The New Heart for Life Community
Welcome to The New Heart for Life Community podcast, for a greater understanding of the New Heart for Life Community and its ambassadors.
Their founder, Dan Williams' passion is to inspire others towards a fit and quality life. Dan's journey, from near-death to achieving senior Olympic gold, along with his 21 Fitness Principles, serves as a guide for all, to lead a fit and quality life.
In each episode, Dan explores the stories and experiences of the New Heart for Life ambassadors—individuals making a positive impact by championing the New Heart for Life mission within their personal and social networks.
Every installment provides a platform for ambassadors to share their journeys, insights, and the meaningful changes they're creating in their communities. The interviews aim to facilitate connections among fellow ambassadors, enhancing awareness of their roles in promoting positive transformations.
So, listeners are encouraged to grab their favorite cup of coffee, unwind, and prepare for a rewarding and enlightening journey. Tune in to hear firsthand from ambassadors, actively inspiring others throughout the world.
The New Heart for Life Community
From Global Roots to Community Impact: Jan John’s Journey
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Jan John, a lead ambassador for the New Heart for Life Community, as she shares her incredible journey of cultural resilience and the art of blending different perspectives. Born in India, raised in the UAE, and now a University of Houston senior, Jan's tapestry of experiences has influenced her artistic vision and community leadership. Discover how her love for colors and design, combined with a deep appreciation for diverse cultures and religions, fuels her passion and strengthens her role in guiding the evolution of the New Heart for Life Community. Jan's story is a testament to the power of adaptability and the richness of embracing life's diverse experiences.
Our discussion also ventures into the transformative realm of human resource development, emphasizing the importance of soft skills and relationship-building beyond traditional HR duties. Uncover innovative strategies to foster meaningful connections and learn how childhood cartoons can ignite the imagination and drive persistence. We also introduce you to exciting offerings from the New Heart for Life website, including "21 Fitness Principles," a book designed to inspire healthier lifestyles. As we close, Jan and I leave you with a special message that encapsulates the spirit of living a fit and quality life, encouraging you to embrace a healthier, more connected journey.
Visit our Community @ http://NewHeartforLife.com
Welcome to the New Heart for Life podcast for a greater understanding of the New Heart for Life community and its ambassadors. Their founder, dan Williams' passion is to inspire others towards a fit and quality lifestyle. Dan's journey from near death to achieving senior Olympic gold, along with his 21 fitness principles, serves as a guide for all to lead a fit and quality lifestyle. In each episode, dan explores the stories and experiences of the New Heart for Life Ambassador individuals making a positive impact by championing the New Heart for Life mission within their personal and social networks. Every installment provides a platform for ambassadors to share their journeys, insights and the meaningful changes they're creating in their communities. The interviews aim to facilitate connections among fellow ambassadors, enhancing awareness of their roles of promoting positive transformations.
Speaker 3:I am honored to have Jan John with us for our Spotlight Ambassador interview, and Jan's not only been with us. Since the inception of the New Heart for Life community, she has been a huge contributor to our success and evolution. So, jan, welcome to the show and let our audience know a little bit about what Jan John is all about.
Speaker 2:Hello Dan. I'm so excited to be on this podcast. Thank you so much for this opportunity and it has been an incredible journey with the new heart for life and getting to meet you. So I am Jan. As Dan introduced, jan and Dan rhymes. That's my fully name. I don't have more letters. My first name is just Jan. I was born in Nintyel, but I grew up in United Arab Emirates. I lived there for about half my life and I moved to the US right before high school, so I've been in the US for a couple years now. Wow.
Speaker 2:I've lived in a couple different cultures, been around different religions and I think that gives me a unique third culture perspective.
Speaker 3:And how has that international experience and, of course, being in the United States as a University of Houston senior student getting ready to graduate how has that influenced your perspective on life?
Speaker 2:Much more than perspective. It's definitely perspective. It affects how I interact with different people and how I approach problems and how I utilize my past experience whenever confronting a different problem. Because of this, how diverse all these cultures are, india being predominantly a Hindu religion based, very religious. All UAE and India are very religious, but two different religions with very different core ideas and celebrations and different focuses within things. That gives me a different and unique perspective whenever I'm approaching a problem.
