Dr. Sharita Warfield is a successful female physician who wanted to Thrive, not just survive.
Think about it: Are you a high-achieving woman–who is also trying to raise a family and build your career? Are you exhausted? Listen in to how Dr. Sharita Warfield had that “aha” moment when she realized she was just not going to do it any longer.
On a recent episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sharita Warfield, a board-certified emergency and lifestyle medicine physician whose personal and professional journey offers a wake-up call for so many high-achieving women.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Warfield worked in emergency medicine—thriving in high-pressure situations where split-second decisions often meant the difference between life and death. She was respected, accomplished, dependable, and outwardly successful. But beneath the white coat, something else was happening. Like many women who carry enormous responsibility at work and at home, she was quietly exhausted, depleted, and disconnected from herself.
Her turning point came during a chaotic ER shift when she suddenly realized she was no longer functioning at her best. She felt foggy, drained, and disconnected—not because she lacked skill, but because years of “pushing through” had finally caught up with her.
How to Stop Surviving and Start to Thrive
That moment changed everything.
Instead of continuing to glorify exhaustion, Dr. Warfield began studying what true sustainability looks like—not only for her patients, but for herself. She shifted her focus toward lifestyle medicine and developed what she now calls the THRIVE Framework, designed to help high-performing women sustain success without sacrificing their health, identity, or purpose.
What made this conversation so powerful was how universal the experience felt. So many women are applauded for doing more, carrying more, and never slowing down. We are praised for being dependable, resilient, and endlessly capable. Yet few people stop to ask what all of that achievement is costing us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
As Dr. Warfield shared, “Success taught me how to achieve, but not how to sustain myself.”
The THRIVE Framework for Sustainable Success
Her THRIVE framework offers a practical and deeply human approach to reclaiming balance:
- T – Transformative Mindset: Reframing how we interpret stress, setbacks, and success.
- H – Health-Focused Living: Treating physical and mental health as leadership assets, not afterthoughts.
- R – Responsible Resilience: Balancing output with recovery instead of operating in constant depletion.
- I – Intentional Efforts: Making purposeful decisions about where time and energy go.
- V – Victorious Outcomes: Redefining success to include sustainability and well-being.
- E – Empowered for Life: Creating long-term habits that support fulfillment, health, and longevity.
One story she shared particularly resonated with me. A highly successful CEO came to her exhausted and overwhelmed. Everyone around her called her “Superwoman.” Yet her blood pressure was elevated, her cortisol levels were dangerously high, and her body was signaling distress. When Dr. Warfield asked how she was really doing, the woman admitted:
“I’m tired, but I don’t know how to stop.”
How many women feel exactly the same way?
The truth is that many of us have been “applauded into exhaustion.” We become so identified with achievement that we lose touch with our own well-being. We define ourselves by productivity, by how much we can handle, and by how much others rely on us. But eventually, the body keeps score.
What I found especially meaningful in our discussion was how naturally this conversation connected to the themes in my newest book, Rethink Retirement. Whether we are mid-career, leading organizations, raising families, or entering retirement, the same questions emerge:
- Who am I beyond my role or title?
- What gives my life meaning?
- How do I sustain myself while caring for others?
- What happens when the structure of work disappears?
Dr. Warfield beautifully reminded us that thriving is not just about avoiding burnout during our working years. It is also about learning how to age powerfully, stay socially connected, and continue living with intention and purpose.
Too often, retirement exposes the fact that people spent decades building careers but never built the habits, relationships, or inner foundation needed for the next chapter. As she wisely noted, “Freedom without structure is really just wasting a day.”
This conversation is a reminder that thriving is not accidental. It is intentional. It requires us to listen to our bodies, rethink our assumptions, and stop measuring success solely by how much we can endure.
You do not have to wait until you are on the brink to choose differently.
Listen to the Full Episode
If you are feeling stretched thin, questioning your pace, or wondering how to sustain success without losing yourself in the process, this episode is one you won’t want to miss.
You can learn more about Dr. Sharita Warfield at her website and through her coaching and lifestyle medicine work at www.drsharitamd.com.
And remember: small changes, repeated consistently, can transform not only your health, but your life
Connect with me:
- Join my Substack Newsletter Rethink Retirement
- Website: www.simonassociates.net
- Book Website: www.andisimon.com
- Email: info@simonassociates.net
- Learn more about our books here:
Now–it is time to share our new book with you!
