Authenticity A uthenticity. We have talked about it many times before in ASPIRE. Businesses built on authenticity thrive because we are now at a place in history where consumers more than anything are looking for a way to connect with themselves and for something to belong to. In only her second ever interview (lucky us) this month we are very fortunate to have Tera Warner gracing our front cover. We wanted to dive deep into her world and find out what makes Tera tick warts and all. Full transparency. Unedited. Enjoy.
Authenticity Tell me a little bit about yourself Tera as if in an elevator pitch Go! blush* *sigh* I take stairs, not elevators, so I ll pass and trust the details will reveal themselves in the answers to your other questions.
You ve no degrees or formal training in your job tell me about the passion that inspired you? I have degrees in anthropology and English--essentially people watching and articulating myself clearly. I suppose, in truth, both are passions that inspired me. I ve been writing stories and watching people since I was very young. My mother always said that I should grow up and be a teacher because I would have all my little cousins and the local neighbours seated around me on the floor while I would stand at the blackboard and tell them what to do. I have created a business in women s health and nutrition, and it s true I have no formal training in business, health or nutrition. I am constantly met by women who have business degrees and nutritional certifications and are looking for a job. I guess a lot of those formal training institutions never teach you how to build a successful business with your passion. People can study and learn whatever they want, but the fire that fuels their accomplishments in life needs to come from that persistent, non-negotiable, cosmicallycommitted part of you to fulfil the longing of your spirit not just to make a buck. When you feel a sense of duty and responsibility to do what you do, you re less easily deterred by obstacles that pop up along your path and no amount of acronyms can make a person feel committed, determined or alive.
You are big on weight issues tell me your philosophy on why diets don t work I m big on weight issues only because weight issues are big on women. If I could have a business where I rocked up and said, Hey! Come live your dreams, follow your passion, be who you want to be!! then I would do that. But we need to communicate in a way that is real and accessible to people if we want to get their attention. Most women have so much of their livingness tied up in worries about their body that I can t actually get their attention on dreaming and believing in the possibility of what life can be until I get their attention OFF their thighs. I talk about weight loss, detox, cleansing, health and other matters of a material nature, but it s a bit of a covert operation, really. I m most interested in matters of the human spirit since I ve observed people long enough to know the fire that fuels how alive a person feels has nothing to do with what they buy or how they look, but how they dream, love and dare to believe in what s possible for life. Diets don t work because in spite of what billions of dollars spent on marketing campaigns would like us to believe, life isn t about whether or not you can fit into your skinny jeans. The more you keep a woman obsessed about what she eats and how she looks, the more likely she is to stay on a roller coaster relationship with the bathroom scale for the rest of her life. If you want to get a woman feeling better, slimmer, happier, healthier, get her to believe in herself a little more, get her to spend time outside, talking to friends and cleaning up her clutter. Get her writing love letters, whispering the secret dreams she locked up in her heart when someone told her she needed to get a real job or a real man and help her start believing in them again. When you do that, her weight issues just kinda fall away. The truth is that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN on the planet knows exactly what to do to lose weight, feel great and look 10 years younger. Eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise and get good sleep. It s not that she needs another NY Times Bestselling paperback promise that she ll lose those last 10 pounds if she decided to, if she wanted to, if she was determined to treat herself well and valued her life and Life itself enough to do everything she could to live it fully, she d just wake up one morning and start doing whatever was necessary to make that happen. The reason she doesn t is what we re trying to address--not her calorie count or omega fatty acid profile. We don t need to find a new way for women to lose weight. We need to get women believing in themselves and in Life again. When you do that, the excess weight falls off if it needs to, but more importantly she starts to see there s a whole lot more to living than trying to fit into a size 6 skirt and so immediately starts feeling a lot more alive!