Speaker 2:An interesting thing is design-wise. I love to graphic design, I love to use Canva, I'm an artist, I like to draw and I see these different cultures influencing my art in interesting ways. Because I'm familiar with the hindu scriptures and their stories. I take inspiration from them. I am, my family is christian and I'm from a christian family and my that's the religion I grew up in. But since I grew up in a hindu-based country, a lot of times I use red and gold, which is focus colors for Hindus, and that's prevalent in a lot of my art, like I did a whole art series where it's just red and gold focused on women and similar things for Muslims, and also, yes, art and whenever I'm approaching new people, I think it helps me connect better with different people because I know about different cultures, and a little bit more aware and a little bit more open-minded because of my background.
Speaker 3:So I would say thank you for that. The word versatility comes to mind and being able to adapt. Versatility comes to mind and being able to adapt, and you've taken those different cultures and those different experiences and incorporated them into you. Know your passion for art, as you mentioned. I'd never, ever, thought that gold would be something that would represent your culture. You know a cultural representation, but that's very deep and, yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning as we go.
Speaker 3:I know you've got a lot of talents and I know you have a lot of just you and I having catch up calls every other week. You're our lead ambassador and I rely on you heavily in terms of helping shape the evolution of the New Heart for Life community. So we have gotten to know each other. You know, even in you know, it seems like more than a year, but it's been a very meaningful year getting to know you, and one of the traits that I see in you is and I would be interested for you sharing your perspective on this trait but in a word, resilience. I see a tremendous amount of resilience in the terms, in addition to the versatility that I mentioned. So what's helped you over the years, become so resilient over the years?
Speaker 2:become so resilient? That's a really good question and versatility is a really good word to describe my background. And just more on colors. I love colors. They're the best thing and that's one thing that attracted me to New Heart for Life the colorful logo with the rainbow, and every religion does have different colors. That's main associated with them and resilience.
Speaker 2:I think that more than yes, I lived in three different countries, but the 10 years I lived in uae I lived in about 10 or 12 different houses, slash apartments. The longest I've stayed in the same place would be three years. I would constantly move between places and that would mean adjusting to new scenarios and adapting to that different housing, because sometimes we would go from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom apartment, then to a three-bedroom apartment by the time I was 16, I've lived in over 16 apartments or houses and after that I stopped counting because I wasn't sure whether I would include dorms. Does that count as a different housing or I'm just staying there for five, six months? So that really helped me.
Speaker 2:And also, I spent 10 years in UAE and every summer and winter vacations but mostly summer vacations, those two to three months I would go to India and I would stay with my grandparents or other relatives. My parents don't have a house in India because they live in other places, so I would be staying with different relatives. And that also requires a lot of adapting and adjusting to the situation, because I'm staying there only for two months, or like two weeks, and the rest of the year I'm in a different place and even there I'm not staying there continuously at the same span of time. I would always be expecting to move to the next place at the end of the year when the lease is up.
Speaker 3:And that's an asset. Probably at the time of all those moves I'm not sure how you you know at what age you were but at some level of those changes, you were building resilience and you're building grit and building assets that allow you to deal with life challenges that at the time seemed like no, this is not great. You know all those moves and all those different locations, but often in life, with principal alert lessons, right, you know, there's lessons and blessings, and so some of the lessons that you learn in terms of all those moves really has become a blessing in your life in terms of adaptability, versatility and resilience. So that's an incredible journey so far. It must be exciting to think about what's next in terms of your future. What are those things that you're looking forward to Share with us? Your dreams? What are Jan's dreams?
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to moving again. I haven't moved in two years now and I actually miss moving around. A lot of people don't like moving around, but I loved moving around because different scenarios, I love different architectural house designs and how each and every house was unique, and also before moving we would go around and visit different houses and apartments and I loved seeing those. So I'm excited to move, preferably maybe somewhere to a city, because right now I'm living in suburban Texas so it's not very walkable.
Speaker 2:So I miss walkable cities. I grew up in a city. Uae is very developed with cities and there's, like all our apartments, they have buildings at the bottom ground floor it's stores. So there are stores just in walkable distances and everything is much more accessible and public transportation is just so much better. In every other country I've been in except in Texas, so I would move to some place.
Speaker 3:Got to watch out for those rattlesnakes and horses God knows what else critters are out there if you're taking your walk in rural Texas.
Speaker 2:They don't even have footpaths in some areas Suburban Texas, they're just so used to having cars. All the roads are just built for cars, like people like to walk.
Speaker 3:Walk or ride a horse right Fascinating.
Speaker 2:There is a horse in the neighborhood. None of the houses just have a horse. I've never seen it outside, though it's always unstable.
