, tap water. I'll drink from a faucet. It grosses my family out.
They're like, eww, I'm like, it's good. Or like, oh yeah, this one, this water doesn't taste good. Like I'm a little bit picky about water.
Kristel:
Awesome.
Rebecca:
Water playing up, playing good. Is that, am I saying that right? Kombucha con Buka I'll once in a while, like for, um, gut health, those are always wonderful. Yeah. Like a fizzy treat.
There's this Ollie water. It's like Olli pop. I think it's 35 calories and it's a, like a sparkling tonic.
Kristel:
Yeah. So I did, um, plant-based I still eat plant-based but I do, I was vegan for a little bit and I tried it out and then I did more pescatarian and I felt, um, I'm still active.
I like run every day. Sometimes I'll take your classes, you know, but yeah, I felt like I wasn't getting enough protein and I was craving. I was like, you know what? I'm going to listen to my body. So I, now, I, I still don't eat a lot of meat, but I will eat more chicken. I avoid red meat, but I love water, coffee, and I drink a lot of tea and, you know, I'm so excited.
Cause I just got a new sponsor for the show, which is Rishi tea and botanicals. And I've been drinking their teas. Since like college and I absolutely love it. So this is, I was so excited when, you know, they wanted to partner up, but I love their green tea. So a lot of times like early afternoon I'll have some green tea or some matcha tea, and then they also have a really good, um, turmeric ginger that I really liked.
And they have a new sparkling botanicals, which are like bubbly, really delicious flavors, like black lemons. So those are some of the fun things. Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca:
Yeah. I'll have to check those out for sure.
Kristel:
At this point, I would love for you to share a few things that you do for your own mental wellbeing. You know, you mentioned working out, but do you do any other things, like, do you meditate every day or do you have any rituals that help you stay grounded?
And particularly, I would love to know what you did to stay grounded during the pandemic, because like you said, there was so much going on and you had your kids and the studios, like what worked for you?
Rebecca:
So movement for sure is a grounding force for me, it always has been it before I found the studios and in between my ballet stint and my finding the studios, I was a runner.
I ran the Boston marathon. Like I ran, ran, ran. So I've always found that movement is going to calm me down. Right. It's just going to be like, huh. And then when I was, my daughter is now 11, but when she was about two or three, I started to developed terrible insomnia. Horrible. And I would run. And I was thinking like I run so fast, I'm going to wipe my body out and I'll be able to sleep in two seconds.
And it didn't. And what I was able to, I tried everything I tried, I was short of going to a doctor and getting sleeping pills. I tried all the things to try to get myself to sleep. And what I found was meditation. Meditation saved my life. It really helped me calm my anxiety, calm myself. Help eventually figure out my sleep and then it helped me just be way more mindful.
So then when I found this Dailey method practice and this bar and cycle studio, I already had this background of meditation. I've been meditating for, I mean, Raleigh is 11 now, so it's been nine years of meditation and I truly believe it saved my life, which is I don't meditate every day.
I can tell when I need it more or less. Right, because I'm so mindful in my classes now, I feel like that's like a meditation for me, but if I'm not taking a class, I'll meditate. I do go for a walk. And so you'll see me sometimes walking, you know, just a walk around. And then I also talk, I read a lot.
I read a lot. I just like, it calms me. I tried to get my kids to read as much as I do. I read three books last week. I was like, come on, let's read. But, um, it just like, it feels like calming my brain. Right? Like in the way a TV would kind of like stimulate my brain reading helps me calm and the same way meditation does. So I really enjoy it.
Kristel:
Fiction or non-fiction, or does it not matter?
Rebecca:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm like highbrow, lowbrow. I read bridge written and then I read Edith Wharton, and then I read Henry James, and then I read, you know, I'm like reading a textbook right now. So I'm all over the place. Yeah.
Kristel:
You're going to need to tell me some good fiction books cause we're going to like Tahoe.
Oh, yay. And so I I'm gonna need some good fiction.