Rethink Retirement: It’s Not The End–It’s the Beginning of What’s Next
Out on Amazon and WalMart, and in your local bookseller and Rethink Retirement: The Workbook
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From Observation to Innovation,
CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
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If you would like to dive into the text, read on…
Andi Simon 00:00:01 Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I’m Andi, and as you know, my job is to get you off the break. And I do that by bringing you people to listen to who are going to help you think about what you’re doing in a new way. Today I have with us Dr. Sharita Warfield, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about her in a moment, but I want to set this in the stage for transitions. You know, as some of you know, you know, I’ve been working with Women in Transition for a long time now for companies in transition and fighting the need to change. Although today it’s hard to do that. And my new book, Rethink Retirement, came out in March, and it’s now full of wonderful reviews about how we’re helping people transition into the next stage. I won’t call it retirement for the moment, because if sometimes the retirement to the retirement, as people are discovering all kinds of things. So, Dr. Sharita, I’m so glad you’re here with me today.
Andi Simon 00:00:55 Let me read the audience a little bit about you, and then you’re going to tell them a lot more about your growth and transition. Dr. Sharita Warfield is a board certified emergency and lifestyle medicine physician. Now, I must tell folks that I’ve worked in health care for seven years, and I’ve had about a third of our clients over the last 25 years in health care. And so and I’ve been working with a health care client on their leadership academy for eight years now. So all of this is quite you know, I get it. But she’s also a bestselling Amazon author. She’ll tell us about her book. She’s a wife. We’ll talk a little bit about how you balance all of those things. She’s a mother of four and a physician. She spent over 30 years in emergency medicine, thriving in high stakes environments where lives depended on her ability to perform under pressure. But behind the white coach, she was experiencing what many achievers silently endure chronic stress, depletion, illness, and the realization that success was coming at a course.
Andi Simon 00:01:52 And that cost was that it was time to take a good look at who she was and what she was doing. That turning point led her to expand her work into lifestyle medicine and coaching. She now helps high performing leaders, especially women in midlife, reclaim their energy, health and sense of purpose. In some ways, On the Brink is here to get you off the brink through exactly the same process that Sharita is going to tell you about. She created the Thrive Framework, and she teaches executives, entrepreneurs, and high achieving women how to sustain success without sacrificing themselves in the process. This is a lot of interesting questions about who am I? What do I do? How does what I do differ from who I am, and what’s the task as opposed to a personal identity? So we’re going to talk today about who she is, how she’s evolved herself, but also how she helps her patients who are more like guests and patients, even to really rethink who they are. Thank you for joining me again.
Andi Simon 00:02:57 And now let’s tell them your story, because it’s much more fun than reading what you send me. As much as I liked reading it. Now, who is the curator?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:03:07 Thank you. Thank you so much, Andi, I’m so honored to be here today. And as you said, you know, it’s funny because growing up, I used to always say I wanted to be a wife, a mother and a physician. And I was able to achieve all of those things. But that’s a tall bill and that’s a tall ask. But I have existed and practiced emergency medicine for over 30 years. I worked, as you said, in those high pressure environments where people depended on me, right, to make those they wanted me to perform at my best, obviously. Right. And I had to make those split second decisions. It sometimes meant the difference between life or death. Right? But I built a career that allowed me to remain reliable and composed, and I was able to push through, if you will push through anything.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:03:51 Yeah. However, not realizing that the toll again that it was taking on me. I recall a time that I found myself in a moment that probably many of your listeners, as well as high achieving women, would recognize, but we rarely talk about. Right? I was at the height of my career and respected and experienced and accomplished, but I remember one particular air shift where it was busy, chaotic as usual for the year. Right? And I was moving from patient to patient, making critical decisions, which I had done for over decades. In the middle of this shift, though, I paused because not because I didn’t know what to do, not because I wasn’t capable, but because in a brief moment, I just felt completely off. Completely off. I was foggy, I was drained, kind of disconnected with myself. Right. And it struck me that it wasn’t just the feeling. It was the realization that this wasn’t a one-time thing. This had been building over time. You see, for years I had been pouring into everyone else, as many of us do, right? My patients, my family, my responsibility.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:05:00 And. But quietly, I was neglecting my own body. I was neglecting my own health and my own need for restoration. And so, like so many other high performers, I told myself I just pushed through. Right. You’ve got this. Keep going. Because that’s what we’re taught, right? That is what is expected for us to be strong, be dependable. Don’t drop the ball and never quit, you know. But that’s when I realized that pushing through was no longer serving me. It was no longer a strategy. It became more of a liability, not just for me, but also for the level of leadership that I and the care that I was responsible for delivering. Right. Because I was at that time medical director for the emergency department, I was also an attending physician. So I was in charge of taking care of my patients and training the residents, the medical students and other nurses and people up under. Right. But that was where my turning point happened when I realized that success taught me how to achieve, but not how to sustain myself.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:05:58 Right? And so then that’s when I started looking at, you know, from a physician point of view, my physiology, my stress, looking and taking to an account, my sleep, my hormonal changes, because at that time I was in midlife transition. And so I realized that those were all directly impacting how I showed up. It’s impacted how I led and how I lived. And so that realization allowed me to want to expand my work into lifestyle medicine and coaching. And then, as you said, that’s when I developed the Thrive framework. And so now I help high achieving or high performers, right, to optimize their health, their energy and their leadership capacity so that they can thrive and not just survive success. Because I took what I did for me and then so now I offer it and present it to others.
