A BETTER WAY to MAKE a DIFFERENCE | The Healthy American Peggy Hall

➡ The Healthy American Peggy Hall, a life coach and animal welfare advocate, shares her experiences about the importance of setting boundaries in life. She explains how she used to overextend herself in her efforts to please others and help animals, often at her own expense. However, she learned that by focusing on her strengths, such as education and advocacy, she could make a more significant impact. She encourages others to find their unique gifts and use them to make positive changes in their lives and the lives of others.

➡ The author shares their experience of helping animals, initially by fostering and rescuing them personally, but later realizing that they could make a bigger impact by focusing on education, outreach, and networking. They learned to set boundaries, such as limiting the number of events they attend and the amount of money they donate, to avoid burnout and maximize their effectiveness. They also donate items to animal shelters and support a non-profit that transports animals from high-risk shelters to safer ones. The author encourages others to consider where they can set boundaries in their own lives to increase their impact and avoid overextending themselves.

➡ The speaker thanks everyone for their interest in their animal rescue work and shares that they donate to a specific organization. They also introduce their new Substack, Livingswell, which is a free newsletter summarizing their video content. The newsletter also includes links and images, and offers a paid subscription for those who wish to support their work. The speaker appreciates everyone’s participation in their positive community and looks forward to future interactions.

Hey friends, Peggy hall back with you from thehealthyamerican. org. From time to time, I like to share with you some of my favorite videos from my living swell channel, which is here on YouTube. Living swell with Peggy hall. All about positive encouragement for vibrant living. So without further ado, I hope that you enjoy this very special broadcast from my living swell channel. Hey friends, it’s Peggy hall back with you to add some positive of encouragement to your life.

I want to talk about how boundaries can be life saving. And I literally mean that. I came to understand setting boundaries in my life a little bit later in life. I am of the nature of a people pleaser, and what that means is I want everybody to be happy. I want to solve everybody’s problems. I want to help them feel better. And that’s part of what I strive to do with my encouragement coaching here.

And it’s interesting because I really don’t have the power over your feelings. I don’t have the ability to actually make you feel better. Now, you might feel better after listening to some of my broadcast when you consider the tips and the tools and the strategies and solutions that I offer here for you. My goal is to inspire and encourage you to make some changes in your life. Positive changes that can yield some important results.

So when I think about a lifetime of me being a cheerleader, literally for others to try to help them feel better, sometimes I would feel frustrated because I wouldn’t see the results that I had hoped to see in certain people’s lives, and maybe not even in my own. And the problem with being a people pleaser is often we do it at our own expense. What does that mean? It means I, in the past, did things that I didn’t really want to do.

And that’s okay. We all have things in our life that we might really not want to do. We would call these obligations or responsibilities, but I was taking things on only, maybe not only, but with a deep desire to help people feel better and frankly, to have them appreciate me and like me and approve of me and validate what I was doing. It seemed as though I could never do enough to satisfy that desire to be liked.

Now, maybe I’m alone in that, but I have a feeling that many people who have a compassionate heart, who sincerely want to help alleviate the suffering of others or of animals, that we have that desire, and we will do anything and everything in our power to make a difference in that way. So I specifically want to speak about animal rescue. And I want to talk about how I set some boundaries in my life, and then stick with me because I want to share with you what many of you were asking, which is, since you know about my involvement in animal welfare, you wanted to find out where I donate and what organizations I trust.

So I want to share with you. Let me share this picture with you right off the bat, and then I will tell you the story behind this picture. So, here we go. This is. Let me get that out of the way. And this is my teddy bear. This is Teddy. She is my senior citizen at the time of this broadcast. She is 14 years old. She is doing absolutely great.

And I found Teddy as. She’s a girl Teddy. And I found her as a little abandoned puppy kind of in the rough part of town in Pasadena, California. And she literally was just a little bundle of fur. In fact, I think I might have an image of that for you. Okay, here we go. Here’s a picture of little Teddy bear. Oh, my gosh. Can you believe how adorable this little Teddy was? And this is actually from my Facebook page.

It says 2014, but this was a picture from about 2010, because that’s when I found her. And she was a starving, dirty little puppy that had somehow escaped. Here’s another picture of her. Oh, my gosh. Just so darn adorable. And here is another one. I’ve got a quote from myself, basically, that says, I can think of no greater calling than to ease the suffering of others, especially the most innocent and the most overlooked.

If you’ve listened to my videos before, you know, I also am in favor of, when I speak, of the most innocent and overlooked. I also am an advocate of pro life because I believe that every life is sacred. So in my work here with animals, you can see this is just on my Facebook page, which is now private. But I did a lot with animal. Whoops. I did a lot with animal rescue, and here are different animals that I’ve been involved in.

This was in Mexico, where we went down and brought a lot of food and items. And this was my organization called Compassion for all. And we helped with this pets and people advocacy fair in Mexico, where people were coming to get their animals checked out. Many of them were getting their animals neutered because of the pet overpopulation there in Mexico. Anyway, suffice it to say that, let’s see here.

