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Life by Design is a podcast that shares the experiences and tools to help couples align their wealth goals and reclaim their time, enabling them to experience freedom, abundance, and a life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (00:05)
Welcome to the Life by Design Podcast where Jessilyn and Brian Persson, struggling to align your financial goals or confidently invest in real estate as a couple,
Brian Persson (00:15)
That's why we created this podcast and the Riches Relationships and Real Estate Program to help you build wealth and strengthen your relationship. Visit weekendwealth.ca to take our quiz and discover your real estate investor type. Let's create the life you deserve together.
Jessilyn Persson (00:32)
In this episode we're diving into a truth that often gets overlooked. Your health is the foundation of your wealth. We'll explore how stress quietly eats away at both your bank account and your opportunities. Why longevity is one of the smartest investments you'll ever make and simple steps you can take right now to protect your energy, build confidence and align your wealth with a life you can fully enjoy. The first
Takeaway we're going to focus on is your health is the foundation of your wealth. If your body is drained, your earning power, creativity and decision making all suffer.
Brian Persson (01:11)
That is absolutely true. ⁓ Me and you have both been in that position where we just don't, you just don't want to do anything. You just don't want to, you know, you have no motivation to go anywhere, do anything, work towards any kind of goals because you're physically suffering. And when you're physically suffering and your health is just not the best that it could possibly be, what kind of energy are you going to put towards?
any kind of business or any kind of wealth or any kind of future endeavors.
Jessilyn Persson (01:44)
absolutely a great example is everyone has experienced some kind of an illness whether it be your common cold, flu, COVID, you name it, everyone has experienced it at least once in their life if not once a year, right? And if you think about where you're at in that time, you wanna lay on the couch, you want to get rest, you want...
hydrate. A lot of times you don't feel like eating. You're lucky if you're sleeping. So in that state, now that's an extreme state because you're actually physically sick but you definitely aren't working. You're lucky if you got the TV on to kind of just keep you busy between naps. put that aside and you're better. You don't have, you're over your cold, you're over your flu but over time other things start.
to take into account. Aging happens, which can shift everything in your body and things you don't even know until it's done and it impacts you in ways you can't necessarily prepare for. So if you don't take care of your health overall, it's gonna slow down your ability to create the wealth you want.
Brian Persson (03:01)
Yeah, and your wealth won't mean much if you don't have your health. Like we've done very well for ourselves, but I remember even recently, like I think it was two years ago, I had a significant hip issue. My muscles and my tendons were just not firing and moving the way that they should have. And it was causing like a significant amount of pain for me. it just takes you out. That's all you can think about. Even just trying to...
put eight hours a day towards your job is difficult because your health is so impacted by this that you literally can't get past the fact that you're in pain or you're suffering in some way and then you can't focus on anything else beyond that. it really just kind of blocks you from building anything else beyond trying to get through that pain really.
Jessilyn Persson (03:57)
yeah, you're definitely not your best self. I know I've shared before in 2019 when I experienced severe burnout from working way too much and then my body just shut down because I was not listening to my body. And I was down for two months. I couldn't leave the house. I couldn't have light. I couldn't have noise. I couldn't have motion.
And I'm laying there going, I am useless. This is useless. I can do nothing. What good was all the money I made working 50 plus hour weeks if I can't do anything with it? And so that was a really hard and eye opening lesson for me to learn back then. And now I'm very conscious of triggers, knowing that, wait, I'm working too much. I'm feeling the pain in back of my eyes, in my neck, in my back, wherever that pain sits.
when you feel pain somewhere, that is a sign that something is off. And more often than not, we push through thinking it'll go away. Or we take drugs to ease the pain, take it away, which is a band-aid. It's going to come back with a vengeance if you actually don't take care of the root cause.
Brian Persson (05:06)
Yeah, yeah, especially when it comes to like muscle related issues and like just your your regular mobility issues because mobility is is so so huge. And and I mean, health can drastically affect wealth, but it can also go the other way around. If you can build wealth, then you can also just live a healthier life because that wealth will will just buffer you from time, you'll have more time in your day to actually do things. It will buffer you in terms of
getting a massage so that you don't have to start suffering, you know, particular joint problems or particular muscle problems. You can use wealth to also build your health, but you need to start by having some health level first in order to actually be able to get to the point of building the wealth.
