Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blueprint brought to you by Brilliant Pathways. I'm your host, Manny Tejeda. In this forward thinking podcast, we explore the evolving challenges and opportunities in preparing students for college and career success, offering expert insights, actionable strategies, and real life stories to help listeners better support young people as they draw their future.
Welcome to another episode of the Blueprint where we explore the pathways, skills and stories that help young people prepare for college, career and life. Today's guest is Selena, the founder of Waverider Wellness. She's a certified nutritionist, personal trainer, yoga and Pilates instructor, and a life coach. She's built a career around helping women feel stronger, energized, and deeply at home in their bodies.
Lina's story is especially powerful because it blends her personal experience, entrepreneurship, and then turning that into service.
We're excited to hear how she turned her story into a calling and what she wants students to know about finding their own path. Lyna, we're so excited to have you here and welcome to the Blueprint.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: That's awesome.
Well, at Brilliant Pathways, we love emphasizing the importance of sharing your pathway story because we know there's something in your story that can resonate with one of our listeners. So can you walk us through your story from all the way from Vermont to California to now in beautiful Florida, what are the moments that shaped you as a person and as a professional that you've become?
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's such a good one. There's a lot to my story, so I'm going to try to keep this succinct, but I grew up in Montpelier, Vermont, a small town of 7,000 people.
I loved living there. It was very based in community and sustainability and environmental activism. I ended up going to college at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
And after that, I took a.
Most people take a gap year between high school and college, but I did it after college instead. And that year of travel really opened my eyes to the possibilities out there. It also inspired me to leave Vermont just to shake things up, to try something new. So that's when I moved to San Diego back in 2013.
That was a super pivotal moment in my life. I had never visited San Diego before. I just decided to get up and go. And my mom was actually the one that inspired me to not visit. She said, why don't you just move there? And I said, okay.
So we packed up my trusty Volvo, we took a two week road trip from. From Vermont, out to San Diego.
And long story short is I was there for 13 years. I loved it. I tried lots of different things. I met amazing people. I worked for Lululemon, I taught yoga, I taught Pilates, I taught at a fancy health spa, I worked for a naturopathic doctor. I dabbled in a lot of different things.
And that was honestly one of the most beautiful chapters of my life. I will never forget it.
Last year, however, I felt a pull to move to Florida, to St. Petersburg, Florida. That's where my parents live. I had been visiting them for about eight years and I really grew to love it. A couple things took me to Florida, one being the affordability, moving from San Diego and also just being closer to family. And the timing just felt right. And it was right around that time that I moved, that I also launched my business, Wave Rider Wellness.
I broke up with a boyfriend, I launched a business, I moved cross country, I bought a house.
I basically decided to blow up my life in the best way. And here we are. Now, a year later, I am happy as a clam and Florida life is the life for me.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That is wild. That's awesome that you've had those experiences. So can you walk us through a little bit about what inspired you to go into nutrition and health coaching and what keeps you passionate about this work?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So like I had mentioned, for many years, 10 plus years, I was teaching Pilates and yoga and doing personal training. I was teaching upwards of 30 classes a week sometimes, and I would often lose my voice, my body hurt, I was near burnout. And I realized that as much as I loved it, it really wasn't sustainable for myself or my body. And so I thought to myself, what could I do that is still kind of in this realm of health and wellness, but that is a little bit more sustainable? Something where I could actually maybe sit down for a couple hours a day and not have to use my body as much. So that's really what inspired me to get into the nutrition and health coaching space.
And like I said, I launched my business last year, but I've been doing it for about five years, working for various companies. So it's been a really fun time, a big learning curve. And I would say what keeps me passionate is I work mostly with women. And what I see through my work is women time and time again, reclaiming their energy, their confidence, their sense of purpose. So often people come to me not feeling well, and then they come out of the program on the other side and they feel like a completely different person.
And I often say this, but as much as I love nutrition and exercise, this work to me really isn't even about exercise or the food or the nutrition.
