26: Increasing Your Passion and Energy with Ronni Kahn AO

[00:00:00] If I was dealing with daughter Ronnie. Yes. What is the lesson that you would want to instill in me? I would want you to know that you are powerful beyond your own belief, that there is nothing that you can’t do as long as it doesn’t harm anybody else or yourself that it adds value and that resilient.

And encourage other two very important quantities. Resilience is not to give up either on yourself or on your dreams, your ideas, whatever it is that you think that you can add value to and the courage to step out and do it. If you just look around and know and believe in yourself, and others will believe in.

Hi there. Welcome to the field better now, podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Balca. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here [00:01:00] to fuck yourself, to create a bit of future in your health, in your current. In your relationships, both yourself. And for those around you, just one small action step at a time with so much love and gratitude to be your guide.

Let’s get started.

Jackie back. Hi, everyone. Jackie, back here, we have such an incredible guests. One of the most purposeful driven people I’ve ever met the one and only Ronnie Kahn a. Oh, and for those of you that don’t know a AU signifies Ronnie’s appointment as officer of the order of Australia. Ronnie is infectious, she’s energetic driven, and a passionate storyteller.

Ronnie is the founder and CEO of Oz harvest a for-purpose organization dedicated to feeding the hungry, a topic that I am so passionate about. Did you know that [00:02:00] women are the new hungry? I was harvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organization. She recognized that we have surplus food and hungry people put the two together and now feeds millions of people.

Every. With food that would otherwise have gone to landfill. We chat about how food in landfill is the biggest contributor now to climate change her strategies to feel better and live from a place of dignity, respect, and non-judgment how to create joy in your life. And so much more Ronnie’s memoir a repurpose life is another wonderful contribution to the.

Everybody needs to read this book, helping us understand that life is just too short, not to leave a purposeful, meaningful, joyful, enriched life. Ronnie and I are both. So like-minded and passionate about fixing our broken systems and mind body medicine. My tip stay to the end as runny shares. Something really special.

Welcome. Welcome. [00:03:00] Welcome, Ronnie con, I am honored to have you on the show today. Well, I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. Yes. So Ronnie, I want to start with a beautiful quote from you and you have so many, I say be brave and courageous because all you have. Can you tell me what you meant when you said that?

I absolutely can, but before I do, I’m just going to take knowledge that I made you on the land of the Gadigal people of they are a nation and I pay my deep respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to wherever you are and to all first nations peoples, thank you, you know, bold and courageous now.

So when I was 28, my mum passed. She was 63. She had spent her life. Scrimping and saving for when she had retired and she died. Now, she hadn’t planned on dying. Then that’s what happened. And it made [00:04:00] me realize when that wicked plot and plan for all we live, but really the present is all we have. And then when my beautiful, magnificent 36 year old daughter in law vegan, Yoga teacher, beautiful human singer songwriter performer guide.

Within six weeks, she got cancer, pancreatic cancer, and six weeks later passed away. I really got to understand the present. I really got to understand now. And we do not have the luxury of saying one day I will do something. If we are not living right here and now, and being the very best we can be. We are wasting the opportunity of our lives because really, you know, whether it’s Shane Warne who woke up in the morning, thinking he had the rest of his life still to do whatever he did, he didn’t [00:05:00] wake up and say, well, this is my very, very last day.

None of us know this. So we really have to be, and our very, very best and do what it is we need to do. And often that involves both courage and being brave. And bring bold because there’s simple, easy things. Don’t seem to provide the same impetus, either task selves, or to the world in which we live. And I’m very much about this notion of the more you do for others, the richer, the individual.

Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. And there’s so much science around that. Now, you know, the gift of giving and kindness and gratitude and that you receive more than you could ever know possible. Absolutely. So Ronnie, you, Hey, we talked before the show about, I used the word infectious to describe you, which is maybe not so easy now, but you have this [00:06:00] infectious, infectious energy it’s electric.