Jessilyn Persson (05:55)
Yeah, once you have ⁓ some wealth built up, it absolutely gives you the opportunity for ⁓ more downtime. know, you're not going to be as worried. If you can afford to pay your bills, you're not worried. Then if you got to take a day or two off just to chill out and regain your energy, you can do that without the stress of the money worries. Right. And like you said, it buys you time freedom. So again, if you have wealth, you can outsource tasks like cleaning your house or
mowing your lawn, task where that would take an extra one, two, three, four hours, possibly a week, that you now get to focus on you and things that make you feel better because you could afford to pay someone else to do those tasks.
Brian Persson (06:36)
Exactly, yeah. They go hand in hand. Wealth, you need your wealth to create your health, and you need your health to create your wealth. And without both of them together, I would find, ⁓ I would think that most people, I know we were there in the past, find it difficult to somehow balance both of them out. How do you build your wealth when you're suffering? How do you take care of your health when you don't have that freedom to do what you need to do? Yeah. It's very difficult. So you got to work on both at the same time.
Jessilyn Persson (07:04)
Absolutely. So an action step our listeners can do today is to audit your daily energy habits. Choose one upgrade this week, whether it's going to bed 30 minutes earlier, walking 20 minutes a day, or just simply drinking more water. Protect your energy like you would protect your bank account.
Brian Persson (07:21)
Yeah, and don't beat yourself up about it either. That's key. If you take on an upgrade and know life gets in the way, we all know that. Just stay consistent. Maybe it takes you a month, but if you're consistent and you can keep on it, guarantee you it will show some effects into the future.
Jessilyn Persson (07:39)
Yep, eventually it will become routine. Okay, and that rolls us into takeaway two, which is stress costs more than you think. Poor health creates financial leakage. So burnout leads to missed opportunities, medical bills and shortened careers. And as I just noted, when I had that burnout, I was completely out. So I definitely didn't work for those two months. Nevermind.
anything else and I wasn't even supporting anything in the house. So and that was all stress induced burnout.
Brian Persson (08:10)
Yeah, and not only were you not sporting anything in the house, but your physical condition actually prevented things like lights on, ⁓ any kind of heavy or sharp noises were a difficulty for you. So, ⁓ you know, maybe it would have been okay if you were just laying on your bed taking care of yourself, but like there was a spillover effect into other things. So when things like that happen,
Sometimes it's not just about you. remember like when I had my hip issue that I was talking about, I couldn't like lift things, I couldn't bend over. ⁓ Simple yard work and a whole bunch of other activities around the house were totally impossible for me. So there's a spillover effect that happens when you're under that type of stress and it really costs much more than you think.
Jessilyn Persson (09:01)
⁓ absolutely. There are impacts to the family as well. like we said, I was pretty much in bed, but that meant you had to pick up everything around the house, take care of the boys, making sure we had groceries.
It's a life.
But cooking, cleaning, you know, all those things fell to you, which means that took away your time to work on the business and making money. So there was, it was just domino effect financially for us.
Brian Persson (09:27)
Yep, yep. kind of like what I mentioned in the previous takeaway, it can go both ways, right? So if you work towards building up your wealth, that changes you as a person. You just have to do it a little bit smart. That works for you. know, most people won't take on the life that we took on with a, you
the weekends eaten up here and there and the evenings and sometimes the really, really long days. You don't have to take that on, but you do have to be aware of what you're able to take on and then just stretch your stress level a little bit every single day or every single week so that as you grow as a person and age, age, your wealth builds, your stress tolerance builds. And like, I look back at myself when I, you know, when we were younger.
And that level of heartiness in both our wealth and our ability to handle stress just wasn't there. Like we literally could not take on as much as we could take on today.
Jessilyn Persson (10:29)
Yeah, that was more of a mindset thing. We didn't know what we didn't know. So we didn't realize what we could actually take on and would still.
Brian Persson (10:35)
Exactly, we're able to take on stresses now that we would not have been able to take on in the past. And through taking on that stress, or having the muscle to take on that stress and building it up over time, we now are more immune to certain levels of stress and it doesn't ⁓ affect our health in any detrimental way.