Speaker 3:One horsepower is what we say. So I want to touch on and you've shared with me that you do tutor. You're a learner, you're a lifelong learner. You've helped me with a number of technology learning curves and I appreciate that Technology learning curves and I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:So tell us about some of your tutoring younger children and how that motivates and how that becomes a passion of yours. I love learning new things and I also love I like teaching new things to other people because I'm learning in the process. I'm developing skills, and it's one thing to know how to do something, but it's another thing being able to explain it to somebody in a way that they can also understand and use it. That's a whole other skill and I'm always eager to develop that. So I do tutor for my university for English and math and mostly entry level classes for freshman and sophomore year. But this year I had the opportunity to do a fellowship where I am tutoring elementary school students. So it's an initiative by Team for America to bridge the gap between education in underdeveloped areas within the United States. So the students I teach, they group them into classes of students of three to five. They didn't receive enough attention in earlier years of elementary school so they are falling behind their peers and this program wants to address that at least now. So they are falling behind their peers and this program wants to address that at least now, so they're caught up before they get older and it becomes harder to stay in the same grade level and eventually a lot of those students lose interest. A lot of the students I'm working with they don't like learning but they actually don't know that learning is fun, so they just have. They just didn't have a good experience of learning and a lot of these students have multiple siblings so they're not getting a lot of attention at home either. So they have built kind of like resentment to education and learning and they don't want to be at school.
Speaker 2:So I like I'm mostly more than being a tutor or teacher. I'm mostly an older peer to very friendly and most of my classes I use games with like Kahoot like that's why I was very initiative about your Kahoot initiative, because that's one tool I use in my tutoring classes. Like I don't agree with traditional education where you have to take notes Like those are helpful if it's helpful to the student, but learning can be fun. It does Like, if you think about it, ages ago Aristotle and Plato and all those people were just sitting under a tree and thinking.
Speaker 2:They weren't really watching videos or like listening to long lectures, they were just thinking about things and figuring it out, and that's something we lost along the way. People just don't have enough time to just sit and think and just have fun while learning. They're not able to experiment with different things. That's something I'm really eager and passionate to bring back in my practices of tutoring and teaching students. That's also why I chose HR development. So in human resource, there is different aspects and the one I'm focusing is human resource development. So that's where I meet. I'm able to improve talent within a company and provide them with leadership classes.
Speaker 3:And just often think of, and one of my favorite sayings of his is what you just mentioned, and that is the things you learn to do.
Speaker 3:You learn by doing, and isn't that true with teaching right?
Speaker 3:In order to really learn a topic and know it well, sign up to teach Person that benefits from that, in addition to the students that are so fortunate to have you as their mentor, slash teacher is yourself.
Speaker 3:You grow because you learn not only about the subject matter, but you learn about people and how to motivate people and how to encourage people and how to make learning, as you mentioned, a fun and engaging exercise. And we're so grateful to have you emceeing our cahoots and helping me develop cahoots, because we often talk about if you're going to want to wake up in the morning and do something, you've got to love it, and learning is something that, if you want to learn to love it, you've got to have some fun with it, and so we're honored and really privileged to have all of your talents with our ambassadors and helping us, along with our cahoots and our educational initiative. You also mentioned HR and I'd like to understand more about the perspective of HR that you want to pursue post-graduation and the aspects of it that might be different from what our audience traditionally thinks about an HR representative, so help us understand a little bit more about your niche into that HR world.
Speaker 2:I am still in the process of figuring a lot of those myself. Hr is a very large umbrella that has a lot of different things, but typically when a person thinks about HR, they automatically think about the evil person doing terminations or they think about the recruitment. But HR is so much more and my particular focus is HR development, creating training modules and helping people improve themselves. So, but recently I have been involved in project management and a little bit of product management and I have been considering pursuing that as a career as well, because a lot of the HR and a lot of skills that I've gained through tutoring and emceeing I love emceeing those things is the soft skills that I can apply for management.
Speaker 2:And that's something I have been developing over the years, so I see opportunities in that field as well. But I was just attracted to human resource development because it stood out, because whenever I thought of human resource prior to that, it just recruitment or payroll management. That doesn't sound fun, that's just a lot of paperwork, you're not doing any, you're not meeting with people, but human resource development you were actually. Your entire focus is on developing people and there are actually companies and that just focus on creating resources to develop specific roles within companies.
