Podcast appearances and mentions of David Frank

**Tracklist**: 1. Adina Butar - Whisper (ReDub Remix) 2. Matt Fax - Versa 3. hysma & Sam Rose - Stranger 4. Daniel Wanrooy, Amber Revival - All At Once 5. Ivan Blyashenko - Heart 6. Dosem - Ultrarave 7. David Frank, Phillip Castle - The Only One 8. Nitrous Oxide, Adam Sobiech - Collide 9. Jordan Tilstone - Porcelain Voices 10. Sue McLaren, Farius - Come Alive 11. flowanastasia, Leena Punks, Amy Wiles - Heard It All Before 12. U-Mount - I Dont Want That 13. Talla 2XLC, Fragma - Toca's Miracle 14. Bryan Kearney & Plumb - God Help Me

Smart Money Moves for Therapists in a Shaky EconomyFeeling nervous about the economy? You're not alone—and you're not powerless. In this episode, Julie Herres welcomes financial planner David Frank back to the show for a calming and practical conversation about what therapists can do when things feel financially unstable.You'll learn why panic doesn't serve your practice—and what to do instead. Whether you're watching the market dip, worried about Medicare or Medicaid cuts, or just feeling the pressure of team payroll, this episode is packed with tools and reassurance.Why listen:Understand what market volatility really means.Learn how to protect your business from revenue concentration risks.Get proactive steps to ease anxiety and make grounded decisions.Show Highlights:01:45 – Why anxiety is rising and what's really happening in the market03:00 – Zooming out: what history tells us about bear markets and recovery05:00 – Julie's “set it and forget it” investing strategy08:00 – Dollar-cost averaging explained—and why it works09:30 – How to think like a CEO if you rely on Medicaid/Medicare10:40 – Revenue concentration risk: what it is, and why it matters11:30 – Using “fear-setting” to prepare without panicking14:00 – The value of securing a line of credit before you need it20:00 – The difference between tracking for action vs. emotional reassurance22:00 – How missing a few big days in the market can hurt long-term returns23:00 – Julie's closing reminderClosing Thought: “If you're feeling unsure, that's okay. You don't have to hustle harder, but you can plan smarter. You've got this—and I'm cheering you on.”Links and ResourcesTurning Point HQ – David Frank's Financial Planning Services https://turningpointhq.com/Money for Therapists Practice Startup - https://www.greenoakaccounting.com/startupGreenOak Accounting - www.GreenOakAccounting.comTherapy For Your Money Podcast - www.TherapyForYourMoney.comProfit First for Therapists - www.ProfitFirstForTherapists.comProfit First Academy - www.ProfitFirstForTherapists.com/Academy Podcast Production and Show Notes by Course Creation StudioGet our free KPI tracker to see how you practice measures up to others in the industry! www.therapyforyourmoney.com/kpi

This week on Faith & Freedom, bestselling author Charles Martin reveals the real-life events and deep faith that inspired his gripping new novel The Keeper. Dr. David Frank, a biological dentist and healthcare advocate, breaks down the fluoride debate and why informed healthcare choices matter more than ever. Pastor Anthony Thomas returns with a message of spiritual resilience, reminding us how to stay rooted in purpose when life gets hard. And political strategist Eduardo Neret joins to unpack Trump's impact, the shift among Gen Z voters, and what it really takes to turn this country around. [00:50] Writing for Redemption with Charles MartinBestselling author Charles Martin opens up about the personal experiences that shaped his Murphy Shepherd series, especially the latest release, The Keeper. He shares how grief, faith, and the redemptive love of God weave into his storytelling. Charles also explains how real-life encounters with human trafficking inspired his heart for writing stories that rescue, restore, and bring hope. [13:03] What's Really in Our Water?Dr. David Frank dives into the fluoride controversy—why it was introduced, what recent science is showing about cognitive health risks, and how to make more informed choices when it comes to what you're drinking. He also shares his take on RFK Jr.'s health freedom movement and why critical thinking matters more than ever in healthcare. [23:07] Strength Through the Storm with Pastor Anthony ThomasPastor Anthony Thomas returns to unpack the spiritual battle many are facing right now. From learning to wait on the Lord to embracing your God-given purpose, he shares biblical encouragement for staying strong in your calling—even when life gets tough. [35:14] Trump's First 60 Days with Eduardo NeretPolitical commentator Eduardo Neret breaks down the major wins of Trump's return—border control, government spending cuts, and a cultural shift among young voters. He also shares why Gen Z is waking up to the truth, rejecting identity politics, and embracing faith, freedom, and personal responsibility. Resources: Charles Martin –  charlesmartinbooks.com Pastor Anthony Thomas –  Website: TipOfTheSpearChurch.org Rumble: Tip of the Spear Church Eduardo Neret –  X: @eduneret   Sponsors   Get clean healthy water with SentryH2O Use the promo code: “HEALTHY10”   Get true American made products at  switchtoamericawithshemane.com   Protect yourself with EMP Shield  Use the promo code “SHEMANE”    Activate stem cells & reset your body's clock  at lifewave.com/shemane Please send product inquiries to: shemane.lifewave@gmail.com   Watch Faith & Freedom every Sunday,  10am est on America'sVoice.News   Organic natural products to help your family thrive with  Rowe Casa Organics & use promo code “FAITH”   Purchase “My Pillow” at  mypillow.com or call 800-933-6972 Use promo code “FAITH”   Use promo code “FREEDOM” to receive  20% off your first order at Field of Greens   Join Shemane's new programs Fit & Fabulous Start Pack Faith Fuel: 21 Day Devotion    Check out Shemane's books:  Purchase Shemane's New Book: ‘Abundantly Well' Shemane's new #1 Bestseller ‘Killer House' "4 Minutes to Happy" Kill It and Grill It Cookbook   Connect with Shemane: Send your questions, suggestions, hunting photos & funny pet videos to shemane.chat@gmail.com    Watch Killer House Documentary: KillerHouse.org Get Wildly Well at shemanenugent.rocks Shemane's Social Media: Instagram: @shemanenugent Youtube: /shemane Truth Social @Shemane

This week on Faith & Freedom, bestselling author Charles Martin reveals the real-life events and deep faith that inspired his gripping new novel The Keeper. Dr. David Frank, a biological dentist and healthcare advocate, breaks down the fluoride debate and why informed healthcare choices matter more than ever. Pastor Anthony Thomas returns with a message of spiritual resilience, reminding us how to stay rooted in purpose when life gets hard. And political strategist Eduardo Neret joins to unpack Trump's impact, the shift among Gen Z voters, and what it really takes to turn this country around. [00:50] Writing for Redemption with Charles MartinBestselling author Charles Martin opens up about the personal experiences that shaped his Murphy Shepherd series, especially the latest release, The Keeper. He shares how grief, faith, and the redemptive love of God weave into his storytelling. Charles also explains how real-life encounters with human trafficking inspired his heart for writing stories that rescue, restore, and bring hope. [13:03] What's Really in Our Water?Dr. David Frank dives into the fluoride controversy—why it was introduced, what recent science is showing about cognitive health risks, and how to make more informed choices when it comes to what you're drinking. He also shares his take on RFK Jr.'s health freedom movement and why critical thinking matters more than ever in healthcare. [23:07] Strength Through the Storm with Pastor Anthony ThomasPastor Anthony Thomas returns to unpack the spiritual battle many are facing right now. From learning to wait on the Lord to embracing your God-given purpose, he shares biblical encouragement for staying strong in your calling—even when life gets tough. [35:14] Trump's First 60 Days with Eduardo NeretPolitical commentator Eduardo Neret breaks down the major wins of Trump's return—border control, government spending cuts, and a cultural shift among young voters. He also shares why Gen Z is waking up to the truth, rejecting identity politics, and embracing faith, freedom, and personal responsibility. Resources: Charles Martin –  charlesmartinbooks.com Pastor Anthony Thomas –  Website: TipOfTheSpearChurch.org Rumble: Tip of the Spear Church Eduardo Neret –  X: @eduneret   Sponsors   Get clean healthy water with SentryH2O Use the promo code: “HEALTHY10”   Get true American made products at  switchtoamericawithshemane.com   Protect yourself with EMP Shield  Use the promo code “SHEMANE”    Activate stem cells & reset your body's clock  at lifewave.com/shemane Please send product inquiries to: shemane.lifewave@gmail.com   Watch Faith & Freedom every Sunday,  10am est on America'sVoice.News   Organic natural products to help your family thrive with  Rowe Casa Organics & use promo code “FAITH”   Purchase “My Pillow” at  mypillow.com or call 800-933-6972 Use promo code “FAITH”   Use promo code “FREEDOM” to receive  20% off your first order at Field of Greens   Join Shemane's new programs Fit & Fabulous Start Pack Faith Fuel: 21 Day Devotion    Check out Shemane's books:  Purchase Shemane's New Book: ‘Abundantly Well' Shemane's new #1 Bestseller ‘Killer House' "4 Minutes to Happy" Kill It and Grill It Cookbook   Connect with Shemane: Send your questions, suggestions, hunting photos & funny pet videos to shemane.chat@gmail.com    Watch Killer House Documentary: KillerHouse.org Get Wildly Well at shemanenugent.rocks Shemane's Social Media: Instagram: @shemanenugent Youtube: /shemane Truth Social @Shemane

