Ready for Beyond

In this Boredom episode of Ready for Beyond, Gina Hudel explores a surprising idea: what if boredom is not something to escape, but an invitation to reconnect with yourself? She sits down with Dave Inglis, speaker, author, and advocate for what he calls strategic solitude, the intentional practice of creating space to reflect, recalibrate, and reconnect with what matters most.

Drawing on his own experiences as a business leader, husband, father, and coach, Dave shares how solitude became a transformative practice after a difficult personal chapter and how it has evolved into a regular rhythm that supports both personal growth and leadership. Rather than filling every quiet moment with distractions, Dave makes the case for creating intentional pauses that allow clarity and insight to emerge.

Together, Gina and Dave discuss:

00:01:25 — Boredom Is a Signal
 Dave explains why boredom often points to something missing beneath the surface rather than simply a lack of activity.

00:03:10 — The Difference Between Distraction and Reconnection
 A discussion about how we often soothe boredom with digital distractions instead of creating space to reconnect with ourselves.

00:04:40 — What Is Strategic Solitude?
 Dave shares how strategic solitude became a personal practice and why intentional time alone creates clarity and alignment.

00:07:50 — Learning From Regret
 Exploring how solitude helps us process regret, strengthen our identity, and continue growing through life's challenges.

00:14:45 — Planning the Next 12 Weeks
 Dave explains how he uses solitude to create a focused roadmap for the next three months instead of reacting to circumstances.

00:17:30 — The Conversations That Matter Most
 Why the insights that emerge in solitude often reveal important conversations we've been avoiding.

00:22:15 — Everyday Practices for Solitude and Recovery
 Practical tools, including HeartMath and daily recovery moments, that help build nervous system resilience and self-awareness.

00:29:00 — Creating Space for What Matters
 Dave describes how protecting time in his weekly schedule helps him transition well, care for life's responsibilities, and stay connected to what matters most.

He shares how regular periods of solitude help him return to his family, work, and relationships with greater alignment and purpose. His perspective offers a reminder that growth does not always come from doing more. Sometimes it comes from creating enough space to hear what has been waiting beneath the noise all along.

A thoughtful conversation about reflection, resilience, leadership, and the courage to spend time with yourself.

⭐ About: Dave Inglis

Over the last 10 years, Dave has been helping ambitious leaders do the inner work to build great businesses, teams, and families. He started his career as a driven entrepreneur and crashed into a personal crisis when his business just about swallowed his personal life whole. When his partner left him, he realized something massive had to change. That was the beginning of his adventure into meaningful leadership.

Now, Dave’s clients say he’s part advisor, part sage, and that’s what makes his coaching so impactful. He loves turning knowledge into lived experiences and wisdom that leaders can put into action, because skills and systems are nothing without a deeper connection to who we are and what we care about.

He has built and grown businesses. He taught entrepreneurship and innovation at universities and colleges across Canada, has been a trusted advisor and coach to organizations such as the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Globe & Mail, along with some of Canada's fastest-growing startups, and he has been trained as a professional couples coach. Regardless of the context or situation, Dave has a knack for leveraging his eclectic experience to help others adapt and thrive through their most critical moments.

Many people have a direction they think they want to go, yet somewhere along the way, got off course by just a bit…and end up becoming someone nearly unrecognizable to themselves. This is why creating space to be alone and begin again is at the crux of Dave’s work in Strategic Solitude experiences, where leaders re-orient to their authentic selves. 

Dave says, “It’s my honor to support leaders with families and purposeful priorities as they take an intentional and strategic approach to the intersection of life and business through their own triple bottom line – their health, wealth, and relationships.”

Resources discussed in this episode:

⭐ About the Host: Gina Hudel

I’m Gina Hudel, a transformation leader who has worked with teams in more than 40 countries. Over the years, my career has taken me across sectors and communities, supporting people and organizations as they navigate change, make thoughtful decisions, and move forward with clarity and purpose.

I’m also deeply committed to volunteer leadership and community work, which keep me grounded in what matters most: people, connection, and contribution. Whether the setting is global or local, my focus is the same — creating space for people to find their footing, focus on what matters, and make steady, sustainable progress.

