Christiane [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to another episode of the happy healthy hustle where we intersect health, happiness, and productivity. The podcast fan of the week. So the name of the reviewer is f c a s c I. And the review reads, I love the superpower messages and descriptions. I can relate to some of them, especially the superpower of empathy where I feel for everything even if the things are inanimate objects. It reminds me that everyone has a purpose in the world and helps me to be more positive about my everyday life knowing I have a purpose. Oh my gosh. How gorgeous is this?

Kevin Russell [00:00:48]:
Beautiful. It's

Christiane [00:00:49]:
absolutely gorgeous. So thank you so much, FC, for this beautiful review and that you like embracing the world and embracing things that might help you and find your superpower. If you haven't left the review that, please feel free to do so because you might just be that podcast fan of the week that I'm gonna read out next time. But with that, let me introduce Kevin Russell. Thank you, Kevin, for being here.

Kevin Russell [00:00:47]:
Thank you, Christiane, for having me.

Christiane [00:01:17]:
Yeah. This is really great because I always feel we are letting people share a little bit about who we are and given that I just read the review about the superpowers. Kevin, what is your superpower?

Kevin Russell [00:01:28]:
I guess I might call it problem solving would be a a Superpower. Where I was when I was younger, I would see And IKEA Hutch Computer Hutch we'd be putting together. I was in elementary school, and I took one look at the multipage An instruction manual, and I just knew. I was like, oh, I can do that. And my dad wouldn't let me at the time, and I was frustrated. I was like, no. I can do it. And it then served me in my professional career as a designer for almost 20 years where we would get Complex business requirements or project specifications.

Kevin Russell [00:02:01]:
And as the designer, we're designing the human computer interaction. So the touch screen, the kiosk, the software, the application, the website, whatever it is. And so there was some heavy doses of creative problem solving there. I was also doing a lot of inner work, and then 2019 happens and I hits, and I have a massive, what I call, a reconnection or an enlightenment experience. And then What I started doing was applying those same problem solving approaches that just felt naturally. Like, we can do this more easily. We can do this with less effort, with less pain, trauma, stress. I just started applying those processes and practices to the human equation Of how can we make our equation simpler, more streamlined, less convoluted, less less messy, less Understood and more known and getting back to those kind of core essences of who we are behind all the conditioning of life.

Christiane [00:02:56]:
It's not only that we need to use our skills, problem solving skills, to solve other people's problems or at work, But you can also solve your own problems. So in a certain way, your superpower is something that, sometimes we tend to forget about how amazing we are. And I love that you were, like, digging down and you're like, alright. So hold on. I have a problem solver, and I'm dealing with some problems right now. I should be able to do this. Sure.

Kevin Russell [00:03:26]:
I That's really that's my equation for success in life is finding something we're naturally good at. What is a natural Talent. What's a superpower? And the beauty part is it can be literally every anything. It can be elder care. It can be childcare. It can be music. It could be engineering. It can be welding.

Kevin Russell [00:03:42]:
It can be sports. It can be literature. It can like, absolutely anything in life, and it's up to us to identify. And then what lights us up? What interests us? What excites us? And if we can marry a natural talent with some doing something that we love, I feel like that's fulfillment, And we can find fulfillment at any time. But to your point, a lot of times, we get those those knowings of our superpower muted or drowned out early in life because It might not be in alignment with what the family does or with what our culture does even though it's the thing that just lights us up. So I I find really Listening to that inner voice and and letting that inner light shine out, even though it might feel nervous or scared or Uncertain is one of the most powerful things we can ever do.

Christiane [00:04:29]:
Yeah. And, actually, speaking again about your problem solving, I noticed how Lego has done a beautiful job in really crossing gender, age, backgrounds, Independent of income level because it comes in very small sets as well. So they're doing a beautiful job in making it very accessible to us and reconnect with our Superpower. Yeah. Because it's not just for children. If you buy a Lego set that has, some of them have a 1,000 pieces and you are a problem solver, just go for it. Right?

Kevin Russell [00:05:04]:
It's it's exercise. Yeah. It's problem solving exercise. And especially with the instruction manuals at Konop Legos, hardly any words Mhmm. But really detailed diagrams. And you can tell what a 4 a 4 post piece is versus a 6 post piece, or it's really across the board from product design and development All the way through their instructions. It's a beautiful experience to for any age.