Andi Simon 00:06:47 Well, let’s pause for a moment, because that moment that you described. I think we’ve all being high performing women having multiple roles to play and. And I had good role models with my grandmother and my mother.
Andi Simon 00:07:04 Yeah. My husband had a high performing well. She was in corporate. She had her own business, and she was a successful women business owner. But your models become who you become. Yes. So many ways. And the standards become ones that you set up for yourself. But I knew that I was never going to be a good stay at home mom. None of my other women in my life were. And we all had purpose, said balance the two. It wasn’t an either or. But I also like you, had that moment. Where is this really what matters? Yeah. And what is success and what is significance. And but what is also the gifts that we’ve got every day to give. And how do we wake up in the morning wanting to do something for kindness to benefit someone else. Life is a series of special mornings. Your thrive approach, though, for our listeners and our viewers, is important to understand that there could be an approach that you can take as opposed to simply having a wakeup call in check.
Andi Simon 00:08:06 Right? And you can you can just change. I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to do that instead. Yeah, but maybe there’s an approach to take so that you don’t have to give it all up, but you can begin to change the way you’re doing it. Tell us more. Well, what did you create and how does it work?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:08:20 So the Thrive framework Thrive stands. T stands for transformative mindset right. So it’s basically how you interpret stress, how you interpret success and challenges and basically allowing you to reframe your mindset so that it becomes more positive as opposed to negative. So you look say an example, a leader who misses an opportunity, right. Or a big deal that they had on the table instead of the reactive mindset would say, I failed, right? But the transformative mindset will stop, look and say, what is this teaching me and what can I do differently? So changing our mindset plays a long way as far as how we lead and how we live.
Andi Simon 00:09:00 I want to add a thought to your thoughts, because I often preach that we live the story in our mind. Our mind does exactly what it thinks you want it to do.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:09:08 That’s right.
Andi Simon 00:09:09 Right. And so if you want to be happy, please. And if you want to be unhappy, go ahead. But it’s not in anyone else’s. The outside isn’t telling your mind. Your inside is. Please continue. So now we need a mindset that says I can thrive. It doesn’t matter what happens. I’m going to turn negatives into positives and find myself thriving. Right?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:09:28 Correct. Yes, ma’am. And so then the age is for health focused living. So here is where you’re treating your physical health as a leadership event, right. Or an asset, you know, not an afterthought. We are intentional and we align our physical and our mental well-being right. So we make choices concerning our sleep health, our nutrition, our stress management. All of those things come into play. We prioritize hydration, eating, anti-inflammatory foods.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:09:55 You know, as far as our nutrition and getting in that movement and that exercise, because we often say movement is medicine, and it really is in a lot of ways.
Andi Simon 00:10:04 Yeah, definitely. After sitting by a screen all day, you got it.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:10:07 Correct, correct. You know, and that’s the thing a lot of people are working from home now and they’re sitting on the sitting at the screen. You know, I always tell my clients, make sure you get up at least every 45 minutes to an hour. If nothing else, stand in place, stretch, you know, maybe do some jumping at whatever it is you’ll go get a snack or, you know, but you have to move because we’ll sit in the, in the seat, you know, sedentary for up to eight hours. And that’s not good.