Ready for Beyond brings that perspective to the mic. These conversations are grounded and human, shaped by a reminder I hold close: the future matters, but so does today. Each episode offers a moment to pause, reflect, and take the next step with confidence and intention, while staying present to the day you’re in.

⭐ What Is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next — and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Through candid conversations and practical tools, host Gina Hudel helps listeners move forward with clarity and courage, while still making space to enjoy the day they’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to community impact, the show explores how people make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now. Whether you’re leading a team, rethinking success, or opening the door to something new, this is a space to learn, reflect, and feel supported along the way.

Let’s go beyond.

Contact Gina Hudel: 

Contact Dave Inglis:

Creators and Guests

Host
Gina Hudel
Gina Hudel is a global transformation and governance leader, operating in Kitchener-Waterloo in Waterloo Region along Canada's Innovation Corridor. She is passionate about supporting businesses, institutions & community growth. Whether helping a board navigate transformation, an entrepreneur flourish, a non-profit group evolve, or students master new concepts, she takes a systematic, collaborative approach to her work. Gina’s focus is on sustainable results and meaningful impact.
DI
Guest
Dave Inglis

What is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next—and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Host Gina Hudel shares real conversations and practical tools to help you move forward with clarity, courage, and a little more ease—while still making space to enjoy the day you’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to social impact, this show is for people ready to make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now.

Whether you're leading a team, rethinking success, or simply opening the door to something new—you’re in the right place.

Let’s go beyond.

Gina Huddel: [00:00:08] I'm Gina Huddel, and welcome to Ready for Beyond. Ready for Beyond explores how we move forward in a world that's changing fast from AI to global dynamics. It looks at how the lives we build lead us to shape our future. We'll examine growth and personal fulfillment with practical takeaways and candid conversations that open the door to possibility. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss any episode of this journey. Let's go beyond. Welcome to Ready for Beyond. I'm Gina Huddel, transformation and governance leader, community builder, and your host. Today's theme is boredom. Not something to avoid, but a signal that something may no longer fit, or an opportunity for brainstorming. My guest is Dave Inglis, professionally a person who speaks about strategic solitude, creating space to reflect and reconnect with what matters. Dave, welcome to Ready for Beyond.

Dave Inglis: [00:01:23] Oh, well, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to hang out with you today.

Gina Huddel: [00:01:27] Hey, Dave, when you speak of boredom, you may look at it one way. Other people might look at it another way. From your take, when people say they're bored, what do you sense is really going on?

Dave Inglis: [00:01:41] Yeah. So you know what? It's an interesting question for me because I have a five year old right now who regularly lets me know that he's bored. And if I answer the question through his little lens, it's, I think, a search for something to satiate a desire to be stimulated, right? Or looking for something that allows us to recognize ourselves doing something right. And a lot of times the things that keep us highly engaged are the very things that reinforce our sense of self. And I think when we're bored, it's a subtle way of us saying, I don't have those things around me, and I'm not sure how to recreate that otherwise. So I think that's true. If it's been a five year old who is bored and doesn't have that same level of stimulation to soothe themselves or to find that place they love to be in. And same for us sometimes too, as adults, but the whole conversation around boredom is quite an interesting one to me, especially over the last 5 or 7 years, where I think a very common pathway that a lot of us manage our boredom is through being distracted and engaging ourselves and a lot of things that when we look back on the way we're spending our attention, instead of actually embracing solitude for what it could be, we're kind of consuming the junk food equivalent in that time by consuming things like Instagram, etc. others, right? So that's my thoughts on boredom as it is.

Gina Huddel: [00:03:08] You talk about how we consume junk food rather than what else we might do during that boredom. What do you mean by the junk food? I have an idea of how I waste my time.

Dave Inglis: [00:03:23] Yeah. I mean, I think they're super food and junk food equivalent when it comes to the way that we invest in our health, the way that we invest in our relationships, the way that we build our work. And solitude and boredom very much is in relationship to self, right? And so when I think about how we manage our boredom, I just think that a lot of us are spending time or trying to satiate that discomfort, doing things that aren't actually contributing to the overall well-being, to ourselves and our sense of alignment and the clarity that we have, we distract ourselves from it. So the junk food is really just speaking to the fact that it satiates like the discomfort and the boredom that we have in the short term, but it's not really laying down good building blocks and fundamentals for something bigger and further, which I think is a fair parallel with food too, and the quality that we consume. And my thesis is, strategic solitude, actually learning to embrace the power and the medicinal properties of solitude is a very accessible thing for all of us. And a wonderful alternative to that junk food equivalent.

