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You're in a good place now. You are listening to
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Perspectives with Ashley Burgess.
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Welcome back Live to Live Your True Life Perspectives, and
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I'm your host, Ashley Burgess.
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Today is the day.
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There's really no better time than right now, and today
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is the first time that you're going to experience what
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And I find it very interesting when we really think
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about the value of the present moment, the value of
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the day, how important that is, and how much that
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resonates with me, how much that resonates with my listeners
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and my clients, and how important that is as a
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valuable concept on our day to day life.
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Joining me live in.
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Studio today is Russ Rogers. Russ has written six books,
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mostly kid and family friendly books to connect the family
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with their children. He's an international speaker as well as
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a motivator. Russ, great to have you here live on
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Live your True Life Perspectives.
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How are you doing today, Ashley.
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I'm doing amazing and it's been great to just talk
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with you, you know, prior to the program, and I'm
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excited to be with you today. Be excited to be
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with you and your listeners, and I'm excited about this
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conversation and it's a great way to you know, kind
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of kick off our weekend.
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I love it, and I absolutely love your book series,
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and you have six of them in total, and I
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love how they're all titled today. For example, today, here
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I Go Today, Great Adventures, Today, something New, Today, my
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first and today baby Steps. Tell me about where did
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this information knowledge muse start from?
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With you?
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Yeah, you know, I was all my life, I was
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basically you know, outdoors, right. We lived when my parents
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were when I was six months old, they built a
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house and it was kind of in you know the country,
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and so all of my life and my upbringing and
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everything was all outside, and you know, it kind of
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just translated, you know into sports and activities and you know,
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we would go on vacation, we'd do a lot of
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stuff outside. And then I went into my adult life.
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I went into personal training, and I started with you know,
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working with kids one on one, and it was absolutely amazing.
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So I would take these kids maybe through thirty minutes
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or an hour of training. Some of them I would
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have or maybe you know, one visit or maybe I
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have them for nine years and you know repeat, you know,
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clients that would come to me of all ages, and
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it was just an amazing opportunity to speak into somebody's life.
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But you know, after twenty years of that and eight
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years of collegiate softball coaching, COVID hit in twenty twenty,
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and it you not only changed everybody's life, it changed
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my life in the direction I was going. And so
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during twenty twenty, when all the parks and the schools
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and everything's shut down, I was like at a point
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where I was like, all right, so what am I
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going to do. I have another business, which is landscaping,
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which I continue to do, but you know, it was
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during this time I was really thinking like, all right,
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what is the next step? And I didn't know what
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that steff was. But soon thereafter, about a year later,
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I was on a flight to New York and on
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that flight I had this journal that had been carrying
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with me for over a year, and I was on
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this flight that I was like, it was like a
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lightning bolt that came down and words just started coming out,
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and I was just writing and writing and writing. And
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the first word, Ashley, that I wrote in that journal
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was the word move. And I drew a little rectangle
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around that word, and everything flowed from that point on,
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and it was just pages upon pages upon pages that
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led me into where I am today.
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Oh that's powerful. I'm a big believer in journal writing.
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I talked to my clients a lot on there. I
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don't want to write a journal. I don't want to
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do this. It's so painful, Mike, you don't understand you're
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really going to get something out of it. And I
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love the fact that you wrote the word move and
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you know it put the rectangle around it, and this
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started happening.
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You know.
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I do find it interesting because I don't think that
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a lot of people understand the value of the moment.
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I don't think they understand it. And so you know,
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when you were writing this that start kind of also
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champion and as well? Or have you always valued in
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the moment or have you always found that gratitude or
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always been in the present moment?
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You know, most of my life I was in the
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present moment, you know. And you know in that present
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moment of writing. Uh, you know, even at that moment,
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even when I was writing, it was fulfilling because it
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was I was I was taken back to my childhood
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and I was writing anything and everything that would come
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to my mind, and I would I would write stories
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about what I've seen. I live on the you know,
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live on the beach, and so you know, I would
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see the connectivity and the disconnectivity of family right on
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the beach and family activity, and so I would I
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would see all of this, and in living in that moment,
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it was like I would take these these situations, and
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I would take these experiences, and I would take these
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stories and I would put them down and and it
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would just come to life. And it was amazing because
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even when I was writing all this, I had no idea.
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I had no idea where this was going to go.
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But in that moment, you know, I was so enthralled
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by what I was writing, and I began to share
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with other people about what was happening. And I remember
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talking to a grandmother and she was like, you know,
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this is amazing, like what you're talking about, because this
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takes me back to my childhood and memories that I
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had with my parents and with my grandparents. And then
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as I became a parent, it took me back to
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that moment. Living in that moment seventy years later, you know,
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it was really really cool. You know, the whole process,
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but living in that moment, living in that time of
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writing was it was just an experience that I had
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never experienced before.
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That's very valuable, that's awesome. When did you write your
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first book?
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So it basically, you know, it was all of these pages.
