It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a k, U, N, V studios, original program. You are listening to special programming brought to you by its where I am.com the content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. You

Zandra Polard 0:44
Well, hello and good morning. This is Andre Pollard. The show is, it's where I am, right here on 91.5 jazz and more. Well, guess who's back, y'all, it's Natasha McRae. She is here via telephone. Thank you for calling in, Natasha. Natasha is an author, director and empowerment strategist. We need you. Girl, we need you. Yes, we got to get back on track. I know I'm off track a little bit. So you say you help the Alpha woman reclaim their power and design lives they love. Yes,

Natasha McCrea 1:35
indeed, yes indeed. It's one of my favorite passions.

Zandra Polard 1:41
Women win. Tweak me a little bit, because I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel and I need to get off of it.

Natasha McCrea 1:49
Yeah, that's the probably one of the biggest challenges for women, where we are right now, is being on that hamster wheel, because then you have that centrifugal force that just swings you around and around and around, and it gets faster and faster and faster. And it's you wonder, how can I get off of this hamster wheel? But you have built this life that revolves around the hamster wheel, and the only way to get off the hamster wheel is to really lean back into self. And that's one of the I think people stop, because sometimes that can be a little time consuming, but it will save you so much time. You will 10x your time when you lean back into self, right,

Zandra Polard 2:40
prioritizing yourself, right? And so we do that with, well, I know to do that with self care, which I don't always have time for, but we got to make that

Natasha McCrea 2:53
one of the, yeah, you have to make that time. And I think what happens sometimes is we'll buck the system where we look at everybody else's self care, or self care that we read somewhere, opposed to creating our own viable blueprint for ourselves. Okay, and so that's really important. You have to create your own blueprint for yourself, because and your self care is going to look different at different at different times in your life. And so I did a workshop years ago, and I was able to identify the different types of self care that my clients could tap into, and it was amazing how their lives changed and shifted simply by identifying your love language and identifying the type of self care that actually replenishes you, okay? And I have some people who like, say, for instance, massages. I mean, we love massages to be rejuvenated. But there are some women who do not want to be touched in you know. And so when you go to get self care, it puts you and that could be from just trauma, or everyone has different experiences that physical touch is not their love language. And so when you're thinking about it from that perspective, and you're laying there getting massage from someone that would that's horrible for some people, that is not rejuvenation. Yeah,

Zandra Polard 4:20
I have a few friends who don't like massages. It's unbelievable to me, but that makes sense,

Natasha McCrea 4:27
yeah. And so instead of feeling like something's wrong or not seeking out an alternative, what we do is we identify Well, what is that thing that's going to replenish you, and what is that that's going to bring you joy. Because in order to really step into that big dream, or to step into that finding life, loving life, in that that way, you have to calm your central nervous system and and being back. On the hamster wheel. You know you're in survival mode. You're just trying not to be flung off that will, yeah, definitely. And in order, yeah, and in order to get off the hamster wheel, you're just gonna have to pause. And we look at your life personally, look at your life, and say, Okay, well, how can Sandra pause? Zandra, your pause looks different than my pause?

Zandra Polard 5:27
Yes. So how do we do that without taking the class? Like, what if there's listeners out there who are not taking the class? Would you advise them to do to figure out what will work for them. Is it journaling or do you start with that? I'm

Natasha McCrea 5:44
gonna, I'm gonna say this one, and it's one of the most alarming ones. And I do this, and it always works, and I always get pushback when I first start working with a client. We lean in and and I say, Okay, I know you are a high achieving woman. You live by the calendar. So what I'm going to ask you to do is take two hours and block your calendar and put nothing in it. You should see the look on people's faces when I asked them do that. I could hear you cringing over there. Yeah, put nothing in it, and if you need to, you start with baby steps. But what you're going to do is you're going to offer your brain a pattern interrupt. Because being on the hamster wheel isn't just the act itself. It becomes habitual. And it's not habitual, just in the lighter sense of the word habit, you've created neurological pathways that make being on the hamster wheel easier than sitting down.

Zandra Polard 6:52
And even that can go with procrastination as well.

