EP #117: The Healing Power of Filtered, Thermal Water with Sara Douglas and Kristina Velkova, Co-Founders of Vitaclean

(gentle music) Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stuffinopolis, and this week I am super excited to end the year on an episode that I actually recorded earlier in the year this summer with co-founders Christina Delcova and Sarah Douglas of Vitaclean, which is a vitamin C filtered showerhead company. And something I've been reflecting a lot on as the year is coming to a close, are of course my goals for 2024 resolutions, whatever you wanna call it. And something that I really wanna prioritize is self-care activities. And this might sound a little fluffy and trivial and silly, but when I say self-care, I don't mean bubble baths and just like, I don't know, things that we see on social media that aren't getting to like the depth of what it means to take care of yourself, really more so just carving out intentional time to create routines and practices that make me feel like I'm luxuriating in my own home. 'Cause I'm always on the go, and I often don't really take the time to just relax and do things that feel relaxing and good and nourishing in that way. And so I think releasing this episode at this time is actually a great reminder for me that there are so many ways you can bring little luxuries into your life. And having a clean filtered showerhead is absolutely one of them. Learning to really just appreciate every part of showering or also just having access to clean filtered water, I think is a huge luxury. So really excited to release this episode now at the end of the year is I'm even thinking about those resolutions that I have moving into 2024 and ways that I can create luxurious environments even at a small scale in my own home and in my day to day. So in this episode, Christina and Sarah sat down to talk about the inspiration for via to clean, how they met, how they bonded over. They're shared love for everything related to beauty, skincare, wellness. We also talk about the power of having access to thermal filtered, clean water, how our skincare, our hair care impacts, our confidence levels, and some of their wellness tips as well and their non-negotiables and their wellness routine. I'm super excited for you guys to tune into this episode. And if you like what you heard and wanna try out a Vitaclean showerhead for yourself, you can use the code EE15, that's capital E, capital E and then 15, 415% off of your order. So I'll link all that information in the show notes as well. But before we dive into the episode reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer and follow along everyday endorphins on Instagram to stay up to date with all episodes, events, especially moving into the new year and to stay plugged into the community. I also launched a sub-stack a few months ago where I review monthly recaps of episodes, events that I've done, list out certain things that I brought me endorphins and anything that's really been on my own mind. So definitely go check out the sub-stack and subscribe as well, it's just everyday endorphins. And if you like what you're reading, what you're seeing, what you're listening to, please reach out. I love hearing from all of you who tune in to the show and who follow along. It definitely brings me a lot of endorphins. So please send me a DM like a sub-stack newsletter, piece, anyway that you wanna get connected. I'm always open and willing and would love to hear from all of you. So please reach out if there's anything you wanna share too. All right, let's get into it. - Thank you both so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It's incredible to get to do this live and in person. So I'm really grateful that we got to make this work and so excited to have the both of you on the show today. - Yeah, thank you so much for so happy to be here and it's just so nice to do this in person. I know we mentioned it off air, but it really changes the energy and I can feel a lot of good stuff happening right now. - Oh, totally. - Yeah. So there's a ton of things that I wanna talk about today. But I would love to start out by giving the both of you the opportunity to share a little bit about yourself and how your paths crossed and ultimately came to the idea to start fight a claim. 'Cause you both have super interesting and dynamic stories but I wanna give you both the chance to share a little bit more about yourselves respectively and then how your paths really integrated together. - So my name is Sarah. I'm originally from Australia. My mom is from Iceland and I live in the English countryside. But I haven't always lived there. So Kristina and I, we used to live in London together and our paths crossed, you said you were a yoga teacher. Actually, our paths crossed a lot and hot yoga studios. - I teach heated vinyasa. - Oh really? - That was what I like how passion. - We always ran into each other at hot yoga studios and surprisingly not just in London but I used to spend a lot of time in New York and Kristina's born and bred in New York and so we ran into a few studios here in New York and also in random places in 'cause in London there's not such a big variety for it. So we kinda go to like East London and really kind of small unique little places and be like, oh hey, like you're here. So really like a wellness journeys crossed and that was the start of our relationship and the happiness. - Yeah, that's fantastic and I love how yoga is the place that brought you two together. I've met such great people at yoga studios. I think it's also such a special community. Like when you meet people through like-minded interests and people who share some more passions