Christiane [00:05:31]:
Yep. So I love that you paired that to the IKEA kit challenge because that's frequently what people get very stressed out about, but and some others are really enjoying it. They like putting things together. Right? We all live different.

Kevin Russell [00:05:44]:
And it's the translation layer that fascinates me because we can have the designer at the IKEA factory putting the manual together and creating diagrams in a way that makes perfect sense for them, but it might not translate to everyone who's putting it together. And I feel like That translation layer a lot of times is where we can find that frustration, where we're getting instruction or direction from somebody that We're perceiving has an authority. If they're if they've created the the product, then the they know how to put it together. But then if we're not understanding or if we're not getting their intended message, that can derail everything.

Christiane [00:06:23]:
Completely agree. And I also think that, like, that you might not be a visual learner that I can look at in instruction manual and immediately understand it, But maybe there is a video. So maybe instead of just looking at these fixed static images, Maybe you need more dynamic movement. Maybe you need more of a three d approach right there. And there's so many neat things these days that you can learn with putting things together. And most importantly, don't be hard on yourself because that's the at the end of the day, it's not like you have to create the house it's Supposed to look like. You can go a little, more creative, right, and follow a different approach when you put that thing together with Legos.

Kevin Russell [00:07:05]:
Why not? And regardless of what it is, whether it's doing a home renovation or Yeah. Learning a new language or playing with Legos, Recognizing that the 1st time we do it, we might not get it right, and that's okay because what is right anyway? We can take a Lego set that's intended to be one thing, and we're looking at building blocks literally. So we can create something else entirely with it that doesn't follow the instructions.

Christiane [00:07:30]:
Completely true.

Kevin Russell [00:07:30]:
Which can be as as fulfilling, if not more of an exercise of just self expression, self fulfillment, Being more at ease with ourselves regardless of whatever else is going on outside of us, that's that's to your point, Learning what type of a learner we are. That can be an aspect of learning our Superpower. Because if we're just butting our heads against A textbook, and it looks like Greek to us, but we can watch a video and get it immediately. The more we can streamline, the more we can go towards what we naturally find easeful. That can really launch us in a beautiful new direction.

Christiane [00:08:07]:
Completely. And, actually, a lot of innovations came about with doing things, And I'm not gonna use this a right or wrong way, but maybe in a different way.

Kevin Russell [00:08:16]:
Yeah.

Christiane [00:08:16]:
So, like, when my children were young, I would just let them put on their shoes. And it's really quite hard to figure out which shoe goes on which foot. Yeah. And I would never tell them this is not the right way to do it because I thought They will figure it out. If it's not comfortable or they fall down, maybe they figure it out that's maybe not ideal as it was that. Maybe to optimize your walking, put the shoe on the other work. It's just, like, part of learning. Right?

Kevin Russell [00:08:43]:
And we're gathering information and experience. There's a there's a line from a movie called National Treasure that love. And we're talking about Edison with the light bulb.

Christiane [00:08:52]:
Mhmm.

Kevin Russell [00:08:53]:
And regardless of the rivalry between Edison and Tesla at the time, what Edison said was He took over a 1000 iterations to create the incandescent light bulb. And what he said was, I didn't fail a 1000 times. I only needed to do it once. I learned almost a 1000 ways to not make a light bulb, which in turn helped me make the light bulb. And so these things that we perceive as failure, again, There is no, in my experience, there's no black and white. Everything is shades of color and spectrum. And so the more that we can shift out of this kind of Fatalistic duality perception of of our lives where it either is or it isn't, and shift more into a place of It can be multiple things. It it it has the potential to be any number of things.

Kevin Russell [00:09:40]:
That really can create that space and freedom to help us identify that superpower that we might not have get gotten earlier in life. There's no there's never a wrong time to to dip our toe and help to define more what our superpower in this moment is. And it can change and evolve, and it most likely will. We're gonna gain new information, new insight, new new tools in the toolbox. And so those superpowers, they're not fixed by means they can grow and expand and evolve with us.

Christiane [00:10:04]:
How did you get to the point were there Challenge in your life that led you to understand this? And what was maybe the biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

Kevin Russell [00:10:15]:
Yeah. As you're asking that question, the thing that popped into my mind was self knowledge.