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And then as I was going through these pages and
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starting to read, I was like, wow, I don't know,
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you know, because it was about a year year and
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a half of writing. But even then when I was writing,
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actually I was like, I didn't know it was going
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to be a book. I had no idea. And then
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when I started looking at this and started breaking it down,
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I was like, you know what, I think I got
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a book here. But then the way that I was
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writing in these pages, I was like, maybe I have
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more than one book. So I started dividing up everything
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and I said, you know, I'm going to take this
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concept and I'm going to put this idea into different books.
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So I ended up breaking it down into five books
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and deciding that this is going to be the first
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five years of a kid's life. So book one is
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for you know, infancy to one, and then one to
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two and two to three and so forth, and so
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so these pages that when you look through these pages,
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you can see this child is you know, he's growing
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older and he's now at these two and these three,
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and so the activities change. And so in that year
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of twenty twenty one and twenty two, that's when it
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was all coming together of how I really going to
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design the way that this was going to look. And
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instead of just launching one book, I decided to launch
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all five books at one time. And it was It
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was exciting.
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It's really neat, and I like, yes, how you go
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through the situation where you know you're at your first breath,
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you're you're outside for the first time, to you know,
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being on the trampoline or fishing with your family and
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that sort of thing. It's very cool. And I like
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the concept how this is all outside. This is all outdoors.
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It's not like surrounded by video games or stuck inside.
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What have you liked that?
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Absolutely? You know, you know that's the whole premise because
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as I was looking back at my life, right and
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as I expressed earlier in the show, it's like everything
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was outside. And if you look at society today and
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you look at like we have an entire think about this,
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we have an entire month dedicated to mental wellness, right,
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And it seems like Ashley, it seems like it's growing
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and it's growing, and it's growing and people are spending
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more time. But now we have a month that is
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dead to mental wellness. And so one of the things
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that I've seen as I've studied and I've looked, and
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I've read and I've listened, you know, over the last
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couple of years, you know, on mental illness and everything,
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and what impacts us the most when we're going through
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this is people are stuck indoors. They've made the choice
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to be indoors, to watch video, to play video, to
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watch TV, you know, to listen to their music, to
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play on their phone and their devices. You know, it's
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all these things that are indoors. Indoors are watching just television.
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And so the greatest thing that we can do that's
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going to impact our lives mentally is to get out
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and get vitamin D, to get out and move, to
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breathe in fresh air. And let's say you live in
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a city, go to a park, go to where there's
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a lot of nature that's around, you know, and enjoy it.
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Breathe it in and take it in. You know Bryant Park.
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When I visit New York City, one of my favorite
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parks is Bryant Park, right smack dawn. You know, their
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Central Park it's massive, but Brian Park is is much smaller,
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but it's just beautiful. It's lined with trees, it's got
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a nice walking path and a water feature in the front,
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and you could just sit there and you can take
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in some sunshine. And you know, there is so much
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in our surroundings, no matter where you live, that we
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can breathe in nature and take advantage of it.
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That's neat and I totally agree with you. And it
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is interesting because mental health and mental wellness is so
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important and a lot of times I feel that people
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take it for granted. You know, I have clients, you know,
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when we start working together and eventually, you know, the
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concept of them not being able to sleep, and those
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types of things kind of emerge into session. And you know,
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my first question is how you know? How often do
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you work out? How often do you walk? How often
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do you run? You know? And usually the response to
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that is none, unless I'm being chased. You know, I'm like, well, okay,
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so if I didn't run and I didn't work out
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and I didn't do things, I would not be able
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to sleep at all. And I think people don't realize
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the value of the things that you don't need a
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PS description four.
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That's right, that's right, you know. And you know, I
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think about like in my life and what I do,
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you know, the decision making, the choices that we have,
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right we're going to choose if we're going to sit
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on the couch and sit for three, four or five
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hours and watch TV and just veg out, you know,
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And we're all we all work every day and we
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come home, we're tired and everything, but it really comes
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down to a personal choice of what we're going to
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do with our day, what we're going to do with
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our time, and how we're going to spend it. And
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you know, for me, it's like, you know, my my
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slot from when I work out is typically from three
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thirty in the afternoon to five thirty. I don't schedule meetings,
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I don't schedule calls. That is my time that I'm
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going to get a workout in. I am not an
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early riser. I mean I am an early riser, but
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I'm not an early riser to go work out. So
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I've identified that in my life that is out. I'm
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not a noon person where I'm going to go work out.
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And then I got a shower of getting you know,
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six hours from my first hour and then you know,
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start started a day over. So I I typically from
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three thirty to five, I'm walking, I'm riding you know,
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a bike or a peloton. I'm getting in the garage,
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I'm working out, I'm getting outside. I'm playing smash ball
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on the beach. I'm playing beach volleyball. Those are things
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that I do. And it's not just one activity. It's
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multiple activities that gives me that roundabout workout that I
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need that round me out as a person. So I'm
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using different body parts, I'm doing different movements. But it
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is a choice.
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It's true, and I agree with you. It's finding that