Andi Simon 00:10:31 Yep. That’s terrific.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:10:34 R is for responsible resilience. So here’s where you’re balancing your output with recovery so that you don’t operate in constant depletion. You know. So you’re sustaining your energy by making the proper choices, right? And you are able to adapt to very high pressured or high demand environments.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:10:52 So instead of scheduling back to back meetings, you might work in, you know, a recovery period. Good day. Right.
Andi Simon 00:10:59 I think I’ve been in my podcast. You’re absolutely right. I’ve had them all day today. And I’m saying to myself, what did I do to myself? I like the idea of recovery time. So that’s a nice balance.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:11:10 Yes, ma’am. Because, you know, you take time to breathe, step away, reset, and then you’re not so overwhelmed by the constant, you know, back to back to back right kind of thing. I is for intentional efforts. Basically you want to be strategic as far as how you use or spend your time and energy and effort and where it goes. Making purposeful decisions that are impactful and not just busy work. So we want to be intentional in our efforts. That’s intentional and eating and decisions that we make. Again, physical activity, being intentional, setting boundaries and taking a break when needed or recovering when needed. That is the key to sustaining yourself.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:11:51 Being able to sustain yourself victorious outcomes. That’s the key. Basically redefining success so that it includes sustainability, right? Because if you have employed the previous actions, you’re destined to see the small little changes that become victorious, right? And can change the way you used to feel right or the way you used to live right. So just being victorious as a result of again, putting those things in place. And lastly, E is empowered for life. You know, you have you have now created lifestyle habits and systems that support long term health and longevity. You get more fulfillment out of it. Basically, you’re creating a legacy of sustainability and personal fulfillment.
Andi Simon 00:12:35 This is so interesting. So first you have to change your mind. Yes. And then you have to begin to see how to make that mind into a body that acts in a way that’s going to make you healthier. Yes. And resilient and informed about what to do and victorious about it. And energize. How does somebody. Well, you have gone through it yourself to a great extent.
Andi Simon 00:12:59 What you’re trying to tell the listeners, you’re a story, and then we can talk about others and how they could use it as well. Please. How did it work for you?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:13:07 So it worked because again, first I had to become aware, right? I had become aware of where I was depleted, not busy, but depleted. What was I lacking? What was I missing? Then secondly, I had to because before you can optimize your performance, you have to be able to stabilize your system. So I had to regulate, right and stabilize my system. That meant prioritizing my sleep, managing my stress, and creating small moments of recovery again throughout the day. Being intentional in my efforts to improve my health. Start listening to the small physical clues that were that my body was telling me, but I was ignoring. Right? Because why we were pushing through. You know, so we get signals early on, but we have a tendency to override them in the quest of either pushing through, being strong.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:13:55 You know, like you said, following our moms or our mentors and just trying to become that person who we’re trying to become. And so I had to stop, pull back and just kind of listen to my body. And then thirdly, again, exercising and intentionality. Right. Beginning, beginning to make decisions from an alignment and that urgency, you know, point of view, because not everything deserves your energy or your attention. So I had to pull back and put that in the proper perspective. And that’s how it worked for me. You know, it’s funny, I had a client who had come to me one time and she high achieving, she was a CEO of her business, running a running her successful business. She was a mom of three, raising them partly by herself. And everybody at work called her a superstar, right? She was that superwoman. However, her clinical picture told a different story. Right. Her blood pressure was elevated. Cortisol was through the roof. Her weight.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:14:51 She wasn’t able to manage well, you know, so I when I asked her one day, I said, how are you really doing? You know. She said to me something that I’ll never forget. She said, Doctor Sarita, I’m tired, but I don’t know how to stop.
Andi Simon 00:15:05 Yeah.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:15:06 Every time I slow down, somebody needs something from me. And then every time I push through, they tell me how strong I am. So she didn’t know how to stop because she was feeding from that adoration, right of, oh, you go, girl, you’re the strong one. You’re this, you’re that being the dependable one. But it was draining her. So she wasn’t sick because she was weak. She was sick because she had applauded herself or had been applauded into exhaustion. Yes. So again, just a matter of listening to our bodies. But you.
Andi Simon 00:15:38 But you need to take control over us. Yes, because what you’re describing is how the outside defines us. Correct? Defined her.