Natasha McCrea 6:56
Well, yeah, it can. And sometimes procrastination is a sign that something needs to change. I never look at procrastination as a symptom of something, okay. It's yeah. I never think of procrastination as the main, the core problem.

Zandra Polard 7:14
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So when

Natasha McCrea 7:16
you say, I would love to hear you elaborate more when you said it goes with procrastination, is it just that you're so busy and overwhelmed that there are certain things that aren't getting done?

Zandra Polard 7:26
Oh, no, I don't procrastinate. But I know procrastinate doors that feel overwhelmed you Yeah, they over there feel overwhelmed, yes. And it's like, you know, they'll tell me, I just can't get this done. It's like, well, you can do it right now. Oh, but I don't want to do it right now. It's like, hang up the phone and go do it.

Natasha McCrea 7:50
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Accountability is core. So back to like you're saying, okay, these people, every people, are procrastinating. They're on the hamster wheel. What do you need to do? It's taking that moment, if you can't do two hours, put 30 minutes on the calendar, do something to have that pattern interrupt. And then another core principle of the self care that I teach is you have to have accountability. You have to have other people in your lives who are looking at self care from a different lens, because if you do not have those people in your life, it's going to be a lot harder to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, ie, right now would be self care, so you have to make sure that you are surrounding yourself with People who are on that same trajectory. Well. I, you know,

Zandra Polard 8:43
I have people who are not on that same trajectory. So what I do is I kick them out until my Nourse, honey, I need 30 minutes to an hour to myself because we're not on the same page.

Natasha McCrea 8:58
Yes. So yes, and that's, that's what I mean. So when, when I say scheduling that time for yourself, I do not mean putting people into that time. This is your time, and it's going to be challenging at first. It's going to be challenging, and you're not used to it. Your mind's going to be going 100 miles an hour. You're going to think, Oh, I can't do this. Oh, I got something else to do. But you get to do whatever you want to do in that moment, but you have to just stop. And sometimes people are addicted. Like, a major sign that you aren't taking care of yourself is like, you're addicted to the busyness.

Zandra Polard 9:32
Oh, wow, okay, that makes sense. Addicted

Natasha McCrea 9:39
to the busyness. I have people ask me all the time. They're like, they're like, oh my gosh, how do you have the personal development, and how are you directing? Yeah, you do. Yeah, it's now in like, 43 it's all in all California, total lines and and so people are asking like, Well, how do you do that? And I give the analogy of if I was cooking. A beautiful mill, and it had multiple elements to this mill. At one point I'm going to have a pot on the front and it's going to be on high, and I'm sauteing those onions, but once I put that pot in the sauce, it may go on the back burner, on ultra low. And so that's how I do so many things like right now, directing is simmering on the back burner right now, and Jackson McRae whiskey is on the front burner with the onions and garlic, and I'm sauteing it, making sure it doesn't burn. And so, you know, with coaching, it's sitting there on the I got it on the left eye of the stove, and it's on little medium. You know, it's rolling on medium. And so I have to look at my life in that way, because I am multi passionate. And for a long time I struggled because I felt like something was wrong with me. And everybody always tells you, pick one thing, do one thing, and it was a huge struggle with just acceptance that I do have all these ideas, and I do have masterful ideas, and I just let those ideas harmonize, but not at the expense of myself. Okay, that's the key. It can't be at the expense of yourself, because I didn't always get it. I didn't, I didn't always get it right. There were, I mean, I live, I had a time in my life where I lived on burnout. I lived on burnout so much that I could not tell you certain things that happened during that time. And I was the single mom, and I was running around doing all this stuff with my kids still trying to go after my dream acting and modeling and doing music videos and and just every day, I'm thinking, how many days to rent day I was completely burned out, and I would go visit my parents and crash on the couch. They would take the kid, and I would just be knocked out on the couch, and I didn't even visit them, like I was in their house, but I wasn't really visiting And so fast forward years and after therapy, and I had a coach, my very first coach, and I learned to prioritize myself and my my dreams and the visions that I have for my life, because the number one thing that'll keep you from flow is being stagnant from a going after your dreams. And so when I had ideas, I would stuff them. And we know what happens when you stuff things, it's just that's not, doesn't that's not a good look. So I would stuff them, and never really go after them. And it drained me. And when you were thinking, How is doing more going to give you more energy, but it's doing more strategically without sacrificing yourself? And so I figured that out. And then it's a journey. It's a journey. Some