It's really a reflection of the rest of your life. Right. So when we build confidence in ourselves and when we're able to uplevel our lives, it really ripples into every other facet of life, whether that be career or family or relationships or whatever it also might be.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: That's awesome. And it's a powerful reminder that careers often begin with that personal question. But what's important that you mention is you got to start with that self reflection. Right? That's the starting point. And from there you got to figure out, can this work for me? It worked for me three years ago, but all of a sudden you're like, oh, can I do something else where I do have that break, I'm not teaching 30 classes and go on from there. So that's pretty awesome that you shared that. Can you share a little bit about maybe some mentors that have influenced your journey? Doesn't have to be just on the professional side, but. But what do they teach you that still guides you today?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I have so many mentors and I call them personally expanders, people that like up level my life. I just love that word. My number one is my mom. She is my biggest inspiration. Everyone in my life knows that already, so I won't talk too much about her today, but I love you, mom.
And I would say a couple other expanders were three of the people that I did my yoga teacher training with in India back in 2013.
So Kobi Kozlowski, Danny Argueddy, Katie Brower, they all led the yoga teacher training.
That was another huge pivotal moment in my life. And the big lesson that they taught me was this idea of what we call living yoga. And the idea of living out your yoga is so many people think that yoga is about being flexible or about nailing your Warrior 2 or your tree pose or whatever it may be.
But their big message that has always stuck with me and resonated with me is living yoga is so much more than that. It's about who you are outside your yoga mat. It's about how you show up on a day to day basis.
It's about living in integrity. So every single choice and decision you make coming back to that inner compass, and my mentor Katie that I just mentioned, she talks about living in alignment. And what does that actually mean?
And what she says, living in alignment is when your thoughts, your feelings, your actions and your words all line up.
So any Time in life when I feel like I'm a little bit off or whatever, like I feel like this isn't feeling quite right, I always come back to this idea of living yoga, and it always brings me back to my center.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: I'm going to start applying that because I think that's powerful.
That's great.
So at Brailing Pathways, we talk a lot about essential skills. And just to remind you, the essential skills are leadership, agility, perseverance, teamwork, networking, and goal setting. I think you mentioned a few of these, not directly, but in your opinion, which one has.
Which one of those have been the most influential or significant in your success? And why do you think that's the case?
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Yeah, all of them have been essential, I would say. But if I had to highlight one, I think I would probably choose agility.
And we've touched on this already so many times in our conversation, but really, agility is about a willingness to pivot, to try something different, to change directions, and giving yourself permission to take the pressure off, to shift gears, to evolve and learn as you go.
And this really reminded me of something that I check in with myself every single day on. And it's this question I ask myself, which is, what is the next best decision I can make? And I know that sounds really simple, but for me, it's very profound because I think so often in life, we can get caught up in the past or have anxiety about the future, but if we can really stay present and grounded in what's happening now, what is the next best decision I can make? We're going to be golden. And with that being said, I also think it's important to remember that following every decision, almost nothing in life is finite. There's always an opportunity to pivot, to adjust, to realign, to recalibrate, or to do something differently.
And when I remind myself that infinite possibilities and opportunities exist, wow, everything just becomes so much brighter and better. And that mindset piece has helped me out so, so much.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: That's a really great example of agility as a organization. Obviously, we place a lot of emphasis on that. But a lot of students question, when do you know that you got to change course? Or if you think about perseverance, when do you. How do you know the difference between keep moving on the same direction or making a turn?
The goal doesn't change, but it's how you get there. And I think that alignment piece that you talked about, are those three things in alignment really will answer that question, Whether you keep going on that path or you take a little turn and show agility to really adapt to what's going on. So that. Thank you for saying that.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one other thing on that is I think one thing I've had to learn in life is this balance of holding the vision constantly of what you want, but also being willing to surrender to what is and to adapt and to change. And having that balance between the two, I think is so important as well.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
So from your work, what have you learned about recognizing what truly energizes people and how might that apply to those guiding students?
