The Resistance to Change | Madelaine Weiss | 203

What if the biggest thing standing between you and the life you want… is the resistance to change?

In this deeply insightful episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Harvard-trained psychotherapist, mindset expert, executive coach, and bestselling author Madeline Weiss for a powerful conversation about identity, self-worth, reinvention, and the hidden psychology behind personal transformation.

From losing her father unexpectedly at 15 years old to rebuilding her confidence through learning, growth, and self-discovery, Madeline shares the experiences that shaped her understanding of mindset, resilience, and human behavior. Together, Amanda and Madeline explore why people often stay stuck in familiar discomfort, how quieting the mind can help uncover purpose, and why real self-esteem comes from witnessing yourself show up in ways you admire.

Throughout the conversation, Madeline breaks down the five-step framework from her book Getting to Great, explains why the brain naturally resists change, and shares how unconscious patterns quietly shape the direction of life, relationships, health, and career decisions.

This episode is filled with honest reflections, practical wisdom, and meaningful mindset shifts about courage, personal responsibility, identity, and becoming the version of yourself you were always capable of being.

💡 In this episode, listeners will learn:

🧠 Why the brain naturally resists change and prefers familiarity
 🌱 How identity shifts create lasting transformation
 💭 The importance of quieting the mind to hear inner guidance
 ✨ What true self-esteem actually comes from
 📖 How grief and life experiences can shape self-perception
 🔥 Why “what you want more” ultimately wins
 💪 The role discomfort plays in growth and evolution
 🌍 How kindness toward both others and yourself can transform life

05:00 – Losing her father at 15 years old
08:15 – Grief, moving, and struggling in school
17:40 – Quieting the mind & polyvagal breathing
26:00 – The GREAT framework explained
31:15 – Why resistance to change is the real work
35:45 – Why people stay stuck in familiar discomfort
39:20 – “What you want more wins”
42:00 – Amanda’s weight loss & identity shift story
46:10 – Manifestation vs becoming the future version of yourself
52:00 – “Just do good work”

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Transcript

Intro And Meet Madeline

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders and Mindset Podcast, where you'll find both monologues and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people, where your host Amanda Roosevelt will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guests' mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Welcome to Amanda's Mindset.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

So if we explore how shifting your mindset will shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Bruce, and I am so excited for today's conversation.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

I am joined by Madeline Beast, and she is a Howard-trained psychotherapist, a mindset expert, and a board-certified executive career and life coach. She's also a best-selling author of the book Getting to Great, a five-step strategy for work and life, and a children's workbook, What's Your Story? And I am so excited to delve down her story. Thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Me as

Goodness And Earned Self-Esteem

SPEAKER_04 1:16

well. So who would you say Madeline is at the core?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Who is at the core? Yeah, who are you at the core? Oh, who am I? I'm too humble to answer that. I was gonna say something amazing about myself. I will say I didn't always feel that way about myself. But somehow along the way, and it's been a long, long way, I kind of figured out how to be me in the world in a way that I feel pretty good about. And if I could like put that in a bottle, because I think who doesn't want that, right? And you know, if you could put it in a bottle and people could buy it for 25 cents or whatever it is, that would be awesome. But that's not that's not how it goes. There's a lot of um trips and foals and surprises and adventure and the whole nine cards that goes into getting from there to here.

SPEAKER_04 2:41

I'm curious what the amazing things you were gonna say about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well it's embarrassing like to say these nice things about yourself. Why? The word I don't know, the word that popped into my head was goodness. And probably that is because two people actually said that to me a day apart, one about an hour ago. But that's something you do. Like your goodness is so you know how they say about so I was a soccer mall, and when my son, who's all grown up now, when he was younger, you know how they I don't know if they still do, but they would give out trophies for nothing. And and you know, the the kids aren't dumb. They did nothing, and so the um idea that affirming affirmations are gonna develop the person, I think is a little overrated.