Andi Simon 00:15:47 I’m curious for a moment. We can continue, but I’m anxious. How did you end up in emergency medicine? Was that a choice, or did somebody say to you should be a good emergency room doctor? How did that.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:15:59 No, no, that was a choice. So ever since the fifth grade, I always knew I wanted to become a physician. And I just did. What? I joined the science. I’m sorry. I put in a science project in one first place. I was fascinated with the human body. So growing up, one of my babysitters heard that her daughter had gotten sick. And I had to go to the E.R. with them when they took her to the ER. And I was just fascinated by all of the excitement and everything that went on. And I used to watch the show emergency! I don’t know if people are far enough to remember that, but I was just always so enthralled with that. That was our first. You know, now we have E.R. and the pit and all of that.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:16:34 But back then we had emergency with the doctor and the nurse. Yeah. So I just always been, you know, fascinated with that. And then when I got into med school and we did our clinical rotations, I went to Wayne State University in Detroit, and I rotated through Detroit receiving emergency room and that, oh, it’s hot and heavy. It’s just like the show. And it was just so adrenaline pumping for me in so many different things. I felt, you know, you could make a difference in so many people’s lives. You know, when you’re there, you’re there. But when you’re home, you’re home. So I felt it would align with the being the wife, the mom and the physician. So able to kind of do it on that just kind of thrive in high pressure environments, probably to a detriment.
Andi Simon 00:17:17 But you sound like your client who came, you know, she’s a CEO being defined by the outside as a super person. Yeah. And yet at the same time, her body was not aligned with that or couldn’t somehow get aligned so that he could be healthy and still.
Andi Simon 00:17:38 Because to her the question was, If I’m not this, then what am I? And if I am this, I’m not healthy. So that, you know, there’s a I can either be unhealthy and a success or healthy and not a success. I said, if there’s no balance between the two, but you know, and you needed your own transition moment for you to have a moment with a mirror moment, I call them. Correct. You didn’t see what was in the mirror. It looked all good. And then all of a sudden, it came back looking scary dude stuff. Who am I? Who am I?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:18:11 Exactly right. Exactly. Because a lot of times, you’re right. We don’t look like what we’ve been through. I that’s my statement. I always say that I don’t look like what I’ve been through, because on the outside, we look like we have it all together. That’s right, as my client did, and as many of us do, because we don’t, you know, like the mantra, never let them see you sweat, right? We don’t want to let people know what we’re actually going through.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:18:31 But internally, our body keeps a ledger and eventually it sends a bill. And so that’s when we have to start listening to our internal clues.
Andi Simon 00:18:41 I love this conversation because, you know, my earlier books, one called Rethink Smashing the Myths of Women in Business, was about 11 women, all of whom simply said, of course I can. Yeah. And I watched them all challenge male dominated industries, whether it was geology or aerospace or being CEO. And I nobody ever spoke about the health questions. Yeah. Or whether they were physically in tune with it. And I almost want to go back and ask them; how did you do that? You know, because they all were always the one. I was so often the only were the first in the C-suite and in jobs that the guys weren’t in or didn’t want to do, or turn arounds or fix it, or your superpower was going to be your ability to do what they couldn’t do. Yeah. And that puts the stress on it in a way that’s very difficult to appreciate.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:19:37 Yes.
Andi Simon 00:19:38 Because nobody’s walking around saying, hey, Superwoman, are you feeling good today?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:19:42 Right?
Andi Simon 00:19:43 Right. And in fact, if anything, they’re filling up your coffee cups, giving you more, right? Right.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:19:48 Or applauding you on to do more.
Andi Simon 00:19:51 Do more. Or lifting you up the ladder of success. And. But it’s more complicated than that. So let me ask you. Do they need you to thrive or can they do thriving on their own? Or is it a combination of having a coach or mentor or a doctor with them, telling them it’s okay to be a little different? You. How do they do this?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:20:12 I think yes, you would need a coach. You know, life coach coaching is a relatively new phenomenon that people are now buying into. Right. My I’m at the intersection of being a physician. I bridge the lifestyle natural, holistic way to do it, along with life coaching. And so by having a coach like me, yeah, you get the benefit of having that accountability partner.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:20:35 We set out the systems in place because a lot of people just need. We know what to do. We just don’t do it. Everybody knows you should eat right? Exercise right, get your sleep, you know. But do you actually do it? So having somebody, you know, again help you reframe your mindset around things and then put intentionality into living for your health and for your benefit. I always have my clients identify their why? Yeah, right. When you identify your why, then you can center on. Okay, well, why am I doing this right. And then that helps you again learn to thrive, you know. So I’m like the catalyst that helps you learn the system that we have in place. And then after e being in power for life, you’ve learned those sustainable habits that you can then carry on and carry out through your life. But not only does it impact the individual. Most times women, right. It impacts their household because a lot of the healthy changes that you make will be impactful to the people in your home as well, which is good because then it impacts generational health.