Speaker 2:And that just stood out to me like, yes, students need a lot of support and teaching is supportive, but this is a whole another field where there is a corporate ladder and an area to be ambitious, but teaching you become a teacher. There's not a lot of like ladders to climb. You're just within the same class or same student. It's not. You don't. You can't set an aim to grow bigger. In that role within HR, I get to use my passion of teaching other people and developing more than teaching. I enjoy developing learning materials for my students and with this I get to do that at a corporate level and at the same time, have opportunities to advance career and manage more people and more projects.
Speaker 3:You mentioned the word or the phrase soft skills. I love that phrase. It's another way of saying building relationships, and we often think, especially in this world of technology and academics, even that you have to learn to craft, you have to learn develop skills, you have to learn develop skills. But one of those skills soft skills are building relationships. It's something that I believe is a life experience. You know your previous experiences in life have helped you develop yourself and be more versatile, as we spoke about earlier. But how do you approach with your students and our ambassadors and people that you just come across? What is your approach to building meaningful relationships?
Speaker 2:Most definitely connecting with them on something not so professional, something more fun. So I currently work as a project manager for a company and typically whenever we have new people join, one of my first questions to them what is your favorite childhood cartoon? That's not a question anybody's expecting, but that's something you can connect over. Most likely, if you're in the same age group, they have a cartoon that you really enjoyed in your childhood. Each group they have a cartoon that you really enjoyed in your childhood and that gives because a lot of time it's hard to break the ice and you don't know what to talk about like. My go-to question is what's your favorite color? The cartoon question has been so much more content than color. So having fun questions like that is my even with my students like, hey, who's your favorite superhero? Oh, you like marvel. Next day I'll have them like Marvel themed puzzles and Marvel themed word search, and they love it because they get to color Iron man at the end of their class and those are the little things that makes a huge difference for them.
Speaker 3:That's a great icebreaker and it actually had me reflect when I was at my daughters, of my four beautiful daughters, at my daughters, my oldest daughter's high school graduation.
Speaker 3:The speaker guest speaker for the commencement speech was Was I don't know her name, I don't remember much of what she said, but here's what I remember, because my favorite cartoon character was Mickey Mouse from Walt Disney and Jan she had, you know, can't describe it really well, but it was a musketeer or musketeer hat, you know, with the ears, or Mouseketeer hat, you know, with the ears right, and she put that on her head and everybody went like wow, I mean, like you know, it kind of got our attention, took us off guard, and she talked about Walt Disney and how Walt Disney's imagination and how his persistence that Mickey Mouse character actually had to be was originally a rat and somehow it got transformed into a mouse and I'll never forget the image of her with that Mouseketeer hat on.
Speaker 3:So just I can see it right, as you've just opened up, with how you ask questions about your favorite cartoon character, how it engaged me and had me reflect back on something, and not for purposes of what I would talk to you about in terms of an interview or a job situation, but just kind of opened the doors in terms of just helping build our trust and confidence and in and a beginning of building a relationship. So that's awesome. Mickey Mouse, the Mickey Mouse show, those are for the boomers, right, you can always Google it. This is still going strong. And Marvel, you know like I would think that and I'm not totally up on Marvel characters, but isn't there a movie coming up with a new Marvel show movie?
Speaker 2:There's always something new in Marvel, and no, it's just not you. With my second graders, I'm so out of touch with the cartoons they're watching, whenever they say a cartoon what's bluey?
Speaker 3:Right, right, right, especially with all the you know they're watching these on their smartphones, right, you know, all the time you know and their iPads. So, yeah, the industry of cartoons has grown wild since the early pioneering days of Walt Disney With the new Heart for Life community and again I mentioned that you know you've been just a tremendous asset in building relationships, you know, with our relationship and relationships with the other ambassadors. So just pivot a little bit to your experience with the new Heart for Life community. How do you see yourself taking that on beyond your college years and incorporating that into your personal life and our values of living a fit and quality life and networking? And just have you given any thought to post-graduation this spring of 2025 at University of Houston?
Speaker 2:how you want to contribute and be part of the New Heart for Life community? That's a very interesting question. So when I joined, my interview was one year ago with you in january my interview, a first mmf you was january 18 2024 and you asked a very similar question and my answer stays the same. For the most part, I yes, moving and being active and working out is very important, but also, 80% of having a healthy life is the food you consume, and that's my focus. And initially, when I started with New Heart for Life, I collaborated with one of the other ambassadors to create mini posters about different food and their nutrition facts, and that was a series that I did with her for a while, and that's something I'm still interested in.