unknown 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Because maybe they just think the parents are jerks for like whatever it is that they're they think they're doing. But so when I'm being serious, I'm gonna be serious now. The idea is to actually see yourself conducting yourself in a way that you can admire and appreciate as you observe yourself. And to me, that's the true essence of self-esteem. Not what someone else that you even if you did earn it, I think some of that gets in there, especially early on, if it's earned, if it's bona fide, then I think that does get absorbed and contribute to one's sense of self. But honestly, I think there's nothing like seeing yourself do good and saying, I did good, you know. So yeah. And I think in these very complicated times we're living in, I think it's really precious to be able to notice that in oneself and others.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Yeah, I agree.

Childhood Loss And Letting Go

SPEAKER_04 5:17

Can you take us down memory lane a little bit? Tell us about your upbringing, childhood, family.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

You mean like when I was a mouthy bad little girl? Yeah. So when I was little, there was a movie called The Bad Seed. So that was a very, very long time ago. So it's a classic. So maybe you heard of it, but I doubt that your audience or you would have heard of it. And I don't even remember anything about it, except I used to think maybe I'm her. It seems like she was like evil or something. And I've seen I they used to call it fresh.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

So like when you were mouthing off, you're being fresh. So I was like grounded. We called it punished, we didn't say grounded, but grounded as I remember it. Like what was my entire childhood for being fresh. So you know the little children's book, Madeline? Yep. She was not afraid. She was not afraid of my she loved winter snow and I was too the tiger in the zoo. Madeline just said poo-poo, and so did I too many times to my father. I didn't use the exact words, but that was I had attitude. So when I was 15 years old, he died suddenly of a stroke, and I went for years thinking that he died of me because I was fresh. So when I tell you this, you can easily see, I think, why the goodness matters so much because of time spent thinking, oh my god. So and then there was one day at the cemetery with my mother, and I broke down with her about I felt like I aggravated him to death. And she said to me, Oh honey, it wasn't you, it was work. So, no surprise, I now help people how to figure things out for themselves so that they can, especially in their work, get to these great lives that everybody wants, and I think so that's trying to tilt everything.

SPEAKER_04 8:06

Do you have siblings?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I do, I have a brother.

SPEAKER_04 8:11

Younger, older? Older. Yeah and a half older. Golden boy. I don't know what that means. He was good.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And a grandmother used to tell tell me the story of Cain and Abel, and that was the best. But he he I have a really funny story about well, I think, and I tell it in corporate settings to women. Listen up, women. So the story goes like this. My mother, who was not a very good cook, used to like to make, thank God, because we like lamb chops. So there'd be this plate of lamb chops, and my recollection is that I sat there watching my brother just eat the lamb chops, and there was none for me. And then about honestly, it was only about a year ago, my brother comes out with you know what the best thing about our childhood was? I loved lamb trips, and you didn't, so I got to eat them all. And the reason that I'll tell that, like in corporate settings to women, is like, is that on him or is that on me that I sat there and never said a word? Like, can I have one? Or I like those two, and I just sat there. But it was also so incredible to me that we could remember the experience we shared that differently. Like he's like, so great. Then you didn't like the language thinking, well, actually, but I told him that as a doll. That's actually in my book. He read it in the book.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

Oh my gosh. Now, how was schooling for you in your upbringing, going to school? Were you a student?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

They used to say things like, How could how could somebody as wonderful as your brother have a sister like you? So that kind of fits in there. Also, my biggest regret in my life, which I tell my granddaughters, is that I didn't take it all more seriously. I'm really like, I am such a learning junkie now. Take life more seriously? No, school learning. I was on the phone with my boyfriend. I am so sorry. I've I think in in recent, more recent decades, I've done a not bad job of catching up on the deficits, but like history. I actually flunked honors history and was in the house for the whole summer because I flunked honors. I was grounded for that. Well, so uh yeah, I'm really sorry I didn't take school more seriously because it's such a joy to learn when you're involved in the learning. And once once you're off the track and nothing makes sense, uh it's deadly. I remember it being deadly, like like I have no idea what anyone was talking about because I didn't do any of the reading or any of that, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:05

I want to transition back at that. You mentioned you lost your dad unexpectedly at 15, you said?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I was 15 and he was 42.