Andi Simon 00:21:35 Yes.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:21:36 Right.
Andi Simon 00:21:37 Yep. And it also makes sense out of how you manage career success and health. Correct. And it’s interesting looking back on our own. You know, I’ve gotten very involved in trying to understand ageism and how to rethink retirement. And it was not my intent to think about our conversation from the post-work retirement stages. But I’m finding many, too many, both women and men are moving into that next stage without a plan. They almost need a thrive. Yeah. Because they don’t have nobody’s practice retirement. They have no idea what it is. Right. And they’ve been successful. They made it. That made it so exciting. Yeah. Then they discovered they had no friends. They don’t know who they are. They don’t have a mindset about how I build a new community. What’s the purpose? I almost want to ask them what you’re like. And I thought maybe you have some perspective to share that we can sort of just add on, because it’s not just during the work stage.
Andi Simon 00:22:37 It’s all through life where you need a good reason for being. Any thoughts?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:22:41 Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, because as we. All right. So one of my taglines is I implore people to live intentionally, to age powerfully and to thrive authentically. Right. And so, you know, as we age, yes, we have to look at it and find a different purpose in retirement. Right. Like you said, find a different why, something that makes you get up in the morning, something that brings you joy. Yep. One of the pillars of lifestyle medicine is social connectedness. And so if you find that you’ve left the workplace and like you said, now you don’t have the friends or the coworkers that you used to interact with. You have to create a new village. You have to create a new friend circle. And so that could mean getting involved with, you know, maybe a group at the YMCA. So then you’re doing both right. You’re doing the social connectedness, but you’re also addressing your physical activity and you’re pouring into yourself where you benefit from that.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:23:34 So no, I think it’s very important for us to continue to exercise and thrive even as we age, because it gives us purpose and fulfillment. And then you’ll find that you’re a happier being, when you when you exercise and you do that well.
Andi Simon 00:23:48 And the other part is that humans need they love the freedom, but they realize quickly that freedom without structure is really just wasting a day.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:23:57 Exactly.
Andi Simon 00:23:58 You’re wandering around to meet one form. A client of mine said, hey, I go to the gym, I come home, I have my coffee, I have nothing to do all day.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:24:05 Right.
Andi Simon 00:24:06 So you’ve just wasted your gym time because on the one hand, the gym gave you physical activity, but now you need some emotional and social activity and some. It’s all connected. It’s not separate. Correct. Right.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:24:19 Absolutely. Actually, one of my college roommates, she retired and she said after about six months, she was just bored out of her mind because she retired early, right.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:24:29 With her friends who she would normally hang out with. Midday. We’re still working, so nobody is available to meet you where you are. And over time, she ended up just going to get another little side job because she was tired of sitting at home. So you might retire from one career, but then you find I’m bored. I don’t have purpose. I don’t have a why. And so you end up getting into something else, which there’s nothing wrong with that. We all, as humans need a purpose, right? We need a reason. And so that was just funny that she shared that with me because she was like, nobody was around the hangout. I wanted to go out to lunch or meet up for breakfast, and they were like, no, girl, I got to work.
Andi Simon 00:25:03 Yeah. One guy told me he was so miserable. All the folks in the office, nobody would have time for lunch with him, and they would have nothing to talk about when they went out to lunch.
Andi Simon 00:25:10 And so. And he needed a whole new and one. One fellow said, I sold my business. And two years later I’m so bored I’m going back into business. I said, what was wrong with business? You know, it says if that one is bad and the other is good, but you never practiced it. You know, retirement so becomes a really Important. If you want to thrive, you have to do it all through your lifestyle. You might write it now. Yeah. And if you’re younger, you know. Think about it. Now you have a book. Am I correct? Is that about this or something else?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:25:40 It’s about something else. Yes, ma’am. I wrote a book. It’s called a Get informed a guidebook for recently diagnosed diabetics and their loved ones. I wrote that my mom was a type two diabetic. And to this point, it’s funny because we talked about our role models, and she was one of the strongest women I knew. She raised both myself and my younger daughter by herself, single parent home, you know.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:26:02 So she constantly pushed through, pushed through to make ends meet, to provide, you know, a roof over our head and foods in our belly, but to her detriment because she stopped taking care of herself. Right? She had diabetes. She had high blood pressure, ran out of her medicine, but didn’t want to take off work to go see the doctor, to get the refill, to continue to maintain her health. So unfortunately, she ended up developing complications. She lost her eyesight at 57, lost both her legs and her kidneys. I suffered for 11 years and ended up succumbing to those complications. So, you know, I wrote that, you know, as a tribute to her. But even working in the ear, I saw so many clients come in with the diagnosis, but not knowing how to treat it, how to live with it, how to manage it and keep it manageable so that you can prevent the complications. Yes, that’s what that book is about. It’s just in layman’s terms, telling people different steps by steps that they can use to improve the chronic disease type two diabetes.
