Ep. 43: Barbara Bush and Jenna Bush Hager - Sisters First: Balancing family and career and living a life of gratitude
Doro talks with her nieces, Jenna Bush Hager, co-host of NBC's Today Show and an editor-at-large for Southern Living magazine and Barbara Bush, the board chair and cofounder of Global Health Corps, an organization that has mobilized almost one thousand young leaders to take an innovative approach to solving some of the world's biggest global health challenges.
This charming family interview includes how both Barbara and Jenna found their callings and have made their mark on the world. They open up about their daily morning routines, favorite interviews, biggest mistakes, and favorite mindful app.
They teach us to let go of the perceptions of others, ground with breath work and intentions in the morning, take walks after dinner and stay curious about this wild and wonderful life.
Perhaps their greatest gift as children was to be given the permission to make mistakes and let go of perfection.
Both Barbara Bush and Jenna Bush Hager are New York Times Best Selling authors. Their books include, Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life By Jenna Bush Hager, and Barbara Bush and Anna’s Story: A Story of Hope by Jenna Bush.
More From Barbara Bush and Jenna Bush Hagar
Global Health Foundation Website: https://ghcorps.org/
Hoda & Jenna Show: https://www.today.com/hoda-and-jenna
Twitter @JennaBushHager, @ghcorps, @southern_living
Facebook @jennabushhager @GlobalHealthCorps, @SouthernLiving
Instagram: @jennabhager, @todayshow, @globalhealthcorps, @southernlivingmag
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-health-corps/
Books by Barbara Bush and Jenna Bush Hagar
Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life By Bush Hager, Jenna, Barbara Pierce Bush
Anna’s Story: A Story of Hope by Jenna Bush
Our Big Back Yard by Jenna Bush
Ready All About it by Jenna Bush
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Learn more about BB&R and Achieving Optimal Health Conference by visiting BBRconsulting.us
Show Notes
[01:12] We traveled to East and Southern Africa for that launch, and when we landed, it was an incredibly overwhelming experience. We landed and there were hundreds of people in Uganda waiting in the streets for drugs that we had had in the United States for years.
[01:39] At the time, only 40% people on the continent of Africa had the drugs that they needed to live. It was predicted that over 15 million people had HIV.
[02:41] We were really motivated by the idea that we were seeing our peers that were so excited to step up and solve problems throughout the world. When I was graduating Teach for America was one of the biggest recruiters from Yale.
[02:57] We started to recruit exceptional young leaders from around the world.
[03:39] There are so many young people that want to get their foot in the door to be part of positive solutions.
[04:24] We really think of our model as seeding the field of global health with exceptional creative young talent who will be the ones that we read
about in the newspaper in ten years that have gotten rid of malaria.
[04:36] We make sure that we have an AIDS free generation in the next 10 years.
[06:28] I think the beauty of starting something is there’s so many possibilities you don’t know where it could go.
[08:36] Teaching is so difficult it’s a job that I think sometimes our culture doesn’t appreciate how hard it is.
[10:01] I think that lesson is you never really can predict how life’s going to go.
[11:26] A great team is critical.
[12:29] So many people have changed me. And just meeting so many people that were everyday people that were stepping up to change their norm, completely changed my thought about how I should live my life and how I could live my life.
[13:34] One of my favorite interviews was Maya Angelou right before she passed away.
[16:34] I love having a morning routine it really grounds me and centers me. I really now am very vigilant about not looking at my phone or text messages or emails when I wake up and letting myself have 30 minutes where I’m not actually involved in what’s going on with other people at that point in the day. But instead I like to do breath work when I wake up and I like to read our morning practice for work. I feel often very run by my inbox and by my team and by my phone throughout the day. But of course we have control over that. And so I like starting off my day with how I want to start my day and ground my day via breath work and getting quiet and reading something that is a good reminder of how I want to live that day. And being empathetic or being a good listener or how I want to present myself in the world that day. I take control over my time in the mornings so that I am building the blocks before I even get out the house of how I want to be.
[17:36] I realize I’m in control of starting positively and starting my day in the way that I want to.
[21:49] The solitary moments of listening to music and walking and being outside.
[22:12] Being outdoors and going for a walk is a really good way to relieve stress.
[22:19] I go on a walk almost every night after we have dinner.
[22:50] If I’m in nature it just completely changes my perspective and I try to squeeze in any way that I can being in nature, being outside.
[23:46] In my experience, I’ve just grown a lot more when I’ve been uncomfortable or when things didn’t work.
[25:42] Other people’s perceptions should never change who I am.
[26:18]There’s something about letting go of other people’s perception.
[27:08] It is kind of a gray area of being humble but also owning your own power.
[27:28] I just feel like I think it was the greatest gift that I was born with a twin and I had a partner when I was born.
[27:43] I’m grateful that I have colleagues from all around the world that deeply believe that the world can be better and they step up to do it and I get to walk alongside them in this work and try to do that as well.
[27:57] I feel like I’ve been able to just be myself and choose my own path.
[20:08] To be able to explore the world and explore life with incredible people.
[28:23] Henry and I text each other three things we’re grateful for every single morning because I leave the house before he’s awake.
[28:56] The one thing that our parents always did was they let us make mistakes and let us be ourselves.
[29:20] We were allowed to be flawed. I allowed myself to be flawed. I allowed myself to make mistakes. I’m most grateful that we were allowed to not be perfect.
[31:34] My mom would feed us dinner and shower us and we’d go over to my grandmother’s house and nightgowns with white hair and play in the front yard and she would pull out a blanket and lay it on the front yard and we’d all lay down together my sister my grandmother and my mom and me and snuggle and my grandmother would show us all the constellations and just encourage us to dream while we were laying there in the front yard looking at the sky.
[32:03] “Tell me how is it you plan to live your one wild and precious life.” And we always loved that because it was so fun to think about this big wild life that we could live. I think it’s a good thing to think about all the time how can you live your one wild and precious life.
Thank you for joining us on HealthGig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.
“How are we going to spend our one wild and precious life.” - Mary Oliver
“There are so many young people that want to get their foot in the door to be part of positive solutions.” Barbara Bush
“I love having a morning routine it really grounds me and centers me. I am very vigilant about not looking at my phone or text messages or emails when I wake up and letting myself have 30 minutes where I’m not actually involved in what’s going on with other people at that point in the day.” - Jenna Bush Hager
“Being outdoors and going for a walk is a really good way to relieve stress.” - Jenna Bush Hager
“In my experience, I’ve just grown a lot more when I’ve been uncomfortable or when things didn’t work.” - Barbara Bush
“It is kind of a gray area of being humble but also owning your own power.” - Jenna Bush Hager
“Henry and I text each other three things we’re grateful for every single morning because I leave the house before he’s awake.” - Jenna Bush Hager
“The one thing that our parents always did was they let us make mistakes and let us be ourselves.” - Jenna Bush Hager
Keywords
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