SPEAKER_04 12:16

I'm so sad. Yeah, I didn't see that coming. I bet. Did life like shift for you afterwards? Did you move? I got married very young.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

What's very young? 19. So I was 15 and a half when he died, and it was sort of like nobody knew what to do with me. So, and there was this very nice man who is a very nice man, and he's the father of my daughter, and who we weren't the only ones who got married that young at that time. It seems absurd now, but it wasn't as absurd at the time.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

Oh, I'm sure my grandma got married when she was 18. Yes, it's so beyond. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I don't even think the brain is fully formed then. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_04 13:13

So, how was life uh for you like family life before you got married and right after your dad passed? Did anything shift for you, your mom, and your brother?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, rocked their whole world. My brother was going off to college very shortly, I think. Like my actually, today is the anniversary of my father's death. Oh, I'm so sorry. You know something? It used to be painful, and now it's like a visit. It's like a really warm visit. So, but so my brother left for college, we sold our house. I moved to a new neighborhood where I didn't know anybody, which most people today would not do that, because that's not a good idea to have all that change in the context of massive loss like that.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

Did were you in the same school still, even though you've moved like that too? Oh god.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Sorry. I don't know why. I don't know why I'm laughing, but it's a little funny. I decided I just didn't go. Wouldn't go where? To school. So the truant officer.

SPEAKER_04 14:47

You know what that is? I I worked at group homes, so I dealt with them from the kids at the group homes, not going to school.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah, well, I don't know what I was even doing. Instead, but anyway, the truant officer wanted to meet with my mother and me. The true one officer comes in. My mother starts sobbing about my father died. The true one officer is come comforting my mother, and I remember thinking, hello, what about me?

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Didn't you come?

SPEAKER_04 15:24

Oh my gosh. I know it's funny. So did you start going to school again?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah, and I recall the teachers being so nice and so attentive, like staying after school, trying to trying to help me, you know, pay attention. And they were so wonderful. I I have like really warm feelings. And somebody must have written me a really good recommendation because I got into a program that was hard to get into. And given my grades were not so hot, I think somebody must have really put in a good word for like she has potential, let's give her a chance, kind of a thing.

Finding Learning And A New Path

SPEAKER_04 16:18

So, what did you what did you end up going to college for?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

So it was a program. I didn't go to college till after that, but it was a um University of Pennsylvania's graduate hospital school of medical technology. It was a year and a half program in all the different sciences, like chemistry and hematology and serology and all that, all those words.

SPEAKER_04 16:50

So okay, and then and from there, what did I where'd you go from there with that?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

I worked a little bit. I worked in a chemistry lab. And after that, I went started going to college, and after that I went to graduate school a couple times. So I kind of made up for it all. I didn't.

SPEAKER_04 17:17

How did you decide when you first went into that program what you were gonna study?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

I think maybe I went there because I could. Like nobody thought of me as college material. In fact, I didn't even find out that I was like smart until I was already in college. And they put me in an honors program and I had to give a presentation. And when they wrote a reference for me, they said something like, We doubt that she even knows what a brilliant job she has done. Because I didn't think of myself like that until back to my earlier point, I started seeing my output. You know, I started seeing like the papers that I wrote, and then I could see for myself that I was smarter than I looked.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

And then after you did this program, did you just know like automatically that you definitely wanted to go to college?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

No, what happened was I got married, and my husband's advisor said to me, This may not sound good, but this is what he said. He said, You're gonna be married to a PhD, you need to get your butt to college.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

I thought okay, look, look so I did.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