it's really nice to meet people organically through that rather than through university or through a similar job, like meeting people kind of in the wild. - What? - It's a really cool experience to have. - I couldn't agree more. Yeah, that was, it was like so long ago but it was so long ago. - It was long ago. (laughing) - It was. Well, I was born in Bulgaria and my dad won the Green Card Lottery which was really random. So we moved to New York in 2000 and I spent most of my life between here and there growing, going back, see my family and how I ended up in London was because I was a professional model for almost a decade and I modeled in New York. I got offered contracts in Spain, England, Germany. So it was a really fun time and I ended up in London because of modeling. (laughing) - Wow. So you were traveling everywhere. - Yeah, I was traveling a lot in my early 20s and I was doing school in top of it. So it was a wild ride but I really like when I'm doing a lot of stuff. So it kind of fit my personality, that lifestyle. - Yeah, I feel similarly to you. I am also the type of person who does a million different things at once which energizes me but now I've started to realize that when there's like a breaking point that's in the near future, what preventative measures can I take so that I don't reach that breaking point and I'm sure with modeling, it's such an intense career because you're traveling a lot and you're always booking your next role and then the modeling industry, there's a whole entirely separate topic. Just we could even talk about mental health and modeling and all of that. - Yeah, it was a wild ride. I haven't really modeled in a number of years now. I've been focusing primarily on Vitaclean but I did started modeling when I was 18 years old in New York which was a really intense environment. You know, the requirements, the world of running all around town and go to castings, meeting with different producers. Luckily now there's a lot more laws in place to protect models and just create a better environment for us. But those times it was really challenging to just navigate that as a 18 year old and you're working with top clients and you're dreaming as a little girl to work with these designers and those design and just those different people and when you actually meet them in person. I'm not calling out any single designers. I'm just talking about the industry in general. It's a very different and scary place. But it made me really strong and it put me in a situation where I had to choose for myself how I value myself and it was so easy to just value yourself on looks because you'd go into these meetings and you'd want to get that instant gratification of everybody praising you about your looks, about your height, about your hair, about your skin, about your body, but really knowing that's not what defines you as a person. So I had a really hard time battling that at 18 and understanding that I am really smart. I am a good person. My values are not of how I look. That's such a good point. Especially when you're 18, that's so young to have these beliefs kind of subconsciously ingrained into your mind. How do you rewire those thoughts? How do you actually build a greater self-esteem when you're maybe in an industry that is kind of knocking you down? I actually interviewed a while back my cousin who is a sports illustrated swimsuit model, Ella Halikas, and she's a curved model. And we talked about some of the positive changes that have been happening in the industry. So it's exciting to see more inclusivity for sure, but I digress from bringing it back to really the founding story of Vitaclian. So you meet in London for your mutual interest in yoga, wellness, all of that. Where did the inspiration for developing helping a filtered shower head come from, like what specifically about filtered clean water peaked both of your interests? Christina and I were working together at a content agency as she would she'd just graduated and I was like hey, like why do you come work? And so we found out that we worked really well together and we'll really do time we still love very determined but we were really really determined. And Christina was also leaving her apartment and I had a spare room so I said hey, like why do you come stay here for a little bit and a few months into moving in our shower completely stopped working. It was crazy and we had to call a plumber and the plumber was pumping out sludge which is like a big brown tar like substance from the heat pulled all of the bathtub apart and connected his equipment and pumped it into the toilet. So we were just saying like put up put up put up. If you're looking at that, I feel like it's scarring. It was really gross and I just so can't even explain our gross and like how can we make sure that this just never happens again? And he was like, oh you have to get a water filter and we really hadn't thought it up before and we started researching water filtration a lot but at the same time Christina and I like we used to have a lot of talking points when we would work and take up breaks or just have like little in between moments. And one of the things that we would always talk about were the skin and hair problems that we were suffering from and products to combat that. We loved products. We spent a large amount of our salary on products. What happened was we started looking into the shower filters and then Christina found an article where Leo de Caprio had vitamin C showers in his condo in West Village, so here in New York. So I'm basically Leonardo de Caprio now with my very own vitamin C. And we found that so interesting. So we started looking more into the technology