You are. Courageous and bold. How did you get to be like that? So I never knew, and I still don’t know what that is. I think I’ve been given a gift. There’s absolutely no doubt. And that gift again, came to me through that very mother that I mentioned earlier, and my dad in a way, my dad had an accident when I was six.

They didn’t think it survived. He was in hospital for two years and he came out with one stiff leg, one leg in a caliper. Every bone in his body was broken and had to be rebuilt. He was an architect. He went back into architecture and my father never once saw himself as a victim. I only realized when he died at the age of 84 at his funeral, when I did the eulogy that in fact my father was deceased.[00:07:00] 

But he never saw himself as disabled and noted. We, so that power of positivity. And my mother, when my father passed away suddenly, I mean, when my father had this accident suddenly had three children to look after. And she did anything within her power and she did so many phenomenal things to make a living.

And I don’t recall her once considering herself, a victim ever coming home without anything, or waking up in the morning without a smile and a positive attitude. So I do feel blessed. I feel I got an extraordinary subliminal message. And this is really important to anyone who’s listening. We are role models, whether we know it or not.

So it’s how you live, how you behave, how you speak, the energy you exude or not. And it’s unconscious so many times, but it’s subliminal so that the people who [00:08:00] you work with absorb this, your children subliminally absorbed who you are and what you stand for. And those values are so important. So I think.

Gifted that opportunity to absorb and then to live with gratitude, waking up every morning, touching my bed and being grateful that I woke up in a bed and lifting my eyes and being grateful that there’s a roof above my head and looking out of a window and having a window to look at up and see with my eyes.

But there is to see and then awareness and being mindful of that adds to being able to live a life that’s truly present. I would hope I love that so much. And you know, I think it is really important that you have recognized you have a gift and the. Your role is to share that. And, you know, I love [00:09:00] talking about modeling.

I was talking to Bruce Lipton about this on a previous podcast because we absorb the programming from those around us and all of that. We’re downloading and downloading like a computer until the age of seven. We’ve downloaded most of our beliefs. A lot of our beliefs aren’t even our own. So. You know, my gift is as a medical intuitive.

And now I know that it’s my role in this human existence to share that special gift, but when you’re burnt out and we know that burnout is such a huge problem, the world health organization has classified it as an occupational phenomenon when you’re so burnt out. Have you got any thoughts on how to get yourself from feeling bad?

To feeling better. Oh, I definitely do, but I want to acknowledge that the last two years. Of this human existence as we have lived, it has created I think, [00:10:00] an enormous fatigue. So there’s the pressure of work and general blowout, but COVID has instilled fear instead of hope, instilled so much negativity.

That I think we have this double whammy. We have this double whammy of burnout from pressure at work. And then on top of that, this notion that we aren’t in control, that there are things that are beyond our control and it’s what we do with them. And as leaders, or as. You know how important it is to share information and be transparent with information because that lack of knowledge, lack of control, lack of being able to manage is so debilitating.

Again, I think gratitude. Is really one of the keys to stepping out of misery because when I think [00:11:00] about people and we’ve all read and know about people who went through the Holocaust, or yes, everyone knows about Victor Frankel, you know, with hope and gratitude. One can really. Lift one selves out of the deepest despair.

I think taking physical steps. I think meditation is an extraordinary tool. Yes. Well, what I mean by meditation, one does not have to sit with one’s legs crossed hands in this more dress saying, ahm, because not everybody can do that, but taking a moment to switch off and really switch off can be incredibly empowering and rich because it does get one present and being present and knowing that.

Every single thing passes this too shall pass [00:12:00] is very powerful because you know, like a river runs, it’s never the same water and it keeps on running, even if it’s a trickle. So do we, and if we. Put ourselves in nature nature again is another very enriching source of energy. Absolutely. And I would say even something that I loved learning about when I was studying functional nutrition, was that putting your feet on the ground and having the energy of the earth, the electrons come up through you recharges you just like a battery because we are.