I want to introduce you to our guest this time, Fred Dummar. I met Fred through Susy Flory who helped me write Thunder Dog. Fred is taking a class from Susy on writing and is well along with his first book. I look forward to hearing about its publishing sometime in 2025.   Fred hails from a VERY small town in Central Nevada. After high school Fred went to the University of Nevada in Reno. While at University, Fred joined the Nevada National Guard which helped him pay his way through school and which also set him on a path of discovery about himself and the world. After college Fred joined the U.S. army in 1990. He was accepted into the Special Forces in 1994 and served in various locations around the world and held ranks from Captain through Colonel.   Fred and I talk a fair amount about leadership and how his view of that subject grew and changed over the years. He retired from the military in 2015. He continues to be incredibly active serving in a variety of roles in both the for profit and nonprofit arenas.   I love Fred's leadership style and philosophy. I hope you will as well. Fred has lots of insights that I believe you will find helpful in whatever you are doing.       About the Guest:   Colonel (Retired) Fred Dummar was born and raised in the remote town of Gabbs, Nevada. He enlisted in the Nevada National Guard in 1986 and served as a medic while attending the University of Nevada. He was commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army in April 1990.   Fred was selected for Special Forces in 1994 and went on to command at every level in Special Forces from Captain to Colonel. He trained and deployed in many countries, including Panama, Venezuela, Guyana, Nigeria, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Most notably, Col Dummar participated in the liberation of Kurdish Northern Iraq in 2003, assisting elements of the Kurdish Peshmerga (resistance fighters) with the initial liberation of Mosul.   Colonel Dummar's last tour in uniform was as the Commander of the Advisory Group for Afghan Special Forces from May 2014 to June 2015. Immediately after retiring, he returned to Afghanistan as a defense contractor to lead the Afghan Army Special Operations Command and Special Mission Wing training programs until May 2017.   Beginning in 2007 and continuing until 2018, Fred guided his friend, who was blinded in Iraq, through 40 Marathons, several Ultra marathons, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, running with the bulls in Pamplona, and a traverse of the Sahara Desert to raise funds and awareness for Special Forces Soldiers. He personally ran numerous Ultramarathons, including 23 separate 100-mile runs and over a hundred races from 50 miles to marathon.   Fred graduated from the U.S. Army Command and Staff College and the U.S. Army War College with master's degrees in military art and science, strategy, and policy. He is currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Organizational Psychology and Leadership.   Since retiring from the Army in 2015, Fred has led in nonprofit organizations from the Board of Directors with the Special Forces Charitable Trust (2015-2022) as the Chief of Staff for Task Force Dunkirk during the evacuation of Afghan Allies in August 2021, as a leadership fellow with Mission 43 supporting Idaho's Veterans (2020-2023), and as a freshwater advocate with Waterboys with trips to East Africa in 2017 and 2019 to assist in funding wells for remote tribes.   Fred has led in the civilian sector as the Senior Vice President of Legacy Education, also known as Rich Dad Education, from 2017-2018 and as the startup CEO for Infinity Education from 2021-2022, bringing integrity and compassion to Real Estate Education. Fred continues investing in Real Estate as a partner in Slate Mountain Homes, Idaho and trains new investors to find, rehab, and flip manufactured homes with Alpine Capital Solutions.   Fred is married to Rebecca Dummar, and they reside in Idaho Falls, Idaho, with three of their children, John, Leah, and Anna. Their daughter Alana attends the University of Michigan.   Ways to connect with Fred:   Here is a link to my webpage - https://guidetohuman.com/ Here is a link to my Substack where I write - https://guidetohuman.substack.com/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet, but it's more fun to talk about unexpected than inclusion or diversity, although it is relevant to talk about both of those. And our guest today is Fred Dummar. It is pronounced dummar or dumar. Dummar, dummar, see, I had to do that. So Fred is a person I met Gosh about seven or eight months ago through Susy Flory, who was my co author on thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust at ground zero. And Susy introduced us because Fred is writing a book. We're going to talk about that a bunch today, and we'll also talk about Fred's career and all sorts of other things like that. But we've had some fascinating discussions, and now we finally get to record a podcast, so I'm glad to do that. So Fred Dummar, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Fred Dummar ** 02:22 Yeah, no. Thanks for having me. Michael, yeah, we've had some some interesting discussions about everything unstoppable mind and blindness and diversity. And yeah, it's good to be on here.   Michael Hingson ** 02:34 Yeah. And one of the things I know that you have done is ran with a blind marathoner, and I'm anxious to hear about that, as well as what an ultra marathon is. We'll get to that, however. But why don't we start by you may be talking a little bit about kind of the early freight growing up and all that you grew up in, in Nevada, in a in a kind of remote place. So I'm going to just leave it to you to talk about all   Fred Dummar ** 02:57 that. Yeah, Michael, so, and actually, that's part of my, part of my story that I'm writing about. Because, you know, obviously, where we're from forms a large basis of how we sometimes interact with the world. And I came from a very remote town in Nevada. It's dying, by the way. I'm not sure how long that town will be with us, but, yeah, being from a small town where, you know, graduating class was 13 kids, and it's an hour to the closest place that you could watch a movie or get fast food, those types of things, it's definitely a different type of childhood, and much one, much more grounded in self reliance and doing activities that you can make up yourself, right? Instead of being looking for others to entertain you.   Michael Hingson ** 03:50 Yeah, I hear you. So what was it like growing up in a small town? I grew up in Palmdale, California, so it was definitely larger than where you grew up, we had a fairly decent sized High School senior graduating class. It wasn't 13, but what was it like growing up in that kind of environment?   Fred Dummar ** 04:12 Yeah, it was. It was one where you know, not only did you know everybody, everybody else knew you, and so you could pretty much count on anyone in the town for for assistance or, or, you know, if, I guess, if you were on the house for not, not assistance, so, but no, it was. It was a great place to have many, many, many friends from there. But it was, certainly was an adjustment, because I think growing up, there are our sort of outlook on life for us, you know, certainly from the people that that ran our high school and the other adults, most people were seen as, you know, your life after high school would be going to work at one of. The mines, or going to work on one of the, you know, family cattle ranch or something like that. So making the jump from there to, you know, even a few hours away to Reno, you know, to start at the University of Nevada, that was a big it's a big jump from for me, and because the school is so small, I ended up graduating from high school when I was 16, so I barely had a driver's license, and now I am several hours away and Reno, Nevada, going to the university. And, you know, quite an adjustment for me.   Michael Hingson ** 05:32 It's interesting. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to do a podcast episode with someone who's very much involved and knows a lot about bullying and so on, and just listening to you talk, it would seem like you probably didn't have a whole lot of the bully type mentality, because everyone was so close, and everyone kind of interacted with each other, so probably that sort of stuff wasn't tolerated very well. Yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 05:59 it was, it was more so outsiders. I mean, kids that had grown up there all sort of, you know, knew where they were or weren't in the pecking order. Things and things sort of stayed kind of steady stasis, without a lot of bullying. But yeah, new kids coming in. That's where you would see for me, from my recollection of growing up to that's where, you know, I remember that type of behavior coming out when, when you know, a new kid would come into the town,   Michael Hingson ** 06:31 was it mainly from the new kids or from the kids who are already there?   Fred Dummar ** 06:34 From the kids? Sometimes it was the integration, right? Some people integrate into new environments better than others. And you know, generally, no problems for those folks. But some, you know, it takes a bit more. And in a place like that, if you're you know, if you're seen as different, so you know to your theory on or your you know the topics you cover on diversity and inclusion. Sometimes when you're the one that that looks different or acts different in an environment like that, you definitely stick out, and then you become the target of of bullying.   Michael Hingson ** 07:10 What? What happens that changes that for a kid? Then, you know, so you're you're different or in one way or another. But what happens that gets kids accepted? Or do they?   Fred Dummar ** 07:21 Yeah, I don't know. I think, I think it's learning to embrace just who you are and doing your own thing. I think if you know, if you're trying to force yourself into an environment that doesn't want to accept you, I'm not sure that that's ever an easy battle for anyone. But just being yourself and doing your own thing. I think that's, that's the way to go, and that's certainly, you know, what I learned through my life was I wasn't one of the kids that planned on staying there and working in the mind, and I wasn't, you know, my family was, you know, at that point, my mom and dad owned the, the only grocery store in town, and I certainly wasn't going back to run the family business. So, you know, look, looking for a way, you know, for something else to do outside of that small town was certainly number one on my agenda, getting out of there. So being myself and and learning to adapt, or, as you know the saying goes, right, learning to be instead of being a fish in a small pond, learning to be a fish in a much larger pond,   Michael Hingson ** 08:27 yeah, well, and there's, there's a lot of growth that has to take place for that to occur, but it's understandable. So you graduated at 16, and then what did you do after   Fred Dummar ** 08:38 my uh, freshman year at college, which I funded by, you know, sort of Miss, Miss misleading people or lying about my age so that I could get a job at 16 and working construction and as an apprentice electrician. And that funded my my freshman year of college. But, you know, as as as my freshman year was dragging on, I was wondering, you know, hey, how I was going to continue to fund my, you know, continued universe my stay at the university, because I did not want to go, you know, back back back home, sort of defeated, defeated by that. So I started looking into various military branches of military service, and that's when it happened upon the National Guard, Nevada National Guard, and so I joined the National Guard. And right after, you know, I think it was five days after I turned 17, so as soon as I could, I signed up, and that summer after my freshman year, I left for training for the National Guard. Missed first semester of my sophomore year, but then came back and continued on with my university studies using, you know, my the educational benefits that came from being in the National Guard.   