and we saw it wasn't huge in Asia but it was a little bit of a thing and so we decided to set out our journey to find a manufacturer. We looked everywhere and it took us a super long time to find the perfect match and all it all we were trying to different shower heads at the time and we just we fell in love with this particular manufacturer and they helped us develop our product. And that's really how light a clean was born and we took a test period where we saw like do our skin and hair problems cut like all the way. We gave some to our friends. We said well what's your feedback and everyone was just like it's a total game changer. I just completely changed my life. And they were all women who had spent a lot on products like us and all women who were suffering from their own skin and have problems independently and we can get into those more laid out. Yeah. What would you say were some of the biggest skin and hair problems that you identified for yourself or you were seeing when you were getting feedback from I guess that those early customers because personally for me my hair could be really dry and like brittle. And I have also had issues with like hormonal balance and so there was a period of time where I was losing hair on my head and I was like my going bald. It was giving me so much stress which then isn't helping the situation because stressful it's kind of like that catalyst but those are just some of the issues I personally identified but I'm curious to hear what were you seeing as that like bigger challenge. I'm sorry that's happened to you isn't that the worst thing? Oh it's really frustrating when your hair is going through and I was in college and I was like what is going on? The luckier has a very thick out of hair now on my beautiful hair too. My personal experience was with my scalp. I had developed severe dry scalp with the Androof whilst I was living in London and that was really taxing on my confidence and just my feel good. As I mentioned I modeled and a lot of the work I did was for hair, was for skin and beauty. So to go to London and experience this moment where I was having really dry scalp my hair turned brittle, it was in growing, I was so frustrated, I had unnatural brassy tones from it not even coloring my hair and it just killed my confidence completely. So that was a really big personal issue that I struggled with and one that sorry and I talked about extensively because there was no solution. So that moment when the sludge was coming out of the pipes we realized hey I think this might be causing our skin and hair problems because it's not something you think about right away. It's not like hey my hair has my scalp is dry and it's probably my water I should go get a shower filter like that is not something you really think about. So we really wanted to spread the awareness and let people know that of course internal matters a lot in our hairs. The first thing that gets affected especially if you have hormone imbalance I'm not a professional I can't speak to exactly the chemistry that happens inside of you that causes that but I know from my personal experience that ever since I've been using vitocleine my hair is just so healthy. My scalp is so healthy I never have dry scalp anymore and I just feel really confident like I started coloring my hair blonde and it's still really healthy and it's nice and it's just so fun to be able to do that. Yeah totally. I mean first of all the blonde looks great on you. I love it. I also have been dying my hair recently but using the shower head now it has been honestly very much a game changer for me and I'm not just saying that because I immediately noticed how much softer my skin felt and how much softer my hair felt to like it was less brittley. It felt like fuller or thicker. It just the quality of the water and I've always liked showering whenever loved like unless you know that everything shower trend on TikTok or like it's when you spend an hour in the shower and you like shave every part of your body and you like deep condition your hair and you really take your time like that's very luxurious to me but I love the vitamin C part of the filtered shower head like the aroma therapy so can you talk a little bit more about the benefits in particular with vitamin C and how that impacts your skin and your hair. That's one of the things that Christina and I were massive fans of as well before we started fight a clean with vitamin C serum, vitamin C moisturizes, taking vitamin C internally so obviously it really sparked our interest. So the benefit of the vitamin C or a mithyrabic capsule in vitocling is that it declarnates your water and it gets rid of a lot of bacteria in your water as well and it leaves you with this I don't know if you've noticed from your vitocling but this amazing like bright glow and this lovely shade on your head or like non-gracy feel but an also bright skin kind of almost like a vitamin C serum and so it's like we are such big fans of vitamin C. It's amazing. Yeah, I mean it smells so great. I really have been enjoying my showers genuinely because of that like it just feels so luxurious and as I was using you know once I installed the shower head and I've been using it ever since the past few weeks I've started to think a lot about this concept of little luxuries in life because something so simple as a shower head can make all the difference. The smallest change that you can really make and I just started to think about this idea of you know how can I infuse little luxuries into my day-to-day routine. Things that I look forward to, things that are treating myself so that I can lead like a very fulfilling joyous happy life every day and choose