Andi Simon 00:27:03 So I love our conversation today, and I like the fact that you talked about your book, because, you know, I’m an author like you are, and part of the joy of reading a book is learning things. Yes. And today is about how to have those moments where you come to terms, those mirror moments where you look in the mirror and it isn’t who you thought it was, right? Right. But you may or may not be able to take a stock in and redesign what you see in there. Yeah. And so you may need to talk to a doctor. And Doctor Cerrito Warfield has a wonderful website, all kinds of great stuff. You want to talk a little bit about how to reach you if they’d like to talk to you.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:27:43 Yes, ma’am. They can find me at my website, WW Sheridan, MD. That’s doctor a RIT md.com. That’s my website. I’m also on social media sites, Instagram, Facebook, even TikTok and LinkedIn. And it’s at Doctor Sheridan, MD.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:28:05 If they would like to find me there.
Andi Simon 00:28:07 And even on TikTok.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:28:08 Even on TikTok. But not as diligent as I probably should be. But they will find some information there that I post periodically. I do have some interesting blogs and information on my website, so people should go there and check it out. There’s also a link if they’d like to get in touch with me to do a discovery call and find out if we’re a good fit, they can do that as well.
Andi Simon 00:28:31 So when you look in the mirror, all of you who are listening or watching and you like what you see there, make sure it’s really a healthy look. And if you’re looking at, they’re wondering, who is this? What have I become? Don’t wait. Come and take a look at what Doctor Schraeder Warfield can help you discover about yourself, about how to thrive. And every day is a gift. Don’t waste any of them. And don’t think that you know, I have too many folks who I interviewed who thought that retirement, they could be healthy and enjoy all the things they couldn’t do when they were once told her practice in the day after I got breast cancer, she said, what happened? I said, I don’t know, but there’s something in the body that says, oh, you’re retired now.
Andi Simon 00:29:12 I’m going to go get you, right? Too many folks who don’t realize that the body is fragile. You must take care of it. And every day to do that.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:29:21 So absolutely.
Andi Simon 00:29:22 This has been such a pleasure. We will make sure that all of your information is available on our blog, on the podcast, on the video, and I hope that that the folks you share the podcast with also begin to realize that they can share you with others. Because often, you know, this is about influencing people who you see left and right among the super power women and guys, all of whom are ready for a little thrive, right?
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:29:48 Absolutely, absolutely. And I just want to tell you people that you don’t have to wait until you’re on the brink to choose differently, right? You have to choose a different way to live and to lead. So don’t wait. Implement today. You know, small changes, little changes could make a big difference in the long run. And the sooner you start, the better.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:30:07 Long term you’ll be.
Andi Simon 00:30:08 I think, Oprah or just you to have small wins every day. Absolutely. And that change comes a little at a time, a little bit. This has been wonderful. I’m so glad we met. I’m so glad you came and shared your thoughts. It’s been a pleasure. Now for all of you who come. My last little pitches, Rethink Retirement is on Amazon in all flavors, and it loves your reviews. But the book is actually a fun book to read about. What are you assuming and what is real and how people are doing it? There are 30 great stories in there of people who, in the stories they tell you, will help you think about your own retirement or life today before you retire. And I’m beginning to work with companies before retirement to help them prepare for the great exodus that’s happening as people leave and take all their wisdom with them. And that becomes a whole other stress test for the company to survive.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:30:59 Absolutely.
Andi Simon 00:31:00 It’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
Andi Simon 00:31:02 I tell you all, my observation into innovation is how you can get off the brick. And doctor, thank you again. It’s been fun.
Dr. Sharita Warfield 00:31:10 Thank you. Thank you Andi, I appreciate it. Have a blessed day.
Andi Simon 00:31:13 At Bliss State.