Electricity and the truth is we don’t even know what electricity is. So I just, that blew me away that whole concept of grounding, you know, which I didn’t really know what it was before. So I love that you brought that up gratitude being in nature, these things that we don’t necessarily, you know, put first, make time.[00:13:00] 

Absolutely. So Ronnie, you’ve described yourself as an accidental activist, a level of these gorgeous words that you use amongst other achievements. You’ve been part of getting Australia to commit to Harvard. Our food waste. I mean, talk about phenomenon. How are you approaching, fixing our broken system? So I think through us harvest, we’re totally committed.

I mean, now there’s only eight years left between 2022 and 2030 Australia committed to the UN SDG goal, um, to have food wasted. The goal is 12.3. So what are we doing about. It’s about education. You know, every single one of us needs to know that as little as we are, what we do counts. And for example, one of the biggest broken systems is our climate change issues, food waste feeds, climate change.

Most people don’t know this and don’t understand. [00:14:00] And they also think, oh, what difference does it make? If I take my apple and throw it into landfill or my left. Well, it makes a huge difference. And many of us, you know, in some way would love to be a climate activist, but not all of us can afford an electric vehicle.

Not all of us can afford to put solar on our roots. Not all of us are going to go and chain ourselves to trees to protect them, but every single one of them. I can stop food waste because food waste is the first biggest reason for climate change. It’s just moved up the ladder by project drawdown. If food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of methane gases after the U S and China.

So every time we throw away something into landfill, that’s organic and could go into compost or be re purposed. We are aiming [00:15:00] climate change, whereas we could help us save gases from going into climate. We could save money. Food waste is costing us $36 billion a year, just in Australia to over a trillion dollars globally.

The third of all food goes to waste. So, you know, it’s funny yesterday I was meeting with someone we were outside. We had just collected a pickup from. A supermarket stores happened to be Woolworths and a mother and two kids saw me and she recognized me and came over and said, I went to say hello. And I was holding up a box of produce that had just been given.

And I say to the little boy looking at. Basket, you know, what would you eat this? And there was, of course the projects looked beautiful, but bananas had black marks on them. That’s what bananas at the time they grow and get onto a shelf. And the little boy said, no, the mother was absolutely mortified [00:16:00] because I said, have you ever eaten a smoothie?

Do you like banana pancakes? And excuse me, is that a freckle on your face and said to the little boy I said, so, should I throw you out? Cause you got a Franco, they just packed up. But the point is we can take action. And so as harvest is committed to education, we’ve got education programs that are now direct to consumers, trying to teach all of us, how not to waste food.

And we’ve created a new little product to make it so easy because this is based on. Global research first in global research together with Monash university, as well as working with behavioral scientists, that the most likely behavior we could all take to help climate change is to use. Um, so use that what you’ve got take veggies and turn them into frittata.

Make roast vegetables, create pies, pastors pesto’s [00:17:00] you don’t only need basil and pine that store pesto. If you’ve got leftover coriander and you’ve got. Smith’s lettuce. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, with some nuts could, maybe that’s going to be anything and turn it into beautiful sources. So that’s really, we’re very committed.

That’s a big part of where we rack rescuing food to make sure it goes to feed hungry people, but the education of all of us to know our path in not wasting. And I think that’s incredible, Ronnie, and I love that you shared some really practical tips that you can pick and choose from because they’re so varied.

You know, I live in Queensland, so my bananas are always funny. We’ve got about half a day and it’s the, so we always buy a bunch, nothing ever goes to waste. I’ve perfected the art of the banana donut and that’ll be on a donut. But even in my sister taught me a great trick, but we don’t peel any of our veggies, but they doing their house and.

Heals them. And then [00:18:00] she has everything ready to go. And once a week she blends it all up with some means and that’s her dog food. And it’s just a brilliant idea. It’s all the cuts. He doesn’t waste a single thing. Love it. And it tries as a nutritionist as well. I’m livid. When I don’t have people eating their broccoli stalks, I’m like, make them best crumb them, use them delicious.