that. So I'm curious to hear both of your perspectives on what are some of those little luxuries in your life or how do you try to incorporate those glimmers to hold on to. I've been very intentional about these little luxuries I never called on that but I'm going to borrow that from you because it's really good. Feeling good and feeling energized so for me getting at least 15 minutes a day to work out it really makes me feel so good and so aligned drinking a lot of water and my ice roller. Is it like the Jade roller or I have the skinny confidential one so yeah it's really big and it covers a lot of territory on your face. When I really look forward to that wake up every morning I get out of my freezer and I like ice roll while I have my coffee and my water. So little luxuries off the top of my head are these three things. I love that. I have a gouache on and I keep it in my freezer too so it's a similar feel. I used to have a Jade roller but I love just like using the gouache on. I feel like it's defined my jaw little. I don't know. It depends on the angle but it's I know I get that sensation totally. I love a gouache on my favorite tools. So my little luxuries and this is going to sound a little bit promotional but it would definitely be one of the Vita Clean robes. So we developed this amazing robe that just weak all the moisture off you and our hair towels which dry your hair. And there's nothing like getting out of the Vita Clean shower and then into the robe and the hair towel and just like sitting there with a tea on the couch. I absolutely love it. And then also as I said before like my mom is from Iceland so we've spent a lot of time in Iceland in like the capital in Reykjavik where my mom's from but also like in the interior of Iceland and there is a skincare company called BioEffect and they have the greatest moisturizer which is like known to man and just putting like the thick moisturiser on my face. It just makes me feel super luxurious and definitely I like I love animals. I have a horse and I also have a dog so spending time with my horse and also my dog. It's two different feelings. You know like my horse makes me feel very grounded and like close to nature and my dog makes me feel really like happier and excited. So I love that and it's fitting that you have a horse and like the English countryside. Definitely no space for that in New York City. But I'm so happy that you bring up where your mom is from and just going back to cultural immersion and how you were both raised and where you grew up I think across different cultures. There's different philosophies on wellness and health. And then if you move to a place like New York City that's so chaotic, so busy, it's [BLANK_AUDIO] easy to lose sight of those practices that you can do to stay healthy because you get lost in everything that's going on in New York. A lot of people here are either in fashion or finance or film and you can get caught up for sure in all the hustle and bustle that's happening in New York. So I'd love to hear from the both of you about how your culture has shaped your mentality on wellness and specifically even thinking about how clean and filtered water can impact our confidence levels or health and our well-being. I was born and grew up was, is a town in Bulgaria, it's called Belingrad and it's known to be the spa capital of the Balkan Peninsula. I know, it's a, so why it's so famous is that it has over 90 springs of thermal water and the whole town is about wellness and spa centers and using that water to heal things like, join your joints or your skin conditions. And that was my base. I used to go to the bath houses but my grandma, when I was small and we'd soak, she's like soaking the swatters, it's going to be really good for your immunity and really good for your hair and your skin. And that was my baseline. That was my baseline and it's still really special to see the development in the town. There's more hotels opening up, the wellness practices, they're amazing, it's in nature so it's in the mountain. I grew up like going hiking and picking berries and being in nature and then going and soaking in this bath water, this water and just feeling really good. So I've always had a very strong relationship to water but I didn't really put it together when Bida clean came around the way I could look back now and connect the dots. But wellness has been in my life for a really long time, I have the same definitely like mountain girl for sure. And now it's very fitting because after COVID I live nine or ten months out of the year, I do live in Colorado now, which it in a mountain town. So it's full circle. It comes full circle, yes. Yeah, I go back home and I really appreciate more and more as I get older, all of the town has to offer within the medicinal water. That's incredible. I definitely want to visit your hometown. We were talking earlier about how my family is from Greece and my mom's side of the family still lives there. And they're in this small town, kind of more in the north, I guess like Macedonia region called Ethesau and about like a 30, 40 minute drive outside of where they live. There's this beautiful hot spring area and you can just go for the day and you can alternate between like the warmer pools or like the cold water. And it's absolutely gorgeous to see something like this in Greece and to be there and it feels very healing. Something I'm also trying to incorporate more in my routine when I can do it is hot and cold exposure. So sauna or seam room and then ice bath and like a cold plunge and alternating between the two, like going to a bathhouse is so rejuvenating and so good for your health. I mean, it's incredible