December 1, 2025 • 42 mins
Holistic wellness goes far beyond mindfulness and bubble baths. In this episode, Alexandra Dotcheva shares how she practices what she preaches, and how true wellbeing comes from strengthening every pillar of your life: your health, your finances, and your self-confidence.
Alexandra explains why optimizing nutrition, detoxing both body and mind, and cultivating disciplined fitness practices are essential foundations for long-term vitality. We explore the role of financial independence in helping you live on your own terms, and how confidence grows when you face problems instead of running from them.
If you’re curious about how small, intentional steps across all areas of your life can create lasting transformation, this episode is a powerful place to start.
About Alexandra Dotcheva
Alexandra is a registered nurse, real estate investor, fitness advocate, and author of It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach To Self-Confidence: A Practical Guide. After overcoming decades of low self-esteem and major life transitions, she now helps others build holistic confidence through health optimization, financial independence, disciplined habits, and intentional self-leadership.
You can connect with Alexandra on her website https://www.holisticselfconfidence.com/.
Mind Blend is all about real experiences and meaningful conversations—through sharing these insights, I hope to inspire and empower you as you navigate your unique journey.
I’d also love to hear from you! What resonated with you today? What topics or guests should we feature next? Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me on LinkedIn @ karenkchong and @Mind-Blend. Prefer to connect more directly? Drop Mind Blend an email.
Follow Mind Blend to get notified when new episodes are released!
Until next time, stay curious, keep exploring, and let’s continue to blend our minds and discover what’s possible.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So we talk a lot about mindfulness these days, like
slowing down, being present, finding calm.
But what about the other parts that make your person a whole?
The body, the confidence, the financial freedom that lets you
live life on your own terms. So my guest today, Alexandra
Tocheva, doesn't just talk aboutbalance.
(00:22):
She lives it. From music to medicine, fitness
to finance, she's built her lifearound the idea that true
well-being means taking care of every part of who you are.
Welcome to the show Mind Blend. I'm your host, Karen Chong, and
I'll be diving into the minds ofincredible people, each an
(00:42):
expert in their very own way. Together, we'll uncover insights
and share ideas so you can be inspired and empowered to
navigate your own unique journeyin life.
Ready to get curious and discover what's possible?
Let's blend. Hi Alexandra, welcome to Mind
Blend. Thank you so much for having me,
(01:03):
Karen. Pleasure to be here.
So in the intro, I've said many things that don't seem to belong
in the same sentence, like what do you mean music to medicine
and fitness to finance? Can you share a little bit about
your journey, how you got to what you're doing today?
Absolutely. Of course.
Well, I was a musician, professionally trained physician
(01:26):
for 29 years of my life, and then I switched to nursing.
I'm a registered nurse. I got this education in the
United States and I came from Bulgaria to the United States
initially as a violent student and then once I entered the
workforce as a nurse. And so how most of the nurses
lived, I decided I also had to learn how to be financially
(01:49):
independent. And that's when I got
simultaneously into real estate investing and created a
gradually 3 real estate parentalbusinesses.
And the coaching part came last because I, I published a book in
2021. It's called, it really is
Simple, A Holistic approach to self-confidence, which I thought
was very important because I started from a very, very
(02:12):
unconfident individual and I build the confidence with
getting into all these differentaspects of knowledge which I
never believed I could. And then the coaching business
naturally came into existence aswell.
So today, are you more focused on the coaching business?
Are you still doing nursing? I am, because it's very
(02:34):
important to learn what to avoidin medicine, and I learned
tremendously from my patients. I can stop working at any time I
choose, but I know I can fall into old, lazy patterns very
easily. So I don't allow myself to quit
quite yet. But I can, because the real
estate investment businesses have flourished amazingly well.
(02:54):
I am so glad to hear that I'm jealous, but I'm also very glad
to hear that you don't have to be working, but you're still
doing it. So I want to ask you a little
bit more. Why nursing from being a
musician? Because when the financial
crisis hits America in between 2006 and 2008, when the
(03:15):
orchestra started bankrupting left and right, I had to face
the fact that I was not at the level of Ana Sufi Motel or Yo-yo
Ma, the cello, you know? Equivalent to.
Many, many other amazing musicians.
I was not competitive enough andI had been struggling with
pretty, pretty heavy stage fright for well over 15 years at
(03:35):
a time. And I also wanted to feel
useful, which I wasn't as a musician.
When I was 32 in 2008, I had spent eleven years in college
plus twelve additional years in a specialized music school.
So I wanted to feel useful and Iwanted a career that didn't
require additional 11 years of school and career that was in
(03:56):
demand. Plus I always loved biology as a
child. I just never had the opportunity
to develop that love because I was very narrowly specialized as
a musician, so that's why I chose nursing.
Wow, That's an acute turn from amusician to nursing.
Yeah. Do you remember, like, what was
the mental burden or what you had to overcome to take that
(04:21):
leap? Yes ma'am, that's something that
to forget, I have to develop very heavy Alzheimer's.
I will never forget that feelingin the vacuum I felt for a week
or so when I decided to drastically switch careers into
nursing. Because when it hits you on the
head that you are really uselessof what you have been doing for
almost 30 years, it's a very heavy feeling of an
(04:43):
accomplishment. You criticize yourself for not
having faced it earlier, which Iknew it five years prior to
taking the decision, becoming a nurse, but I just wasn't
courageous enough and honest enough with myself that things
weren't going to get better. But I had to take the change
myself and it was personal responsibility.
It's a very heavy feeling for quite some time until you settle
(05:07):
into it. And I remember playing these
concerts for the week or 10 daysafter I switched to deciding
that I had to do something different in my life.
And so I was playing these beautiful pieces, music
classics, you know, it made zerosense to me.
I felt completely out of place on stage among my fellow
musicians. I see.
Yeah, like your your body is playing it but your heart is not
(05:29):
in it type situation. Wow, that's tough.
But you took the courage. You took the lead and you
entered the nursing world. Describe this different world
that you see and how it changed you.
It was a great cultural shock for sure.
The first the first couple of years the learning was extremely
exciting. I excelled at all the classes
(05:50):
because I was studying 12 to 13 hours a day.
I basically turned the hours of my violin practice into studying
the textbooks. I pre ramped many textbooks 2
three times before the classes even started because I had no
scientific basis, let alone in English.
But once I entered the workforceand I saw how there were more
(06:11):
nurses and doctors that I could count that carried every disease
known to men, yet they were allowing themselves to educate
others how to live healthy. The hypocrisy of the healthcare
system. The horrific and healthy food
that was served to patients and their visitors in the hospitals
and the entire culture of keeping patients chronically
(06:33):
sick by disease management rather than disease reversal and
how they were made permanent financial assets to the
healthcare system. So there were lots of aha
moments. I first entered a workforce as a
nurse. Of course, it helped with my
partner, my amazing, you know, boyfriend of so many years now.
(06:53):
He was a nurse of 15 years at the time, and he helped me see
all these things that I probablywould have taken me four or five
years to see because I was naiveenough to believe that it was
wonderful the way the healthcaresystem was designed and to help
people and all that. Yes and no, and mostly no,
unfortunately. Yeah, The thing is, you're part
(07:14):
of it too, because you live in the United States.
Yes. The responsibility that comes
with that, yeah. Like, and it's not just
responsibility, it's if you wereto get sick you would get the
same treatment. Right did.
That open your eyes up. Very much so, yes.
Yes, very much so. So that's when I switched to
home care nursing. So I could actually see the
(07:36):
patient one-on-one much more frequently than in the hospital,
in a slightly better mental state for the patient when
they're in their house on their turf than in the hospital when
they're really acutely sick. Of course, not that the
hospitals don't discharge patients prematurely all the
time, but still the patient is under control in their house and
I can educate much more effectively.
(07:58):
And of course, the whole revelation of how the healthcare
system worked prompt me very quickly to truly live by what I
preached, because otherwise I will never have credibility.
So I completely refined my diet,my fitness routines.
Of course, I was doing martial arts at the time for quite some
time already, But the diet, the exercise routine, and then of
(08:20):
course the mental health also had to be refined to the point
where I it truly could convince people that things can be much
better under their control by giving them leading by example
of what I was doing. Can you tell us a little more
about how you are optimizing your health?
Yes. So I mean, truthfully, in 2000 I
(08:42):
was 24 when I stopped eating allsorts of animals.
I mean, but actually fish I ate at the time, but mammals and
poultry because I turned to yogabefore I became a martial artist
and I said, OK, I'm going to become a vegetarian because fish
is healthy and all that stuff, right?