Gina Huddel: [00:04:30] Would you tell us more about strategic solitude? Certainly two words that we see you put together. Lots of other people haven't put that together before. Can you give us some history of how you came up with that label and what you mean by strategic solitude?

Dave Inglis: [00:04:43] Yeah, sure. So I mean, professionally, I do a ton of work at the intersection of businesses and families. I mean, even my last book was called Chief Family Officer, which is a fun way of combining these two worlds with the nomenclature we use, right? Our personal world, our personal development, and that lovely place called business or our career as an outlet for our leadership development. And there's so many great tools that we use in that context where we're playing to win with the team, and we have a certain thing we want to go and accomplish. We use strategic planning all the time. And for me, I've spent many years doing corporate offsites, doing strategic planning for business plans, and new product development. And I would often ask these leaders over dinner, when was the last time you spent this much time, energy, and money working on your most important enterprise: yourself, your family, and thinking through that? And for me, admittedly, I didn't come to this. I wish I could say I came to it with this just being the idea that I wanted to start with. And it was my starting line. But truthfully, I started using this space on my own to try and reconcile some of the biggest challenges that I was facing in the early part of my career as my partner left me that space. I remember going away to Hawaii by myself for 4 or 5 days. Really was the first time I ever just hung out with myself for over 48 hours without the voices of anybody else around. And it was in that space that I started to recognize that it was familiar, in that the clarity that came from these strategic planning sessions that I would often do with teams was absolutely there, but it was done in solitude.

Dave Inglis: [00:06:14] It was me all on my own. And once I was able to actually step away from the world that I was in and allow myself to actually have the solitude that allowed my subconscious narratives to be able to loosen a little bit. I was able to get really clear and aligned on where I wanted to go from there. And so what started as a practice for myself, that was very much like recovery in nature and trying to fix and solve a dilemma that I was in has now become a deep practice of mine that I do every 3 or 4 months to really proactively manage the big parts of my life, my family, my health, my relationship with spirit, and with myself and the work that I'm doing and bringing to this world. So it's become a real foundational part of how I maintain the alignment that I have and maintain the excitement and the zest for life that I have. I mean, solitude doesn't have to be boring. I think that's often a misunderstanding. When I say strategic solitude, like part of that is also having enough space in your life to be able to allow for nervous system expansion through aliveness. So when I go on solitude, it's mixing and creating days and experiences for myself where I can be in nature, I can go fishing, I can go and do the things that I love, be it ride a mountain bike through the woods on my own, or take myself out for a lovely lunch. But in that space and in that solitude, really bringing in some good intention so that I can come out of that a better person.

Gina Huddel: [00:07:42] So when we look at strategic solitude then, Dave, it may have started reactively, but you see it as a full circle. It can be reactive, proactive, and continue on.

Dave Inglis: [00:07:53] Yeah. I mean, for me, it's a practice, right? It's really the way you get to this space for different reasons. But when I think about solitude, I mean, fundamentally, all of us, we are going to experience regret in our life. And in this day and age, one of my favorite poets, David White, jokingly refers to regret as something that we espouse that we shouldn't have. Right? Like you only live once, have no regrets. But truthfully, we all do have regrets. And solitude is a really great place to be able to catch up with ourselves where we can actually process our regret maturely. Because our regret, when it's integrated, really strengthens our identity. And for me, that's the game that I'm playing over all of these years, is using my business and my family as a vehicle that's going to challenge me to become a better person. And in the absence of that space, exhaustion locks your identity in place, right? So being able to have some space to be able to actually experience an environment where you can allow your nervous system to recalibrate the emotional myths that we carry with ourselves and for clarity to emerge.