Christiane [00:10:20]:
Mhmm.

Kevin Russell [00:10:21]:
And as as much as it was it it felt easy for me to understand how to Solve a not necessarily mathematical equations, but, hey. We're we're going on this trip, and we wanna hit all of these spots, and we wanna keep it under this budget. You know? Problem solving that way. We can really apply it to any aspect of life, but that self knowledge was probably the biggest Factor for me and a lot of it centered around my health and nutrition from when I was at a young age. The first biggest one for me was I was put on an Elimination diet in 2nd grade because of food allergies. And so I'm 2nd grade age, maybe 8, 9, 10, something like that. I want pizza and hamburgers and hot dogs and all the fun things that, you know, that you get at pizza parties and at school lunches and things like that. And, I was at a place where my body wasn't doing well with a lot of processed foods, but I didn't have the language for it at the time.

Kevin Russell [00:11:17]:
And this is in the 19 eighties, and Food allergies were still a a new thing. So it was basically just eliminate the things that we are suspecting could be causing you issues, which was sugar, All grains, all dairy, and that was pretty much it. So I could eat meat and vegetables. Oh. But no sauces, no dressing up, no no no hamburger buns with all the delicious things, just the plain hamburger. And I was in 2nd grade, so I really one, it gave me valuable information for understanding what worked for my body versus what didn't, And it really brought me internal in a way that I hadn't experienced previously of recognizing, Oh, if I eat these things, then I feel a certain way. If I eat these other things, then I feel a certain different way that feels better. But I still wanted all the stuff because I was I was young.

Kevin Russell [00:12:11]:
So then on this kind of journey of self knowledge that I didn't even recognize I was on, The 2nd big signpost was when I was 11 to about 15, and we're dealing some with some things at home. And my way of dealing with What I was perceiving as a lack of control or an instability was to really just lock down what I was consuming. So I was actually anorexic for about 4 years. Moving through that experience and all of the tears and all of the fear and scarcity and uncertainty and negative self image and just All of the things that I was dealing with in the moment really led me to a place of great gratitude for that experience. And it wasn't again, I I it wasn't a place I was looking to end up. It just organically got to this place. So I've been doing a lot of inner work. I've been a lot of work in my adult life as well, but really being grateful for that experience, again, understanding what really works for me.

Kevin Russell [00:13:09]:
And It was it really helped to transform my relationship to food and helped to transform my relationship to myself. And then there was another one in my Adult life of a a raw food challenge, which was, at a yoga studio that my wife worked at. There was a nutritionist there. And I I've gone through various phases of eating healthy throughout my life. And in my early twenties, I would get a, like, a Chinese chicken salad from Jack in the Box and consider that healthy. But this was a really hey. What are you gonna do when all you can consume is raw fruits and vegetables? No. You can't cook anything over a 120 degrees.

Kevin Russell [00:13:45]:
No alcohol, no sugar, no oil, no meat products. And what I found was 3 days in, all of my old symptoms started to evaporate. My irritable bowel, my indigestion, my inconsistency with elimination to to leave it for a a white audience. And that was another major factor of self knowledge. So I feel like self knowledge has been in lockstep of understanding with with those superpower aspects as well.

Christiane [00:14:13]:
I know that you tried a different diet because we sometimes are so set in our ways, and it's convenient. And when we branch out and try something completely different, especially when it's a challenge, all of a sudden, we really start, appreciating what it does to our body. And and I'm totally with you. I have a lot of digestive issues. I really like the raw foods, And it's something I was very scared of, eating. I was like, oh my gosh. It's probably boring, and I don't know. I'm going to be always hungry.

Christiane [00:14:44]:
And, it's like, oh, how How am I gonna get this done in my super busy day? I think all that was more stressful than actually switching the diet.

Kevin Russell [00:14:54]:
The the worry on that.

Christiane [00:14:56]:
Anxiety ahead of time. I was like, oh. It really wasn't so bad.

Kevin Russell [00:15:01]:
It's often though the jump The conclusions that we play with are way worse than the actual outcomes.

Christiane [00:15:07]:
It really is not so bad. So sometimes I'm scared. Yeah.