Rebecca:
I just finished when I was sobbing. I finished it with .
Kristel:
I want happy not that one. We are coming towards the end. I would love for you to share Rebecca, any new things in the studio that people might want to know about. They want to check it out just a little bit more about that and, um, Um, your links, episode details.
Rebecca:
So one of the things I think out of COVID and the switch to our virtual world, and then just going outdoor classes and indoor classes and kind of the whole shift during COVID made me do three things. The first is I realized that we have this opportunity to increase our intensity in a bar class. I think bar is amazing and mindful. And the super small movements are very effective, but once in a while, it's nice to do this, like sweat kind of flowy class.
And so over COVID I leaned in and I developed a class called bar plus, so it's a bar class and the plus is just like, it's a little bit harder. So I that's been this wonderful takeaway from COVID.
I just taught it this morning. It was so fun. And then, uh, one of the other things that was a big takeaway during COVID is doing privates. I never did private classes before COVID and then I think we realized during COVID maybe, perhaps people want more of a personalized experience either online or just one-on-one in the studio.
And it's been this wonderful experience. I mean, I just, I'm very much a connector. I really liked one-on-one I really liked to like become besties. It sounded like, so I get to do that with private clients and it's this is awesome. Awesome, awesome thing. And then the third thing is launching our Raleigh Bird retail business.
So my daughter's name is Raleigh and my last name is Asfour, which means bird and Arabic. So it's Raleigh bird and in the studios, we always sold retail before COVID, but then, you know, COVID hit no one's coming to the studio and the retail business like helped pay the rent at the studio.
So I'm like, what do I do? And so we launched this online store and it's like, wonderful. It's so awesome. I mean, it's just so fun and the retail, you can buy it in online. You can buy it in the studio, you can buy it online and pick it up in the studio. And it's all like integrated. And my team is really awesome about helping me with it.
So it's at leisure for women. Our price points are very reasonable and cool brands and new stuff all the time. So those three things are my big takeaways during COVID. And this is where I looked at the disaster of COVID. I mean, it was a disaster for my businesses in terms of revenue, in terms of membership.
I mean, I look at the disaster. You, my, I lost a puppy, the Sierra, like we got a puppy during COVID and he got hit by a car and it was just like, so we just, like, there were a lot of traumas and disasters in my life personally and professionally, and I could stay wallowing in it and crying on the driveway, or I could.
And I decided not to. And I started pulling myself up by my bootstraps and look at the opportunities that we had this year and how we lean in on the good, just, it just makes everything better.
Kristel:
Right.Well, everyone listening, check out Rebecca’s clothing line. I have some of your stuff. It's amazing. I love it.
And I will put those links in there. I'm going to do a quick lightning round with you, Rebecca. I'm going to ask you two questions and then we're gonna close it. Okay. So this first one I think is going to be easy for you. What is a book you've recently read that you absolutely love that you'd like to share?
Rebecca:
Oh, I read it twice. I loved it so much. It's called the Buccaneers by Edith warden and it's her last book she died when she wrote it. So someone more recently finished it. It's basically, I mean, it's 18th century British or American literature, and it's a story of Uh, American women who moved to the UK to marry into the aristocracy of the UK, because like those gentlemen who had these huge estates needed American money to help prop up the estate.
So kind of like Downton Abbey. It's really good.
Kristel:
Perfect. All right. Last question, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Rebecca:
Ooh, 10 years ago. Gosh, ask yourself, what you really want and be very vocal about how to get it and start asking for the things that you really want and need much earlier than I did.
I didn't even know how to ask for things. And I just kind of went with the flow and I mean, I married a wonderful man and we had beautiful children, but I just, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I had a couple of different career moves. I feel like you should take the time to sit with yourself and think about what's truly going to make you happy and go get it.
Kristel:
Yeah. I love it. That's a great way to end. Well, thank you so much for that.
Rebecca:
Thank you. It was wonderful spending time with you today.