But I eventually realized all the toxins operating the animals
(09:03):
and not just the farm raised animals with all the drugs, but
also the ocean leadfish because of the contamination of the
ocean elastic mercury radiation in the Pacific Ocean from the
ocean of planet disaster. So you have to face these truths
and connect the dots. And then my boyfriend
unfortunately developed pre diabetes and he had had high
blood pressure since age 32 withvery high cholesterol, which he
(09:26):
attributed to hereditary factors.
And then we started talking, OK,you inherit some
predispositions, but also the lifestyle of those people who
made them, they made them sick. And so when he developed the pre
diabetes, that got him really, really concerned.
And then I said, OK, so let's goplant this.
Let's let's trying vegan and notprocessed vegan products but
(09:48):
organic whole from the soil. We prepare it, we ditch all the
restaurant food, stop eating outand all that stuff and watch how
in 3-4 months his hemoglobin A1Cfell to way under normal pre
diabetic level. So he was no longer pre
diabetic. And then he said I'm sticking to
that diet. I said who the heck you are and
(10:09):
I'm with you. And he actually quit all the
animal products completely cold Turkey.
He hadn't stopped eating mammalsand poultry 17 years before
becoming vegan like I did. He stopped completely cold
Turkey and we've been extremely healthy since.
It's been 8 years already, wholeorganic vegan.
So that was the nutrition aspectof the optimization.
(10:31):
Well, good, good job. Like, kudos to that.
And because you're in the nursing field, the medical
field, because you, you see the damage that it's doing to
people. When I was living in the States,
I also learn more vegan because for some reason, you could say
it's media, but I just had no desire to touch animal products
(10:52):
because of all the stories that I've heard.
Oh yeah, yeah. And also the processed food.
Now that I live in the UK, the food is less processed.
There's less additives to it. Not to say that it's completely
whole, but I see the difference already.
The same tub of yogurt, the sugar content is still more, The
(11:12):
calories is still more in the state.
So fortunate for me, I have moreaccess to less processed food
now. But a lot of our listeners do
live in this state, so that was a hell of aspect.
What are the other aspects in your optimization?
Fitness, fitness. I have very stiff fitness
routines. Since I was a martial artist.
(11:34):
I learned a lot about cardio andweight lifting and so I do very
heavy routines, two, 2 1/2 hoursa day, four to five days a week.
And I'm very strong on high resistance cardio and and my own
weight lifting. Like I love to do 80 to 100 pull
ups within a single gym session.It really it takes a lot of
(11:58):
discipline and you construct a way to do as many compound
exercises as possible because they're truly the ones that are
the hardest because they addressthe maximum amount of muscle
groups in the single exercise. I don't isolate muscle groups,
if that makes sense, because it's just not a whole approach
to fitness. But also they're very demanding
(12:18):
exercises and they are excellentfor building a harmonious body,
strong in every aspect. I'm a huge on lung power and
hard power and agility endurance, endurance because I'm
49, I'll be 50 early next year. And I really absolutely have no
intentional succumbing to the notion that all we are with age,
(12:40):
we have to slow down. On the contrary, you have to
speed up because you have to serve as an example to those who
won't slow down because if you slow down, you will die sooner
rather than later. So it's it's really about
keeping the vitality of your body, but it has to be truly,
truly, truly underlined with excellent clean nutrition.
And I just can't say enough thatwhole organic plants don't do to
(13:05):
people what's animal products too, because they don't they
don't develop chronic diseases. I have been a nurse for over 15
years now and my boyfriend has been a nurse for 32 years.
We haven't had a single patient who is a whole food organic
vegan in our entire practice. Like 0.
Zero, right? So what does that tell you?
(13:28):
People like call for organic Venus.
We just don't get sick as readily as other people do.
Can we get into a car accident? Absolutely.
But that's an acute condition. Yeah, that's a very good
chronic. Conditions that keep you sick
for decades. Decades doesn't happen.
It's just I'm yet to see one. Yeah, chronic diseases.
There's something unnatural about it to abuse most of.
(13:51):
Them are man made. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, like I have recently heard
a lot more emphasis on strength,like strength building.
So it used to be like cardio, cardio, cardio, and then you
know how there's different trends.
And then more recently there's more focus on like strength
training. What's your view on cardio in
(14:15):
combination with strength training?
That's what I do every day. Yes, absolutely.
Each has a place in your in yourbody, in your fatality.
Cardio. I'm adamant about cardio.
I see tons of weight literaturesthat dread cardio because they
don't like to sweat as much as cardio will make them sweat.
And then they're afraid they'll lose their muscle mass if they
don't do cardio. I mean, that's just dumb.
(14:37):
You have to train your heart forendurance.
You need to kind of nourish these primal instincts that we
had to run really fast from bad animals in order to eat us.
And that was in Africa. People who used to, to hunt for
their food. There was no morbid obesity.
There was no nothing like the diseases of contemporary wealthy
(15:00):
people and the advanced and developed world like type 2
diabetes, cancer. These are the most profitable
diseases and they stick with that for for the rest of your
life, say, oh, you're going to maintain it, you'll never heal.
That's, that's, you know, nonsense.
So weight lifting for bone strength, for muscle strength
(15:20):
and cardio for heart and lungs. And you can combine, there are
weight lifting exercises that are also excellent cardio
exercises. I mean the brain, it does
tremendous amount of work duringfitness to do it right and to
not hurt yourself and to get thebenefit of the exercise rather
than harm yourself with it or get no benefit whatsoever.
Because there are three possibleoutcomes of exercises.
(15:44):
Benefit, no benefit or no resultat all.
Benefit, harm or no result at all.
So it's your choice what to do and how focused you are during
each fitness session. Because I'm sure when you go
through the fitness, you've seenlots of people who just go
through the motions, like just to score presence there.
But you can tell when somebody'sexercising with intensity and
(16:05):
somebody is going through the motions.
So it's easy to spot the people who are truly dedicated.
Yeah, the form is important. You see people doing planks, but
it's they're it's. Not.
Flat at all? It's like, what do you call them
slides? Like their butt is always.
So yeah, form. Doing it intentionally with the
(16:26):
right form is more important than just being at the gym and
like running on the treadmill. But you're not really doing it
properly. So do you have clients that come
to you for your coaching around the nutrition and fitness
aspect? Well, I do because in nursing,
you know, you have, you supposedly you know all these
things if you're self disciplined and practice what
(16:49):
you preach. I also am very big on functional
medicine, so endocrine health and ill health and the gut
health that most regular practitioners don't focus on at
all because it treats treats symptoms rather than doing these
more sophisticated labs to tell the person how their gut is
working or not working and then how that affects their immune
(17:10):
system and their hormones. It's a huge, huge field, growing
field right now, which is fascinating.
That's absolutely not something that I learned in nursing
school. So the desire to develop
yourself attracts different types of clients and patients in
your practice. And but see with my coaching,
because I insist that people notonly optimize their health, but
(17:31):
also learn how to invest in tangible assets to optimize
their financial health. If they want to be my clients, I
want them to understand that everything is connected in life,
health, wealth and relationships.
Extremely important because yourhealth decisions are very, very
vastly influenced by the people you're are around, not just the
(17:53):
ones in your house, but at your workplace and the your choices
of friends to socialize with. So we address all these factors
because people get influenced bythe wrong people with best
intentions all the time and and that's not making the best
decisions for themselves. And then they wonder why they're
sick and why they're poor and why they're unsatisfied with
life. So it's much more than just the
(18:15):
health aspect in the holistic self-confidence approach.
Yeah, let's dive into this economic side of how someone can
live the fulfilling life. So, tangible asset, what are
some examples of tangible asset that you teach people?
These are assets that you can touch, you can see, you can
hear, and you can fix. I'm very heavily invested in
(18:37):
real estate, obviously, because that is the best tangible asset
you can acquire and it's still pretty affordable if you have
the discipline in the plan, how to and and knowledge how to
chase the deals that are truly affordable that will make your
money right from the start the moment you purchase.
OK, so that was another learningcurve of course, that I had to
undertake that lots of people don't want to undertake,
(19:00):
unfortunately, and they invest in so-called easy stuff like
volatile fake assets in the stock market.
And, and I'm not saying that thestock market doesn't have its
place, but it just said that many financial coaches, they
really focus on the stock marketaspects and never mention owning
real estate to increase not onlyyour net worth, but like if
(19:24):
monthly secure cash flow when you manage assets appropriately.
And it just boggles my mind because it's just so obvious in
plain sight. You can buy it in your own
neighborhood. You can buy it in the
neighboring neighborhood and manage this thing and have this
cash flowing assets for life andfor generations, not just for
(19:46):
the time being. And the financial aspect is
important because it gives you choices.