But you know, this little tool that we’ve created is called use it uptake the sticky tape. Yes. Pick me, eat me. Choose me. And you put it on a shelf in your fridge, you stick it onto one part of a shelf, move, everything that needs to be used up there so that you have it front of mind. And it’s very visible.

And then especially if they young kids in the family, they love it and it shifts and changes behavior, and that’s what we need to do. And it’s very hard for us to shift that. Oh, I love that so much. And you know, it is, it’s about systemizing [00:19:00] where I’m going to get your stickers, but you know, we have quadrants in the fridge, so things move from right to left.

And it’s always on the top of this website. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, that’s so good. And so, you know, I teach people to make smooth. I love that you talked about smoothies because you know, we put broccoli and zucchini and it’s a substitute for. So you actually, it’s quicker to use the veggies, get the fiber feed, the microbiome, and you don’t need the eyes.

So it’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned, love it. Well, talking about it, like what you do though, and provide meals to the hungry. You talk about women being the new hungry. Can you explain this to me? Yeah. You know what happens generally to vulnerable people? How do they get there? You know, people don’t understand, especially in a society where we have social services, but you know, if you lose your job, often times things can [00:20:00] spiral from there, you lose your job, you then start challenges within your marriage.

You know, it’s so easy to trigger. Issues that cause people to fall through the cracks and women are the most vulnerable because they’ve been dependent on the salary perhaps of somebody else. And women are not earning the same salaries as men. So we started off with. You know, behind the eight ball. And what can happen is if you know, there is the saying that we are only three salaries away, all of us are only three salaries away from potential challenges, bankruptcy, but with the cost of living, as it is today, a woman loses her job.

Then she struggles to start paying rent. Things for on her kids need to make choices. You know, this week I came across in nurse. Now this is an essential, so we dependent [00:21:00] on her doing her job. Single mother with two kids had to choose between childcare, driving her self to work in a car, fueling it, food rent and medical goals.

And what often happens is you start off with less food until finally slowly, you suddenly could find yourself that you’re living in. And it’s true. The reality of how welfare is not good enough, our salaries are not equal enough and high enough. And so we find ourselves particularly women in this particular.

Making choices that are very, very hard. It’s incredible. Isn’t it? Because I think like this nurse it’s hidden in 64% of people who need support have a job. One in six Australians need food relief and 64% of them have work. How does that? [00:22:00] You’ve figured that 5 million, 6 million people who try and get a job, but the work isn’t paying enough for them to pay rent, feed their children, educate their children and take care of medical bills.

Yeah, it’s the world is mad. And what I love so much about you Ronnie, is that you do have a gift because you saw that there was surplus food and there was hungry people. And I mean, the world is so much a better place with you in it. Thank you. I must say it is a beautiful thing that we do yesterday.

Literally went out delivering food and it’s humbling. You know, I was chatting to. One of the friends that we deliver gave food to who came to this place to get food. He just said, this is life-changing. And it’s everything we do is about dignity and respect. That’s the whole point. It’s never about hand-me-downs or hand this or giving something [00:23:00] to someone it’s all about encouraging dignity and respect.

Food is about sharing, caring, and respect.

Absolutely. And I love that one of your customers, I think coined the term dignity pack, which is so beautiful, because what I love about you Ronnie, is that you have this beautiful characteristics. Of non-judgment you’re in a safe place and you’re completely free of any judgment because for whatever reason, and I’m not sure how we got here.

We are such a society where we do have judgment. What are your thoughts on. Totally. You know, we now ran a restaurant called the repertory area. It’s a very beautiful, it’s a place that is exquisite. I mean, it’s a huge magnificent fit-out that, of course I got for free and artistic and. Curated and autism [00:24:00] and beautiful.