But I started to love the learning because before that What makes you think you loved the learning this time?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Well, first of all, I got all A's and I really applied myself, and I was studying things that were interesting to me. I make a big point of this. I have a uh little granddaughter who just turned nine, and I make a big deal about this with her papelle, the love of learning. I just found out today the money that I gave her for the holidays. She wants to save it for college. Last time we were all together, she I wrote this book, and her name is on it because she was my consultant. Then I decided there were like three other books I was gonna write, and I decided not to write them. So I put everything, all the materials that I had on a little, what do you call it? Zip the little thing you download onto like a flash drive? Yeah, thank you. So I put it all on there, and I gave it to her with all the uh little kitty resource books. The second book was gonna be on money, kids have money, and uh I'm laughing because she said something to my son and I mean son and me. She said something about um that she's already started. And my son said to her, you're like not even nine years old. What do you know about money? Like you're writing a book about anyway, which is maybe wasn't nice, but it was very funny. Said, oh, good point. But anyway, she wants she's doing her c her college fund.

SPEAKER_04 21:10

That's interval. No, I I I'm curious. Have you did you always know or always think that you would write a book? No.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Well, I take back what I said that I don't even know what I was doing when I was in the house by myself. I was writing books, so I would take paper and I would um sew, like fold it in half, and then with a big, big needle and yarn, sew it up the middle, and then I would make a cover, and then I would write a book on the inside. So I was doing that when I was little, but it never occurred to me that I was gonna go off and write a real one. In fact, a lot of the things that I've done. were not things I thought I would do, which is a major lesson. And I'll tell you what it is.

Quieting The Mind To Hear Guidance

SPEAKER_01 22:11

The quieter the mind is, and I teach people how to quiet their minds, the easier it is for us to hear the inner guidance. So people will say like I don't know what my purpose is. Well your purpose is in there, you just can't hear it. So noisy in there. So I mean it sounds trite to say but when you're like I've been following my bliss kinda doing what comes naturally but it comes from inside it's not anything anyone else says to do.

SPEAKER_04 23:00

And in quieting your mind has helped you follow your bliss.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah. 'Cause I think it's all in there in all of us. We can't access it because it's like a radio, it's static. It's noisy. So we can't hear the signals. There are all kinds of tips in getting to grade. My favorite because it's so quick is did you ever hear of polyvagal breathing? Yes. I call it power breathing because it kicks things upstairs. Okay, so this is the hand model of the brain. This is the amygdala. And when we're overstimulated good or bad this thing is going berserk and it knocks the higher cortex offline. So you don't even have access to higher order thinking. So when we calm this it brings this back in line and this can say something's happening here, I don't know. And the higher order thinking can say thank you for sharing I'll take it from here. So the way you achieve this integration is to stimulate the polyvagal nerve. And it takes 30 seconds or less to do that. And in fact if people go to my website manalemoist.com there's a little tab across the top there's some tabs and one of them says power breathe and people can download that it's a one page instruction on how to do this belly breathing. That's basically what it is a lot of people maybe um who've done yoga or Pilates or whatever know a little bit about or singers know about diaphragmatic breathing. But the idea is that when you breathe you don't fill your lungs because that just makes us more anxious right but you fill your belly like a balloon and what that does is it stimulates this nerve that goes all the way up from your center all the way to your brain and puts you back together again so you can function optimally so how did you discover this? Well because I am a learning junkie I've been taking I just signed up for two last week I take many continuing education courses most of them through the Harvard system because they're the ones who send me the brochures and I get to see what's happening. And I'm pretty sure I learned it through them.