I was working on a TV show where it was the animal rescue dog show, and this was right before the incident that was sloshed all over us here. So that kind of went on hold. But the reason I’m sharing all of this with you is because I want to talk about boundaries. And it’s such a good example of the work that I’ve done over the many, many years in animal rescue.

When I tried to do it all, I literally tried to do it all. I would gather donations for the food and the blankets and the towels and the animal toys, and I would drive to Mexico and drop these off. I would drive between counties Orange county and San Bernardino county, which still remains a very hard hit county in terms of the horrors that are happening in these animal shelters, where they’re not very well run, they’re operating under the police department.

Many animals go in that are healthy, that are euthanized in defiance of the law. So I’ve done so much in terms of advocacy. And the point being, I was doing a lot of things instead of focusing on what I could do that would have the greatest impact. And that’s going to lead me back to the story of teddy bear in that picture that I showed you just a moment ago, because I literally was burning the candle at both ends, and I was running myself ragged, and I was so frustrated, feeling as though I could never do enough.

I was donating money. I was networking. I was organizing events. I was holding events for people to come and participate so that we could raise more money for these events. I did videotaping. I organized getting animals flown from one place to another on jets and just talking about it. Now I’m kind of getting anxiety and ptsd because I literally was running myself ragged. And I know that many of you are involved in animal rescue as well.

And it is so psychologically and emotionally draining because of what we see in terms of the abuse and the neglect. So I needed some help in my overwhelm, and I spoke to a very caring person who said, Peggy, you actually are having less of an impact than you could because you have no boundaries. And I thought, well, that’s a strange thing to say. I thought you were going to tell me to be more efficient and give me some tips on time management and show me how to do even more, because there’s so much that I want to do.

And it was the exact opposite. She said, let me ask you a question. What is it that you can do the best? What is your gift? What is it that you can do that also could have the greatest impact? If you could do only one thing, what would it do? And I thought about it, and these answers can change depending on the circumstances in your life, what you’re doing, and other situations.

But at that moment, I said, the biggest impact that I could have is through education, educating people about what’s going on in the shelters, helping them understand the best places to donate their money, helping those who might be frustrated or not able to take care of their animals the best that they could, educating them on ways with dog training and getting different support. So it all boiled down to education, because that’s my gift.

I am a teacher. I’m an educator. I’m an encourager. And yes, I could get all of the blankets donated. I could get in my car. I could drive to the vet and pick up an animal that needed transportation to a different location. I could do the home checks to make sure that where this animal was going to be adopted was safe and adequate and appropriate. I could do all of those things.

I could sit at the adoption events to try to get the dogs adopted. I have even done my own. I have even fostered animals. And of course, at an all time high, I had five rescue animals of my own. So I felt that I wasn’t doing enough. But when I had this wise counsel from a caring person, I thought, what if I focused all of my time, effort and energy more on education, and it since now has really grown into outreach and networking? That could be a better use of my time.

I could make a greater impact rather than running myself ragged and doing things that other people actually are gifted in. Now, I still do donate a lot of items to the local humane society. I take my items that I’m no longer amusing or wearing, and I donate them to different animal shelter thrift shops rather than the goodwill or the salvation army. That’s just me. I’m not saying anything’s well, I wouldn’t really donate to the goodwill.

You might want to dig into them, but I like what I see going on at the Salvation army. But the point is, I still do some of these other activities, but with boundaries. Let me give you an example. I still do fundraisers, and I decided just my own boundary was a boundary in terms of time. So I decided that I would attend four major events during the year when it comes to animal welfare.

Before that, I was going to every single one that I was invited to, and I was driving all over southern California again, running myself ragged. And I don’t even think that my efforts really paid off in the way that I wanted them to. The time that I was spending driving hours at a time to go to this fundraising event, I could have made other videos. I could have done networking.

I could have done other things, in my view, that would have yielded better results. I could have taken the gas money that I was spending for that and actually given it to some local animal rescue folks that I know are doing good work. So I started thinking about boundaries in terms of my animal rescue and animal welfare work. So limiting the number of times that I would go to an event.

You could even put a limit, for example, on the total amount of money that you are able to donate to different groups. Maybe put a limit on which groups it is that you support. Now, I’m not advocating any of these, other than giving you examples of how setting boundaries is actually smart. It’s not reducing your effectiveness. It’s actually maximizing your effectiveness and your impact. So that is what I am talking about in terms of boundaries.

Think about in your life where you might be running yourself ragged. Are you volunteering at a church? Are you volunteering at a soup kitchen? I’m not saying that volunteering is not a great thing to do. I’m all in favor of it, except if it’s at your own expense, if you are getting sick, if you are getting burnt out, if you’re not just enjoying it like you used to anymore, it’s not up to you personally to do every single thing.