because some of the spa centers there, they literally have like six sonas where the one would be an herbal sauna, a sweetest sauna, a this sauna, a hell million salt sauna and then they'll have these really cool bathing areas where it'd be cold water and then you literally step your feet in this little, I don't know how to explain it, it's this little pathway where you'd step in cold water and then hot water, cold water and then hot water and you'd go back and forward, back and forward and have your feet experienced this. So they have a lot of therapies but watered in my hometown, which is so, so cool to see. Oh, that's fascinating. I need a plan like a wellness vacation and do all of that incredible. But what I really do love about Vitaclean is that you can bring those little luxuries into your home. You don't have to spend a ton of money to go travel to Europe and or elsewhere in the world and have these like bigger luxurious experiences. You can kind of hold on to that in your own home, which is incredible and which speaks to how much water can affect us. And it's like little everyday luxuries taking a shower, you know, not to be cliche but it is one of them. I feel like I can completely change my state of being just like having a shower, having cold shower, hot shower. I love it. I love cold plunges as well. Yeah. I'm doing cold water showers at home when I don't have access to a cold plunge and the sauna is the heat like sweating in a sauna. There's nothing more cleansing than being like a steam room sauna. Just really loved that. It is the best feeling. I've been using the steam room quite often and I love it. One of my favorite places is the blue, the green and the isle. It's really commercialized now but it used to be like less commercialized and that was such an amazing experience, especially back in the old days because you would have the mud clumps for your face and body everywhere. And then also in the winter time we would kind of roll in the snow and then get like hot and cold exposure and then get back in the blue, the green and there's different spots that say summer really hardened, summer less hot and it's such an amazing wellness experience and that was something that we used to go to Iceland like every second Christmas. So it was something that I was exposed to from a really really young age. We were living in Australia at the time. But Australia is also, it's such an innovator and wellness it always has been. So and my mum was so into wellness when I was young to the point that it was kind of weird. My dad, all my parents were lost but my dad was always like, "What's she on?" And honestly she's like on every trend that makes a lot of money now. She loved it and even I always remember. My cereal should get this really strange way powder, not the nice one that you buy at all foods and just kind of be like, "Hey, it's good for you." It was just so random and also with the water in Australia it's so clean. It's amazing. I had such great skin and hair until I moved away. And then I started experiencing all these different skin and hair problems like dry, brudal hair as you said. I lived in New York for a period of time and I got a lot of pimples. More people than I'd ever had. New York has a really hard dirt quantity. It has a lot of dirt in the water here in New York. So that does cause a lot of skin irritation and acne. And then when we moved to London I developed hot red itchy skin after a shower and also really, really, really brassy hair. And so these were just not problems that I would ever have when I was living in Australia or visiting Iceland. And I just couldn't understand why I thought it was from the pollution or catching the subway too often or going out more, eating more restaurants. You think it's anything but the water. That's so true. Yeah. Because in New York, you're always going out to eat and I don't know if either of you were here earlier in the summer when there was the wildfires in Canada and all the pollute oh my goodness. I was here for that. I was working. I was doing a project on the 17th floor in the Empire State building and the whole sky went red. Oh, I was like, are we, is this an apocalypse? I couldn't even believe what was happening. And then it came back again. I think a week or two later. Yeah. New York aside from that, it is highly polluted. And I grew up here. So I think I'm conditioned to it. But now having used fight a clean, I do see a difference for sure and really how water does impact our well being and our health really in a holistic perspective. I wanted to ask a few questions shifting away from what we've been talking about but more around entrepreneurship and how you decided to build this company. So you both have different backgrounds and when you met in London and decided that this was a problem that you wanted to solve and you wanted to create your own product, how are you able to leverage the skill sets that you developed in your earlier parts of your career and use that as a super power and a strength as an entrepreneur. That kind of career shift is difficult and I don't think that enough people talk about the challenges of making a big career pivot and taking a risk like that. Two things definitely research and time and those are things that are available to everybody right. It wasn't just like we dropped our jobs and we were like full throttle on fight a clean. We really took our time with it and we took time to educate ourselves. We hadn't had an e-commerce company before. We'd worked with brands but we hadn't really worked on kind of like a Shopify side or anything like that. And so really for anyone out there, you just have to everything is available. Like you can