It strengthens your ability to be astute about your habits.
It straightens your spending tendencies if you want to learn
because if you start from knowers where I did because when
(20:07):
I came to this country, I had nothing but like very big hopes
on student visa. OK.
So I'm not somebody who was herein the tons of cash periodically
and. I had no idea about finances can
just like I have no idea about science when I started nursing.
So that's why I tell all my students in the readers in my
book, if I could do it, anybody can because I was the person who
(20:30):
never believed I could learn anything besides music because I
had not progressed the way I wanted for 29 years.
I never thought I could progressin anything else since I had put
so much time and effort into a career that wasn't successful.
And you know, here I am today financially independent.
So if I can do it, anybody can. But tangible assets are that
assets that you can touch, you can see, you can visit, OK, that
(20:54):
those are tangible assets. So for Someone Like You
mentioned, not everyone is have this mindset, they may want to
do the easy stuff. What are some of the things that
you normally start telling them to open their minds and start to
consider tangible assets? I ask open-ended question as to
(21:14):
what their goals are within the next 10 to 15 years because
people want the quick fix but they rarely think about long
term, which is a huge mistake. The people that are tremendously
financially successful really start with the long term goals
first because that'll give them a much broader picture of they
want to accomplish in life and how fast they want to accomplish
it. That's the other question, and
(21:36):
most people, you'll find they'venever thought about this at all
because they're just unhappy with their current miserable job
situation and they want out as soon as possible.
So then we talk about career choices.
That's the other very important aspect, financial prosperity,
because you need to be useful tosociety and appreciate it and
sought after to have this incomeat first that will be keeping
(21:59):
your float very well while you collect money to invest in
tangible assets. And that whole connection that
people rarely see how a valuablethey can be with the career that
they are currently in, if only they choose to do so because you
chose a career for a reason. Now, if you chose your career
for all the wrong reasons, we'regoing to discuss that too, OK?
(22:23):
But the money has to come from somewhere for your tangible
assets. Unless you're willing to pursue
seller finance deals for a very long time and start with minimal
cash flow. If you don't think any mortgage
or down payment on your first property or second and third
property, well, that's requires a whole different set of skills.
OK, so the mindset is really depending on your goals that you
(22:47):
and your responsibility to thinkabout these goals.
And how do I know that? Because it was very hard for me
too. I, I read like 10 stuff, like
almost 10 confidence building books and success books.
And lo and behold, they all talked about five year tenure
and 15 year goals to write them down or read them regularly.
That's used to aggravate the heck out of me because it was a
(23:09):
different sort of independent thinking responsibility that
wasn't tied to what other people's thought about taught
you and their advice and everything.
You have to actually figure it out yourself.
And it's hard. It's very hard when you have
lived under the influence of other people's opinions for
decades. That's what changed you to your
current way of living. And once I help people
(23:29):
understand that it's a very liberating thing and yet more
responsibility and obligation towards yourself and your
integrity. And then the the brain unplugs
you release the brakes and you create these goals.
And then they realize the value of tangible assets versus the
other assets that are much more volatile.
And they'll learn strategies in either environment.
(23:52):
But then they are willing to dedicate the time to learning
and investing in themselves in the 1st place with financial
education. Yeah, like it's very important
to make your clients aware. And also they themselves need to
buy into it because you're not there 24/7.
You're not there to watch their every move, watch everything
(24:13):
they eat. Like you're not their trainer in
the gym. So they really have to be that
themselves. So while you were answering, you
mentioned about living under other people's opinions.
And earlier you mentioned that you had really low
self-confidence. I want to see how you built the
confidence. I build the confidence by
(24:37):
getting really sick of my own lack of confidence, And every
major decision I made was faced with a lot of skepticism from
the closest people, like changing careers, go to nursing
school. Yeah.
Oh, it's a very hard profession.Yes, it is.
And that's the point right before the nursing was the
karate, the martial arts, I, I practiced several martial arts.
But when I started martial arts,which was something I really
(24:59):
dreamed of since I was nine years old, but it was completely
suppressed in the family becauseI was a violinist.
And how can I do martial arts? My fingers, right?
No way. But that was badly surprised
when I was a child, because in Eastern Europe some parents came
to be very blunt with their opinions and hurtful, sometimes
with the best intentions. So then the martial arts was met
(25:22):
with a lot of skepticism. I did it regardless.
One of the best decisions of my life for confidence building.
Then changing careers. Skepticism from everybody.
Best decision of my life for confidence building because
changing careers you can boost your confidence like you can't
imagine. Of course, you need five to
seven years to appreciate that this is the starting point.
Then real estate, tons of cosmeticism from France.
(25:46):
Oh yeah, you lose your money. It's very risky.
Well, people who don't take risks don't go anywhere in life.
Another one of my best decisionsof my life.
So you have to counter the opinions if you are deeply,
deeply convinced that you're curious enough to take the risk,
so curious that it makes you excited to take the risk
(26:07):
regardless of the consequences. And that's how you battle low
self esteem. And to hell with it, I'll take
the risk, I'll jump in that hugecrevasse whatever, and see what
happens. Of course educate yourself
beforehand, but the real situation will show you that you
can never educate yourself enough.
(26:28):
And that's why you'll learn for the rest of your life.
Lifelong learning, and that's how you learn to really solve
problems. Yeah.
For real. And first of all and foremost
your own problems with your mindset.
And then everything else falls into place.
And then you can teach others how to solve problems.
But you don't tell people how tosolve problems unless you have
(26:50):
solved your own problems 1st. And that's what builds
credibility. Yeah, you also mentioned it
earlier. Like, you have to practice what
you preach. So that's why you're doing all
these things that you're coaching your clients on.
And you said when you moved to the States, you had nothing.
(27:11):
And I'm sure you had a lot of fear and anxiety.
How did that motivate you? At the time, I didn't have a lot
of fear. And exactly, I was young.
I was 24. You, you barely know anything
about life when you're 24. So you're just excited.
You're just excited, full of andthen life starts hitting you on
the hands one piece at a time. Reality, reality.
(27:34):
Especially understanding the limits of your own capabilities
and how to go around them. That takes a lot of courage and
learning and trial and error. So I wasn't really that anxious
when I came here. I was excited, but the anxiety
came when I saw that I wasn't progressing the way I wanted
through my masters and doctoral degrees.
(27:55):
I mean, I was giving decent recitals.
I was succeeding academically. But when it came to orchestral
editions, the feuds paralyzed meon the stage behind the curtain.
And that that was where fear andanxiety became very obvious to
me, that I had to do something about it to make it work in my
(28:16):
favor instead of against me. But with the violin, I had
already accumulated a lot of really, really bad history.
And much as it seems very hard and scary to completely change
fields, I opted for that for my own benefit, to start completely
from zero in the field where nobody knew me and I didn't know
(28:38):
anybody. So I could prove myself from
Ground Zero up. And that worked for me better
than trying to be the dead horsewith the other career that had
taken 2629 years of my life by the time I already entered the
workforce as a nurse. So this type of anxiety helped
me actually rebuild myself. I'm really, really glad to hear
(29:01):
that because that's not the casenowadays with a lot of cases of
anxiety. It paralyzes us, so it makes us
defenseless even like we can't. We can't do anything to help
ourselves. And that is because most people
refuse to really understand their anxiety.
What do you mean they? Look at it very superficially.
(29:22):
What scares them? And then they run away from it.
But why does it scare you? Is this rational?
Is it completely irrational? And how can you benefit from the
anxiety when it tells you that 90% of what you're afraid of is
things that you know you should have been doing and you're not
doing? So that's when anxiety becomes
your ally. It becomes a friend.
(29:43):
But you have to understand it soyou're understanding yourself.
I practice meditation several times a day now.
The anxiety is not an issue anymore.
It hasn't been for a very long time, but it was like seemingly
forever. And when I when I understood
that anxiety was telling me something important about
myself, and when I finally became willing to listen to what
(30:06):
actually telling and face it, then it started becoming more
and more under my control. To briefly describe how you
overcome it, is it more you learn to cohabit with your
anxiety and sort of like, OK, I I hear you, but now I need to
focus on this important thing inmy life.
(30:27):
Would you equate it with that? Yes, to a great extent, because
anxiety tells you what the things you should, the actions
you should have taken that you haven't yet.
So when you see a problem, you don't procrastinate, you just
solve it right away, start working towards solution,
achieve the solution, then face the next problem.
And the more problems you solve of your own and then help other
people solve their problems by seeing their perspective, the
(30:49):
more in control you are of your anxiety.
And then eventually it, which iskind of almost ceases to exist.
It's a very mild level which is necessary for learning.