Zandra Polard 12:58
of the things that you in the past, okay, that you wanted to accomplish, and let's say you did or you did it halfway. Did that bring feelings of like failure? Yes,

Natasha McCrea 13:15
it did. Until I went to I was in I got my degree in psychology, and I was studying positive psychology, and one of the concepts was, how many times can I fail before I leave this earth? Because if I have had more failures for me, I'll have more success. And that also, I always say I learned so much. I was in Mary Kay years ago, and that was one of the things, because sometimes people would be paralyzed from doing their sales or making the phone calls, and they're like, the goal this week is 50 nose, and whoever gets them 50 nose is going to get this prize. So I started looking at my life from that perspective. So yes, there are businesses like I had a staffing company. Love that company, you know, made some good money. My kid was going to school. It just wasn't in alignment anymore. At the time, I needed to go get a job because it wasn't growing fast enough, and we closed it down. I think about that company all the time. I love it, but I have wonderful feelings about it, and I just think, Hey, that was that's another notch on my belt to get me closer to the next thing I learned so much in that business.

Zandra Polard 14:30
So do you know when to let things go, like, when should? Why do you know? Okay, I'm not where I want to be I need to try harder, or I need to let this go and try something else.

Natasha McCrea 14:48
It's a practice, and I think every person will have an individual experience. However, when you have taken care of yourself and when you are in a. Alignment. And when you have a beautiful self care practice, and I do not mean a perfect self care practice, because no one has a perfect self care practice, but you have a beautiful self care practice, you have built up your intuition into a place where you know when to move, because you're not on survival mode. When you are struggling and thinking scarcity. You may hold on to something long, and then you have to create a habit of it. You have to create a habit of it as well. You have to create a habit of okay, let me check in with me. I guarantee you this. If someone has a question about a decision they should make right now, if they stopped spent some time breathing, deep, breathing, closed their eyes, asked the question, the answer would immediately pop up to them. I guarantee you this. But what happens is, we have a whole lot of other things going on our lives, so then we second guess,

Zandra Polard 16:07
and then we sound more like this. What should I do? I don't know, yeah, I can't figure it out. Yeah, yeah. We sound frantic trying to figure it out. Yeah,

Natasha McCrea 16:19
versus being grounded enough knowing that every answer that you need you have,

Zandra Polard 16:28
and it's usually, if it were my aunt Nikita, it would be no, because she sets those limits. You know, no baby, not this time, yeah, oh, see, I love that. Yeah. Woman in the nose, yeah. Shout out to Aunt Nikita.

Natasha McCrea 16:49
Hey, Aunt Nikita.

Zandra Polard 16:52
So anyway, this is how we can get off the hamster wheel by shocking pause and interrupting, right? Interrupt, yeah, yeah.

Natasha McCrea 17:04
Pattern Interrupt, okay, yeah, pattern interrupt, off the hamster wheel and being willing to take that risk because it's scary, yeah,

Zandra Polard 17:12
sure. So scary because you get used to doing, you know what you need to do daily. You know what I mean, it becomes like you said habitual, your pattern, you

Natasha McCrea 17:22
get used to doing what you do. I would choose to question the word need.

Zandra Polard 17:29
Okay, yes, I agree. I agree.

Natasha McCrea 17:33
You know, indeed, we have to, yeah, we have to ask those questions like, do we really need to do that? What would happen if we decided to come home and take a nap and not make all dinner and fold all the clothes, you would get some rest. That's right, that's what would happen. Wow. Or

Zandra Polard 17:53
women in the second, you know, shift. So this is what you deal with a lot when you say the alpha female, the alpha female, is out there working and coming home and providing in the home the second shift. And so we're still trying to figure out how to balance that.