Dave Inglis: [00:09:03] I mean, this is in that space, the time where our external threat cues can start to quiet down, and we can allow ourselves to go into a deeper place of processing for greater emotional flexibility and allowing ourselves to be able to ultimately unbind our identity and continue to advance our growth. So for somebody who is very spiritual, like myself and for anybody listening, when I say spiritual, all that means to me is I have a very deep inclination towards growth. For anybody who has a deep inclination towards growth and is spiritual, having a practice that is oriented around solitude is critical to really be able to enable the growth that we're committed to. So I think whether or not you want to be brought to solitude through pain like I was originally, or doing it proactively, both cases and both pathways, solitude and silence can be used as a really great inflection point to help us go through that growth. That's been my experience of it. Does that make sense to you?

Gina Huddel: [00:10:02] Absolutely makes sense to me. And I'm looking at this as, as you say, the circle of life, the practice of solitude. And I'm thinking of the different roles that we play. You touched upon the fact that you're a parent as well as a business person and more and so on. All of our listeners wear multiple hats.

Dave Inglis: [00:10:24] As we live and lead in these different areas, like be it family or otherwise. Is there a role that that strategic place plays in involving others to be able to do that? We know in business it does for sure, and in families it definitely does too. Just earlier today, I was setting up a family base camp with a lovely couple. We go away every summer together for 2 or 3 days, and I lead them through a really deep and meaningful experience that's available to them, but it's not something their kids come to. Right now, they're really focused on building that as a practice that they can trust themselves and they eventually, through the commitment of that, can enroll the kids into that over time. That's a very personal choice. And there's no perfect way of doing that. But what I will say is I think you have to be able to be comfortable and to feel the impact of solitude on yourself personally before you start to bring it to more complex environments. Fundamentally, if we think about what's happening when somebody is uncomfortable being bored, often when I think about somebody saying I'm bored, it means that they're not enjoying the current state that they're in. They don't want to be bored. But fundamentally, I think what's happening there physiologically is the nervous system is in a fight. The nervous system is incoherent right now. The sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system are working against each other, and they're imbalanced. And fundamentally, this is why I suggest starting with solitude on our own. Like it's really important that we can learn how to settle into solitude on our own, where we can actually get into a state of heart coherence, where we can actually find ourselves in a slightly parasympathetic state where we can be really calm and comfortable being on our own.

Dave Inglis: [00:12:03] If we can't do that, it is not actually accomplishing the goal of solitude. When we bring that to other people, we want the environment to feel safe for somebody else to be able to have a conversation that otherwise isn't available day to day. It's the same reason why we go away on our own is to be able to create enough space and to dial down the external threat cues that we're always predicting, to be able to actually have more space for a deeper conversation with ourselves, a real conversation. And so just having a retreat doesn't create that space. How somebody feels when they're around you, when they're in that space is going to be the key ingredient to whether or not they choose to actually use the space that you've created, to have the conversations that are going to bring what you're doing to where it needs to go to have an honest contact point with reality and the truth. So I think it's really great, and the instinct to want to bring it to other areas that I see a lot of business leaders have is wonderful, and I admire it. And there are levels to this work, unless you can actually go away and do that on your own. I think that it is just not the right step. It's focusing on the third step, not the first step, if you know what I mean.

Gina Huddel: [00:13:09] Yeah, sure. Is there something you have to do to get ready for the first step?

Dave Inglis: [00:13:15] Pick a date in a place that you actually get really excited about. I mean, like I said, with solitude. And I think so many people are afraid of it. Like anybody I've talked to or shared some of the really wonderful strategic solitude experiences I've been on, often their reaction is either, 'oh my gosh, I would love to have that time and space', or 'I would never fucking go away on my own because I don't want to have to face what's there'. And so I think just actually giving yourself an opportunity to have a positive experience on your own is a real gift. So, build something that's exciting. Like I said, when I go and have these days, I don't just put myself and lock myself into a room. And there are things like dark room therapy that are wonderful, but that's a whole different thing. I think that in this particular case, give yourself a day where you can build it just for yourself, that's oriented around joy and allow yourself to be surprised on what comes to you when you're in that space. I mean, a question that I would leave every single listener with here is if you removed every single voice from your head and from your life for 48 hours, podcasts, your parents, your kids, what do you think would surface? But the first step to that is to build a day and experience that's exciting enough to bring yourself there, to follow through on that curiosity.