Yeah, OK. But when you solve things one at
a time and then collectively everything that gives you
confidence because OK, there is a big problem seemingly now
something very annoying, very distressful, but OK, I've solved
(31:11):
50 problems like that. Yeah.
So there is no reason I won't solve this one.
Let's get it done. Done.
That's it. Yeah, there is no more anxiety,
but people run away from problems and they don't realize
life is all about solving problems.
Yeah. Not necessarily creating them,
but solving them because there are plenty of people who create
problems for you. So you can be very confident
(31:33):
that people will help you in that way.
So the way you react to it though is what's important in
your anxiety control. Think about how much you grow
after solving 10 problems, 20 problems, 50 problems.
So we have talked about so many things in life, like each one of
moments can be like a whole series that's.
(31:54):
True, that's true. So for someone who isn't in the
best health shape, may not be inthe best financial circumstance,
may not be in like the right mental Wellness, what's the
first step they should take if they do want to improve their
(32:14):
holistic well-being? They need to sit and honestly
discuss what they want to achieve with their health,
finances, relationships and everything.
Because once you have a clear picture insight, then you can
act on it and you're less overwhelmed.
But yes, you have to tackle everything if it's all a
problem. If you neglect one thing, the
(32:35):
other ones won't progress properly because they're going
to be on the back of your mind. OK, so I'm working on my health,
but I don't have money for basicnecessities.
So we have a problem here. We have to tailor your health
routine and your nutrition. And there are extremely cheap
problems that are highly nutritious.
When you cook them, they expand threefold.
Beans and grains and legumes andgrains come to mind.
(32:56):
Organic with tons of minerals and vitamins and nutrition in
them. So we, we start with the
easiest. My principle in a vegan that is
you start simple and you keep itsimple.
It it's never worked better finances.
It's a little bit harder to apply that approach, but we
tackle everything because if youare in poor health, that means
you're paying a lot of money formedical bills and medications.
(33:18):
So we need to create a financialstrategy for you as well.
And many people who are very sick, they also tend to smoke a
lot because that's type of a stress relief and that a lot of
their paycheck goes there, rightthere in the cigarettes.
So I mean, tons of habits like that, you know, coping
mechanisms that are really counter mechanisms.
Unfortunately, they don't createany productive results.
(33:40):
So if they're willing to face these problems, they will solve
them. And they already know the
answers to most questions. You.
Just gently lead them towards them, but let them discover that
so it's their idea rather than yours as a coach and things fall
into place. But you have to tackle it all at
once, unfortunately. I mean, you can start easily in
(34:02):
each aspects, but each aspect has to be addressed because
they're connected. And once they see the
connection, it's a big aha moment because they'll realize
how fixing all of these will help all of these
simultaneously, and there is less resistance than to the work
that has to be done by them. Well, so many golden Nuggets of
(34:22):
information in this episode. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
So for this last part, let's play a game.
Rapid fire questions. OK, let's see, I'll have to.
Just get reaction. Imagine yourself waking up one
day low on energy. What do you do?
What's your go to fix? Oh, I take a cold shower
(34:44):
immediately and I do 100 squats with my own weight.
Fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tried that.
I tried the ice bath last week. I can see the benefit of it.
No, no. Go into the cold shower for
three minutes. You will not have low energy
after that. That's a really good tip.
OK, next one. What's a healthy habit that you
(35:05):
secretly think is overrated? Overrated kiddo diet.
It's a another excellent excuse for eating crap as far as I'm
concerned. Yeah, great.
Good thing I'm not on it. So when it comes to health,
(35:27):
people think about like detox too.
We haven't talked about it in this episode, but I know you're
a proponent of detoxing. What is a detox?
What should people detox from that has nothing to do with
food? Well, heavy metals, right?
You have plastic components, youhave decreasing glutathione from
(35:48):
your liver with age. There are also any medications,
air toxins, water toxins, full house water filtration system,
osmosis filter and whatnot. But the foods themselves, even
in the organic industry, that's growing like crazy and starting
to cut corners. The food also has toxins.
(36:08):
Your head's excluding from food.But I mean, you eat food
everyday. So I do detox everyday.
I'm a huge proponent for the detox.
Yes. And there are many ways to
detox. I have chosen A relatively
inexpensive way that I discuss in a great extent in the 7th
chapter of my book, which is allabout detoxification.
But you can't ignore the fact that you're exposed to between
(36:33):
20,000 and 2 million toxins every day.
Wow. It's a huge number and it is
unavoidable. Unfortunately, we can't avoid
it. OK, so much as we try.
Of course, we've minimized all chemical exposures in our house
and whatnot, but if you walk around in the real world, you
get toxins and the whole thing is with your body.
(36:55):
It's is so overwhelmed that yourliver, which serves well over
200 functions in your body, has to be supported on a daily basis
to perform at its best. SO glutathione increase is one
of your best focuses. Then cleaning antioxidants from
your body is a huge focus as well.
And then of course, if you have a specific overwhelm that you
(37:16):
know through very specific labs,you have to focus on that too.
And lots of people don't know because they function at high
capacity, but like almost at high stress modes, survival
modes, and most of us do that without realizing it, and
sometimes in backfires very, very badly as we age.
So you have to be mindful of these things.
(37:37):
So I'd love to discuss immune function, hormone function, gut
health. These are the things that are
extremely interconnected that your regular doctor won't tell
you about at all, because the doctors themselves don't eat
healthy and they don't pay attention to these things.
They didn't learn about these intimate interconnections in
your body and mental health in medical school because it all
(37:58):
focuses on pharmaceutical drugs,right?
It's the pharmaceutical companies that determine fee
curriculum of the contemporary doctors.
So none of this is addressed, unfortunately.
And these connections are rarelyexplained to the doctors.
They're even more seldom explained to the patients
themselves. And then you have doctors that
are very tight specialists. They only focus on their field
(38:19):
and they rarely communicate withthe other doctors for the
patient. And the patient has 6 or 7
specialists. That's a disaster picture right
there. And lots of my patients are like
this. And it's just very, very sad
because you know how we used to have these general practitioners
when we were growing up. They used.
So much more than today's general practitioners and they
(38:40):
are just amazing at connecting body systems and that doesn't
exist anymore or it's very rarely seen.
And this is where patients are so responsible for their old
health. 100% of duty education and be willing to research and
constantly question what they'retold by the so-called
authorities. OK, because we know what
(39:00):
happened when the authorities told us to lock ourselves in our
homes and take a highly toxic drug that killed more people
than it's helped. OK.
So thankfully I've never been susceptible to such suggestions.
But lots of people your tactics.Yeah.
And they just do the dumbest things in their lives, including
(39:21):
with their health. And it's just very, very
important to educate. So to come back to your original
question with the detox, you have to practice mental detox,
emotional detox and physical detox every day because you get
exposed to these toxins every day.
And so if you don't address it every day, you're not in in pace
(39:43):
with the degree of toxicity thatyou're exposed to.
So again, you have to create that wonderful time management
skill to address all these things every single day.
Otherwise it just becomes harderfor you.
Yeah, they just pile up. OK.
What is your definition of true wealth?
Oh well, that's well. That can replicate itself every
(40:06):
month while you sleep. Health is the biggest form of
wealth. That's true wealth.
So excellent, optimized health and financial freedom in
relationships that don't get in the way but nourish you and
allow you to nourish them. That's true wealth.
Yeah, like a golden triangle. OK, last one.
(40:28):
If your younger self could see you now, what would she say?
If she would laugh because she would never believe that that
will be possible to accomplish. My younger self was not very
wise. She would be like, oh, I had a
nice, nice dream. But yeah, no way.
That's what she would say, unfortunately.
Oh, so she's like their family too?
She was really dense, very, verydense.
(40:52):
OK, well look at you today, but you have developed so much
wisdom. You're using your knowledge and
wisdom to help the people aroundyou.
So glad you're on mind gland. Really enjoy this conversation,
Alexandra. Well, likewise, Karens, thank
you so much for having me. I hopefully we helped your
listeners get some new insights and get encouraged and inspired.
(41:13):
Yeah, I will leave your info on the show notes, but what's the
easiest way for people to get incontact with you?
After my website, itsholisticselfconfidence.com,
no dashes, holistic selfconfidence.com, the book is
available there, The coaching material, I mean the explanation
of my coaching strategy. My social links are on the
(41:34):
website as well. The book, the physical copy, is
available in the US only, but the ebook version, which is
significantly less expensive, ofcourse, it's available worldwide
for purchase, and not just on the website but also on Amazon,
Apple Books, Smash Words, and Barnes and Noble.
OK, people have accounts there, that's fine.