Jessilyn Persson (10:58)
Right, what some people or even our old selves would have deemed stressful are no longer stressful. We understand the game around it, the risk, the mitigation. Now also, wealth can help reduce your stress because if you're not stressing about money, like if you don't have to worry about paying your bills, whether you can afford groceries, even if the costs go up for gas, for groceries, for utilities, they're all rising and we see it out there a lot. People are really stressed about.
the rising costs and how are they going to afford it. If you can reduce or remove that out of your life, like that's not where your stress is, that alone can just put your whole body at ease. There's no stress there for you. Sure, you might have other stresses as you're taking on risk or wealth building, but it's not the same.
Brian Persson (11:48)
It, it, ⁓ it, like I said, it goes both ways, right? You need to, you need to balance it out between building that wealth and like taking on a particular level of stress, but also using that wealth to manage a particular level of stress. And if you can manage to bring those up at the same time, then you're going to be doing very, very well.
Jessilyn Persson (12:08)
Absolutely, and I know over the last few years both you and I have taken on different ways to manage stress. And for me it was learning a bit of meditation and journaling and how to journal in a way that worked for me because don't get me wrong, I've tried journaling for well over a decade and I can go back to my notes and see the months of blank pages.
And then we're at journal, journal, journal. But then I had to shift what journaling meant and the way I journaled. That is when I realized it helped reduce my stress, calm my mind, ease it, and led to just an easier way of life.
Brian Persson (12:50)
Yeah, and for me, I mean, I journal too. I have the blank pages like you have the blank pages for sure. think everybody does at some point. But ⁓ the way to handle stress for me wasn't to actually do less. I like being busy. I like doing things. But it was removing particular activities out of my day that were indirectly causing stress. So things like social media. Too much social media, it just...
It rewires your brain and your brain is just no longer able to handle the health and the wealth inside of your own body, right? Because now your body is short-wired. It's basically short-circuited into a different way of being. so I reduce social media as much as I can. Not that I'm not on it entirely, but too much of it is definitely a problem for sure.
Jessilyn Persson (13:43)
⁓ that's a really good point. I reduce social media, I think a little bit more by accident because I just got busy with some other things during the day and didn't really touch it for like sometimes a week or two on end. And then I'd go in and peek and I realized when I look back and think on it, it's like, wait, I actually felt much better not being on it daily. And just this like, embodying data and stuff that
some of it isn't even true. So my mind doesn't need to see it and I definitely didn't miss it. Now I do check in like you do every once in a while and I post a few things but I definitely don't think I would miss it if I was meant to do it once a week as opposed to like oh I don't even know how many times a day I used to check it.
Brian Persson (14:30)
Yeah, yeah. I think if you're very sensitive to your health, if you really get in tune with your health, especially for me nowadays, like the instant I pick up my phone and I start looking at any social media platform, I can feel the rewiring in my brain click in almost instantly. And as soon as I feel that, I'm like, yep, this has got a clock on it. I'm pressing the button and I am off in five or 10 minutes because otherwise this is just gonna like...
make my brain go in a direction I do not want to go. And then that's just going to kick off the whole rest of the day when it comes to your health. Like you might feel less motivated to work out. You might feel less motivated to cook a healthy supper. Whatever impact that has into the future is going to be there if you're not in tune with your health.
Jessilyn Persson (15:17)
Yeah, and listen to your body. If you pick up your phone and you turn on, I don't know, one of the social media apps, and if before you even look at it, you just open the app and you actually like close your eyes and pause, your body's gonna tell you right away. If it's like suddenly tight, intense, maybe you should just put that phone down. I just don't think your body wants to see it. If it's not, that's okay. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's sometimes I go on there and I look at really funny videos that my sister sends me and that's good for a great laugh. I know sometimes we're like, oh, I'm so stressed.
I just need a good laugh. I know exactly where to go in my inbox from my sister and find some crazy weird things. ⁓ And that's kind of what I use it for. So, yeah, check into your body and it will tell you if this is something you really need right now. So an action step ⁓ for this one is build a stress release system, whether it's exercise, journaling or breathing techniques, schedule it into your week the same way you would a meeting with a client. Yeah.