That was something that I really needed to understand and acknowledge and embrace in my own life. There are many caring people that are doing incredible things, specifically in the animal world. Since that’s the example that I’m giving you, I want to continue this theme of setting boundaries over the next several episodes here. And so this one was all about looking at what is it that you do best? Can you maximize that gift and bless others rather than running yourself ragged? Are there opportunities that may not be a good fit for you that you could take a pass on because you’ve set a limit and I’ve let people know, hey, I’m doing four events, and so if you’d like to invite me, and I’ve done this even in my advocacy work, when people are inviting me to go speak at public events, I used to do, like, three events a day.

Literally, I’d be driving from. I literally one time drove from Santa Barbara, where I had an event, from Santa Barbara down to Orange county, where I did another event, and all the way to San Diego, where I had another speaking event. And then I ended up back in Orange county. And that day was hours and hours on the, you know, I needed to remind myself that there are others that can do this as well.

It’s not just all on me, and it’s not just all on you. Let me share with you what I am doing now and how I am taking God’s blessings in my life and blessing others, specifically this organization. So let me share my screen because many of you have asked me, and I’m going to take you right back over. And this is, here’s my teddy bear. All right. And this actually is from the Start Rescue newsletter.

And I will have a link for you. Also, I wanted to let you know I’ve got a substac, and I’ll have a link for you in my substac, which is livingswell substack. com. Stay tuned. I’ll talk a little bit more about that at the end of this broadcast. So that stands for shelter transport area rescue team. And they are a nonprofit. They are very highly rated. I have been working with them for years, and this is a major organization that I donate to.

I also donate to smaller outfits, people that I know, literally people that I know that are on the ground getting animals that were abandoned, that are running in the street. Those are individual people. I highly encourage you to find out. I did a lot of this on Facebook. I’m not on Facebook anymore, but you can find out these local groups. Local is better. So this is in California.

And what they do is they transport animals in this van. They used to have another one, and they will take them out of the shelters that are the hardest hit, where these animals are on the kill list, basically, and they transport them. Here we have it. This was 78 lucky dogs and cats. And thank you, lord. I was able to make an impact in saving those 78 lives.

It says, we named this transport in honor of 14 year old Teddy hall, the beloved dog of the hall family. The halls kindly donated their RV to start last year. I’ll tell you that story in just a moment. We were able to sell it and put the funds toward buying the beastie. And what they did is here they got these animals out of the shelters. Porterville shelter, Visalia.

There are several where they are literally on death row and from the following situations. The streets of Tecate, Mexico, Bakersfield dumped desert dogs and owners who died, and their dogs ended up in the shelter. So here they went to the Pacific Northwest to these animal rescue groups, highly vetted. They’ve been working with them for years. And these groups have more money. They are better situated to take the animals out of California.

And here are some of the sweet stories. And look at this. Poor little was her time was up. And then the transport came. And here’s Lenore in Oregon, and she’s getting lots of attention. Oh, this is so heartwarming. And there she is with her new toy. And here are some of the special four legged passengers that were on that transport that was made possible through God blessing my husband and I.

And we blessed this organization by donating an RV that we were no longer using that needed some repairs. And they took it, they were able to sell it, and they were able to use that money for the animals. So this just is so heartwarming for me. This is exactly what I want to do with my life, is to help alleviate the suffering of the innocence. And even some kitty cats were able to go.

They call it pities helping kitties because a number of pit bulls often will be on these transports since they are not usually easily adoptable here in California. So big thank you to Teddy and the hall family, all of our receiving partners in the Pacific Northwest for their caring and kindness. Our drivers, Terry, Dennis, and Nick, the superwomen of rescue, Shannon, Nadia, Laura, Candice, and Colleen. And you, our donors, supporters, encouragers, et cetera, for being the second best part of start because the dogs and cats come first.

Now, you could buy a seat on the bus, and that’s something that I did for some time and that I’m not quite sure how much that is these days. When I was donating monthly, it was like $65, and I would do that as a regular giving because that is how I can make an impact. Hang on just one moment. So we had an RV that we had not been using and needed some repairs, and we prayed about what to do.

And it was very clear that we were directed by the Holy Spirit to make this donation to this animal rescue group, because that’s exactly what they did, is they used these RV type of vehicles to transport the animals. Now, they were able to sell it, they were able to use that money and put that toward their other transport. So, thank you to everyone who asked me about my animal rescue work.

You wanted to find out which organizations I trust and I donate to, and that’s one of them. In fact, it’s pretty much the only one these days, except for my local on the street people that are literally in the trenches. So I will leave a link for you if you are interested in finding out more about the great work that start does. And I will also have a link for you in my brand new Substac, and that is Livingswell.

Substack. com. Substack is a type of newsletter or blog, and you can sign up for it for free. And I will email it to you every week. It will be a day or two following the broadcast, and it will be a summary of what I discussed in my video so that you can have it in a written form, and then you can share it, you can read it, you can reflect upon it.

And that’s a place where I can add the links and some images, and it’s a way that we can stay connected just in case I go missing off this platform. So again, that’s Livingswell substac. com. It’s absolutely free. There is an option for those of you that find value in my work, and you would like to support me financially. So you can also do a paid subscription if you prefer, but all content is free to all readers.

I thank you so much for being on board and being a part of our living swell positive encouragement community, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming broadcast. .

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