But the website is the easiest way to get a hold of me because
(41:56):
they'll see my YouTube channel there and other media
appearances and contact information.
Everything. Holistic.
Selfconfidence.com. Yeah, there's, like, like I
said, every single topic. It's a rabbit hole.
There's so much to explore in every single aspect of the
health optimization. The listeners hope you learned
something useful today and it'llmake you think twice and maybe
(42:17):
start changing some habits. Thank you, Alexandra.
Thank you, Karen. Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Mind Blend.
If you enjoyed the conversation,don't forget to follow and share
it with anyone who needs to hearit.
And let's keep the conversation going.
Connect with me on LinkedIn or leave me a comment.
(42:38):
Until next time, stay curious, keep exploring, and let's
continue to plan our minds and discover what's possible.
So we talk a lot about mindfulness these days, like
slowing down, being present, finding calm.
But what about the other parts that make your person a whole?
The body, the confidence, the financial freedom that lets you
live life on your own terms. So my guest today, Alexandra
Tocheva, doesn't just talk aboutbalance.
(00:22):
She lives it. From music to medicine, fitness
to finance, she's built her lifearound the idea that true
well-being means taking care of every part of who you are.
Welcome to the show Mind Blend. I'm your host, Karen Chong, and
I'll be diving into the minds ofincredible people, each an
(00:42):
expert in their very own way. Together, we'll uncover insights
and share ideas so you can be inspired and empowered to
navigate your own unique journeyin life.
Ready to get curious and discover what's possible?
Let's blend. Hi Alexandra, welcome to Mind
Blend. Thank you so much for having me,
(01:03):
Karen. Pleasure to be here.
So in the intro, I've said many things that don't seem to belong
in the same sentence, like what do you mean music to medicine
and fitness to finance? Can you share a little bit about
your journey, how you got to what you're doing today?
Absolutely. Of course.
Well, I was a musician, professionally trained physician
(01:26):
for 29 years of my life, and then I switched to nursing.
I'm a registered nurse. I got this education in the
United States and I came from Bulgaria to the United States
initially as a violent student and then once I entered the
workforce as a nurse. And so how most of the nurses
lived, I decided I also had to learn how to be financially
(01:49):
independent. And that's when I got
simultaneously into real estate investing and created a
gradually 3 real estate parentalbusinesses.
And the coaching part came last because I, I published a book in
2021. It's called, it really is
Simple, A Holistic approach to self-confidence, which I thought
was very important because I started from a very, very
(02:12):
unconfident individual and I build the confidence with
getting into all these differentaspects of knowledge which I
never believed I could. And then the coaching business
naturally came into existence aswell.
So today, are you more focused on the coaching business?
Are you still doing nursing? I am, because it's very
(02:34):
important to learn what to avoidin medicine, and I learned
tremendously from my patients. I can stop working at any time I
choose, but I know I can fall into old, lazy patterns very
easily. So I don't allow myself to quit
quite yet. But I can, because the real
estate investment businesses have flourished amazingly well.
(02:54):
I am so glad to hear that I'm jealous, but I'm also very glad
to hear that you don't have to be working, but you're still
doing it. So I want to ask you a little
bit more. Why nursing from being a
musician? Because when the financial
crisis hits America in between 2006 and 2008, when the
(03:15):
orchestra started bankrupting left and right, I had to face
the fact that I was not at the level of Ana Sufi Motel or Yo-yo
Ma, the cello, you know? Equivalent to.
Many, many other amazing musicians.
I was not competitive enough andI had been struggling with
pretty, pretty heavy stage fright for well over 15 years at
(03:35):
a time. And I also wanted to feel
useful, which I wasn't as a musician.
When I was 32 in 2008, I had spent eleven years in college
plus twelve additional years in a specialized music school.
So I wanted to feel useful and Iwanted a career that didn't
require additional 11 years of school and career that was in
(03:56):
demand. Plus I always loved biology as a
child. I just never had the opportunity
to develop that love because I was very narrowly specialized as
a musician, so that's why I chose nursing.
Wow, That's an acute turn from amusician to nursing.
Yeah. Do you remember, like, what was
the mental burden or what you had to overcome to take that
(04:21):
leap? Yes ma'am, that's something that
to forget, I have to develop very heavy Alzheimer's.
I will never forget that feelingin the vacuum I felt for a week
or so when I decided to drastically switch careers into
nursing. Because when it hits you on the
head that you are really uselessof what you have been doing for
almost 30 years, it's a very heavy feeling of an
(04:43):
accomplishment. You criticize yourself for not
having faced it earlier, which Iknew it five years prior to
taking the decision, becoming a nurse, but I just wasn't
courageous enough and honest enough with myself that things
weren't going to get better. But I had to take the change
myself and it was personal responsibility.
It's a very heavy feeling for quite some time until you settle
(05:07):
into it. And I remember playing these
concerts for the week or 10 daysafter I switched to deciding
that I had to do something different in my life.
And so I was playing these beautiful pieces, music
classics, you know, it made zerosense to me.
I felt completely out of place on stage among my fellow
musicians. I see.
Yeah, like your your body is playing it but your heart is not
(05:29):
in it type situation. Wow, that's tough.
But you took the courage. You took the lead and you
entered the nursing world. Describe this different world
that you see and how it changed you.
It was a great cultural shock for sure.
The first the first couple of years the learning was extremely
exciting. I excelled at all the classes
(05:50):
because I was studying 12 to 13 hours a day.
I basically turned the hours of my violin practice into studying
the textbooks. I pre ramped many textbooks 2
three times before the classes even started because I had no
scientific basis, let alone in English.
But once I entered the workforceand I saw how there were more
(06:11):
nurses and doctors that I could count that carried every disease
known to men, yet they were allowing themselves to educate
others how to live healthy. The hypocrisy of the healthcare
system. The horrific and healthy food
that was served to patients and their visitors in the hospitals
and the entire culture of keeping patients chronically
(06:33):
sick by disease management rather than disease reversal and
how they were made permanent financial assets to the
healthcare system. So there were lots of aha
moments. I first entered a workforce as a
nurse. Of course, it helped with my
partner, my amazing, you know, boyfriend of so many years now.
(06:53):
He was a nurse of 15 years at the time, and he helped me see
all these things that I probablywould have taken me four or five
years to see because I was naiveenough to believe that it was
wonderful the way the healthcaresystem was designed and to help
people and all that. Yes and no, and mostly no,
unfortunately. Yeah, The thing is, you're part
(07:14):
of it too, because you live in the United States.
Yes. The responsibility that comes
with that, yeah. Like, and it's not just
responsibility, it's if you wereto get sick you would get the
same treatment. Right did.
That open your eyes up. Very much so, yes.
Yes, very much so. So that's when I switched to
home care nursing. So I could actually see the
(07:36):
patient one-on-one much more frequently than in the hospital,
in a slightly better mental state for the patient when
they're in their house on their turf than in the hospital when
they're really acutely sick. Of course, not that the
hospitals don't discharge patients prematurely all the
time, but still the patient is under control in their house and
I can educate much more effectively.
(07:58):
And of course, the whole revelation of how the healthcare
system worked prompt me very quickly to truly live by what I
preached, because otherwise I will never have credibility.
So I completely refined my diet,my fitness routines.
Of course, I was doing martial arts at the time for quite some
time already, But the diet, the exercise routine, and then of
(08:20):
course the mental health also had to be refined to the point
where I it truly could convince people that things can be much
better under their control by giving them leading by example
of what I was doing. Can you tell us a little more
about how you are optimizing your health?
Yes. So I mean, truthfully, in 2000 I
(08:42):
was 24 when I stopped eating allsorts of animals.
I mean, but actually fish I ate at the time, but mammals and
poultry because I turned to yogabefore I became a martial artist
and I said, OK, I'm going to become a vegetarian because fish
is healthy and all that stuff, right?
But I eventually realized all the toxins operating the animals
(09:03):
and not just the farm raised animals with all the drugs, but
also the ocean leadfish because of the contamination of the
ocean elastic mercury radiation in the Pacific Ocean from the
ocean of planet disaster. So you have to face these truths
and connect the dots. And then my boyfriend
unfortunately developed pre diabetes and he had had high
blood pressure since age 32 withvery high cholesterol, which he
(09:26):
attributed to hereditary factors.
And then we started talking, OK,you inherit some
predispositions, but also the lifestyle of those people who
made them, they made them sick. And so when he developed the pre
diabetes, that got him really, really concerned.
And then I said, OK, so let's goplant this.