MBA Pivot And Leading Under Pressure

SPEAKER_04 26:21

I love that so I'm curious at what point you got your MBA in the midst of all this so by this time now I was the administrative director and treasurer of a large group mental health practice.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

And one day my co-director came in and she looked at me sitting in a chair that I would practice the psychotherapy in and she said are you going to be sitting in that same chair for the next 20 30 40 years I went the question horrified and also it was when managed care was coming on the healthcare scene. So things were really changing and there I was managing a business and I didn't know sweat about business. I could tell you how that happened there were seven so it was this um group mental health company owned by someone else and we me and my seven sisters we all worked together and one day they realized they had overextended themselves so they were gonna shut down the office and meanwhile we had 200 patients that couldn't shut down the office I was seven months pregnant and building a house and we get the notice well the notice was we walked in and everything was gone but a typewriter. They just took everything and so we had this meeting and they said you know we're gonna have to divvy this up and figure out what we're gonna do. And I said well I don't know my mother was my father's bookkeeper and they said okay good then you're the administrative director treasurer I said okay yeah but I don't really know what to do actually and they said yeah just take all the there was tons of cash they said just take all the money stick it in a brown bag take it home and figure it out and okay so of course I I hired an accountant and I hired an office administrator and we figured it out whack yeah it's all very organic isn't it's just so organic That's impressive but what I'm noticing in the telling is that not a lot was very well planned not a lot of my story I mean I love where I wound up but not a lot of it was like when you asked me like I I forget how you said it something about dreaming like did oh did it did I know I was gonna write a book. No I didn't know I was gonna do any of the things that I did none of it and yes when you're open and you could find a little courage because it takes a little courage lots of things are possible that's true.

The GREAT Method For Lasting Change

SPEAKER_04 29:55

So what does the great in the title of your book stand for?

SPEAKER_01 30:00

I'm so glad you answered so the G is the grounding G stands for grounding so it's grounding in the idea that basically it doesn't have to be like you know and when people come to me to work with me they don't typically say that they want me to help them figure out how to have a G R E A T life they're usually in some sort of pain right and they want something to be different and they don't know how. And I know because I've done it enough with enough people I know how possible it is and also from my own life I know how possible it is to get from here to there so I hold that ground for them until they can step into it and believe it and run with it themselves. So it's that grounding in the belief that you can't tell a person back to the beginning of our talking with each other they have to see themselves doing something and then they begin to believe the R is the first line of the book is great life depends on a great fit between who we are and the environments in which we work and live so the R is if a great life depends on the fit with who we are we have to recognize offer recognize who we are and it's not necessarily who anybody told you you should be it's not even necessarily who you always thought you should be it's something like we were saying that springs from in here if we let it and then the E, G R E is exploring the environment so when I was growing up there were maybe one or two things that a girl could do when she grew up and there's a great and I know that's changed but still there's a great big world out there and there's a lot of exploring that can take us to places we never dreamed were possible. But that's a little bit la land and sometimes people get stuck in the dreaming and this is the A is for action. So William James said action doesn't guarantee happiness but there's no happiness without it so the a is that we have to get on a path one foot in front of the other find a little courage to go outside of the comfort zone which most people will fight kicking and screaming and that's the T which is tackling the resistance to the change which is usually pretty significant people are like very excited at the beginning because there's all this novelty thinking about I could do this and I could do that and there's a lot of buzz with that but then when you get down to actually stepping forward in concrete ways to places where you may never have been before it's not always smooth sailing take some fight with yourself. I love that abbreviation how did you come up with that I don't know but I was thrilled I was you know one day I said to myself these people my client are doing so great and my background is so varied. I even studied um Advaita Vedanta pre-Hindu tradition for over 25 years. So between that and psychodynamics psychotherapy and coaching and all these evolutionary psychology you name it because I became a learning junkie. So I was always learning something so I said to myself like what are you even doing like you have like so many tools in the toolkit and so I I laid out all my case folders looking at them like what is common denominator here what do all all these people who are so different from each other what was the common process for them and I came up with this five step process and when I realized that I could fit it into the acronym I was very happy it makes a lot of sense I'm curious would you say tackling the resistance to change is the most difficult part for most people when I was in training I had a very classical training they taught us that they said the resistance is the work people think it's like the figuring out whether to do this or whether to do that the deeper work that makes all the difference is the making the unconscious conscious about what makes you tick and what gets in the way that's true I started to tell you earlier I had a couple of clients recently and they were very successful men in business and at the very beginning they're enthralled with the work and they did like so one of them stopped drinking which is a very big deal and another one was um not really connecting with anybody in his family and completely reversed that the children were like wow you know they really felt like they had a father but then but if so I'm not minimizing any of that but there's something that that's harder than that that that comes next that um a lot of people feel like I've been getting away with doing it this way for my whole life it might not be great my business might fall apart the wife might leave eventually but you know this has been working well enough for so long and when there's no longer kind of pain that brought them in the first place it's not an easy thing to stick with it so I've had people who will get to a certain point and then they'll stop and there will be a crisis that they hope would never happen but I kind of knew was coming down the and then they can go to the next level do you think people have to experience a certain level of pain to change well what what do they say it's either something really positive or something really negative but when you're sort of coasting along it the brain conserves energy the brain will do whatever it can do to conserve it doesn't like to waste any energy change requires enormous energy though people really have to put their minds to it if they really want to change anything because it's not easy that's completely true. I've seen people do it though I've seen lots of people do it I have this wonderful woman who when I first met her she said she was so independent she couldn't imagine even ever living with anyone let alone like getting married or and now she's married and she has two babies and she moved from the east coast to the west coast and she went from um was it she started out in defense and went into finance and she's been adventuring all over the place and having a great life she who thought she was going to have her own four four walls and nothing else I remember when she moved in with the boyfriend she put up a bookcase in the corner like like a dog marking so what what helps with change? What commitment there was a um there was a guy who gave a conference when I was at Harvard and he made a really good point I thought where he said that and this is on my website I think he said that it's not that people don't really want to lose the weight or don't really want to stop drinking or don't really want to start running or stop smoking. It's not that people don't really want to they do want to it's just something they want more and whatever you want more wins want more always win. Again a lot of it isn't conscious and that's what the work with somebody like me is about making that conscious so that you can make a conscious decision about which one you want more really for your life forever more and if it's not conscious and it's strong and staying in the comfort zone is a big one. People's discomfort if it's what they've always known and done it even though it's discomfort it's really comfortable and the brain will try to keep you there because it's easier and it's it spends less energy so as much as we can make conscious as possible.

