Women In Wellness: Gail Gould, The CPR & Safety Lady, On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Treat yourself with kindness and compassion. No one is perfect, and we all make mistakes from time-to-time and many times over. It’s okay. Forgive yourself. It feels so much better than being critical of your flaws or performance.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gail Gould, the CPR & Safety Lady.
Gail has over 30 years’ experience in CPR Training and Certification. She has provided effective, hands-on CPR, AED, First Aid and Emergency Response training to thousands of people in many of Houston’s major corporations, schools and medical offices. Gould has also managed wellness programs for Marathon Oil, worked as a Health Coach for Humana and has worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Teas for over a decade, organizing the Wellness Fair for the City of Houston.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I have been a professional CPR instructor for over 30 years and trained 10k people to save lives. I began teaching CPR in 1989 right after I completed my master’s degree in Exercise Science/Health Promotion. I began talking with Fortune 500 companies about their wellness programming. Turns out, they all needed CPR training for their teams! I was fortunate to facilitate training for some of the world’s largest corporations, numerous medical, dental offices, government agencies, schools and daycares. In 2003, at the age of 49 years old, I became a first-time mom when I adopted my newborn son. Becoming a mom made me realize the importance of preventing childhood emergencies, and it has been my mission ever since.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
There are so many, but the one that sticks out in my mind happened right before the pandemic. I met a loving mom who lost her infant to choking. She shared with me how she was feeding her 8-month-old daughter who began choking. She did not know what to do and went into panic mode. She ran to the neighbor’s home for help. By the time she got back home, her infant had died. Her story was heartbreaking, because I know that if she knew infant CPR at that time, her story may have had a very different ending. It only takes me 10 minutes to teach people how to help a choking child. This story inspired me to create my digital mini-course “How to Help Your Choking Child,” which empowers parents, grandparents, teachers and caregivers with the knowledge to know exactly what to do if their child is choking. Meeting this loving mom and creating the course gave me a renewed sense of purpose and what important work I am offering to the world.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Over decades of teaching wellness and safety, I have had time to become more confident in my own voice. However, that wasn’t always the case. When I was first starting out, my biggest mistake was not being assertive enough in taking an impactful leadership role. I remember one time I was in a room full of executives, and I found myself holding back from voicing my opinion on an issue. I kicked myself later for not speaking up. I want to encourage everyone, particularly women, that you have earned a seat at the table. Lean in to opportunities for you to share your unique perspective. It’s incredibly important to speak up to not become a part of a spiral of silence. This applies to business and everyday life situations.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
At the core, I am teaching people to save lives. It feels incredibly gratifying when someone calls or emails to tell me: “That thing you taught me last week saved my child’s life!” Or, when I go to a preschool and one of the teachers mentions she needed to give her husband CPR and was incredibly thankful she had taken my class during the summer.
Prevention is the key to avoiding CPR. The first thing I tell students in my CPR class is that I hope they never have to use any of what they are getting ready to learn. We want to increase survival rates when those situations do arise. The main cause of unintentional death of infants under the age of one is an obstructed airway. Along with teaching CPR, I spread awareness and knowledge for parents about prevention techniques, such as feeding age-appropriate foods — like no whole grapes or whole hot dogs until about 6 years old. I also encourage parents to hire a professional to baby proof their home and car. Over 50% of people are driving around with their child’s car seat installed improperly. If you have a backyard swimming pool, make sure you have two fences: one around the yard and another around the pool.
The truth is, we all need to know how to perform CPR because when emergencies happen, they happen fast, and someone needs to know what to do. The good news is that if someone needs CPR and you begin compressing within the first 5–10 seconds, you can double or triple the person’s chance of survival.
Can you share your top five tips that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
In my extensive experience with health and wellness, I have a few shreds of wisdom to share that I’ve learned along the way for both mental and physical wellness to live your best life.
- Treat yourself with kindness and compassion. No one is perfect, and we all make mistakes from time-to-time and many times over. It’s okay. Forgive yourself. It feels so much better than being critical of your flaws or performance.
- Find a way to eat what you like and enjoy. I used to be so hard on myself with what foods I allowed myself to eat. Not anymore! I explore new recipes and try new flavors. Food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. If you are not happy with the way you are eating, find a way to eat that you enjoy. This makes my day go so much better!
- Meditate. I tried various forms of meditation but always felt like a failure because I could not stop my mind from “thinking” during meditation. It was not until I discovered meditation courses that I was able to stick with it. I stopped considering thoughts as the enemy while meditating. I think I have only missed 2–3 days of meditation in the last 3.5 years. Meditation helps me sleep much better, I feel calmer, and I am kinder to myself.
- Exercise. Does not matter what you do for exercise. Just move your body on a daily basis. There is so much confusion surrounding exercise. You absolutely do not have to train for a marathon in order to get fit. Any and all exercise counts. There is exercise for fitness and exercise for health. Exercise for health is simply walking the dog, taking the steps, parking farther away from the door, standing more and sitting less. It does not require intense activity in order to be considered exercise. Everyone has a choice as to how they would like to exercise.
- Learn something new. I created my virtual mini-course for CPR at the age of 66. I was not tech savvy at all when I began. It was a huge learning curve for me to write the content, choose the pictures, figure out how to put it all together, market the course, etc. I needed to hire a virtual assistant to help me get it up and running online. But most of it I had to rely on myself, and it has been a huge stretch for me but tons of fun! I have only been on Instagram for a year so learning how to effectively use social media has also been a challenge. Now I look forward to creating content and reels! Never stop learning.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
A couple decades ago, I would have said that exercise would bring the greatest amount of wellness to people. Now, I say exercise and meditation. Both work in tandem to create a peacefulness of the mind and body. Meditation and just sitting quietly observing my thoughts creates a calming influence on my nervous system and my life. For exercise, you do not have to act like you are training for a marathon to derive benefit. Just walk around the neighborhood or even climb steps in your home, walk the dog, march in place, swim, yardwork, housework, find a virtual trainer that resonates with you, etc. It all counts as exercise.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started”?
- It will not be easy to be a female entrepreneur.
- Make sure you only hire people you trust.
- Have a good accountant or CPA.
- Join a mastermind or support group.
- It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Mental and emotional well-being is very important to me. Nearly 1-in-5 adults in the U.S. live with mental illness, and I believe we all need to reflect on our own mental well-being. A few years ago, I had insomnia so I began meditating, and it cured my insomnia in a week. I meditate 17 minutes each morning and evening. Just in the last year or so, I was experiencing physical pain and anxiety so I began journaling 20 minutes per day, and this practice has made a tremendous difference in how I feel physically and emotionally.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Follow me on Instagram @thecprandsafetylady. I host engaging live content weekly related to safety and wellness. You can also follow me on my Facebook Page called “How to Help Your Choking Child.” I also offer a digital course for CPR, so anyone can learn about these life-saving techniques no matter where they live. You can find it at www.cprandsafetylady.com.
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Gail Gould, The CPR & Safety Lady, On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.