Let's let's trying vegan and notprocessed vegan products but
(09:48):
organic whole from the soil. We prepare it, we ditch all the
restaurant food, stop eating outand all that stuff and watch how
in 3-4 months his hemoglobin A1Cfell to way under normal pre
diabetic level. So he was no longer pre
diabetic. And then he said I'm sticking to
that diet. I said who the heck you are and
(10:09):
I'm with you. And he actually quit all the
animal products completely cold Turkey.
He hadn't stopped eating mammalsand poultry 17 years before
becoming vegan like I did. He stopped completely cold
Turkey and we've been extremely healthy since.
It's been 8 years already, wholeorganic vegan.
So that was the nutrition aspectof the optimization.
(10:31):
Well, good, good job. Like, kudos to that.
And because you're in the nursing field, the medical
field, because you, you see the damage that it's doing to
people. When I was living in the States,
I also learn more vegan because for some reason, you could say
it's media, but I just had no desire to touch animal products
(10:52):
because of all the stories that I've heard.
Oh yeah, yeah. And also the processed food.
Now that I live in the UK, the food is less processed.
There's less additives to it. Not to say that it's completely
whole, but I see the difference already.
The same tub of yogurt, the sugar content is still more, The
(11:12):
calories is still more in the state.
So fortunate for me, I have moreaccess to less processed food
now. But a lot of our listeners do
live in this state, so that was a hell of aspect.
What are the other aspects in your optimization?
Fitness, fitness. I have very stiff fitness
routines. Since I was a martial artist.
(11:34):
I learned a lot about cardio andweight lifting and so I do very
heavy routines, two, 2 1/2 hoursa day, four to five days a week.
And I'm very strong on high resistance cardio and and my own
weight lifting. Like I love to do 80 to 100 pull
ups within a single gym session.It really it takes a lot of
(11:58):
discipline and you construct a way to do as many compound
exercises as possible because they're truly the ones that are
the hardest because they addressthe maximum amount of muscle
groups in the single exercise. I don't isolate muscle groups,
if that makes sense, because it's just not a whole approach
to fitness. But also they're very demanding
(12:18):
exercises and they are excellentfor building a harmonious body,
strong in every aspect. I'm a huge on lung power and
hard power and agility endurance, endurance because I'm
49, I'll be 50 early next year. And I really absolutely have no
intentional succumbing to the notion that all we are with age,
(12:40):
we have to slow down. On the contrary, you have to
speed up because you have to serve as an example to those who
won't slow down because if you slow down, you will die sooner
rather than later. So it's it's really about
keeping the vitality of your body, but it has to be truly,
truly, truly underlined with excellent clean nutrition.
And I just can't say enough thatwhole organic plants don't do to
(13:05):
people what's animal products too, because they don't they
don't develop chronic diseases. I have been a nurse for over 15
years now and my boyfriend has been a nurse for 32 years.
We haven't had a single patient who is a whole food organic
vegan in our entire practice. Like 0.
Zero, right? So what does that tell you?
(13:28):
People like call for organic Venus.
We just don't get sick as readily as other people do.
Can we get into a car accident? Absolutely.
But that's an acute condition. Yeah, that's a very good
chronic. Conditions that keep you sick
for decades. Decades doesn't happen.
It's just I'm yet to see one. Yeah, chronic diseases.
There's something unnatural about it to abuse most of.
(13:51):
Them are man made. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, like I have recently heard
a lot more emphasis on strength,like strength building.
So it used to be like cardio, cardio, cardio, and then you
know how there's different trends.
And then more recently there's more focus on like strength
training. What's your view on cardio in
(14:15):
combination with strength training?
That's what I do every day. Yes, absolutely.
Each has a place in your in yourbody, in your fatality.
Cardio. I'm adamant about cardio.
I see tons of weight literaturesthat dread cardio because they
don't like to sweat as much as cardio will make them sweat.
And then they're afraid they'll lose their muscle mass if they
don't do cardio. I mean, that's just dumb.
(14:37):
You have to train your heart forendurance.
You need to kind of nourish these primal instincts that we
had to run really fast from bad animals in order to eat us.
And that was in Africa. People who used to, to hunt for
their food. There was no morbid obesity.
There was no nothing like the diseases of contemporary wealthy
(15:00):
people and the advanced and developed world like type 2
diabetes, cancer. These are the most profitable
diseases and they stick with that for for the rest of your
life, say, oh, you're going to maintain it, you'll never heal.
That's, that's, you know, nonsense.
So weight lifting for bone strength, for muscle strength
(15:20):
and cardio for heart and lungs. And you can combine, there are
weight lifting exercises that are also excellent cardio
exercises. I mean the brain, it does
tremendous amount of work duringfitness to do it right and to
not hurt yourself and to get thebenefit of the exercise rather
than harm yourself with it or get no benefit whatsoever.
Because there are three possibleoutcomes of exercises.
(15:44):
Benefit, no benefit or no resultat all.
Benefit, harm or no result at all.
So it's your choice what to do and how focused you are during
each fitness session. Because I'm sure when you go
through the fitness, you've seenlots of people who just go
through the motions, like just to score presence there.
But you can tell when somebody'sexercising with intensity and
(16:05):
somebody is going through the motions.
So it's easy to spot the people who are truly dedicated.
Yeah, the form is important. You see people doing planks, but
it's they're it's. Not.
Flat at all? It's like, what do you call them
slides? Like their butt is always.
So yeah, form. Doing it intentionally with the
(16:26):
right form is more important than just being at the gym and
like running on the treadmill. But you're not really doing it
properly. So do you have clients that come
to you for your coaching around the nutrition and fitness
aspect? Well, I do because in nursing,
you know, you have, you supposedly you know all these
things if you're self disciplined and practice what
(16:49):
you preach. I also am very big on functional
medicine, so endocrine health and ill health and the gut
health that most regular practitioners don't focus on at
all because it treats treats symptoms rather than doing these
more sophisticated labs to tell the person how their gut is
working or not working and then how that affects their immune
(17:10):
system and their hormones. It's a huge, huge field, growing
field right now, which is fascinating.
That's absolutely not something that I learned in nursing
school. So the desire to develop
yourself attracts different types of clients and patients in
your practice. And but see with my coaching,
because I insist that people notonly optimize their health, but
(17:31):
also learn how to invest in tangible assets to optimize
their financial health. If they want to be my clients, I
want them to understand that everything is connected in life,
health, wealth and relationships.
Extremely important because yourhealth decisions are very, very
vastly influenced by the people you're are around, not just the
(17:53):
ones in your house, but at your workplace and the your choices
of friends to socialize with. So we address all these factors
because people get influenced bythe wrong people with best
intentions all the time and and that's not making the best
decisions for themselves. And then they wonder why they're
sick and why they're poor and why they're unsatisfied with
life. So it's much more than just the
(18:15):
health aspect in the holistic self-confidence approach.
Yeah, let's dive into this economic side of how someone can
live the fulfilling life. So, tangible asset, what are
some examples of tangible asset that you teach people?
These are assets that you can touch, you can see, you can
hear, and you can fix. I'm very heavily invested in
(18:37):
real estate, obviously, because that is the best tangible asset
you can acquire and it's still pretty affordable if you have
the discipline in the plan, how to and and knowledge how to
chase the deals that are truly affordable that will make your
money right from the start the moment you purchase.
OK, so that was another learningcurve of course, that I had to
undertake that lots of people don't want to undertake,
(19:00):
unfortunately, and they invest in so-called easy stuff like
volatile fake assets in the stock market.
And, and I'm not saying that thestock market doesn't have its
place, but it just said that many financial coaches, they
really focus on the stock marketaspects and never mention owning
real estate to increase not onlyyour net worth, but like if
(19:24):
monthly secure cash flow when you manage assets appropriately.
And it just boggles my mind because it's just so obvious in
plain sight. You can buy it in your own
neighborhood. You can buy it in the
neighboring neighborhood and manage this thing and have this
cash flowing assets for life andfor generations, not just for
(19:46):
the time being. And the financial aspect is
important because it gives you choices.
It strengthens your ability to be astute about your habits.
It straightens your spending tendencies if you want to learn
because if you start from knowers where I did because when
(20:07):
I came to this country, I had nothing but like very big hopes
on student visa. OK.
So I'm not somebody who was herein the tons of cash periodically
and. I had no idea about finances can
just like I have no idea about science when I started nursing.
So that's why I tell all my students in the readers in my
book, if I could do it, anybody can because I was the person who
(20:30):
never believed I could learn anything besides music because I
had not progressed the way I wanted for 29 years.
I never thought I could progressin anything else since I had put
so much time and effort into a career that wasn't successful.
And you know, here I am today financially independent.