Gina Huddel: [00:14:32] And during the day, is there a way that you can make sure that you're making the most of it, or is that in itself too confining to try to give yourself guardrails or signposts? Are we just going to come back and see what happened?

Dave Inglis: [00:14:48] Yeah. There's lots of different ways that this works beautifully, and how we experience or see the evidence of it. I think there's a couple of different ways that you can see this. For me, the first one, and it was funny, back in the beginning of March, I went on one of my strategic solitude retreats over to Mallorca, which is a beautiful island just off of the coast where we live here in the Mediterranean. And I did some hiking for 3 or 4 days all on my own. One of the parents that I bumped into at the airport had said to me, "What are you going to bring back for your kids?" And I jokingly just said, "a battered dad". And I think fundamentally that is the best evidence of this working is can we actually go into strategic solitude undefended enough where we allow the experience to change us? I've come home from these experiences with some really honest areas of ownership that I've chosen to be able to take when I step away from my family and I have the ability to look at myself more honestly. And so I think that the greatest measure of this is: do we come back better people and not in our own opinions? Like, do the people we love reflect that back to us? Practically speaking, you're also talking about, well, it's nice to have an impact like that. We also have shit to do to like, we're talking about very busy people with lots of responsibility and a lot of pressure. And so one of the really great things that I always come out from my strategic solitude with is a 12 week year map.

Dave Inglis: [00:16:15] I map out my next 3 or 4 months in great detail. I don't build out a one or 2 or 3 year plan. My wife and I will go away regularly throughout the year and we'll dream a little bit. We'll look at future horizons and those types of conversations. But in strategic solitude, I often want to just make sure that I'm really clear, that I'm looking at my health, my wealth, and my relationships. Which of those matter most over the next 10 to 12 weeks? And am I designing my life before my meetings? Like, am I scheduling my calendar and my space? Am I having the conversations with the people that I love to be able to make sure all that's possible and that they're covered too when I go and pursue the things that I want to go and do. Like I often leave my strategic solitude with 3 or 4 little pieces of paper. That is my game plan going forward. And included in that is a series of conversations that I want to have after that strategic solitude, to make sure that I'm aligned with the people that I love and that we're actually going into this eyes wide open. So that's an example, I think, just a little bit more tactfully, right around like, what do I actually come out of this with? And for some people, that's a really nice thing. You can hand off to an executive assistant to be able to get some help or a virtual assistant for others. It just becomes the thing that you reference inside of your own practice on your own, right? It looks different for different people, but that's a really good output.

Dave Inglis: [00:17:30] And then I would say, if you really want to squeeze the juice out of it, I should be able to walk out of that experience with one or two conversations that I know that I maybe have been avoiding over the last little bit that I want to have. So that for me is always a really good marker of my humility and my humanity in that space, is, can I be willing to come out of that being changed by this space and allowing myself to recognize a conversation that's important that I'm perhaps afraid of being able to have? And if I can come out of that time and time again, I do this three times a year. I encourage leaders to do it 3 or 4 times a year as a part of their personal practice. And many people add more time to do business planning in conjunction with this. But if you do this over time, you start to build a lot of momentum and build a lot of adaptability. And I think it allows ourselves to process the regret that we have in life really maturely, which means that it should change how we show up in the future. And that to me is, at the end of the day, there's a short term, did I do this right? But long term, like, can I look back and be really happy with the eulogy that I effectively have written for myself based on how I've lived.

Gina Huddel: [00:18:41] And you have been doing this for a while. When folks are getting ready and they listen to a podcast like this, or they have the time with you and they're about to go in, and then they come back and they didn't feel it to be quite as rewarding. Do you have any feedback for that, or do you have any questions that you ask for someone to say while you're away? Did you?