Michael Hingson ** 09:55 So you're in the National Guard, but that wasn't a full time thing, so you were able to go back and. Continue education. Yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 10:01 it was, you know, it's a typical one weekend a month, one weekend a month for duty. Typically, we would go in on a Friday night, spend Saturday and Sunday for duty. So we get a, you know, small check for that. And then we were also allowed to draw, you know, the GI Bill and the state of Nevada had a program at the time where you didn't get paid upfront for your classes, but at the end of every semester, you could take your final report card and for every class, for every credit that you had a C or higher, they would reimburse you. So yeah, so they were essentially paying my tuition, and then, you know, small stipend every month from the GI Bill. And then, you know, my National Guard check, so and in the 80s, you know, when I was going to school, that that was enough to keep, you know, define my education. And where did you go to school? At the University of Nevada in   Michael Hingson ** 10:59 Reno, in Reno, okay, yeah, so, so you kind of have ended up really liking Reno, huh?   Fred Dummar ** 11:07 Yeah, I, yeah. I became sort of home city. Obviously, no one would ever really know where. You know, if I would have mentioned that I grew up in a town called gaps, most people would, you know, not, not really understand. I sometimes, if they're, you know, press and say, hey, you know, where are you really? Because, you know, often say, Hey, I went to school in Reno. If they say, where did you grow up? I'll, you know, it's a longer conversation. I'll be like, okay, so if you put your finger, like, right in the middle of Nevada, in the absolute middle of nowhere, that's where I grew up.   Michael Hingson ** 11:40 Well, you know, people need to recognize and accept people for who they are, and that doesn't always happen, which is never fun, but Yeah, gotta do what you can do, yes, well, so Reno, on the other hand, is a is a much larger town, and probably you're, a whole lot more comfortable there than you than you were in Gabs, but that's okay. So yeah, so you went to the university. You got a bachelor's, yep, and then what did you do?   Fred Dummar ** 12:11 Yeah. Well, so along the way, while I was in the National Guard, you know, being a medic, right? I was convinced by a lieutenant that met me. I was actually doing the physical, because it was one of the things our section did when I was first in, you know, we gave the medical physicals, and this lieutenant said, you know, you should come transfer our unit. The unit was an infantry unit, and I became their only medic. And so that was much better than working in a medical section for a helicopter unit where I'd been and and the lieutenants, you know, said that I should consider joining ROTC, since I was already going to the university. So I did in my junior year, started the Reserve Officer Training Corps there at the University of Nevada. And so when I graduated college in the winter of 89 I accepted a commission into the army. So then a few months later, I was, I was off on my my Grand Army adventure,   Michael Hingson ** 13:11 alright, and then what did you do?   Fred Dummar ** 13:15 So, yeah, that was, you know, because it was an infantry Lieutenant went to Fort Benning, Georgia, and I believe now the army calls it fort Moore, but yeah, I trained there for about a year, doing all of the tasks necessary to become an infantry officer. And then I went down to Panama, when the US still had forces in the country of Panama. And I spent two and a half years down there was that past mariega, yeah, right after, because I had graduated from college in December of 89 while operation just caused to get rid of Noriega was happening. So year after my infantry training, I sort of ended up in Panama, and sort of as at the time, thinking it was bad luck, you know, because if you're in the army, you know, you want to, kind of want to go where things are happening. So I'm in Panama the year after the invasion, while Saddam Hussein is invading Kuwait, and everyone else is rushing to the desert, and I'm sitting in the jungle. So, you know, as a as a young person, you start to think, you know, oh, you know, hey, I'm missing. I'm missing the big war. I should be at the war, you know. So that was an interesting take, not what I would have now, but you know, as a young man,   Michael Hingson ** 14:31 what caused you to revise that view, though? Or time,   Fred Dummar ** 14:37 yeah, yeah. Just, just time. And, you know, later in life, you know, after, uh, serving combat rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan, I realized it wasn't something one needed to rush towards,   Michael Hingson ** 14:48 really quite so bad, where you were, yeah. So,   Fred Dummar ** 14:52 yeah, I spent a couple years in Panama, then I came back to Fort Benning, uh, Fort Moore, and worked at the Army's Airborne School. So. Uh, you know, the place that teaches people how to jump out of airplanes. And I did that for for a year. So it's, it's really fun because watching, you know, watching people go through the process of of training to jump out of an aircraft, and then sort of their very first time on an aircraft might takes off, and you can see the, you know, sort of the realization that they're not going to land with the plane for the first time in their life. You know, they're they're not going to be in the plane when it lands. That's always, you know, it's always a good time. And then, of course, when you know, then there's another realization, moment when the doors pop open right, and the doors, doors on the aircraft are opened so the jump masters can start making checks, you know, and out, yeah, and they're looking, you know, their eyes get larger and larger, you know, as as preparations for the jump. You know, when they're stood up and they're hooked up inside the aircraft, and then finally, you know, told to exit. Yeah, it's interesting. And during the time when I worked there, that's when I was eligible, because I was a senior lieutenant at that time, that I could apply to become a Green Beret. I could go through special forces training if I was selected. So I left from Fort Benning, I went up to Fort Bragg, now fort liberty, and went through the selection, Special Forces Assessment, selection, and was selected to become a Special Forces soldiers that I went to Fort Bragg, you know, spent the year or so becoming qualified to be a special forces team leader, and then the next I spent the next 20 years of my Army career in various units at at Fort liberty, and third Special Forces Group, Special Forces Command, seven Special Forces Group, Special Operations recruiting, just, you know, bouncing around in different assignments and then, but obviously during that time, 911, happened, and you know, was on the initial invasion in 2003 up in, up into the north. We were flying in from Romania, you know, before the war started. And so being there during that phase of the Iraq combat in Iraq, and then going to Afghanistan and and spending multiple, multiple tours and multiple years in Afghanistan. So, so   Michael Hingson ** 17:25 did you do much jumping out of airplanes?   Fred Dummar ** 17:29 Yeah, in combat, no. But over the years, yeah, I accumulated quite a few jumps. Because what, you know, every, every unit I was ever assigned to while I was in the army was always one that was, you know, airborne, which are, you know, the designation for units that jump out of airplanes. So   Michael Hingson ** 17:47 have to, yeah, yeah. Well, you're a pretty level headed kind of guy. What was it like the first time you jumped? I mean, you described what it looked like to other people. Do you think that was basically the same for you, or did you, yeah, kind of a thicker skin,   Fred Dummar ** 18:01 yeah, no, no, I think, I think that's why I was able to, you know, in large measure, that's how a lot of us are able to have empathy, right? If we've, if we've, if we've been through it, and we are able to access the memory of, okay, what was it like when I was doing it? It allows us to be, you know, more compassionate to the people that are going through it at that moment for the first time, but yeah, I can remember being in the plane, and then you know, that realization is like, hey, you know, in the pit of your stomach, I'm not, I'm not landing with this plane. And then, you know, the doors opening up, you're like, you know, kind of hey, those, I don't know what the gates of hell look like, but right now, that's that's in my mind, what, what they would look like, you know, and then going out the first time, and and then I think the second time might have been worse, because it was the anticipation of, oh, wait a minute, we're doing that again. And by the but if you do five jumps to qualify before you're given your parachute as badge, so I think by the third one, I'd come to terms with, with, with dealing and managing. You know, you know the fear of it, of leaving an airplane. And people you know often ask, you know when, when you're older and you're past the 100 jump mark, you know it's like, still, is there still fear and like, I think, I think, if there's not, I mean, then you know, there's probably something wrong with you, but, but it's not, it's nowhere near you know how it is when you know your First learning and your first learning to trust yourself and trust the equipment and trust the process. