How foundher and ZONE by Lydia are rewriting the definition of productivity and what high performance should look and feel like now
Olympian and entrepreneur Lydia Lassila explains why she’s excited to partner with foundher for the RESET YOU Retreat at SOMA, Byron Bay.
foundher exists to equip ambitious leaders of change with a toolkit for the modern world, and there’s no doubt Olympic champion and entrepreneur Lydia Lassila is one of Australia’s leading lights.
A freestyle aerial skier, Lydia overcame a devastating knee injury to win gold at the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010 and pushed the sport to greater heights in 2014 when she became the first female to perform a quad-twisting triple somersault, earning her a bronze medal at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
She’s also a driven entrepreneur – her first business, BodyICE, a range of joint-specific ice and heat packs, was born in response to her long journey with injury; similarly, she developed her range of environmentally conscious yoga gear and clothing, ZONE by Lydia, after discovering the transformative power of yoga.
Key to Lydia’s success in business and sport is her ability to tap into a state of ‘being’, or what she calls ‘the zone’ – and her sustainable focussed yoga brand is all about helping others find that state, too. This resonated with Elana when the pair first connected and led to a deeply aligned brand partnership for foundher’s first RESET YOU retreat.
“What started as a great business collaboration has developed into a deeper connection as we bonded over our shared belief that performing at our best is about presence, awareness and sustainable productivity,” Elana reveals.
“It’s been a really great fit,” adds Lydia. “It’s really nice to work with someone who’s totally aligned with what we do. Elana’s ideals and how she’s helping people who are already in that high-performing environment to look at things holistically and find that balance and reset and spend time on themselves – that’s what ZONE is also about. It’s taking time, whether it’s five or 10 minutes a day, to go inwards and nurture yourself to make better individuals.”
The power of intention
The foundher partnership with ZONE by Lydia started in 2022 and sees guests at the RESET YOU annual retreat gifted with products from ZONE’s sustainable range of yoga mats and clothing to enhance their reset experience.
ZONE’s commitment to using sustainable, high-quality materials such as hemp and cork, along with its wider philosophy around practising yoga with intention, echoes the RESET YOU retreat goal to upgrade your being mode with routines and rituals that enhance personal development and growth.
As Lydia explains, ZONE products are designed to encourage people to think, grow and explore while practising yoga.
“We don’t just make yoga mats, we incorporate art there to initiate thinking,” she says, pointing to collaborations with Indigenous artist Ricky Kildae and Hungarian free diver and artist Fru Pinter. “There’s deep meaning in these artworks and people can bring their own meaning to them. Whether you want to connect to your country or explore the concept of growth or letting go, you can bring a certain intention and purpose to your mat.”
Intention is key to foundher’s philosophy, too. Part of the Sustainable PACE Method is starting each morning by checking in with how you’re feeling (mentally and physically), then getting clear on who you need to be for the day ahead and how you want to show up.
This makes perfect sense to Lydia, who believes that the practice of being present is a vital tool for performing at your best in our fast-paced, modern world.
“To be able to be where you are and stay in that moment is a really important skill,” Lydia notes. “I had to work really hard on staying present as an athlete because you have to be in the moment to perform at your best … and that’s where you’re most productive, too. That’s why present-moment techniques are really, really important.
“Yoga is a perfect tool to gently nudge people towards that,” Lydia continues. “And that ties into foundher’s Ripple Effect Framework. It starts with the awareness piece, which I love, because without that, you can’t make any changes.”
Creating a work-life blend
As an elite athlete, Lydia intimately understands the benefits of coaching when it comes to achieving goals. She worked closely with a mental training coach during her Olympic career and still draws on those lessons in her everyday life.
Lydia’s mental training coach encouraged her to embrace a blend of priorities, such as family, work and other passions, outside of sport. This was key to Lydia managing life on the road as an athlete and a smooth transition out of elite sport.
She’s now using this concept of work-life blend to live her dream lifestyle, travelling in Europe with her husband and two sons while running her businesses – but adds that it’s a constant process of finessing her routine and rhythm.
“Because I’ve always been remote and nomadic [as an athlete], I get to achieve one of my biggest values, which is lifestyle,” she says. “My husband runs an IT company as well, so we’ve never had a nine-to-five setup and we’ve always been flexible with what we choose to do, whether it’s holidays or enjoying life! Sometimes we work really hard and sometimes we back off a bit, but it seems to balance.”
Similarly, Elana encourages all her clients to continually finetune their rhythm to meet their vision for their best life. “Our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world demands it,” Elana says. “No day is the same, so how you respond and show up also needs to change. Who you’re being affects what you’re doing, always.”
No wonder that Lydia and Elana’s connection runs so deep – their belief about what it takes to make a difference is completely in tune.
“Everything Elana talks about and teaches – I love it,” Lydia agrees. “It resonates and I definitely agree with everything she’s trying to do.”
Lydia, who now mentors athletes herself, sees many parallels in Elana’s approach.
“When I mentor athletes – and it’s no different to high performing executives – I ask them to make other goals in the other priority areas of their lives: connect with your friends or spend time with your parents or your partner; learn something outside of sport; take the time to find another passion in your life that fills the cup,” Lydia explains.
“Elana’s done the corporate thing, she’s been a high performer and she’s realised the need to step back and develop that self-awareness and identity outside of the career so that you can be more productive and you can serve better,” Lydia reflects.
“It takes discipline and it takes courage and it’s like she’s practising what I practised, particularly as an athlete.”
Lydia’s advice for those wanting to re-write the script for high performers
The lessons Lydia learnt as an athlete still serve her today as a business owner, helping her to create her unique sustainable productivity rhythm and avoid burnout, even when dealing with the chaos of a pandemic on her new business.
For Lydia, high performance at work looks the same as it does in sport: it’s about finding her zone so she can stay present.
“It comes down to finding that flow state and really rolling with it,” she says. “There are days when I get to my computer and I’m distracted and I didn’t get done what I needed to get done. That disappoints me because I didn’t start the day with an intention. So, for me, high performance is about setting that intention, but also having a really good plan to deflect distractions.”
Her advice to other high performers on finding their zone?
Practice.
“It’s a practised thing. I think everyone knows when they’re in it, but maybe it wasn’t done on purpose. Yoga has really helped me as an athlete be able to very quickly decompress after a long day or get ready and set intention for the day,” she says.
“I think if everyone started with 10 minutes of yoga, whether that’s just pranayama [breath work] or a quick practice, that’s already setting them up for a better day, and the skills learnt there are totally applicable to everyday life.
“Every time you get on the mat, you’re making a small, incremental change and bettering yourself. And if you can do that you can serve whoever you’re serving a lot better.”
As we say at foundher, changing the world needs all of you to show up. That’s why it’s so important to consider who you’re being as well as what you’re doing.
Lydia has just one other productivity secret to share… “Noise-cancelling headphones,” she says with a smile.
Join foundher’s next RESET YOU retreat this October to explore the benefits of deeply recharging, learning to build a sustainable rhythm with the help of ZONE by Lydia