Brian Persson (16:13)
schedule schedule schedule
Jessilyn Persson (16:16)
And the third takeaway we're going to talk about is invest in longevity, not just assets. So wealth without health isn't freedom, it's a burden. The best ROI is when your financial choices support a life you can fully live.
Brian Persson (16:34)
Yeah, and this comes down to a topic we've probably touched on in many other podcasts, and that is choose your heart, right? You can choose to take care of your wealth and your health right now today so that you have the freedom in the future. If it comes to your health, do you want to choose an exercise that not everybody enjoys, and very often it's hard.
Or do you want to end up going to the doctor all the time when you're older because your joints are sore and your health is not there? Both are going to be hard. So choose which one is hard.
Jessilyn Persson (17:11)
Yep, giving up your health to build your wealth is not gonna give you the end goal you want. Because your health at some point will start to deteriorate. That is a fact. It's called aging. And if you've spent 30 years because you wanted to build your wealth and never took care of your health, well you're gonna spend those next 30 years just on your health and not necessarily in a good way. Like you said, it could be...
medication, lots of medical visits, could be a lot of pain, wheelchair, canes, like whatever it is you need and it's not going to be what you expect if you've given up everything to build your wealth.
Brian Persson (17:51)
Exactly. Yeah. I'm listening to a podcast right now that talks about how your health in your forties to your fifties basically decreases by 10 % per decade after that. So if you have a particular level of mobility into like into your fifties, it'll decrease by 10 % throughout your fifties, 10 % throughout your sixties, seventies. So it's very important for you to start early and build up that health and wealth as we all know, goes the opposite way.
it increases in value and over time. So you want to start that early so that your health is at the top level that it can be coming into older age and that your wealth is at the top level. It can be coming into older age because they're both going to be the most highest performing things if you start them earlier.
Jessilyn Persson (18:39)
Yep, and you're want to use some of your wealth when you're younger to invest in your health meaning Pay that extra money to make sure you're going to the dentist at least once a year the eye doctor every couple years Because those things can slowly degrade and if you're waiting too long by time you get there It can take way longer to correct it if it's even correctable expenses like physio massage, whatever that looks like
Those are well worth the investment if it's helping you with your overall health.
Brian Persson (19:14)
Yeah, we know lots of people who don't do that and it would definitely help them out. And it's unfortunate because they have the money, they have the wealth and they won't spend it on their health. then, you know, ultimately, like I was saying earlier, it's gonna, you're gonna have a slow decline throughout your life. But you can raise the bar on where that decline starts and make a healthier future for yourself when you're older.
Jessilyn Persson (19:43)
And you say slow decline, but if you let it go long enough, that slow decline is actually going to be a much quicker. Yeah, so take care of yourself. An action step to align is to align your spending and investing with long term well-being. So, for example, budget for healthier food, fitness or wellness experiences, just like you budget for real estate or investments. When health and wealth work together, you create true freedom, freedom to live longer.
Brian Persson (19:49)
Accelerate yeah,
Jessilyn Persson (20:12)
enjoy more and design a life you worked so hard to build. The most important takeaway from what we discussed today, I think mine would be around the stress costs more than you think just because I've experienced the burnout of too much stress and how it impacted my physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, you name it, it hit it. you, and unfortunately, I think I needed that to realize it because I was just going so hard for so long.
⁓ But if we can help any of our audience realize that now before they get hit hard, that's a win.
Brian Persson (20:52)
My takeaway is just how wealth builds confidence. The actions you have to take to build your wealth, the actions you have to take to keep your health, ⁓ both of those just provide you with more confidence into the future. I can look back at my life and say, would I really truly be the person I was today if I didn't try to increase my wealth, keep my health, and do all the things that put those two together?
I can honestly say I would not be that person.
Jessilyn Persson (21:25)
Thanks so much for tuning in. Listen for more real estate investing stories in the next episode of the Life by Design podcast.
Brian Persson (21:32)
Before you go, don't forget to visit WeekendWealth.ca to take our quiz and discover what type of real estate investor you are. We release new episodes every two weeks, so be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (21:50)
Thanks again for listening. It's been a pleasure being with you today.