So a lot of our audience could be educators, whether it be a teacher, whether it be a counselor. How can they help out other students who have no clue what they want to do?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: That's such a good one. I think there was a time in my life when I felt immense pressure to figure it out. And I don't know exactly where that came from. Maybe I need to go to therapy for that. Who knows?
But over time I would say, you know, taking the pressure off of needing to figure it out is huge.
And from an educator perspective or a student perspective, instead focusing on experimenting, trying a lot of different things is going to be so beneficial.
One thing I'm always trying to do is to stay curious, stay open minded and stay, stay adaptable. I think that's where some of the biggest learnings come from.
And you also touched on this. But I would consider myself an empath. So I'm very tuned into other people's feelings and my feelings. And I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned as well, and that I think could help others is really paying attention to and taking stock of what energizes you and what drains you. That's going to be a huge indicator of what lights you up and what some of those interests might be moving forward.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Being an empath certainly help to recognize where you want to be close to, who you want to be close to it, who you want to stay away from. But I think that the same curious for the students and if I'm obviously a teacher who I see a student who perhaps doesn't have a clue or says, oh, I just don't know, they just dismiss the question and encouraging them to try new things, go out and experience things. Not as easy when you're thinking about where you're going to end up in college. Right. Are you making that choice? Especially with so much of the pressure right now, Is college even worth it? But I think it's important to your point, there are multiple different pathways that you can take and education could be the center of it. But the way in which the education takes place could be looking very different. And it doesn't have to reflect what others are putting that pressure have experienced themselves. So I think that that was really nice. So if you had to switch it now you're not thinking about the student. Sorry, you're not thinking about those guiding the student. You're thinking just about the student. I'm a student and you're going to give me some advice about creating a life that is both authentic and meaningful. What would you say to me?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Oh, so many things. You know, I'm again just pulling from my own personal experience. But I think, you know, sometimes as a student or someone that's younger and still trying to figure out our path, it's easy to want to build a life based on what we think we should be doing or based on what looks good from the outside.
And I would really encourage people to build your life based on how it actually feels to live it. Because if it doesn't feel in alignment, it's not going to be sustainable and it's not going to feel good long term.
I would also say I said this earlier, but give yourself permission to evolve.
Allow your life to be perfectly imperfect. Allow it to be messy. Allow yourself to make mistakes. This, of course, is all for the sake of your own personal evolution and growth and another huge thing. And this will be the last thing, I think, trusting that you don't need to have the whole plan figured out again. For a long time I was like, all right, I need to plan my whole life and if I don't, then I'm a failure. But really just focusing on the next right step and trusting that the path will unfold from there, I think is the best way to go. My grandfather, I remember growing up, he always said this was like his one liner. He was like, it will all become obvious.
And that's really stuck with me because I think again, if you just focus on the next right step and letting the path unfold the way it's meant to, it really does all become obvious.
And it's much easier that way to kind of stay in the flow of life and it's more fun that way.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Well, Elena, this has been an awesome conversation. And it's a reminder that entrepreneurship, you didn't set out to go in and be an entrepreneur, but for the sake of making a lot of money for you, it seemed like it was more about the vision, the self trust and the willingness to turn your experience into a service to help others. So thank you for doing that. And students and audience, through Elena's story, you can hear that you can build a meaningful career, that you can do it through curiosity, challenge, growth, but very important, through alignment. So, Elena, thank you so much for joining us today on the Blueprint, where every conversation brings us closer to prepare the next generation not just for success, but for significance. I'm Manny Tejeda, your host, and I'll see you next time.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Thanks, Fanny. It's been a pleasure.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Thank you. Support for this podcast comes from Brilliant Pathways, an organization that had spent over 30 years helping students make opportunities happen.
Connect with us wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you for joining us on the Blueprint. I'm Manny Tejeda, your host, and I'll see you next time.