So if I can do it, anybody can. But tangible assets are that
assets that you can touch, you can see, you can visit, OK, that
(20:54):
those are tangible assets. So for Someone Like You
mentioned, not everyone is have this mindset, they may want to
do the easy stuff. What are some of the things that
you normally start telling them to open their minds and start to
consider tangible assets? I ask open-ended question as to
(21:14):
what their goals are within the next 10 to 15 years because
people want the quick fix but they rarely think about long
term, which is a huge mistake. The people that are tremendously
financially successful really start with the long term goals
first because that'll give them a much broader picture of they
want to accomplish in life and how fast they want to accomplish
it. That's the other question, and
(21:36):
most people, you'll find they'venever thought about this at all
because they're just unhappy with their current miserable job
situation and they want out as soon as possible.
So then we talk about career choices.
That's the other very important aspect, financial prosperity,
because you need to be useful tosociety and appreciate it and
sought after to have this incomeat first that will be keeping
(21:59):
your float very well while you collect money to invest in
tangible assets. And that whole connection that
people rarely see how a valuablethey can be with the career that
they are currently in, if only they choose to do so because you
chose a career for a reason. Now, if you chose your career
for all the wrong reasons, we'regoing to discuss that too, OK?
(22:23):
But the money has to come from somewhere for your tangible
assets. Unless you're willing to pursue
seller finance deals for a very long time and start with minimal
cash flow. If you don't think any mortgage
or down payment on your first property or second and third
property, well, that's requires a whole different set of skills.
OK, so the mindset is really depending on your goals that you
(22:47):
and your responsibility to thinkabout these goals.
And how do I know that? Because it was very hard for me
too. I, I read like 10 stuff, like
almost 10 confidence building books and success books.
And lo and behold, they all talked about five year tenure
and 15 year goals to write them down or read them regularly.
That's used to aggravate the heck out of me because it was a
(23:09):
different sort of independent thinking responsibility that
wasn't tied to what other people's thought about taught
you and their advice and everything.
You have to actually figure it out yourself.
And it's hard. It's very hard when you have
lived under the influence of other people's opinions for
decades. That's what changed you to your
current way of living. And once I help people
(23:29):
understand that it's a very liberating thing and yet more
responsibility and obligation towards yourself and your
integrity. And then the the brain unplugs
you release the brakes and you create these goals.
And then they realize the value of tangible assets versus the
other assets that are much more volatile.
And they'll learn strategies in either environment.
(23:52):
But then they are willing to dedicate the time to learning
and investing in themselves in the 1st place with financial
education. Yeah, like it's very important
to make your clients aware. And also they themselves need to
buy into it because you're not there 24/7.
You're not there to watch their every move, watch everything
(24:13):
they eat. Like you're not their trainer in
the gym. So they really have to be that
themselves. So while you were answering, you
mentioned about living under other people's opinions.
And earlier you mentioned that you had really low
self-confidence. I want to see how you built the
confidence. I build the confidence by
(24:37):
getting really sick of my own lack of confidence, And every
major decision I made was faced with a lot of skepticism from
the closest people, like changing careers, go to nursing
school. Yeah.
Oh, it's a very hard profession.Yes, it is.
And that's the point right before the nursing was the
karate, the martial arts, I, I practiced several martial arts.
But when I started martial arts,which was something I really
(24:59):
dreamed of since I was nine years old, but it was completely
suppressed in the family becauseI was a violinist.
And how can I do martial arts? My fingers, right?
No way. But that was badly surprised
when I was a child, because in Eastern Europe some parents came
to be very blunt with their opinions and hurtful, sometimes
with the best intentions. So then the martial arts was met
(25:22):
with a lot of skepticism. I did it regardless.
One of the best decisions of my life for confidence building.
Then changing careers. Skepticism from everybody.
Best decision of my life for confidence building because
changing careers you can boost your confidence like you can't
imagine. Of course, you need five to
seven years to appreciate that this is the starting point.
Then real estate, tons of cosmeticism from France.
(25:46):
Oh yeah, you lose your money. It's very risky.
Well, people who don't take risks don't go anywhere in life.
Another one of my best decisionsof my life.
So you have to counter the opinions if you are deeply,
deeply convinced that you're curious enough to take the risk,
so curious that it makes you excited to take the risk
(26:07):
regardless of the consequences. And that's how you battle low
self esteem. And to hell with it, I'll take
the risk, I'll jump in that hugecrevasse whatever, and see what
happens. Of course educate yourself
beforehand, but the real situation will show you that you
can never educate yourself enough.
(26:28):
And that's why you'll learn for the rest of your life.
Lifelong learning, and that's how you learn to really solve
problems. Yeah.
For real. And first of all and foremost
your own problems with your mindset.
And then everything else falls into place.
And then you can teach others how to solve problems.
But you don't tell people how tosolve problems unless you have
(26:50):
solved your own problems 1st. And that's what builds
credibility. Yeah, you also mentioned it
earlier. Like, you have to practice what
you preach. So that's why you're doing all
these things that you're coaching your clients on.
And you said when you moved to the States, you had nothing.
(27:11):
And I'm sure you had a lot of fear and anxiety.
How did that motivate you? At the time, I didn't have a lot
of fear. And exactly, I was young.
I was 24. You, you barely know anything
about life when you're 24. So you're just excited.
You're just excited, full of andthen life starts hitting you on
the hands one piece at a time. Reality, reality.
(27:34):
Especially understanding the limits of your own capabilities
and how to go around them. That takes a lot of courage and
learning and trial and error. So I wasn't really that anxious
when I came here. I was excited, but the anxiety
came when I saw that I wasn't progressing the way I wanted
through my masters and doctoral degrees.
(27:55):
I mean, I was giving decent recitals.
I was succeeding academically. But when it came to orchestral
editions, the feuds paralyzed meon the stage behind the curtain.
And that that was where fear andanxiety became very obvious to
me, that I had to do something about it to make it work in my
(28:16):
favor instead of against me. But with the violin, I had
already accumulated a lot of really, really bad history.
And much as it seems very hard and scary to completely change
fields, I opted for that for my own benefit, to start completely
from zero in the field where nobody knew me and I didn't know
(28:38):
anybody. So I could prove myself from
Ground Zero up. And that worked for me better
than trying to be the dead horsewith the other career that had
taken 2629 years of my life by the time I already entered the
workforce as a nurse. So this type of anxiety helped
me actually rebuild myself. I'm really, really glad to hear
(29:01):
that because that's not the casenowadays with a lot of cases of
anxiety. It paralyzes us, so it makes us
defenseless even like we can't. We can't do anything to help
ourselves. And that is because most people
refuse to really understand their anxiety.
What do you mean they? Look at it very superficially.
(29:22):
What scares them? And then they run away from it.
But why does it scare you? Is this rational?
Is it completely irrational? And how can you benefit from the
anxiety when it tells you that 90% of what you're afraid of is
things that you know you should have been doing and you're not
doing? So that's when anxiety becomes
your ally. It becomes a friend.
(29:43):
But you have to understand it soyou're understanding yourself.
I practice meditation several times a day now.
The anxiety is not an issue anymore.
It hasn't been for a very long time, but it was like seemingly
forever. And when I when I understood
that anxiety was telling me something important about
myself, and when I finally became willing to listen to what
(30:06):
actually telling and face it, then it started becoming more
and more under my control. To briefly describe how you
overcome it, is it more you learn to cohabit with your
anxiety and sort of like, OK, I I hear you, but now I need to
focus on this important thing inmy life.
(30:27):
Would you equate it with that? Yes, to a great extent, because
anxiety tells you what the things you should, the actions
you should have taken that you haven't yet.
So when you see a problem, you don't procrastinate, you just
solve it right away, start working towards solution,
achieve the solution, then face the next problem.
And the more problems you solve of your own and then help other
people solve their problems by seeing their perspective, the
(30:49):
more in control you are of your anxiety.
And then eventually it, which iskind of almost ceases to exist.
It's a very mild level which is necessary for learning.
Yeah, OK. But when you solve things one at
a time and then collectively everything that gives you
confidence because OK, there is a big problem seemingly now
something very annoying, very distressful, but OK, I've solved
(31:11):
50 problems like that. Yeah.
So there is no reason I won't solve this one.
Let's get it done. Done.
That's it. Yeah, there is no more anxiety,
but people run away from problems and they don't realize
life is all about solving problems.
Yeah. Not necessarily creating them,
but solving them because there are plenty of people who create
problems for you. So you can be very confident
(31:33):
that people will help you in that way.
So the way you react to it though is what's important in
your anxiety control. Think about how much you grow
after solving 10 problems, 20 problems, 50 problems.
So we have talked about so many things in life, like each one of
moments can be like a whole series that's.