Dave Inglis: [00:19:06] I think where that ultimately comes down to is, if you got to do the work before the work. If you're a busy person who fundamentally needs this, it means that there's probably a thousand things that could come in and give you a reason not to. So know that, don't ignore that and then build something to support that for yourself. So for me, building the time to go away is one thing. Building the wall around myself so I can insulate myself to be able to go is where the hard work really goes into it. Right? So I think those are some practical things there, but admittedly, I can't think of a single experience in solitude that I've come back to where I did not recognize the impact that it had on me. And I think genuinely, it might not always be intellectual breakthroughs or insights or big decisions that I make. What it is, is a feeling of returning to a feeling of being able to be on my own, being coherent, being connected to something bigger than myself, and being able to recalibrate my perspective, to feel peaceful, to be able to feel really clear on where I am. And so like solitude, whether it's done by moving your body or meditating, there's so many different vehicles for exercising solitude and what it looks like. But having done this now for well over ten years, multiple times a year, I can tell you that it always leaves me feeling different.

Dave Inglis: [00:20:28] And I think that's a great intention to go into solitude with, we do it to create a feeling for ourselves, right? And anything we get on top of that is extra. Is gravy. Sure, is it nice to have some worksheets that give us some game plans going forward? Absolutely. It's lovely. But I think it's easy to overlook the profound impact of actually just allowing your nervous system to settle in. Because in my experience, truth cannot ripen under constant evaluation. And so solitude where we can be safe with ourselves is a prerequisite for truth to come forward. And sometimes, if we have a hard time facing that truth, the likely reality is, it's likely been a truth or something that you need to look at that you haven't for a very long time. And that's okay. Right. That's absolutely okay. But that's a part of that process. And that's why I talk about biology a lot in this, because I think the nervous system really does tighten itself up underneath that pressure and this space. It's so much about actually loosening the grip of our nervous system to then allow something to come through. And we live in a pretty intense world right now, where I think our starting spot for most people is nowhere near as regulated as it ought to be in order to be able to be in good contact with their truth.

Gina Huddel: [00:21:47] We need to make it through those three months to get to the next moment of strategic solitude. And that informs the three months that are in between on a daily basis, on a weekly basis. Any tips for how people can recalibrate themselves to the priorities and the missions that they set for themselves when they came back, or those aha moments they promised to look to address. Is this something that you suggest they have a daily discipline on, or they customize that for themselves?

Dave Inglis: [00:22:19] I'd say it's a good question you ask because you're right. Most of what we've talked about so far over the last 20 minutes or so has been strategic solitude, or solitude in the context of, hey, every 3 or 4 months. Right? But the experience of solitude and the medicinal properties, if I could describe it like that from it, are not exclusive to a practice that is prolonged like that. Most people don't really have the luxury of being able to get away for two days on their own or three days on their own because of all the pressures that they have. Like it's not easy. So a daily practice, absolutely. One of the things that I've seen, there's lots of different ways that I could answer your question based on my experience or what I've seen others do really well. But one of the things that's really been exciting for me over the last six months, we have a group of about 12 women who are all business owners, who are doing a lot of great work together around being more undefended. And in that work, we've been doing a lot of nervous system entrainment through a really great product called Heartmath.

Dave Inglis: [00:23:23] And as far as a practice to do every single day, this practice has totally become a micro solitude moment for all of us. Heartmath is really neat because using the technology, they used to have a lot of interesting heart rate variability sensors that they would use. But now you can use your phones really easily, and it's about $100 a year. And you can actually, in real time, do biofeedback to evaluate your heart coherence. And so for me, same thing with meditation, all of those practices are great, but what is the goal of them? Like most people end up taking these recovery practices like meditation or journaling, and it becomes another sympathetic nervous system activation point where it just becomes a task less something they have to go and do, instead of actually allowing the practice itself to create the state that it was designed for. So Heartmath is really interesting because it allows me to see in real time, am I actually able to breathe and move myself back into a state of coherence where my heart and my brain are actually aligned and actually be able to see the data around that. So for me, if anybody's listening to this and you don't have a ton of time and you do want to actually accomplish the nervous system impacts that solitude does actually afford us.