Kevin Russell [00:15:11]:
And for me, it was as much of a a a system reset of understanding what really worked well for me, which just happened to me more lightly cooked and or raw fruits and vegetables. And then now I've really supplanted that with really focusing on combination eating with legumes and that and ancient and squashes and tubers and all the different beautiful amazing nutrition that's available to us. But the really interesting thing for me was the almost like a standard American detox

Christiane [00:15:45]:
Uh-huh.

Kevin Russell [00:15:45]:
Where it I we weren't adding salt to anything. We weren't adding sugar to anything. And after about a week or two, celery started to taste like the most amazing potato chip that I've ever had. Some raw walnuts and and a half a banana was the most delicious banana bread I've ever eaten. It's funny because after we came out of it, Ever we we very lightly season things if at all. We used lemon juice just because there was so much once we got away from all of the heavy seasonings and heavy that goes on a lot of sodium and processed foods. It really gave my system a recalibration of taste, and it really I stopped eating dessert. I didn't have as much of a sweet tooth afterward.

Kevin Russell [00:16:25]:
I started to to your point about, like, the the intensity that we can experience around these unknowns, Food prep became much easier and much more streamlined because I moved the unknown to unknown because I was doing it, and I was able to still work and eat all the things I was Eating at the time. So, yeah, it was invaluable in a lot of different ways.

Christiane [00:16:47]:
Yeah. I always think of easing off Sugar and salt. I always compare it to if you think, like, maybe it's a sponge or anything and you're getting rid of all the little pores and that are maybe clogged. So your taste buds and etcetera, you're just basically completely letting the filter actually do its work. Yeah. So, like, your taste buds get completely flushed out, and you're going to taste the tomato sauce that you buy in a jar. And it's wow. It has so much salt in it and sugar.

Kevin Russell [00:17:17]:
Yeah.

Christiane [00:17:17]:
And tomato sauces. Yeah. And that all of a sudden makes you appreciate that you look at labels when you purchase per, processed foods. And I look for those Two things. I always look for sugar and for salt. And then same with cereals and other things like that. And then my children are now used to this as well. What do you feel was, a big influence that got you to that place? Or what or how or who? Yeah.

Christiane [00:17:41]:
Yeah. Happens?

Kevin Russell [00:17:42]:
You know, a lot of it, You have I gotta be honest. A lot of it was my mom. Like, you know, so I had a lot of ear infections and strep throats when I was a baby, like, when I was an infant. Allergies have run-in my mom's side of the family, so she was aware. Me and my grandma had eczema so bad that she was, like, laying in bed with medicated, bandages because the the flare ups were so bad. So it was really her instigation of Recognizing early on in my adolescence, like, something see, something's not quite right, so let's see if it's diet. As much as that was an important factor, the freedom to explore different things. One thing she always said, talking about haircuts and control and things when we're little, Her standing statement about doing anything different with my hair was, well, it's not life threatening.

Kevin Russell [00:18:28]:
It's not morally threatening, and it'll grow back. So do whatever you wanna do. So So just giving that space to do my own self exploration was a really big one. And then as I got older, it was that kind of That thirst for knowledge, again, that really got it got embedded at an early age. My mom was an English teacher, and she was a teacher of the deaf. And so anytime I had a question about how do I spell this? Go look it up. I need to do a book report. Okay.

Kevin Russell [00:18:53]:
Get out the Encyclopedia Britannica that we have Because there was no Internet at the time. So I think those are really 2 2 pretty powerful factors is she was that that advocate when she saw something wasn't quite right and got me on that elimination diet, which Started my journey of self knowledge, my relationship with nutrition, and and what worked for me. And then that that thirst knowledge whereas, like, as much as I hated it at the time, go look something up, and I look up the word, and then I see all these other interesting words that are adjacent to it in the dictionary. Or I'm looking up Antelope, and next thing you know, I'm researching Angola because it's close to it in the dictionary in the encyclopedia. So as much as at the time they were, I looked at those as restrictions and as challenges and as mom being mean, in hindsight, they were invaluable in my own exploration of life as I grew up.

Christiane [00:19:38]:
I tell my students all the time in the classroom. And they ask me questions. Sometimes I can answer them. Sometimes I'm not 100% sure. And I tell them GTS. Google that shit. Because nowadays, we don't have the encyclopedia there, but just Google it.