How do you view body images? Ideas such as body dysmorphia. Serial dieters. Yoyo dieters how do people get past those limiting issues? I view these as a direct result of the architecture of insecurity that has come about through an average 3000 marketing messages per day hypnotically indoctrinating people who spend their time leafing through magazines, newspapers, TV, internet and media in general. This is what happens when you tell women, or men, that their value is based on the size of their thighs or the width of their hips rather than the breadth of their dreams and the depth of their love. The way to get people past these limiting issues is to show them what marketing really is. Start by watching Jean Kilbourne s film, Killing Us Softly. Raise your media literacy. It s difficult to become the negative effect of things you truly understand, so once you can see how marketing is designed and why, then it has a significantly more difficult time getting a hold on you. There are some very serious life-threatening conditions you re talking about here, and when it gets to the point that these conditions are consuming the life and attention of any You help women. Are men different in their needs? person, then in my opinion, you need media control and intervention. That means, BURN the glossy magazines, throw away the TV and bury the bathroom scale in a deep, dark pit. Get outside every day. Be present to your external and real time environment enough that you start to get interested in Life, not how you look. Steer clear of shopping malls and streets lined with billboards. Get a woman back in Nature putting her attention on what life IS, not what we are marketed to believe it is. She ll get better. My Dad left when I was four and my husband left when I was pregnant with our second child, so I guess the truth is that I ve not observed to the same degree the difficulties that men encounter growing up in the face of media. I ve not had a TV in 20 years either so I really haven t paid attention to what is being marketed. I ve spent my life uncovering the things that stopped me from living my best life and in so doing came to better understand others who had lived with the same difficulties. Turned out that was usually women, so I focus my attention there. But I love and deeply admire men, so one day perhaps I ll get around to doing a better job at understanding and meeting their needs, too. Turns out most of the ones I know are very happy that I m looking after their women. It seems a happy, confident, self-assured and positive woman is a very good thing for most men that I have encountered.
Authenticity The truth is that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN on the planet knows exactly what to do to lose weight, feel great and look 10 years younger.
You talk about women needing to communicate with themselves what do mean by this? Well, in the face of all this incoming media, we ve tipped the balance on communication. There are really two kinds of communication--incoming communication, and outgoing communication. Bombarded by 3000 incoming media messages per day and an average of 8 hours of screen time on the average child in the US, we ve got a LOT of incoming communication. We ve fallen out of communication with our bodies and our environments. It will seem very silly, but if we could get women just to touch, observe and be with their bodies--not in a pinching and poking and fixing way--just to be there comfortably and LOOK without shame, criticism or judgement, then we would start to tip the scale We would stop seeing our bodies in comparison to the photoshopped pin-up in a glossy magazine and start seeing it for what it is--the beautiful vessel carrying us about in life that depends on our care and kindness to survive. If people went outside every day for a walk and just took the time to notice trees and bees and birds and smiling people, we would also tip the scale. When you look OUT at the world and observe, it s very different than when a media screen is pushing messages IN on you while you sit on the couch. We need to get people s attention back on real life--the things and people in their environment for them to see what it s really about. We operate with assumptions about what life is because of how life is marketed to us. We need to be simply able to look, not listen, and see for ourselves. In spite of the headlines, I believe most people can look outside their window and see a beautiful, peaceful, unthreatening environment. Thats a good place to start. The proof that we ve fallen out of communication with our bodies is that we can have so many life-threatening diseases and conditions rock up in the body without our noticing until it s too late. The number of ingredients in most processed food alone means that there s a chemical experiment going on inside our bodies and we don t really know how all the different ingredients we eat affect the way we feel. If you get a person to focus on something as simple as eating fruits and vegetables for a few days, you would restore her very primal and innate ability to notice what s going on in their body and why it s happening. I don t teach a particular diet when it comes to food. I say, Hey, the one thing everyone can agree upon is fruits and vegetables. Let s start there and simplify things enough that we can start to notice what s going on. If you were to eliminate everything but fruits and vegetables from your diet for three days (remember people can live on water alone for 40!) then profound changes will happen to your skin, sleep, confidence, clarity of mind, digestion, mood and general attitude toward life. Then you ll know what YOUR body needs and wants because you observe it to be true yourself, not because a nutritional guru proclaimed it to be true in the pages of their NY Times bestselling book! What we eat has a huge impact on the way we feel. We can use diet as a way of helping people get back in control of their health, and their lives, but diet s just the start of the conversation, not the goal of the conversation.