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 19:45 what you're learning a little bit along the way is to how to control fear. And you mentioned my book earlier, the one that's coming out live like a guide dog, which is all about trying to teach people to control fear, because we have so many things happen to. Us, or we think about so many things, that we develop so many fears consciously or not, that when something does unexpectedly happen to us, especially something that isn't necessarily a positive thing, we just automatically go into a fear reaction mode. And the the reality is it doesn't need to be that way you can learn to control fear, which is what we talk about in live like a guide dog, because it's important that people recognize you can learn to control fear. I would never say, Don't be afraid. Yeah, but I think you can learn to control fear, and by doing so, then you use that fear to help guide you and give you the the the the tools to really be able to move forward and focus. But most people don't really spend much time doing that. They don't learn introspection. They don't learn how to to slow down and analyze and develop that mind muscle so that later you can analyze incredibly quickly.   Fred Dummar ** 21:06 Yeah, we in the army, we call that stress inoculation, good description, you know, it's, you know, once you're, once you're, you've learned to deal with stress, or deal with, you know, stressful, fearful things. Then, you know, the next time you're you're better equipped. And that fear and that stress can be, you know, can be continually amped up. I used to laugh when I was doing Special Forces recruiting, because the you know, it would require a special physical for candidates to go get a special physical before they could come to training. And one of the boxes we would joke about was, I have no fear of heights or enclosed spaces. No everybody has those fears, is whether you can, you can manage those fears and deal with. You know, things are very uncomfortable. Well, that's   Michael Hingson ** 22:05 really it. It's all about managing. And so I'm sure that they want you to check no, that you don't have those fears when you're when you're going through. But at the same time, what you're hopefully really saying is you can manage it. Yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 22:20 that you can manage and that's why I was saying, that's why I would always laugh, because of course, everyone has those fears and but learning to deal with them and and how you deal with them, and that that's, you know, one of the things I discuss in one of the chapters of the book I'm writing is, is, you know when fear, when fear comes to You, you know, how do you deal with it and how do you overcome it? I think people are more and more recognizing you know that there are techniques through stress inoculation, you know, things like that. They'll teach you how you can overcome fear. And you know simple breathing techniques to you know, slow down your breathing and engage your brain, not just your brain stem, right? When you breathe, it fast, your brain stem is in charge, not your brain and yeah, and think your way through things, rather than just reacting as a, you know, as a frightened animal,   Michael Hingson ** 23:19 right? And it's one of the things that that, as I discuss in the book, and I talk to people about now a lot, that although I didn't realize it for many years, after September 11, I had developed a mindset on that day that said, You know what to do, because I had spent a lot of time learning what to do, how to deal with emergencies, what the rules were, and all that, and all of that just kicked in on September 11, which is as good as it could get.   Fred Dummar ** 23:45 Yeah. Well, Michael, you have a you have a distinct advantage. You had a distinct advantage a couple of them, but, but one being, you know, because you already live in a world without light in your sight, you're not dependent on that. And so another, when other people are, you know, in, you know, when I'm reading the book, I'm nodding my head knowingly, you know, as you're talking about being in the stairwell and other people being frightened, and you're just like, this is okay. This is an average, I mean, maybe unusual circumstances, but an average day for me,   Michael Hingson ** 24:21 yeah. But they side of it is, I know lots of blind people who would be just as much in fear as anyone else. It's the fact is, of course, we didn't know what was going on. Yes, September 11, a   Fred Dummar ** 24:35 bit of ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 24:38 that was true for everyone. I had a great imagination. I could tell you that I imagine things that could happen that were a whole lot worse than in a sense, what did, but I, but I like science fiction and horror, so I learned how to imagine well, but the fact is that it isn't so much being blind that's an advantage, really. Really was the preparation. And so the result was that I had done that. And you know, of course, the airplane hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. So the reality is going down the stairs. None of us knew what happened. We figured out an airplane hit the building because we started smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. But by the same token, that was all we knew. We didn't even know that tower two had been hit until, well, much later, when we got outside, colleagues saw David Frank, my colleague saw tower two was on fire, but we still didn't know what it was from. So yeah, the the fact is that blindness may or may not really be an advantage, but preparation certainly was, yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 25:43 how you reacted, how you reacted to being blind. Because, yeah, you can just, just like anything, right? You can react in in several different ways, and how you acted, how you built your life around,   Michael Hingson ** 25:54 sure. And most people, of course, just rely on reading signs. And so they also have the fear, what if I can't read the signs. What if there's smoke and all that? And again, they they build fears rather than doing the smart thing, which is just to learn what to do in the case of an emergency when you're in a building like that. But you know, it is part of what what we do talk about, and it is, it is pretty important that people start to learn a little bit more that they can control fear. I mean, we have in our in our whole world, politicians who just do nothing but promote fear, and that's unfortunate, because we all buy into it, rather than stepping back and go, Wait a minute. It doesn't need to be that way.   Fred Dummar ** 26:37 Yeah, I think the other thing, like you talked about your your preparation and training. And I always that was one of the way ways, or one of the things that brought me to ultra marathoning, you know, after my initial training in Special Forces, was, you know, if you're, if you're going to push your capacity to see, you know what you're what you're really capable of, or build, you know, build additional reserves. So, you know, if you are counted on to do something extraordinary or in extenuating circumstances, what do you really have, you know, yeah, how far can you really push yourself? And so it really brought me into the sport of ultra running, where, you know, the distances, or those distances that exceed a marathon. So a marathon being, you know, 26 miles, yeah. So the first ultra marathon is a 50k because, you know, Marathon is 42 so eight kilometers farther. And then the next, general, you know, length is 50 miles. And then there's some other, you know, 100k which is 62 miles. And then, kind of the, although, you know, now we see, see races longer, but kind of the the longest distance being 100 mile race and so, and the gold standard in 100 mile racing being, you know, for most, most courses, every course being different, but for most courses, is to finish under 24 hours, so within one one day, but to keep moving for one, you know, one entire day while, you know, while fueling yourself and and, and some people say, Well, you Know, wow, that pace doesn't seem that fast. Troy   Michael Hingson ** 28:22 yourself then and see, yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 28:24 and, like a lot of things, it doesn't, it doesn't exactly seem fast until you're factoring in, okay, but you're still gonna have to stop at some point to you, you know, relieve yourself, and you're gonna have to, you know, walk while you eat. And, you know, there's hills to climb and all these other sorts of obstacles. So, yeah, finishing under 24 hours is, you know, sort of the, you know, the standard, I guess, for the people want to achieve. And anyway, yeah, I became, for a bit there, became addicted to it. And then, so when I met Ivan, my friend, who you were talking about, who, who was, was blinded in in Iraq in 2006 when I met him, he had already been injured, and I realized that he really wanted to run marathons. He'd run one, and had to use, like, several different guides, right? You know, there were different people jumping in and out, and it really wasn't an ideal situation for him and he and he also needed someone who who wanted to do that, who would be a reliable training partner, right? Because it's not like, okay, you know, you might be able to find people that show up on marathon day. Want to run the marathon, or a few people, but, you know, day in, day out, to be training. And so I was like, Hey, this is one of those things that ends up in your path, right, that you can, maybe you can walk around it, but, but for me, when I, you know, when I saw. I was like, Okay, this was, this was something that, you know, for whatever reason, is on my path. I meant to do it. I meant to be the guy that does this. And so, yeah, we started training together. And, you know, ended up running 40 plus marathons together, you know, from London, Chicago, you know, every, every the Marine Corps Marathon, just everywhere. And, you know, summiting Mount Kilimanjaro and running with the bulls together. And then our last race was, it's often referred to as, you know, the world's toughest foot race. It's the marathon to Saab, and it's a, it's a distance race of 150 some miles across the Sahara Desert. And they break it up into stages. So on different days, some days, you run 30 miles. Some days, you know, 26 one day is a 50. I think we were at 53 miles on one of the days. But anyway, and you start the you start that race with whatever you're going to eat and whatever you're going to need, you know, in terms of gear on your back. And the only thing that's provided to you during the race is water. So, and that was our kind of, you know, he's like, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to run, and so I just want to do that before I stop. I stopped, right? So, but anyway, yeah, so that was how I ended up meeting my friend Ivan, and, you know, over the course of a decade and a half, we did all of these, you know, what some people think are incredibly dumb things, but, you know, sort of embracing the discomfort of training and competing to, you know, to make ourselves better, you know? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:44 so while you were in the military, I know you mentioned earlier something about doing some work in as a medic. Did you do that most of your time? Were you specializing in that? Or what?   Fred Dummar ** 31:54 No, no, that was only when I early on, when I was a soldier, I was a medic, and then when I was commissioned, I was commissioned, I was commissioned as an infantry officer, and then, and then, when it became Special Forces, you know, the officer is, sort of has, has no specialty other than leading the team. The team has medics and weapons guys and engineers and communicators and all that. But, you know, the officers sort of assigned as the as the planning the planning agent, you know, the to lead the team, rather than have any of the specialties,   Michael Hingson ** 32:30 right? And you participated long enough that you rose to the rank of colonel. Yeah, yeah, my participation   Fred Dummar ** 32:38 trophy was attaining the rank of colonel. And I would often tell people the arm don't think the army doesn't have a sense of humor. I was promoted to Colonel on April 1, so April Fool's days when, when I was promoted? And yeah, and I, after almost 30 years in uniform, retired in 2015 so I don't know that I would have went that long. But you know, they're about the middle of my career, from 1986 to 2015 you know 911 happened, and for me, it wasn't, it wasn't really a choice to to leave. Then, you know, it was like, Okay, we, you know, we have to do this. These Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, my my very last, my last year in in uniform. I was in Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan commandos. And when I returned from that tour, you know, was told that, hey, I had to, I had to finally leave Fort Bragg after 20 years and and either go to, you know, the Pentagon or another headquarters. And that's when I decided to retire. Because it was like, okay, you know, if, if the wars don't need me anymore, then I, I can go home and do other things. Yeah, I can do other things. If the wars don't need me, you know, then I can probably hang it up. So   Michael Hingson ** 34:11 when did you get married? So   Fred Dummar ** 34:15 over the course of my Army career, I was divorced twice. Yeah, it's just not an easy No, it's not. It's just not an easy lifestyle. I'm not making any excuses for my own failings in that regard. But, you know, it is, it is, I think, easier to become emotionally detached from someone, especially, you know, as in my case, I think I often put the army, first, the army, my soldiers, the mission, you know, as the first on my mind. And you know, for someone else, you know that to be a pretty strong person, to sit in the back seat during that so. And I did not have any children and then, but after I retired, when went through my second and four. I met someone. And so, yeah, we were married in in 2020, and so I had a, I was able, you know, after not having children, my first son was born when I was 50. So I have a son who's, you know, four, four years old, four going on five. And then we decided that, you know, he should have someone to be with. So we were going to have a second child. And my wife had twins, so I have twin, three year old girls. So, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 35:37 you're going to do it. You might as well go all the way, huh?   Fred Dummar ** 35:40 Yeah, and and, and I haven't, and I adopted Rebecca's older, the child that she that she had. And so now we have four children, Alana being much older, she's already finished for freshman year at the University of Michigan, and this get ready to go back to Ann Arbor and continue her studies and and then we have, you know, the small pack of humans that are still here in their pre, pre kindergarten phase. So   Michael Hingson ** 36:10 she is a a Wolverine fan, and there will ever be an Ohio State Buckeye,   Fred Dummar ** 36:18 yeah, something like that. Yeah, that rivalry is pretty intense. And, you know, never being part of a school that was, you know, in that, in that division, you know, not really realizing, well, you know, watching college football, I kind of understand the rival, all the rivalries. But once she started going to Michigan, and, you know, attending a football game there myself. And then, unfortunately, you know, we were able to go to the Rose Bowl this year, which, you know, when Michigan played Alabama. So we were able to go to that together. So, yeah, it was, it's interesting to learn that dynamic. And like, I tell her, it's like, never, never take for granted being part of a big school like that without those sorts of traditions. Absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 Yeah, I went to UC Irvine, so we didn't really have a lot with with football, but my wife did her graduate work at USC, and I always like to listen to USC football games. I judge a lot about sports teams by the announcers they hire, I gotta say. And so we've been always so blessed out here in California, although I think that announcing isn't quite what it used to be, but we had good announcers that announced for USC out here on I think it was originally on Kx, and then it went to other stations. But anyway, when we got married, the wedding started late because a bunch of people were sitting out in their cars waiting for the end of the USC Notre Dame game. And so the wedding was 15 minutes late starting because everybody was waiting to see who was going to win the game. And I am quite pleased to say that we won, and God was on our side, as opposed to Notre Dame. And, yeah, the marriage lasted 40 years, so until she, she passed away in 2022 but I love to tell people that, you know, God clearly was on our side, especially when I tell that to my Notre Dame friends,   Fred Dummar ** 38:15 yeah, the touch touchdown, Jesus wasn't, wasn't there for them, not   Michael Hingson ** 38:19 that day. Yeah, but, but, you know, and there's college football is, is in a lot of ways, I just think so much more fun, or it has been than professional. But, you know, now a lot more money is getting into it, which is unfortunate too. Yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 38:37 I think that's caused some of the you know, teams re evaluate what they what they do happen, how they operate. And I think it's forced some of the older coaches to leave the game, yeah, because it's not the game they recognize, so not   Michael Hingson ** 38:53 what they had well. So you've been to a variety of different places. You've been a leader. And I think it's pretty clear that you really still are, but how did all the the different experiences, the different places that you went to, and all the the experiences that you participated in, how does that affect and shape your leadership style?   Fred Dummar ** 39:19 Yeah, Michael, you know, I think one of the first things, right, if you when your surface looking, and some people never go below the surface. So when you talk about things like diversity and inclusion, the things, the things that they will think about that make people divert diverse are not generally what I think about. Because, you know, when you look below the surface, you see a lot of commonalities in the human experience. You know, from my time living, living in Panama and operating in Central and South America, some countries in the in the you know, the Caribbean when I was first in special operations, and then. Obviously, I went and did some time in in Africa, some peacekeeping operations in Nigeria, some other exercises down in the south, southern countries in Africa, and then my time in Iraq and Afghanistan. People, you know, they're they come in different colors. They they have different their path to God or the universe or the higher power that they recognize that the cultural artifacts that they use may may look different, but you know, they're generally pointing if you if you can step aside from your own preconceived notions about things, you can see that they're they're just different signposts to the same God, right to the same, to the same, power to the same, to the same things, and people want the same things, you know, for their families, you know, for for security and prosperity, and you know that that sort of thing. So it's, that's where I, kind of, you know, came to my leadership philosophy, which is pretty easy to remember. It's just lead, lead with love. And you know, if you use, and I haven't tell people, doesn't really matter what denomination you are. If you read, you know, the Gospels of the New Testament purely as a leadership guide. You know it's, it's hard to find a a better leadership example than than what, what Jesus was was doing, you know, the way he was serving others the way he was leading. It's, it's, it's pretty powerful, pretty powerful stuff. And you know, even, even at the end, right during the Last Supper, when he tells people, you know, who, who's the most important is the most important person, the person sitting at the table getting ready to eat, or the person serving, you know. And of course, you as humans, you know, is based on our, you know, the way we think about the world. We think the most important person is, you know, not only the person sitting at the table, but the person at the nicest table, or the head of the table, and not the person serving. And so that was something I tried to embrace during my time in the military, and what I try and embrace now is, you know, being the person that serves others and using your position. You know, if you if, if and when you are promoted or asked to lead that, you approach it from a position of, you know, what? What can I do from this position to help other people and and just be compassionate to their actual circumstances. And that doesn't mean, you know, when people, people hear me say that they're, you know, they think, Well, that's pretty how does that reconcile with you being a Green Beret and being around, you know, a bunch of you know, meat eating savages, you know, how do you how do you reconcile that and like, well, leading with care and compassion doesn't mean you know that I'm coddling anyone, because I'm certainly not coddling anyone you know. You know, I demand high performance for myself and from from people in those positions like that. You know, when I was a member of a special forces organization, but not everybody's supposed to be doing that. And so I think recognizing the circumstances and the people and what the organization's supposed to do or and how it can care for people, I think those are things that became really, really important to me   Michael Hingson ** 43:33 well. And I think you raised some really valid points. The reality is that September 11, for example, was not a religious war, a religious event. It was a bunch of thugs who wanted to have their way with the world. But most people who truly practice the Islamic faith are the same as the rest of us, and they and they seek God just like we do, like Jewish people do and others do, and we've got to keep that in mind, but it's, it's so hard, because we mostly don't step back and evaluate that and realize that those 19 people on those four airplanes are just a bunch of thugs, pure and simple.   