Natasha McCrea 18:17
The way to balance it is to give yourself the first the first hours, the first of everything. Because if your cup is not you should not be giving from your cup. To be honest with you, you should be giving from the overflow that goes into the saucer after your cup is full. So the way you balance it and harmonize it is you give yourself the first, and some people are afraid of looking selfish or being called this. And yes, it is selfish, so that you can give your best. If you don't give yourself your first, you are not giving your best. Yeah,

Zandra Polard 18:56
a good friend of mine said, as we all know, when you're on the airplane and there's a crash or something's happening with the plane, it says to put that device over your mouth first, and then you can help someone else. Yeah,

Natasha McCrea 19:12
and it gets scary sometimes, because we've been so used to the pattern. We've conditioned our family members to be so used to that we can condition our business partners to be used to certain things. And then you finally have to tell yourself and the people around you know more, and you can say it when it can be

Zandra Polard 19:30
cultural too, though, um, Natasha, some people, yeah, do believe, mostly women, that I know it's better to be selfless, to give to others before you give to yourself. And like you said, that feeling of looking bad or being a bad person because they didn't give first and they're about to pass out.

Natasha McCrea 19:57
Yeah, yeah. And. It's unfortunate, and you know, they're doing the best that they can. But the real question is going to be, do you want to live the rest of your days like that?

Zandra Polard 20:09
Right? And it would take someone to help others realize that, hey, taking care of you is okay and necessary. Do you still have the you had, like, a peer group or something like that. You mentioned it earlier? Yeah, do you still have that group? I had

Natasha McCrea 20:32
group coaching, and I paused that as I went into tech stars with Jackson McCray. And so I'm bringing back accountability sessions. Okay, so I've been, we've I've been in beta with accountability sessions, with a couple of people, where we've met and you get the hard things done, the things you wouldn't normally get done, that have sat on your calendar for, like, the last two years, not even on the didn't even make it to the calendar. And it's been amazing to watch the growth and the confidence that happens when someone goes, oh my goodness, I did that thing that I've been putting off for two years, and it was so easy. I got it done in this two hour accountability session. Yeah, and so I do that and the private coaching. So I'll keep you posted on, on when I'm having those groups, because I'm having a retreat coming up in a in a couple of months, because it's really important. Yeah, I'm running on the women who are really on the pivot, like they are, they are ready to I'm calling, I'm I really have created this main character code, because, you know, being an actress, I think of things in that perspective, yeah, like who, who's, who's your supporting cast. They're supporting cast. You're not, you're not the supporting cast. And you're acting like you are. You're acting like you know, you are not number one on the call sheet. And so my objective is to get women who have been playing in the background, been playing in the ensemble, thinking that they really want to be a main character, and they're just not. They're like, not the main character of their lives. And so I'm helping them become, get into that space of becoming the main character of your life again. And, yeah, yeah, going after your goals and your dreams and and self care is included in that, but it's also what's, what's your old dream? And all the wisdom you have, we've gotten to this place. You know, I'm 52 or about to be 52 in June. I'm not rushing it. I got a month and but what the wisdom that you have from all the things you've done? How many people you can help with that? How can you package that and monetize it? But you can't even think that way because you're so overwhelmed.

Zandra Polard 22:54
Yes. Now, speaking of acting and directing, are you? Do you have any projects coming up? Are you directing television or theater? I

Natasha McCrea 23:06
haven't direct. I directed theater like a few years ago, but I just recently my most current project is called jump the gun, and it is a short film, and so we're doing the film festival submissions right now. So we may do, we may we may put it out there as well, and we'll see in the next few months where it's going to be screened. But you can check it out on not this, not the film itself, because we're holding that close to the trailer. Yes, there is a trailer on Instagram, at jump the gun.

Zandra Polard 23:42
At jump the gun on Instagram, all right, yes, yeah, tell us about this Jackson McCray whiskey. That's one of the good things about having in person guests, because they bring

Natasha McCrea 23:58
Right, right. We would have that for you. Telling

Zandra Polard 24:01
me about the whiskey. Is it a smooth whiskey?