Identity Shifts Kindness And Closing

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Whatever the brain wants more I've never heard of that but that makes a lot of sense I have my own weight loss journey actually once I shifted internally I was able to lose the weight and maintain like a 70 pound weight loss but I probably before I before I started that tried losing weight for almost my whole teens like I tried losing weight for like eight years and nothing what is it that flipped the switch for you how to do that a big thing was the identity I shifted how I saw myself prior to it it was just I kind of didn't I didn't really care almost and I don't want to say that I didn't care about myself because I feel like I did but not enough to really possibly there was something you wanted more than you wanted to for the trouble to lose weight. Yeah I was just What was it? I enjoying life I was drinking I was eating whatever I was like I was in my early 20s I was going out I don't want to say podiing per se because I wasn't a big like club type person but I could eat whatever eat the fried food have three drinks with the goals like it sounds like freedom well you said that you could do whatever you want you were choosing a freer spirit than the discipline of weight control. Yeah and then something happened that made you want to choose the other it's funny because it was so random I was I had lived in this apartment that I had been living in for a while but I was on the third floor and there was one day that I was out of breath going up the stairs and I had nothing I had nothing in my hands and I was like I feel like I just ran a mile I'm not carrying anything and I need to sit down just from walking up the three flights of stairs and just did you have anyone in your life who um went in a bad direction with that sort of thing where there was a bad outcome like you didn't want to wind up like that whatever it was like weight wise you mean or illness I was in a relationship at the time and like neither one of us were really taking care of ourselves. I don't know that I like witness somebody experienced illness from it but it was a small thing. No, it was huge.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