Fred Dummar ** 44:15 Yeah, that, yeah, that, and, and the organizations they represent, right? You know, they're, they're, they're, and they're not the only ones, right? People from of all faiths have harnessed, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 44:30 their various back to the Crusades, yeah, you know, you know, their   Fred Dummar ** 44:33 various religions have harnessed themselves up to, you know, to sway people to to hate, or to, you know, to engage in combat or whatever. So yeah, to to lump that all in. I think our, some of our responses, and then also some of the way people think, has really led it led us to a more a more divided we're. Well, then you know that are more inclusive and and you know, thinking of ourselves as one we we think of ourselves as, you know, many and different, and sometimes things that we think would bring us together or help us make things more fair, like, you know, talking about diversity and inclusion, if we aren't really thinking about what we're trying to do and what that looks like, we can end up making the world more divided and less inclusive.   Michael Hingson ** 45:34 And unfortunately, we're seeing way too much of that, and it isn't helping to do that. And hopefully at some point we'll, we'll figure that out, or we'll realize that maybe it's a little bit better, or can be a little bit better than we think. Yeah, and I know you in 2003 did a lot to help the Kurds in northern Iraq, right?   Fred Dummar ** 45:55 Yeah, that was primarily, you know, my, my experience in Iraq was, you know, before the 2003 invasion, I was in Romania with my special forces company. And, yeah, we flew into northern Iraq and linked up with a group of Kurds and from where they were at and primarily our mission, you know, at that point, nobody really knew what Saddam might do when the main offensive of, you know, conventional army, conventional Marine Corps, British, you know, other allies, started from the south towards Baghdad. What would Saddam do? Would he, you know, send his forces in the north against the Kurds to create a destabilizing effect, you know, one both killing Kurds, but causing Kurds to flee to Syria and Iran, and, you know, probably most importantly for people that were planning to Turkey, you know, to further destabilize the region. So obviously, out of a desire to protect, help protect the Kurds and help stop or prevent something like that from happening. You know, we went in a couple weeks before the actual ground war started, we were in place with the Kurds and started organizing them to to defend themselves. And do you know, take back the land that they considered theirs, because, after, you know, Desert Storm, the you know, the 90s, the 90s war against Iraq, Saddam had pushed into Kurdish territory and established, you know, what he referred to as a, you know, his, his buffer zone. And then, you know, the US had been forcing a, you know, a no fly zone up in the Kurdish areas, but the Kurds had still never been allowed to go back to some of the cities that they considered theirs. So, you know, when we got in there with them, we were able to get, you know, move currents that have been forced out of those towns moved back into their towns and and our particular sector we we cleared down to Mosul Iraq, which, you know, people in the Bible will recognize As as the city of Nineveh. Or maybe not know that, but yeah, so we were, I was able to go drive through the, you know, the biblical, the some of the remains of the, you know, city of Nineveh as we got to Mosul. And then once we were there, that was sort of when, you know, we stole the Kurdish allies that, hey, you guys can go back to go back home, and then at that point us, we're only there a few days before us conventional forces. Now this is a couple months into the war, but us conventional forces made their way up there, and, you know, started doing stabilizing the city, and it was probably best to get the Kurdish militia out of there at that point, for things between the Kurds and the Arabs continue to deteriorate. So yeah, but it was a it was a great experience for me being with the Kurds and helping them, you know, sort of move through and retake towns that they had historically lived in. And, you know, along the way we passed and were able to clear Assyrian monastery that's on one of the mountains on the route to Mosul. So some, definitely, some history along the way, history lessons along the way. I   Michael Hingson ** 49:38 had the pleasure of going to Israel last year in August, okay? And spent a day in Jerusalem, so we got to go to the Western Wall and so on. And I really appreciated, and do appreciate, the history and just the awesomeness of of being there and touching the the temple and the wall that's been there for so long. And, you know, there is so much history over there that I really wish people would more appreciate and and on all sides, would figure out how they could become better at working with each other. One of these days, there's going to have to be peace, or it's going to really get a whole lot worse, very quickly,   Fred Dummar ** 50:21 yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was. It was interesting, though, when we were there, obviously watching the various groups of, you know, Syrians, Kurds, Arabs and others that had various claims to different parts of Mosul and different parts of the area around it. So it's fascinating, you know, to watch history try and unwind itself from some of the decisions that were made. You know, post World War Two, when lines were being drawn in the desert to create countries and and the ramifications of that? Yeah. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 51:06 you certainly have a perspective that's built on a lot of knowledge and being there, which I think is great on the other hand, well, not on the other hand. But then you left the military that that had to be a major change in terms of what you had been doing and what you were used to after almost 30 years. What's it like when you decide to make that kind of a major change and then, in your case, go back into civilian life? Yeah. So   Fred Dummar ** 51:38 my first, my first step, wasn't that far away from the military. And I started referring it. Referred to my first job as sort of an addiction clinic, because I went, I went to work as a house, yeah, I went to work as a contractor, or, you know, defense contractor. I went back to Afghanistan for about a year and a half running training programs for some of the Afghan special operations forces. So, you know, it was, it was really, you know, there was, if I, if I was a heroin addict, you know, I was in the methadone clinic, you know, trying to, trying to get off of it. And then, yeah, I realized, you know, kind of needed to go home. And my marriage, you know, dissolved, and so it's like, Hey, I probably time to, like, go home and have, you know, a different kind of life. And I moved into a civilian job with a friend, a friend at the time, who was doing investment training around the world. And he's like, Hey, we, you know, I know you're, you will travel. There's a lot of people that, when I talk to him about travel, it's involved with our business, you know, they don't, don't really want to do that. And he's like, but I know, you know, from where you're at. And he's like, hey, I'll buy, buy a ticket. Fly to Hong Kong, see what our business is about. So I went there and learned about the investment training they were doing in Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia. And then they had an office in Johannesburg, and, you know, one in London, Canada and the US and doing all this training. And so for about a year, little over a year, I worked in that business and and learned, you know, the various things that they were doing. You know how they were teaching people to invest in real estate and stocks and that sort of thing. Started doing it myself less, as I wish I would have known earlier in my life, but started doing that, and then when I left that company, that's a lot of what I've been doing. I've taken some smaller jobs and smaller contract projects. But by and large, that's basically what I've been doing since then, is, you know, working in real estate investing or real estate projects   Michael Hingson ** 53:50 and continuing to hone your leadership skills. Yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 53:54 yeah. Well, you know, I kept continue to work with or a couple of, you know, jobs where I was helping people start up businesses, you know, as either in CEO role or in an operations role to help help them start their businesses. So I did some of that which, which is always fun. It's great working with new talent and establishing procedures and helping people grow that way. So that was, that was really fun. And then got to be part of a couple of nonprofits, Special Forces, Charitable Trust, probably my longest stint. I did that for, you know, about seven or eight years on the board of directors, you know, running, helping to develop activities and programs to support our Special Forces veteran. So, yeah, it was, it's been, it's been fun. And then obviously having a new family and spending a lot of time in my role as a dad has been probably the most rewarding.   Michael Hingson ** 54:53 Yeah, I bet. And that is, that's always so much fun, and you get to help bring some. New people along into the world and hopefully help to make a difference that way. And on top of that, you continue to study. You're getting a PhD. You mentioned it earlier, but you're getting a PhD in organizational psychology and leadership. There we go with the leadership again.   Fred Dummar ** 55:14 Yeah, you know, it's, it's fun, because, you know, when I do get the opportunity to speak at events. I move around and speak at different events. I know you do a lot of speaking. You probably do much more than I do, but the events I do speak at, I want to make sure that sometimes being a practitioner of something doesn't always mean that you have the exact language or the academic credentials to go along with being a practitioner. And I've been a practitioner of leadership for so many years, but now studying it and applying, you know, one working towards an academic credential in this says, Hey, this, this guy knows what he's talking about. But then also having, you know, the the latest developments. And studies on leading people effectively and and how people are doing it wrong, and how you can help them. I think it's, it's been, it's been, been a great journey to be on as well, especially keeping my mind active in in all things leadership and helping organizations do it better.   