And we serve lunch Tuesdays to Fridays. It’s in Sydney on beautiful tables with crockery and cutlery and a served three-course meal to our friends who come for free. Anyone can walk through the door. And, you know, it is so interesting. Cause sometimes I’ll have lunch with someone because I’ll take my funders there.

I’ll take people, I’m having meetings with there because you can see how dignity and respect does. And there will often be people who say, well, that person doesn’t look like and how can we do. Anybody and you ended up, people have said to me, when we opened up free supermarket, people will take advantage and people who don’t need food will come in.

And my feeling is if they come in and they don’t need it, then they have a problem because they do need it. Because if anyone would come in [00:25:00] to take advantage of something, they have problems. And that is the exquisite thing about non-judgment everybody. Deserves the opportunity to be treated with dignity and respect.

Mm. I couldn’t agree more if I was your daughter, Ronnie. Yes. What is the lesson that you would want to instill in them? I would want you to know that you are powerful beyond your own belief, that there is nothing that you can’t do as long as it doesn’t harm anybody else or yourself that it adds value.

And that resilience and courage are the two very important qualities. Resilience is not to give up either on yourself. Or on your dreams, your ideas or whatever it is that you think that you can add value to and the courage to step out and do it. If you just look around and know and believe in yourself, then others will believe in you.[00:26:00] 

Oh, that is so beautifully architected. I love that so much. I mean, I suppose that’s what I think my gift is helping people better connect to themselves, helping people love themselves and really listening to the language that we’re using about ourselves, which is often horrific. But if it is that’s okay, because you just need to take the first step to changing that, to turning that into something.

More loving, more kind, more supportive as you would speak to a friend or a family member. Absolutely. The words we say to ourselves are the most powerful. Absolutely. And we need to also say what we mean and mean what we say yes. In integrity, which you do so much. I love that. So Ronnie, you’re an overachiever.

So, so many things that you’ve done. Busy, busy woman. What adventure are you embarking on next? So I recently finished my memoir repurpose [00:27:00] life, which I never thought I’d write, but I did. I wrote it together with my daughter in New York, which was an extraordinary experience in both bonding, testing and exquisiteness really ultimately.

So that book has been very powerful. I didn’t realize that it has become a tool for so many people to find purpose, which is not on a supermarket shelf. It would be so easy if we could just go buy it, but it’s really right to inside of ourselves. So I think the book has been powerful, but really what I want to do now is two things.

I want to create a repurposed. For youth. So we were pitching to rewrite that book so that it targets young people because young people specifically after these last two years, you’re not, I wrote the book without COVID in mind and it was launched during COVID. So it didn’t get the kind of launch that a book would have got, because we couldn’t do book launches [00:28:00] or we didn’t do any public events.

And the poignancy and power of it post or during COVID, you know, has been even more evident. So I know that this book, the book that I want to do now is really about sustainability. I want to embed it into the school curriculum, this notion of positivity, this notion of finding purpose and meaning, cause a meaningful life.

Is what inspires people to live and to grow and to have integrity and to give back. So we’re about to rewrite that book, looking for a publisher or someone who can help us bring that to light. And I have also launched I’m working on a beautiful program called the art of purposeful leadership to bring purposeful leadership to every business on all levels.

Of business. It’s not just leaders. Every single one of us is a leader. Whether we’ve [00:29:00] got a title or not, and we all need to be able to stand into our own strength, tap into it, and again, be the best we could be. And I’m working on the art of purposeful leadership together with a wonderful psychiatrist from New York, Dr.

Paul Brody, who is himself, is a psychiatrist. Couple’s therapist, an individual therapist, an actor, and a narrative storyteller. So it’s all about storytelling. That is very much part of the art of purposeful leadership. And also we are running courses in that, which is very exciting. So that’s a new avenue in direction for.

Oh funny. How did, how do you keep your, I know we talked about gratitude and is that how you continue to drive yourself? I don’t have to drive myself. I haven’t worked a day in the last 18 years as harvest every day is a joy to wake up [00:30:00] every day. I am blessed. I am privileged and I will never, ever not appreciate that.