Speaker 2:Being fit and a quality life is so much more than staying active. It's also about what you put inside your body. That's what's going to give it back. So, having a nutritious meal and it's also something that concerns me just in general, because so much of our food right now is I don't want to say processed, because just about everything is processed, but they have additives and ingredients that shouldn't be there and that doesn't benefit the body at all. So that's something I wanted to like put the new heart for life and just personally, bring more awareness about quality of food and what you're eating, and I am not sure exactly that I have a lot of interest.
Speaker 2:I'm always excited to learn more and I like meeting people, I like engaging with them, I like learning new things from different people. Everybody comes with a unique perspective because they all have different experiences and background and New Heart for Life definitely helped me do that. Before I joined New Heart for Life, I had maybe 22 connections on LinkedIn. Now I have over 700. That was gained in a year since I joined New Heart for Life, so excited to keep growing my connection and meet new people. And now I have friends all over the world. I have a friend in Belarus.
Speaker 3:Belarus, anastasia, and when you were talking about working on nutrition, was that with our ambassador in South Africa? Was that Wandi?
Speaker 2:Yes, that was Wandi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's also a graduate and now she's in the field of nutrition and helping teenagers and youngsters develop proper eating habits and her local community she does have a podcast too, too, like she did a podcast last year, I believe okay, all right. Well, let's plug her podcast, wandi from south africa youtube it. I also did an interview with wandi in the early days podcast.
Speaker 2:That's what I meant, sorry oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:So the new heart for life community podcast. As you see Jan's podcast and other ambassadors, you'll see Wandi and her emphasis and focus on nutrition. But I'm learning something every day. I didn't know that you were closely collaborating with Wandi on that common passion.
Speaker 2:Yes, she used to have a wellness Instagram page that she used to regularly post on last year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so well, in whatever fashion or in whatever role. You know how I feel about your contributions and your talents and you'll always be a very, very, very important part of my passion to create a community system, a higher goal, and that's the higher goal. And then, specifically, we all have different ways of doing that and yours is through the, through the path of nutrition, so that's very cool. So I would hope that, whatever capacity you can or are able to fulfill what I I often say once an ambassador, always an ambassador, so in spirit, but also to have you part of our community and contribute.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to have been part of so many different projects and support them in small ways that I could.
Speaker 3:Small but very, very meaningful and consistent. So thank you for that. Journey is your word, and we've mentioned journey a number of times in terms of the 21 fitness principles and I'm going to reflect on a couple more principles that you have walked the talk, if you will. You have engaged, you have really contributed selflessly of yourself and I'm going to just tick off a couple of the 21. I won't mention Journey because we've talked about that a couple times, but here's what I will say about Jan John of the 21. I won't mention Journey because we've talked about that a couple times, but here's what I will say about Jan John and the principles Accountability, one of our principles. You have been accountable. You have made yourself accountable to not just your contributions and helping me launch and evolve and grow the community, but to your fellow ambassadors in terms of onboarding them and helping them to better understand what the expectations of our community are.
Speaker 3:Grit Say no more about grit.
Speaker 3:That was our educational initiative topic recently and you have shown grit in terms of just staying with it day in and day out and understanding that life has its challenges. But your attitude and your soft skills and your ability to be versatile has helped you be, if I can say, more grittier. I'd also mention act. Action changes things and there are people that, as I've done sales training and coached and led sales teams. I've said there's three types of individuals that you may come across there's people that make it happen, there's people that watch it happen and there's people that say what happened. And you are the type of individual that makes it happen. You act and, as I say, action changes things. So those are just a couple more principles that I wanted to put in context around your contributions and thank you so much for all of the efforts and contributions and passion that you've, that you contributed and shared with us, and I'll leave the last couple summary comments to you before we close out your spotlight interview as our ambassador that is in the spotlight.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. This was a wonderful journey and I'm so excited to having done this podcast. Please do check out our website at wwwnewhartforlifecom and do check out our merch store and you can get your own t-shirt or tumblr or even a mouse pad with the new heart for life logo and by that way, you will be contributing and always spreading the message to live a fit and quality life.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jan. And on that website, new Heart for Life F-O-R. Life, you'll also be able to get a copy of my book 21 Fitness Principles. I always close with four words that Jan knows very, very well. So here's how we're going to close at this interview. I'm going to start with the first two words and Jan's going to leave us with the last two words that really reflect the spirit of the new Heart for Life community. So, in closing, be fit and be well.