Michael Hingson ** 56:21 Well, you, you have been a leader for a long time, but now you're studying it. Would you say that you're also discovering new things along the way? And you know, I guess what I'm getting at is, of course, none of us are ever so much an expert that we can't afford to learn more things. Oh   Fred Dummar ** 56:39 yeah, for sure, both, both learning new things, learning why I might have done things wrong based on, you know, studies, you know, like, okay, you know, if you if you have this type of personality, you might do this wrong, or things I was doing right, but not exactly, knowing all of, You know all of the mechanisms that were going into why I was making that decision. But you know, when you look at the psychology behind it, and you look at organizational structure structures, you look at cultural artifacts within organizations, then you can start to you start to unwind why teams do what they do, why leaders are developed, the way they're developed, and why people make certain decisions. And, yeah, it's been fascinating, you know, and then also looking back, as you said, back at things that you did, decisions that you made, and what you know, what you could have done better as you as you look that, through that, and how you can help someone else, and that's also really helped me further, you know, synthesize down this way that I look at at leading people with with love and compassion and why it's so important to be that servant type of leader, you know, not just a transformational leader that's trying to transform an organization to move that, but then, you know, how do you serve and care for the care for the people that are that are going to be part of that transformation?   Michael Hingson ** 58:10 Yeah, because if you are just looking at it from the standpoint of being a transformational leader, I'm going to change this organization that that doesn't really work. And I think that the most important aspect is being a servant leader, is being a person who serves, because that also opens you up to learning along the way and learning how to serve better.   Fred Dummar ** 58:34 Yeah. And you know, as I learned in the many organizations that I was part of over, you know, my time in Special Forces is, you know, just because, you know, alluding, you know, we were discussing roles, and I was saying, you know, this officer's role to often, to plan and to lead, but that other people are the experts. And that's something you know. The sooner you embrace that fact, the faster, the faster you become effective, and the more effective you are when you realize that understanding the people and and caring and serving them, and then getting their their best performance and understanding what they know and what they can do, and where you need to put them to maximize their potential, then those things start to become the most important thing that you're doing, how you know, how people play against each other, who works well with who? How that works, how that betters the organization. Those are all, all all things that are fascinating, you know, to me, and things that kept me up at night, trying to figure out, you know, how to how to be more efficient, how to take better care of people, while, you know, getting, not only getting the best out of them, but them, realizing they were giving their best and being happy and proud of what they. Were doing   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:01 and getting the best out of you as well.   Fred Dummar ** 1:00:03 Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, bringing the best out of them is bringing the best out of me, right?   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:08 So you've gotten work also in the nonprofit sector. You're continuing to do that, yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 1:00:13 yeah, yeah. Now, after leaving this Special Forces Charitable Trust, I realized, you know, after I'd moved out to Idaho, where I live now that I wasn't as connected to the regiment as I'd been my first retired and I was still kind of in the North Carolina area or but after moving out here, you know, just felt like that. I probably there were other guys more recently retired, knew more of the things that needed to be done. So stepping down from that organization. And then, obviously, one of the other things that happened was, you know, the the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Afghanistan, and I found myself with many other Afghan veterans, sort of, you know, both wondering, you know what it all meant, why? You know, and then, but then also what we can do. You know, not dwelling too long. I know, you know, poor me. You know what? You know. Why did I go? What did it mean? But more so, hey, you know, we had a bunch of people that we made promises to, a bunch of people that follow alongside America, some certainly, you know, in the interest of Afghanistan. But there were also many, many of the especially on the Afghan Special Operations sides, that were not always necessarily doing things at the behest of the Afghan government, but operating with US forces on things that the US wanted to do, but then, you know, we're sort of left hanging when during the withdrawal. So, you know, working alongside other veterans to try and get as many of those people out during the withdrawal and then. But so now I work with an operation or a organization called Operation recovery that is still following these families, following these cases, people that are either still in Afghanistan, some in hiding, some in other countries, illegally, but trying to help them resolve visa issues and either get to Canada or the United States or someplace in Europe, just someplace safe for them and their family, away from the from the Taliban. And so that's been it, and it's, it's hard work, you know, because the in work like that, we're trying to make government bureaucracies realize that they should be issuing visas or allowing people to move, it's not always a rapid process. So feels like, and, you know, and I'm not pointing fingers as if anyone should still, you know, be completely focused on Afghanistan. But you know, other things happen. You know, Ukraine, the war in Ukraine draws attention away. You know, the war in Israel. You know, hurricanes, storms, everything that's going on. You know, Assassination comes. You know, assassination attempts, you know, all of that stuff diverts people's you know, draws people attend. You know their attention to that. And I'm not sure many people, you know, they support the troops. And you know, you often hear them, you know, you know, thanking troops for their service. And the only response I can have to that, you know, for for for years, I struggled with how to respond to that. When someone would say, Thank you for your service, you know, just Okay, thank you. You know, I don't know, thanks for your support, but you know, I heard a good response, and I've been using it since, and it's like, America's worth it. So,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:54 yeah, on top of everything else that you do, you've also been dabbling or going into real estate a little bit, yeah,   Fred Dummar ** 1:04:01 yeah. So that's, that's a lot of what I've been doing, you know, for because, you know, providing for your family, right? So, yeah, I started doing some investment real estate, and out here, got a partner, we did, worked on a couple of mobile home parts, larger projects. And I still, once a week, I still teach a clas

Nach über vier Jahren kehrt David Frank vom Blog "Jung in Rente" zurück und teilt seine tiefgreifenden persönlichen Erfahrungen und Veränderungen, die er seit ihrem letzten Gespräch durchlebt hat. Im Mittelpunkt des Interviews stehen seine Entscheidung für ein Sabbatical, die Auseinandersetzung mit einer Sinnkrise, die Umstellung seines Portfolios und der Wandel seiner Perspektive auf finanzielle Freiheit.Vor über vier Jahren war David Frank zu Gast im Finanzrocker-Podcast. Damals sprach er ausführlich darüber, wie er sein Ziel erreichen wollte, früh in Rente zu gehen. Seitdem hat sich in Davids Leben viel verändert. In dieser Folge diskutieren wir Davids Entscheidung für ein Sabbatical und die tiefgreifenden Veränderungen, die er in den letzten Jahren erlebt hat. Was bedeutet es, sich bewusst Zeit für sich selbst zu nehmen? Wie beeinflusst eine Sinnkrise die persönliche und finanzielle Lebensgestaltung? David teilt seine Erfahrungen und reflektiert über den Wert von Glück, Zufriedenheit und die Suche nach einem erfüllten Leben.Zusätzlich sprechen wir in 65 Minuten über seine aktuellen Anlagestrategien, den Übergang von Einzelaktien zu ETFs und die interessante Welt des Impact Investing. David bietet uns Einblicke in seine neuen Projekte und wie sich seine Perspektive auf Geld und Finanzen verändert hat.Freut euch auf ein inspirierendes und ehrliches Gespräch, das nicht nur für Finanzinteressierte von Bedeutung ist, sondern für alle, die über ihr Leben nachdenken. Viel Spaß beim Zuhören!ShownotesZum Blog "Jung in Rente"Zum gemeinnützigen Projekt "Wilde Wälder"Zur Webseite "Alle Dividenden"Zum ersten Interview mit DavidZum neuen YouTube-Video "Wann Aktien verkaufen?"Präsentiert von Wechselpilot2024 lag die Inflationsrate bei 2,2 %. Die Energiepreise sind 2024 um 3,2 % gesunken, nachdem sie 2023 um 5,3 % und 2022 um 29,7 % gestiegen waren. Trotz dieser Entspannung sind die Preise insgesamt stark gestiegen. 