Detox not just for bodies but for homes please explain Well, you manage your thoughts much like you manage your stuff. We have programs that help women declutter their environment because you can significantly improve her health, outlook on life and confidence by helping her clear up her space! Since I m a simple country girl, I do love to get her sprinkling essential oils, baking soda and vinegar over other toxic household cleaners that aren t doing anything for her health or her hormones! You are not a fundamentalist tell me about your more holistic approach and the wriggle room you advocate? I think people are bombarded by conflicting nutritional information. Tofu used to be the cool thing to do, now it s a genetically modified, hormone-disrupting monster. Dairy used to be an acidic, mucous-producing bad guy, now it s good, but just needs to be unpasteurized from grass fed cows. When we decide what s true about food based on the marketing messages and generally accepted parlour room chit chat rather than what we observe to be true by what we see happening with our own bodies, it becomes easy to lose confidence and feel confused about what s right or wrong when it comes to food. We don t listen to or trust ourselves and the messages from our bodies which is great for marketing because confusion and insecurity are a fantastic platform for more spending! I know as many people who restored their health by converting to the vegetarian diet as I do people who restored their health by getting off it. I don t believe the number of variables (environment, genetics, emotional stressors, individual preferences and genetic and historical factors, etc.) that affect how one person digests and assimilates their food will ever be something we can take apart enough to decipher a right way to eat. If you think about your body as a test tube in which all the food, cosmetics, environmental pollutants and even emotional stressors are coming together to create a reaction in your body, then you would do well to simply simplify the number of variables getting in the test tube. Get back to foods you can find in nature, reduce the amount of chemical exposure as much as possible and you ll start to observe, understand and know what s right for YOUR body. Then it s a question of maintaining sufficient personal integrity to continue to trust yourself and make the choices that ultimately keep you feeling your best. It s far more empowering to finally know and trust your own body than to feel enslaved to the latest exotic superfood, supplement or diet book to hit the shelves.
Natural beauty routines tell me more? Wrinkle cream gives you wrinkles. Pimple potion GIVES you pimples. The more cosmetics you use, the more you need them to correct the problems being created by petrochemicalbased, carcinogenic body care products you put on your skin. You digestive tract has filters to remove harmful toxins. It would be better that you eat most beauty care products than that you put them on your skin. You skin is composed of cells and so if it s on your skin, it s IN your blood stream. If you wouldn t eat it, you shouldn t put it on your skin. Period. The rest can be learned here. You have a beef against commercial diet organisations such as Jenny Craig, what makes you dislike them so much? One day I was curious about Jenny Craig like I was curious about Mary Kay. I decided to dive in, do some research and learn a little more about her goals when she started out. Who was she? What did she want to do? What motivated her to get started? I didn t get far before I discovered that in spite of what her initial goals may have been, today the company is now owned by Nestlé. I suspect that the goal of Nestlé is to sell packaged foods. If so, Jenny Craig is a great model. As long as we have women aspiring to the goal of having a smaller body, then it s okay to sell them low-calorie brownies and diet soda and they will still get into their skinny jeans. I would like women to know that skinny and healthy are not synonymous. You can still be skinny and very, very unhappy and unhealthy. Unhappiness doesn t discriminate on size and cancer is not a fat-person s disease. We need a new model for women s health and health in general--one that gets them to aspire to health in a simple, affordable, sustainable and sensible way. A woman, when she steps away from the marketing matrix, realizes that she wants MORE than just a smaller body--she wants to be seen for who she is and loved as she is. She wants to believe in her dreams again and not be held back by insecurities about the size of her thighs, but propelled forward in life by knowing that the breadth of her dreams and the depth of her love are better measures of her health and happiness than inches or calories or pounds ever could be. I don t wish Jenny Craig or any commercial diet organization ill will. I simply think they need to conform to a new, more ethical and sustainable paradigm for women s health, not simply specialize in the making of smaller bodies.