It changed your life. It did. It was an awareness that changed your life. You saw you. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah. But I shifted the identity like was the biggest thing that helped me make the change.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Before you lost the weight? Yes. So nowadays they call that like manifesting. Like you're supposed to a lot of people swear by it that you're supposed to begin living. So let's say you weighed an extra 70 pounds, you begin living as if you've already lost it. You're not supposed to be they say what people get wrong is they think they're supposed to be imagining what it's going to be like you know unless sort of dreaming about the day when and they say no no no it's you're already like you live like you already lost the weight.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

I'm just I guess you're right I guess I did manifest it you did isn't that what you it seemed like you said well no I was using your story to make a point about the the myth about manifestation but if you're saying that you began to live I began to think about myself like even before I started going to the gym but thinking about myself that like somebody that cares about their body enough to even move it a little bit okay you know because because prior to that I wasn't getting up doing much like if I didn't have somewhere to go something to do. I was just I wasn't needing to walk down the three flights of stairs I wasn't sounds like you had a really good wake up call.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Not everyone's that lucky I know that is true.

SPEAKER_04 46:25

And you ran with it which is great I have I have now I I'm curious I love the great acronym do you have any other acronyms that actually I do I teach decision making and I have an acronym for that which is Flash but in the interest of time I'm not going to break that down here but if any of your listeners or you if anyone is interested um I offer a um complimentary stat strategy session so anyone can get in touch with me and if they want to talk about that or something else I'll be happy to do that. Awesome. And I will link your website in the show notes for people to connect with you directly have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? Yes I have I'm a big fan of his stuff he's got a podcast as well called On Purpose and he ends it with two segments and I've borrowed those two segments and I end my podcast with those two segments first segment is the many sides to us and there's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each oh god they're not heard they're easy you can't get them wrong you you just took me back to my panic in grade school but there's no wrong answer that's the best part okay I'll be brave go ahead what is the one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as friendly what is one word someone who knows you extremely well could use to describe you as sincere what is one word you'd use to describe yourself earnest what is one word that if someone didn't like you or a good mindset would use to describe you as that is my favorite question so far.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Arrogant What is one word you're trying to embody right now what is one word I'm trying trying trying to embody I'm not I'm not trying to embody and it's then what are you embodying presence second segment is the final five and these can be answered in a sentence what is the best advice you've heard or received um when I was working at the medical school speaking of arrogant there are lots of really big egos all over the place and there was one time I was in tears and I went into actually it was my boss's boss's office and was just sobbing and he said to me just do good work and we're sort of back to the goodness you know the sense that you know that you're like so if that you know what hits the fan it wasn't because you weren't doing the best that you could do because you were doing good work. So I share that with clients a lot and it's kind of like a mantra just this advice that I got just do good work. It just yeah and it doesn't and it doesn't apply just to work obviously from everything else I've been saying it's like do good in your life and then the chips fall where they may and we can't control everything but at least we know that we did our best I I think that's a nice way to be why would you say that's the best advice to just do good work because people ruminate overthink are filled with self-recrimination and I just had dinner with somebody last night who gave a talk and after every time she gives a talk she's wondering if she was any good or not and I thought oh my God like still look at some point aren't you like you did your best so I think I think it spares us when we do good work and we keep and we're mindful about that it spares us from all the self-recrimination which is an incredible waste of life what in the worst what in the worst advice you've heard or received oh see folks she didn't give me these ahead of time it would have helped okay the worst advice oh I know oh my god I know this is a whole other can of worms when maybe like 20 something years ago believe it or not I got flesh eating disease and um it was really horrific and it was in my it was a strep infection in my arm so it was like having strep throat in your arm it's not a big deal in your throat you go on antibiotics in your arm it's very big deal. The but the doctor came in and said and they had gouged this is disgusting I'm sorry they had gouged out all the tissue and like oh there was like almost nothing left except the bone and the doctor said to me what why don't we just close that up and we'll send you home and you'll rest a little and when you're ready you'll come back and we'll figure out how to make it look better that was his advice and my answer was I am not moving this bed until you figure out how to do something with this arm because I'm not doing it would have been really truly terrible and as sick and vulnerable as I was I did not take that advice and I am really really really glad because my special arm is doing really great I call my special what is something that you used to value that you no longer value I was just talking about this with somebody today so that's why it's coming out I stopped having a car in 2005 I had a sob at the time and it wasn't even off warranty and I had already burnt out the clutch and the thing was in the shop all the time half the accidents I had I wasn't even in the car. It was like I left the emergency brake on and it's rolled out into the middle of the street kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