just Google how to start a Shopify store, how to start a product. How to find a manufacturer and there's going to be a lot of crap but there's also going to be some good stuff. YouTube is also an amazing source of information. I would just advise anyone who's like trying to start a business just to start there and research and put in the time because it's going to take a lot of time and you're not necessarily going to make the right decisions straight away and unfortunately sometimes you actually learn the most from making the wrong decisions and then you don't make those decisions again. But it's like a university and I think the people should think of it like that. Think of it as if you're like going there to study different modules, take notes, break down everything and really learn what your best practices are. That's really good advice. I like that analogy a lot because you can be creative with it and have fun. I think that was excellent and I definitely second that and my only addition to it would be survive long enough to thrive. Tell me more about that. I'm curious to hear. It's hard. It gets really hard. You get knocked down a lot of times and there's different things you try to hold on to in terms of growth and trying to reach milestones but there's a lot of setbacks and you can look at as a thing where you want to do really quick or you can look at as a thing that you know is going to take. take time. And I have to say for myself in the beginning, I didn't understand the length of time I was committing to this company. I think when you're, I was 25 when we started this. So at that age, I felt really invincible. I felt like I could do anything. I've always been top of my class, honors student. I did well in modeling. So I said, hey, this is the next thing I'm going to, I'm going to conquer it, but it doesn't take a year or two. It took us a while. But you have so many learnings in that and survive long enough to thrive is you have to just really hold on for the ride. Definitely get motivated. Like you can't just be like, I think I'm going to start a company. Like you have to be full on motivated and whatever you can do to get yourself there. Like whether it's like super intense workouts or like chanting, I God knows whatever works for you, you have to make sure that you definitely have that energy in the beginning because it's draining. It is really draining and you have to really find out how you can keep yourself on that level of motivation. Yeah, I always talk about how there's joy to be found in discipline because you're not going to make a sustainable change unless you show up for yourself every day to actually make that change. So that's strengthening your resilience muscle. You're through the act of discipline, you are holding yourself accountable to doing what you're setting out to do. And I think the challenge oftentimes, A is just starting, like you were mentioning earlier, like you just have to start, you just have to do it. But in addition to that, once you're in that momentum, it's like the difficulty is finding that balance of learning when to scale back and be like, I need to take a rest because I'm actually overworking myself. And that's something I even experienced with this podcast. I took a break from May to September and relaunched the show in October. During the time of rest, it was very difficult for me to even come to that decision because I was so stuck in executing and producing content and sharing episodes that, you know, I definitely had the momentum and the motivation, but it was almost to a fault because I wasn't finding that balance within myself and listening to myself. So have you experienced something similar? You know, being so motivated, having that momentum, but reaching a point where you needed to kind of re-adjust, re-evaluate, re-calibrate and think about how do I actually scale back so that I can keep the momentum sustained? I think it's a tricky one with an e-commerce site because even if you want to scale back every day, it's pumping, even on weekends. So I mean, that is one of the challenges. Like, you can't just be like, "Hey, I'm going to chill for a few months because if you want to go raise money next year or you want to show your performance," then it's like, "Well, what were you doing these months?" And you're like, "Oh, I designed to chill for a few months." Like, it's just not going to go down well. And so it's really hard sometimes. Even on holiday, it's really hard to go on holiday. I went on holiday this year and the first day was spent basically dealing with the shipping disaster that customers had to be cleared and I had all the documentation for it. And yeah, so when Vita Kling calls, like, you just have to answer. And that is one of the challenges. So it's tricky. We never knew what we were getting into. But I'm happy that we didn't, but because we were in it now and we enjoy it. You have to just find ways to get stuff done and yeah, you can't really take time off, which is the hardest part. But I look forward to my everyday and these challenges have built me and have pushed me to areas that I never imagined I would be in. So I'm grateful for that. And if you can hold on to that for any oral reasons, it really helps. Yeah. And I really value growth. So seeing my growth, seeing the business growth, it's something that really motivates me. And I definitely have to say that in the beginning, I didn't know how to balance myself. I'd work myself to the bone and we were in London and working with manufacturers in Asia. So the time difference really kind of skewed my sleeping schedule of what have you. And I learned to manage things a little more proactive versus reactive. And