Dave Inglis: [00:24:33] This is something that we can be training every single day. And for me, I decorate my day with little moments of recovery three, four, five times in transition zones. And these are the great places to be able to kind of come back to center. And I just share Heartmath specifically because I've just noticed the huge impact that these women have had from doing such a consistent practice, and subsequently, how much this actually translates to them having more capacity to be able to deal with, whether it's the boredom in their life, because as parents, sometimes that's one of the things we don't talk about, is you get bored when you have a big business and kids who are just doing crayons on the ground, and we have to settle into a different environment, or being able to manage the chaos of everything, like having that capacity goes a long way. And solitude, again, can be a place that we can go and practically build that. So that's what I would share, something really practical hopefully I can share with you and your listeners.

Gina Huddel: [00:25:26] Well, this is awesome. We'll be sure to link to that in the speaking notes. Thank you for that. You are, Dave, one of these people who is very much strategic about taking care of yourself. But I think you're also taking care of a lot of other people. It's a busy day. I know that you work hard to have balance and you use different tools and technologies. Some of them have lots of history with meditation and now with the technology at hand, but it's the real world, and we got to get groceries. We got to make sure that the bills are paid. It is an awful lot. Can I ask you personally, as an individual living in this real world, where theoretical and practical sometimes can be a real challenge? How is it that you unwind and reset after a long week?

Dave Inglis: [00:26:17] I'm pretty committed to this. So for me, my way of transitioning into a very different state in my week on Fridays is I just quite simply have a rule where I do not take meetings on Fridays. There's something really interesting. I have a sister in law who is a paramedic and her husband is a firefighter, and they have very unique work schedules. For my brother in law, he worked seven days a month, and they're 24 hour shifts, don't get me wrong. But what's really interesting is, he has all of these weekdays that are open where everybody else is working to be able to go and get those things done. And I think for most of us, just speaking very practically, myself included, if you go and drop your kids off at school in the morning, you go to work all day, you come home, you pick them up. God knows you come back to work to wrap up a couple of things, because in Canada, you pick up your kids at 3:00. Right? And now all of a sudden, you're rushed into the evening like there's so much going on that we actually don't have the space to take care of life, to feel like we can actually fold our clothes, to be able to make a good meal, to be able to clean the room that we were just in, to be able to call our moms to be able to do the little things that actually we never have time for.

Dave Inglis: [00:27:30] And I hear that in the way that my brother in law really relishes this time that they have based on their schedules, where most people are working, they can have a little pocket of time where the kids aren't home. Because as much as we would like to think when we're not working, we can relax if we have kids. Those who do know, it's just full on all the time. And so what often happens is, is the way that people transition into the weekend, and I'm not exempt from this, I've been here and do this at times. It's the junk food equivalent. It's like, great, let's order a pizza and let's open up a couple bottles of wine and transition in and forget it. Instead of what I've now learned to do, which is this is a critical moment in my week, how I transition and how I end. My week is all about how I begin my weekend. And now on Fridays, I've made sure to make sure that I have that day that my brother in law has all the time. I've set it up where I limit myself to not take meetings so I can finish up work stuff, but I can also have the space to be able to take care of my life.

Dave Inglis: [00:28:28] I have to submit paperwork this week to be able to renew my disability insurance as a really good example. Doing that late at night when my kids are around like that is not actually recovery. But if I don't have space in my day to actually take care of life, then it's always weaving itself into the cracks. And the cracks are where I could be able to have those moments of connection. And so I think for me, that's been a really important strategy. And I recognize that's a privilege of being self-employed and a choice that I can make. And that is precisely why I chose the path in life that I have is so that I have the ability to have autonomy in those areas, because this matters to me. So that's how I do it. In addition to that, quite honestly, when my kids get off to school at 5:00, usually our friends do too, and we have a nice cold beer here down outside on the patio, the kids play in the playground and that is always a lovely, fun way, especially when the sun is out just to transition into the weekend. And of course, turning the phone off is also a lovely way of making sure that we just make that good shift too.

Gina Huddel: [00:29:28] Very thought provoking my good friend. Very thought provoking for the real world, and I appreciate your candor there. We all live in that real world. Much to take away, much to ponder. We will put speaking notes in for references that were made to other resources. I thank you again, Dave, for this brilliant conversation, always inspiring. And I'd like to thank our listeners for joining us on Ready for Beyond. Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram. And until next time, stay curious, keep moving forward, and stay Ready for Beyond.