Kevin Russell [00:19:52]:
Yeah.

Christiane [00:19:52]:
And they ask me, oh, is it going to rain? I don't No. That's why we have Google, or they ask other things about things that nobody should even know. Right? That's Google.

Kevin Russell [00:20:02]:
Look it up. Yeah.

Christiane [00:20:03]:
Like, random facts and things like that. Just look it up. And I also feel that we see we get used to googling, but then I like that you mentioned that you actually use your brain and, like, fill filter out. Alright. So what does that really mean? Because sometimes Even like nowadays with artificial intelligence, we get the response. And instead of saying, oh, yeah. That this is it. Let's maybe use your brain then.

Christiane [00:20:29]:
Okay. So you got a response. And what does it actually really mean? Was that actually a helpful response? Yes. Maybe. Because Google is smart as is artificial intelligence. Maybe you need to use a different prompt and you need to ask a much better question. No matter where you are, how much you Google your life, or How much you use artificial intelligence. You need to actually be a smart person to ask the right question.

Kevin Russell [00:20:51]:
Or not. Which which is one of my it's Things. It's the it's from Plato, I think, the oracle of Delphi Mhmm. Where or or yeah. Plato. Because Socrates is going around Challenge asking everybody, who is the smartest? He's asking all the artisans, all the pottery makers, all of the the seers, all of the cast people. He's interested and intrigued by everything everybody's doing. So he goes to the Oracle of Delphi, and he asks, who is the wisest man or the smartest man of all in all of Athens and the response was who you are.

Kevin Russell [00:21:21]:
And his response was, I don't know anything. How can that be? Which is one of the most beautiful I I love that allegory because it's so true. The more we can question ourselves, Question our beliefs. Question our life perceptions. Question our judgments of right and wrong. Yes and no. Black and white. The more we can come to our answers for ourselves as opposed to what anybody else is telling us.

Kevin Russell [00:21:42]:
And I I do feel that self experience is such an important factor Along with not being satisfied with the answer that were presented.

Christiane [00:21:50]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Kevin Russell [00:21:52]:
So you we everybody who has kids or has been around kids knows the why phase.

Christiane [00:21:57]:
Why?

Kevin Russell [00:21:57]:
Why? Get that back. Everybody right now, get back your why phase. We need to get back to why Because so many things are going on in the world right now, where if we ask a few whys, it doesn't make sense. The the justification for what People are and things are are going on and institutions are doing. It doesn't hold water. So I feel like the more we can question ourselves with why am I doing it this way, why is this happening again, And opening ourselves up to new dynamic answers with questions like yes and, especially when we're looking something up. Oh, that's interesting. And what else is behind that, or what else does that mean? Mhmm.

Kevin Russell [00:22:32]:
We can really unpack a lot of agenda and potential Misinformation by putting it through more of our heart filter or a gut filter with how does that make us feel, not what does it make us think. Because minds are very easy to change and very easy to manipulate if we are not being diligent with our own gate Keeping of what thoughts we allow ourselves to entertain. If are we trending towards positive, or are we wallowing in in mucky, gunky, Not fun feeling ways of thought, and we're the only ones that have any autonomy over that. Nobody else can make us think a different way or or change anything. Sometimes it can be conditioned and manipulated into us. But once we step back and pull back the lens and start to question, why am I doing it this way? We can come to some beautiful expansive dynamic answers we might not have been able to otherwise.

Christiane [00:23:25]:
Oh, this is great. Kevin, the problem solver questioning. I love this beautiful story arc that we just built here. Where can the audience and viewers for all of you on YouTube get in touch with you?

Kevin Russell [00:23:41]:
So if you're on YouTube, just check out Radical Enlightenment. We've got our own YouTube channel there as well. Radicalenlightenment.com would be a great resource to check out. And And then also if you're interested in subconscious transformation or emotional freedom, go to rapid transformation sessions.com where you can find all the information about the work we do 1 on 1 with clients and also in group settings as well.

Christiane [00:24:03]:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kevin, for being here today. To the audience, thank you for tuning in, listening, or viewing this to another episode of Happy Healthy Hustle. We Totally intersect with the health, the happiness, and the productivity here today. And I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you so much.