Natasha McCrea 24:06
I love it. It is smooth. Up. Yes, it is smooth. So my business partner and I, Sheila Jackson, during the pandemic, I did a my one woman show, and it was, you know, it was anticlimactic. It was just me and the stage manager, but it was televised all over the world, and so I wanted to celebrate. So I'm driving down in Hollywood. I see this amazing restaurant as seating outside, and I go, but my husband had already made it home, so I called my business partner. She shows up, and I had ordered it all the fashion, but we had been friends for five years and never talked about whiskey. We did the rose a yacht parties, you know, had wine tastings. And so we got into the conversation of, Why were we friends? For five years without mentioning that we both really liked whiskey. I ordered the old fashioned, and she was like, girl, you know, whiskey is in my DNA. I'm from Tennessee. So when we started thinking about it, the culture around whiskey is really male dominated. And. They don't include women in the conversation. Yeah. And so we said, Well, how about we do this? How about we disrupt this market? And that was a really bold stance, but what we ended up doing was we surveyed women who drink whiskey, and asked them what they liked best about the whiskey they drank and they wanted something sippable and smooth, caramel, smoke, vanilla and spice. It

Zandra Polard 25:23
was a little cherry. I like a little cherry. Yes, you can put that in there.

Natasha McCrea 25:28
We make a really good Manhattan. I like

Zandra Polard 25:30
to whiskey taste. Oh, you will love Jackson

Natasha McCrea 25:33
McCray. You have to get it. It's available in 46 states. E commerce, so people can go to our website, Jackson McCray, and it's MC, C, R, E, A, and order. And if you're in California, you can go to all the total wines, and they have total wine here, yeah, we just, we are licensing to go into Nevada. We haven't done that yet. Oh, we are approved at 80 of them. And we went into the 43 that are in California where our license is okay, yeah, Mm, hmm. And so we, we love it. We're disrupting the market. We got into Tech Stars. We've gotten some funding from a big liquor VC and spirits VC, and so now we're just in a position of growth and sales. You know, we're looking for that next wave of funding so that we can just go into other other markets and saturate California, which is interesting, Los Angeles is the number one market for whiskey consumption. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, I know, right. Yeah, California is number one, think it would be

Zandra Polard 26:41
wine because of wine country, right? Well, I

Natasha McCrea 26:45
don't compare. I'm not comparing the sales for wine, but when you look at Whiskey, the place where they drink the most of it is California.

Zandra Polard 26:53
Wow, that's really weird. Yeah, okay, I believe you know. You should know it's totally

Natasha McCrea 27:03
but it's been really fun. It's been really fun because it had me tapped into that area. Like, what? Why would I leave something on the table that I'm passionate about and I want to do? Like, why would I say no to myself? And so I had to give myself the opportunity to say yes, and that's making sure I'm taking care of myself. Now there have been some times like this was a different kind of business. So there were some times where, yes, I, you know, was feeling burnt out, and I just thank God that for the last 10 years, I built love CEO Institute because I had the tools of how to reframe my self care blueprint. That was the name. Love

Zandra Polard 27:45
CEO, yeah, no. Love Institute, yeah. Love Institute, love CEO Institute, oh, I was correct. Okay. Love CEO, okay,

Natasha McCrea 27:56
yeah, so I still have that. Oh,

Zandra Polard 27:58
I've played your show from 2021 a couple of times. Yeah, I've done reruns on that one. Yeah, because it was fantastic. So if anyone that is listening has missed any portion of this broadcast, or would like to see the one Natasha McRae was on before. You can always find it on Apple, Spotify, Google. It's also on my website. It's where I am.com, and hey, you get to learn more about Natasha McCrae and myself. So, yeah, this is Andre Pollard. That was Natasha McCray. Y'all, yes, get off that hamster wheel. Find your purpose and find your time for self care. Thank you for coming on, Natasha. Thank you for having me always welcome. Just let me know I sure will awesome. This is Andre Pollard, it's where I am. Is here every Saturday at 7:30am this is 91.5 jazz and more, the number one smooth jazz station in the nation. We'll be here next week. Y'all. Have a good one. Be well. Bye. You.