Grit and Grace with Tracy

We had our last minor hockey game with our son on Sunday.  It left me feeling like someone punched me in the gut.  It made me get curious and dig deep about what was really going on.   I've also had one of my kids going through endings of a job/clients and also a move with a lot of beginnings - location, school, business, everything is new.   In this episode I talk about my beggings journey, how e...

A bit of a shift in focus for this podcast, but moving forward I will be weaving in agriculture based topics and conversations.  I have been working with farmers and farm families over the last 20 years as a consultant and I know I need to start sharing more about the industry.   After the last 5 years (or so) there has been a huge shift in how people talk about farming, agriculture, food producti...

It has been a year away from the podcast and for a good part of that year, it was on the chopping block.  I wasn't sure if it still had a place in my business that aligned with my goals.  I'm happy to say that it's back!  I promised myself that on March 1st, I was bringing her back to life,..and here it is.  In this episode I talk about why I needed to take a step back, and share some lessons lear...

If you have struggled with perfectionism, feeling overwhelmed, and you freeze as you face your long to do list.  You waste more time than you would like to admit, and your are craving more order and control over the small moments of your day.   If this resonates, then this episode has been shared for you.  I have found myself freezing and not doing anything because I was raised to believe that if...

I believe we are all put into a leadership role at some point in our lives.  We all start into leadreship roles with the intention to do a good jobe and achieve something significatn.  The challenge is that as a leader, there are people you are leading that are unpredictable and dynamic.   I have been studying leadership formally and informally for many years and I have discovered that there are 3...

Have you ever got yourself into a corner in business or had a deal fall apart, and you found yourself saying 'I knew it!'? Have you stayed too long in an arrangement because your ego wanted you to stay?  When in fact your intuition was whispering for you to leave? We have been conditioned to think that we only rely on our logical brain to navigate in our businesses when in fact the best business m...

When I started in the health and wellness industry 25 years ago, things were very different.  Options and choice was limited and the access to information and resources was much harder to come by.   This episode is a celebration of the options and choices that we have.  I recently started with a company called USANA and I wanted this episode to be about celebrating the the options we have.  Celebr...

In this episode I share a lesson that I learned during some difficult times that made me take a step back and question everything.  This episode share the contrast between your vertical (spiritual) relationships and your horizontal relationships.   In the hardest of times, we are forced to dig deep and seek wisdom.  I hope that this episode serves anyone who is struggling with hope, faith, and nav...

When's the last time you said "I'm not wired that way' as you pushed up against something you just don't do? How do you defire yourself? What thougths do you have about what you do, what you have to do, and how you navigate your day? 95% of your thoughts are the same - day by day - over and over again.  How many of those thoughts are not serving you? Not good for you? Holding you back?  Keeping yo...

Are you determined to start your 2023 summer feeling excited about getting into your cute summer clothes that you only get to wear for a few months?  I know I am!  For so many years I look forrward to summer, but dread pulling out my summer clothes.  Many times I don't even wear my summer dresses because I just don't feel confident enough.  I have also reached a stage where hormones are not very c...

For years I have worked with women who have lost their sense of passion for their dreams and desires.  They have silenced the whispers of their soul as they focused on their roles of wife, mother, employee, business owner, volunteer, or whatever role we have assumed.  So what happens when the roles change?   Women over 40 often discover that there is a void that they don't know how to fill.  They...

2022 was a year filled with life lessons.   Most of the time life lessons are packaged with challenges and hard seasons.  2022 gave me plenty of opportunities to learn about myself, others, and how to stand strong in the storm.  Some listeners won't relate, and that's ok.  We are all here to learn our own lessons, and navigate our own journey.  Regardless of where you are right now, I hope you wil...

I love a brand new calendar year.  It has always been the time that I step back and evaluate what I have learned, what went right, what went wrong, and most importantly, what I want for the year ahead.   We all get 8760 hours.  Time is the one thing that we can't trade, sell, buy, or barter.  It's also something that we often squander (hello bad social media habits!).   In this episode I share wit...

If you are a mom with a busy life, you know the pressure that comes at Christmas to do it all.  When I first got married I remember people asking me - are you done your Christmas baking?  I remember thinking,...is that a requirement now that I'm married?   Over the years with 4 kids, business and hockey, I have learned to simplify my list.  That means eliminating the extras and evaluating my to-do...

When you are not feeling well, what words do you use?  I learned many years ago that the words that we use when we are not feeling well has a huge impact on how we approach health, wellness, and recovery.  In this episode I share my experience in the holistic world and how people have given away their internal wellness to external perspectives.  I talk about what I have witnessed and how I frame c...

The small things that you do on a daily basis, creates habit.  You can either have habits that support your life, or you can have habits that don't.  In this episode I talk about the power of the mind, the preparation we do, and creating a foundation that supports us when times are hard.   In this episode I talk about how to use these foundation pieces in being an athlete and a higher functioning...

I'm a podcast and audio book junkie.  I always have one or the other playing, and it drives my family crazy.   This means that I have a passion for it, and I'm always talking about the podcasts I'm listenting to.  I get asked a lot, which podcasts I recommend and which are my favorit.   So, I decided to create my top 10 list, and here it is.   I'm sure it will change over time, but right now, thes...

I have met with so many farm families over the years, and when I ask about their background, I find so many educated, ambitious women on the farm.  I ask them about their story, their dreams, what they aspired to do/be.  Many share goals and dreams that they once had, but that had gone silent over the years because the farm and family took up most of her time.  From the tone of her voice and look...

Sometimes in life, the most profound lessons are the simplest.   This week we said goodbye to a young man who never let a good time go to waste and approached all set backs with the philosophy and belief that 'it's just a part'.  I don't know why it has stirred something within me, but it's all I have thought about since the service.  I have not lived my life that way.   I have blamed myself for n...

This episode is capturing some questions I have been asking over the last few months about when to allow space (a pause - like I talked about last episode), and when to push hard and get it done to stay consistent.     When does an athlete get better results by pushing hard and working through soreness vs when does an athlete jeopardize progress by pushing hard and creating an injury?   There are...

If you are an entrepreneur you have likely needed to take a pause.   In this episode I shared the perspective I received while taking a pause and I share some of the awareness pieces I discovered during this reset.   There is a ton of wisdom to be gained when we take away numbing, distractions, and habits that are keeping us from moving forward.   I share what I learned while working on closing th...

In this episode I share my wisdom of how to get through crazy busy seasons to avoid overwhelm.  I used to dread May.  With 4 kids playing competitive softball, and also on house league - we would have 8 teams to manage and hundreds of miles per week for travel.   Living on a farm, May and June are very busy months.  I had to create a system that allowed me to get everyone to everything, with hopef...

If you are an empath, and you know it, this episode will help you with some tools to help you manage when the energy of others weighs you down.   If you don't know it, you will understand yourself a bit more.  The reactions, your body, your response.  Things will click into place for you.   If you or someone in your world is often an outsider, taking on the worlds problems on your shoulders, and p...

I have always been huge on goal setting, but over the last few years when life was uncertain and nothing felt predictable, I felt myself holding back.  It's time for us to set out goals and map our dreams out once again.  This episode is exploring why writing your goals out is so important and a free resource for you to try and map/plan out your goals and dreams.   https://tracyparker.kartra.com/p...

Over the last few months I have seen the strongest, bravest people struggle.  I noticed common threads that connected them all together that included a mindset that would not allow or accept any struggle, the denial of needing help or support, and an unhealthy focus on trying to fix things outside of their control.   This episode is about stepping back and asking - am I self-sacrificing to appear...