(31:54):
True, that's true. So for someone who isn't in the
best health shape, may not be inthe best financial circumstance,
may not be in like the right mental Wellness, what's the
first step they should take if they do want to improve their
(32:14):
holistic well-being? They need to sit and honestly
discuss what they want to achieve with their health,
finances, relationships and everything.
Because once you have a clear picture insight, then you can
act on it and you're less overwhelmed.
But yes, you have to tackle everything if it's all a
problem. If you neglect one thing, the
(32:35):
other ones won't progress properly because they're going
to be on the back of your mind. OK, so I'm working on my health,
but I don't have money for basicnecessities.
So we have a problem here. We have to tailor your health
routine and your nutrition. And there are extremely cheap
problems that are highly nutritious.
When you cook them, they expand threefold.
Beans and grains and legumes andgrains come to mind.
(32:56):
Organic with tons of minerals and vitamins and nutrition in
them. So we, we start with the
easiest. My principle in a vegan that is
you start simple and you keep itsimple.
It it's never worked better finances.
It's a little bit harder to apply that approach, but we
tackle everything because if youare in poor health, that means
you're paying a lot of money formedical bills and medications.
(33:18):
So we need to create a financialstrategy for you as well.
And many people who are very sick, they also tend to smoke a
lot because that's type of a stress relief and that a lot of
their paycheck goes there, rightthere in the cigarettes.
So I mean, tons of habits like that, you know, coping
mechanisms that are really counter mechanisms.
Unfortunately, they don't createany productive results.
(33:40):
So if they're willing to face these problems, they will solve
them. And they already know the
answers to most questions. You.
Just gently lead them towards them, but let them discover that
so it's their idea rather than yours as a coach and things fall
into place. But you have to tackle it all at
once, unfortunately. I mean, you can start easily in
(34:02):
each aspects, but each aspect has to be addressed because
they're connected. And once they see the
connection, it's a big aha moment because they'll realize
how fixing all of these will help all of these
simultaneously, and there is less resistance than to the work
that has to be done by them. Well, so many golden Nuggets of
(34:22):
information in this episode. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
So for this last part, let's play a game.
Rapid fire questions. OK, let's see, I'll have to.
Just get reaction. Imagine yourself waking up one
day low on energy. What do you do?
What's your go to fix? Oh, I take a cold shower
(34:44):
immediately and I do 100 squats with my own weight.
Fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tried that.
I tried the ice bath last week. I can see the benefit of it.
No, no. Go into the cold shower for
three minutes. You will not have low energy
after that. That's a really good tip.
OK, next one. What's a healthy habit that you
(35:05):
secretly think is overrated? Overrated kiddo diet.
It's a another excellent excuse for eating crap as far as I'm
concerned. Yeah, great.
Good thing I'm not on it. So when it comes to health,
(35:27):
people think about like detox too.
We haven't talked about it in this episode, but I know you're
a proponent of detoxing. What is a detox?
What should people detox from that has nothing to do with
food? Well, heavy metals, right?
You have plastic components, youhave decreasing glutathione from
(35:48):
your liver with age. There are also any medications,
air toxins, water toxins, full house water filtration system,
osmosis filter and whatnot. But the foods themselves, even
in the organic industry, that's growing like crazy and starting
to cut corners. The food also has toxins.
(36:08):
Your head's excluding from food.But I mean, you eat food
everyday. So I do detox everyday.
I'm a huge proponent for the detox.
Yes. And there are many ways to
detox. I have chosen A relatively
inexpensive way that I discuss in a great extent in the 7th
chapter of my book, which is allabout detoxification.
But you can't ignore the fact that you're exposed to between
(36:33):
20,000 and 2 million toxins every day.
Wow. It's a huge number and it is
unavoidable. Unfortunately, we can't avoid
it. OK, so much as we try.
Of course, we've minimized all chemical exposures in our house
and whatnot, but if you walk around in the real world, you
get toxins and the whole thing is with your body.
(36:55):
It's is so overwhelmed that yourliver, which serves well over
200 functions in your body, has to be supported on a daily basis
to perform at its best. SO glutathione increase is one
of your best focuses. Then cleaning antioxidants from
your body is a huge focus as well.
And then of course, if you have a specific overwhelm that you
(37:16):
know through very specific labs,you have to focus on that too.
And lots of people don't know because they function at high
capacity, but like almost at high stress modes, survival
modes, and most of us do that without realizing it, and
sometimes in backfires very, very badly as we age.
So you have to be mindful of these things.
(37:37):
So I'd love to discuss immune function, hormone function, gut
health. These are the things that are
extremely interconnected that your regular doctor won't tell
you about at all, because the doctors themselves don't eat
healthy and they don't pay attention to these things.
They didn't learn about these intimate interconnections in
your body and mental health in medical school because it all
(37:58):
focuses on pharmaceutical drugs,right?
It's the pharmaceutical companies that determine fee
curriculum of the contemporary doctors.
So none of this is addressed, unfortunately.
And these connections are rarelyexplained to the doctors.
They're even more seldom explained to the patients
themselves. And then you have doctors that
are very tight specialists. They only focus on their field
(38:19):
and they rarely communicate withthe other doctors for the
patient. And the patient has 6 or 7
specialists. That's a disaster picture right
there. And lots of my patients are like
this. And it's just very, very sad
because you know how we used to have these general practitioners
when we were growing up. They used.
So much more than today's general practitioners and they
(38:40):
are just amazing at connecting body systems and that doesn't
exist anymore or it's very rarely seen.
And this is where patients are so responsible for their old
health. 100% of duty education and be willing to research and
constantly question what they'retold by the so-called
authorities. OK, because we know what
(39:00):
happened when the authorities told us to lock ourselves in our
homes and take a highly toxic drug that killed more people
than it's helped. OK.
So thankfully I've never been susceptible to such suggestions.
But lots of people your tactics.Yeah.
And they just do the dumbest things in their lives, including
(39:21):
with their health. And it's just very, very
important to educate. So to come back to your original
question with the detox, you have to practice mental detox,
emotional detox and physical detox every day because you get
exposed to these toxins every day.
And so if you don't address it every day, you're not in in pace
(39:43):
with the degree of toxicity thatyou're exposed to.
So again, you have to create that wonderful time management
skill to address all these things every single day.
Otherwise it just becomes harderfor you.
Yeah, they just pile up. OK.
What is your definition of true wealth?
Oh well, that's well. That can replicate itself every
(40:06):
month while you sleep. Health is the biggest form of
wealth. That's true wealth.
So excellent, optimized health and financial freedom in
relationships that don't get in the way but nourish you and
allow you to nourish them. That's true wealth.
Yeah, like a golden triangle. OK, last one.
(40:28):
If your younger self could see you now, what would she say?
If she would laugh because she would never believe that that
will be possible to accomplish. My younger self was not very
wise. She would be like, oh, I had a
nice, nice dream. But yeah, no way.
That's what she would say, unfortunately.
Oh, so she's like their family too?
She was really dense, very, verydense.
(40:52):
OK, well look at you today, but you have developed so much
wisdom. You're using your knowledge and
wisdom to help the people aroundyou.
So glad you're on mind gland. Really enjoy this conversation,
Alexandra. Well, likewise, Karens, thank
you so much for having me. I hopefully we helped your
listeners get some new insights and get encouraged and inspired.
(41:13):
Yeah, I will leave your info on the show notes, but what's the
easiest way for people to get incontact with you?
After my website, itsholisticselfconfidence.com,
no dashes, holistic selfconfidence.com, the book is
available there, The coaching material, I mean the explanation
of my coaching strategy. My social links are on the
(41:34):
website as well. The book, the physical copy, is
available in the US only, but the ebook version, which is
significantly less expensive, ofcourse, it's available worldwide
for purchase, and not just on the website but also on Amazon,
Apple Books, Smash Words, and Barnes and Noble.
OK, people have accounts there, that's fine.
But the website is the easiest way to get a hold of me because
(41:56):
they'll see my YouTube channel there and other media
appearances and contact information.
Everything. Holistic.
Selfconfidence.com. Yeah, there's, like, like I
said, every single topic. It's a rabbit hole.
There's so much to explore in every single aspect of the
health optimization. The listeners hope you learned
something useful today and it'llmake you think twice and maybe
(42:17):
start changing some habits. Thank you, Alexandra.
Thank you, Karen. Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Mind Blend.
If you enjoyed the conversation,don't forget to follow and share
it with anyone who needs to hearit.
And let's keep the conversation going.
Connect with me on LinkedIn or leave me a comment.
(42:38):
Until next time, stay curious, keep exploring, and let's
continue to plan our minds and discover what's possible.
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