these are just things that you learn along the way with the challenges that you've been presented and you figure it out. And you just have to be honest with yourself. But it's a lot of work. Yeah. And really having that mindset shift, it sounds like it's been super crucial to the both of you. Seeing things with a growth mindset, seeing things in a more positive light, even when it's difficult, you just have to kind of always focus on that north star, which is difficult to do. But there's so many practices we could go on and on for like hours, just talking about things that you can do to tap into a more productive mindset for yourself. But this actually brings me to the final portion of this interview and some questions that I wanted to ask both of you more on happiness, in particular. So obviously, everyday endorphins is a show about mental health, happiness, finding things in life that bring you endorphins, enjoy. And I'm always curious to hear from my guests how they define happiness and how their perspective has shifted over time on what it means to be happy. That's an amazing question. I'm going to have to just share what's first comes to mind. Just feeling really good in your own skin and really being happy about the people around you. Those are very important to me. Just feeling good in your own skin and having a lot of gratitude for the people around you, yeah, had to be set to voice. It's a good answer. So for me, it would be progress and that goes across progressing business and progressing personal growth, just reacting better to things or having better personal relationships. Yeah, that would definitely be progress. Makes me happy. And that's how you define happiness in barking on, progressing through. Growing. Yeah, definitely. I think that's a really interesting take to have. Because as you progress through certain experiences or you're actively working on reaching the next step in whichever part of your life you want to look at, there's so much joy to be found in the process. And I think it comes back to this idea of staying present. You can't fully enjoy the process, which is life, like living your life if you're thinking about the future or worrying about, you know, ruminating on the past. So it also comes back to this idea of mindfulness and intentionality. So I love that. As we wrap up today, I wanted to ask you both my signature question that I ask every guest on the podcast. And I thank you both have answered it indirectly through some of the earlier things we've talked about, but I would love to hear from the both of you what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins. So not little luxuries, not glimmers, but endorphins in particular, however you want to interpret that every day. For me, it's something that got created over COVID called "Wins of the Day". So when we have dinner with our family, we go around the table and we go, "Everybody has to say the wins of their day." We also like love hosting dinner parties, so we have friends, well, dinner parties of like 14 friends, we all go around and say our "Wins of the Day". And that brings me so many endorphins because you get so happy listening to someone's response and how good they felt at that point in time of their day. And it also really reminds you to focus on the positive because focusing on the negative can be very easy sometimes and you can dismiss what makes you feel good. So when we do "Wins of the Day" at dinner, it's just a really special way to feel good. Yeah, I love that. That's so important. It reminds me of like my gratitude journal. You just have to refocus your attention on the things that you're grateful for and that's a win. Even the smallest wins are so important. Yeah. For me, it's definitely horse riding, just being in nature and also, you know, when you're horse riding, you just can't think of anything else. Just at that time, you have to be so present and so in the moment and no matter what's going on that work, like it always makes me really ready to take on the day and not get stressed about what lies ahead. So yeah. And you can't be on your phone while you're riding a horse. So I think that definitely helps. I've actually never ridden a horse. I think I've ridden a pony once when I was like a little kid and I was traumatized, but I would love to learn how to ride horses. So maybe that'll be a new hobby in my future. I don't know. But if it ever is, I will hit you. Yeah, come to Bulgaria for a spa weekend and then go to the country side in England and for a lesson horse riding with Sara. That sounds like an ideal time away from me. Well, thank you both so much for coming on to the podcast. Truly, it was incredible to get to chat with you in person today. Where can my listeners follow along both of you on social media, fight a clean? Where can they get their very own little luxury and bring it into their home? I'm Christina and you can find me on Instagram. It's at Christina Valcova. I've also been playing around with TikTok a little bit. So I'm there as well. Christina underscore Valcova and VitaClean is at VitaClean_official on Instagram and at VitaClean on TikTok. And you can buy VitaClean at www.VitaClean.co and you can find me at Sara K Douglas on Instagram. That's S-A-R-A, not S-A-R-H. Lovely. And I think I also have a discount code with VitaClean. So I'll link that in the show notes so people can go and get their very own with a special everyday endorphins, discount. Yes, enjoy your little luxury. Thank you both so much. This was such a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being, and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading Endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.