When you are not living your passion, what are your other passions? That s a funny question. I m always living my passion. My passion is being present to life as fully, vibrantly and attentively as I can. That s a full time job and takes all kinds of colours, shapes and sizes. How do you unwind? Hot baths, petal perfumes and time spent outside with my family. What books do you like to read? Books that make me more able to communicate effectively and understand what makes people tick, what will make the world a better place. What is your favourite meal? A really well made green juice knocks it out of the ball park for me and makes me feel like a billionaire. What famous person (dead or alive) would you like to meet? Graham Broadhurst (Father of Nick Broadhurst, editor and founder of ASPIRE). He s on the top of my list. What would you ask them? I would just give him a big hug, sit down, smile a knowing smile and listen. I know it would be earthshakingly delicious--the kind of conversation that makes my cheeks burn from smiling. What advice would you give your sixteen year old self? I don t know why that question made me cry, but I suppose I wouldn t want to be anywhere other than where I am right now. But IF, it could all turn out the same, that I had the same beautiful children and partner in life and career It would never happen. The only thing I would do with my 16-year old self would be quietly whisper in her ear that I believe in her. What was the latest new skill you learnt/acquired? Starting a lawn mower! Did it for the first time last week. What country would like to visit next? I m excited to be heading to New Zealand in February to visit the mother land to my life parter. What was the last film you saw? It was a documentary about media literacy for girls. I was so disappointed by it, I threw it away before it was finished, so I won t actually say which film it was, if you don t mind. What was the last fruit you ate? The not-so-exotic apple I ate last night. What time were you in bed last night? I m not telling you! :-)
Do you pray? Authenticity My prayers are whispers to myself to keep going, keep trusting, keep believing. I have many loud and enthusiastic expressions of gratitude for every branch and breath of life that breezes its way past me. I am a very grateful person and my life Do you believe in an after life? partner since he was 10 years old has a prayer that he says before every meal, and so yes, I supposed I do pray. You re really hitting it out of the ball park with the rapid fire here. I don t believe in anything I haven t observed for myself to be true. I work better on knowledge and observation than faith and incense. I trust myself, my perceptions, my observations and experiences, so here s what I know for sure: I know that telling people they only live once keeps them in a shopping and working frenzy until 65 when they finally rock up to buy a set of golf clubs and decide to start living. That s usually when arthritis kicks in and it all starts to go downhill. I know that you could never have slavery if people knew they would be able to grab another body if you knocked off the one they had. They would never subject themselves to vile behaviour at the threat of losing their lives because they would know they ARE life and could grab another body next time around. I know that if people knew that to be true, they would value personal integrity before their immediate life. I know that if people thought they had to come back and live in the environmental and ethical aftermath of the choices they made, they would behave differently. I have observed the famous YOLO: You Only Live Once slogan be a justification for unethical behaviour, self and environmental destruction. I can t tell you all the places I ve been or things that I ve done along the track of time, but my kids can. I guess because I never questioned or invalidated their stories when they told them, they both could tell you who they ve been before. What they did and how they died. I believe it s possible for people to transcend their differences and see what we all share in common--that spark of life you see when you stop to look a person in the eyes. I know that when you tell a person they are nothing more than the sum of their biochemical parts, and there s nothing they can do about how they feel or what s happening with their health, they start to flounder. I know that no matter how many green smoothies you feed a person who has lost their dreams, their hopes, their faith in themselves, no amount of chlorophyll will ever bring them back to life. That s what I know for sure. The rest, I m in the game of living to understand as I go and the more I learn, the more I believe in a continuum of life where ethics, honour, personal integrity and responsibility call the shots. I hope that answers your question. What would you like your last words to be? Thank you. Visit TeraWarner.com and BodyEnlightenment.me see more of Tera s work.