Or take advantage or not be aware of that. And yeah, a gift is the energy that I have, and I’m blessed to have that, but yeah, it’s just, you know, waking up and seeing that the clouds will right behind those clouds. The sun is. Waking up every morning fact that I can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not. Yes, absolutely.

I love that. You’re such a great role model. We surveyed over 12,000 people now globally on their energy. One of the questions is about purpose and gratitude, and we know that six out of 10 people don’t have purpose. And even that seems, it feels like it should be more than that from what I’m seeing clinically.

So, you know, your. I repurpose life. And the programs that you’re running are so critical. [00:31:00] I mean, there is such a valid need for people to do what you do and never work a day for the rest of their life, despite contributing more than you could ever imagine. Yeah. And one can do that one. Doesn’t have to start a charity.

You know, Jackie, I keep saying people say, I love what you’ve got. You can have what I’ve got. I happened to have been in a position to see a need. And create an organization, but every single one of us can do that within the workplace that we work. And add value that you know, is imparted to everyone around them.

So people shouldn’t think you have to only be working in the full purpose world. You have to be infused with purpose and meaning, and it’s right there. It’s in the joy that you find with what it is that you do. Every single one of us have got that you just have to know how and where to find. Absolutely.

And you’re so right. We all have very special gifts [00:32:00] that we need to share with the world. Thank you so much, Ronnie. You’re an absolute superstar. I really enjoyed getting together. Can I share a little, oh my gosh. I would love that, please. Okay. So. It’s a quote in the afterward of my book. So maybe this will make people want to read the book even, but I think it’s a beautiful little quote and that’s why I put it there.

And it goes like this in the event of a huge conflagration, like a fire. We as humans all have three principle options as to what we can do. We can look at that fire and we can run away as fast as we can and leave those that cannot run to. Number two, we can write an angry letter to the newspaper, demanding that the people who started that buyer get punished, or number three, we can run and find a backup.

And if we cannot find a packet, we find a junk. And if you cannot find a jug, we find a teaspoon because [00:33:00] every single one of us has a teaspoon. And I know that a teaspoon is tiny and the fire is huge, but there are millions of. And if we all use our teaspoon, we can put out that fire. And so I would like to invite everyone.

Who’s listening to join the order of the teaspoon, where we either wear a teaspoon on Allen Pell, or I wear a teaspoon around my finger. It’s the handle of a teaspoon. I wear one around my neck. They’re available. On my website, where it says gratitude or blessed to know that we are part of the order of the teaspoon, which then gives us the power to do random acts of kindness and to be part of adding value to society.

So. Everybody can do this right now. Jackie, put your hands together, your two hands together and look into your tooth cup tans because [00:34:00] they’re in your hand is your metaphorical. T-spine take your hands and put them to your heart. And you’ve just embedded the TC. In your heart and the commitment to do random acts of kindness and be the best you can be.

Thank you. Oh, Ronnie. That is just so, so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And it’s so true. Even from a biological perspective, the kind of. Releases oxytocin. Oxytocin is a love hormone. And we want to practice that. You know, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So who wouldn’t want the teaspoon, or even if it’s a Meredith Oracle teaspoon or rings and necklaces and set the intention and that, oh, and it endearing.

I knew I wanted my teaspoon so that I reminded every single. Yeah, I love it so much. And that is just a beautiful way to [00:35:00] end this chat. I really appreciate you, Ronnie, and all that you do for us in this human existence. Thank you so much with so much gratitude for coming on the show today and changing even more live.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to connect with you. It’s been an absolute pleasure if you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate your seatbelt because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career, in your relationships. And I am so proud of you. And if you want more, Feel better now.

So tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belper for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered@fieldfitbitinstitute.com. Sign up. That’s feel better. institute.com/sign up, but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better [00:36:00] because the world needs you to feel good.

So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, see soon here’s to feeling better. Now bye-bye Jackie Bowker.