So I don't value that anymore people have tried to give me one of the if you could describe what you would want your legacy to be as if someone was reading it what would you want it to say well you know I wrote I wrote my epitaph in um business school it was this she helped us to be strong and because we were strong we were happy and for that we loved her that's beautiful if you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 55:03

And I want to know why you know there's a lot of talk about freedom of speech and I'm finding it not a lot of it is not that kind and the um I think it's the Buddhists have a guideline which is speech should be true, kind, necessary and beneficial and that if it doesn't meet that test keep your trap shut so I think if we could all work on our speech and be kind to each other it would be a better world actually national February 17th is I'm gonna get this wrong but close is something like National Random acts of kindness day or something like that. And I um I prepared a post a blog post so on my website there's another tab that says blog so I prepared a blog post on that and it starts with my experience in the grocery store the other day and all the different ways that people were thinking they were being kind that wasn't so much and then my of an example of myself which was really funny and so if anyone is interested in this silliness on a very serious subject trying to yeah if you join my mailing list a place to do that too but then when I send this blog out whoever it is who joined would get the the So why would kindness be the law you enforce you're really peeling the onion here well because look look how much pain there is so people we could be like we could be like feeding the hungry we could be loving each other the world would just be a better place. We could be innovating with all the energy we waste being nasty everyone's trying to be um right I'm right and good and you're bad and wrong and I just I I feel like kindness would serve us all much better. I don't know wouldn't it no I agree I do but but we're only responsible for our own behavior that is true my s my story in the grocery store when I turned it on myself is that I saw a friend a neighbor and she had a bunch of bananas and the line was like in Trader Joe's was like around and around and I said to her is that all you have she says yeah I said give me your bananas so like I'm being kind right I'm taking her bananas and then she said well I need some celery so then she put in celery and then she put in ground beef and then her granddaughter likes chocolate pudding so then she put in chocolate pudding and it went on and on and on until by the time I got to the register I had actually enabled her to cut in line in front of everyone else who was standing dutifully and patiently in line and I it was an example of me virtually signaling what a good person I am helping her out with her bananas and then it turned out that I had violated the code of conduct in the grocery store. But there were so many examples of people thinking they were doing a kind thing who were just violating norms all over the place. And it just kind of made the point of how nuanced it all is it's so true.

SPEAKER_04 59:34

It's so true. Well I will link your website in the show notes for listeners to click it directly and I do just like to give it back to the guest no pressure but any final words you want to leave listeners with sure so one of the things that I took away when I was studying Advaita Vedanta for 25 plus years is they have a concept called good company and good company is not just the people you hang out with although it is that but and this kind of pertains to to your story about you know the drinking and eating and this and that so well so it's the finest quality of everything that you can manage to bring into your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

So it's the books you read it's the music you listen to it is the people that you hang out with the food you eat and most importantly now here this is the most important one the thoughts in our head a finest quality that we can manage. So the kindness is not just between us but I can't stress enough how within us can be and what a difference what a difference that makes that's true I completely agree.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:08

Well thank you so much Madeline I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

Me too me too it's really fun being with you and again if anyone has any questions or comments they want to bring to my attention ring it on sounds good and thank you guys for tuning in to an episode of Meander's mindset in case no one told you today I'm proud of you I'm voting for you and you got this as always if you enjoyed the show I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating leave a review and share with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget you are only one nine step shift away from shifting your life thanks guys until next time