2025 kannst du Energie sparen, indem du Wechselpilot nutzt. Dieser Service wechselt jährlich zu den besten Verträgen, spart hunderte Euro und benötigt keinen Aufwand. Mit dem Code "Rocker20" erhältst du 20€ Cashback beim ersten Wechsel.Wenn Du Dich jetzt selbst von den Qualitäten von Wechselpilot überzeugen willst, schau einfach mal unter folgendem Link vorbei.Weitere interessante InterviewsMit über 100 Einzelaktien auf dem Weg zur Rente mit 50 – Interview mit Beamteninvestor Ben Offenberger„Mit 40 in Rente“ – Interview mit Oliver Noelting von FrugalistenFinanzielle Erkenntnisse vom Highway: Was ich vom 2. USA-Roadtrip über Aktien und Finanzen lernte (Special-Folge) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This last episode that was recorded in Wyoming early 2024 brings you David Frank, resident of Sheridan and owner of Western Sporting. Many of you listening have probably ordered from Western Sporting before, and this episode will give you the chance to hear more about David and his history. In particular, David talks about his early experiences as an animal trainer, taking advantage of an opportunity to live and work in England and also hawk in Scotland, and of course, and many other things. David and Western Sporting have generously donated items to many state club raffles, including ours in Indiana, so if you've never given them any of your business, please consider heading to westernsporting.com next time you have any falconry supply or book needs! Sign up to support and/or receive extra content at buymeacoffee.com/falconrychroniclesSpecial thanks to the organizations and businesses who've kindly helped support the podcast!The Archives of Falconryhttp://www.falconry.orgMarshall Radio Telemetryhttp://www.marshallradio.comMasters of the Skieshttp://www.mastersoftheskies.orgBaba Yaga Craftshttp://www.instagram.com/babayagagoshawkNorth Mountain Goshawkshttp://www.northmountaingoshawks.comNew Mexico Falconers AssociationArizona Falconers Assocationhttp://www.arizonafalconers.comTexas Hawking Associationhttp://www.texashawking.orgNorth American Falconers Associationhttp://www.n-a-f-a.comFalconry Fundhttp://www.falconryfund.orgPursuit Falconry and Conservation Magazinehttp://pursuitfalconry.co.ukThe Specialist Falconhttp://www.thespecialistfalcon.comCape Falconry Clubhttp://www.capefalconry.co.zaEast Coast Falconshttp://www.eastcoastfalcons.comBlackhawk Falconry Dachshundshttps://www.facebook.com/blackhawkdachshunds

Nick sits down with Eric Kirk and David Frank to discuss Trump's presidential win, the war in Ukraine, the erosion of trust in our institutions, Israel/Palestine and more.   11/23/2024

On this episode of Unstoppable Mindset we meet and get to talk with Dr. Christine Balarezo. While Christine was born in Peru much of her youth was spent in California and then Connecticut. During her life she has secured various college degrees including a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Texas. She spent ten years working in the field of human trafficking. Later she worked briefly for a nonprofit organization.   Christine was never fully satisfied with both working for other organizations and for working in academia. After her time with a nonprofit she decided to go out on her own. What she realized she was being directed by her inner self to do was to take up the job of more directly helping others. Christine became a spiritual coach and healer. Today as she explains she “helps creative sensitives reconnect to their true soul being by using her intuitive and psychic gifts with practical, multi- and interdisciplinary transcultural knowledge so they can fully shine their light”.   Our conversation touches on many topics including the concepts of spiritual healing, psychic intuition and some of the fears and prejudices around these concepts. I hope you enjoy what Christine has to say. One thread I find both with this conversation as with so many we have had on Unstoppable Mindset is that we all should learn to be more open and curious to things we may not fully understand or embrace.       About the Guest:   Dr. Christine Balarezo is Founder of Christine Balarezo, which offers multidimensional spirituality services for clients around the world. She is an Intuitive Spiritual Coach, Energy Healer, Intuitive Astrologer, and Educator. She helps creative sensitives reconnect to their true soul being by using her intuitive and psychic gifts with practical, multi- and interdisciplinary transcultural knowledge so they can fully shine their light. Christine loves working with diverse groups of people especially those with multidimensional identities and/or overlapping intersectionalities, neurodivergents, HSPs, BIPOC, single parents, immigrants, witches and healers. In a past life, she was a human trafficking scholar with ten years of experience in the field, and with expertise in mixed-methods trafficking and policy research. Christine began her career in academia serving as an Adjunct Professor of Political Science, and a Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Scholar, where she conducted fieldwork across Israel on its human trafficking policy. She also had a brief stint in the nonprofit world supporting national anti-trafficking efforts. As a multicultural Latina and single mother, she is also passionate about mentoring and continues working with vulnerable populations within the mental health, metaphysical, and higher education fields. Christine received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Texas, and her M.A. in Political Science from the University of South Florida. Christine's goal is to provide practical yet cosmic guidance - balancing the scales, that is - so people can live a life that is true to them and their heart. When she's not helping others or talking about energy, she loves traveling and exploring new places, cooking Peruvian and Asian food, spending time with her college son, walking their two dachshunds, and finding new books to read at the library.   Ways to connect with Dr. Christine:   Email: christine@christinebalarezo.com Join My Newsletter: https://sendfox.com/christinebalarezo Grab a Virtual Coffee & Let's Chat: https://tidycal.com/christinebalarezo/cafecito-connection-chat Website: https://christinebalarezo.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinebalarezo46/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChristineBalarezo Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/christinebalarezo       About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today we have the pleasure of talking with Dr Christine Balarezo and Christine, well, what can I tell you about Christine? She has founded a company called Christine Valery so and she offers multi dimensional spirituality and coaching. And I'm not going to go into it all, because it's more fun to hear it from her than to hear it from me. Anyway, so I'm just going to say, Christine, I really want to welcome you to and thank you for coming on unstoppable mindset.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 02:00 Thank you so much, Michael. I'm really grateful and excited to be here and to converse with you and simply see wherever we go in this conversation. Well, it'll be fun.   Michael Hingson ** 02:12 And yeah, who knows where we're going to go? It'll it'll be fun. I've got lots of questions I can think of, and I'm sure you have lots of things to say. Let's start with something that should be pretty easy. Tell us about, kind of the early Christine, growing up and so on, and kind of maybe how you got where you are today. But let's start with sort of the the early Christine,   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 02:32 absolutely. So I'm Christine, as many of you know, most people call me this. I was born in Peru to Peruvian parents, but my mom came here when she was 16, to the United States, to Connecticut, specifically, and then she went back to Peru and met my dad. And I was born there during the time of a civil war, and my parents realized that they had wanted to live somewhere else, perhaps maybe with more stability and see a different type of lifestyle. So they first moved to California, and eventually we ended up in Connecticut, and that's where I spent my earlier years. I grew up on the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, where my grandparents had already come beforehand, and they established a restaurant, and that's where I saw my formative years. It was a very different, I think, way of living, because since then, I've moved I also have a twin sister, and it was, again, a different way of for me growing up, perhaps coming from another culture and blending that into where I grew up in, which was predominantly homogenous, so there wasn't too much diversity, and I learned to navigate different types of people and experiences. And long story short, we're speeding it up here in high school, I moved to Florida, which opened up to a completely new culture, different experiences, and my main goal in life was to work with other cultures and other people. And I initially wanted to pursue a line in diplomacy, and that's what I was working towards beforehand. With my background in political science, I really wanted to help people. I really wanted to focus on peace and bringing together, perhaps some type of mediation resolution in countries that experienced a lot of instability, a lot of conflict. But I think life had other plans.   Michael Hingson ** 04:36 That happens a lot, doesn't it? Right? There's   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 04:38 that saying, you know, when you plan something, sometimes God or whatever your beliefs are, there's something that changes your plans. I'm like, Oh, I plan things. So to the T and I realized things are changing, and I'm going to have to also pivot. And I became a single parent. I'm a mom to a beautiful boy when I was still completing my undergraduate. IT career, and so that definitely changed my trajectory. And I know in diplomacy, especially the route that I wanted to go into, it entails a lot of traveling, and sometimes you have to go to locations where you may not be able to bring family. And I knew I didn't want that. So I reformulated, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna have to go down a different path. And I realized I may not be able to do that particular line of work, but I still wanted to pursue something to help people, so I pivoted to human rights. And that just opened up because human rights is very broad. It encompasses so many types of groups, so many types of individual rights, civil political liberties, among many other types of perhaps freedoms that we have here in the United States, that we may obviously take for granted, but that are not always present in other countries. And I pursued that path with obviously completing my Bachelor's, my master's, and then my doctorate, and then I changed. I was like, maybe I'll consider academia, and I'll just tell you. Fast forward, many years later, I just started feeling like I couldn't help people in the way that I wanted to because I was not working one on one with people in the way that I felt that I could help them. A lot of it had to do with, maybe more abstract, theoretical types of support and aid. And sometimes I felt like I was lost in that bubble, because academia and sometimes some of the work people do human rights, and it depends, but the line that I was on, it just felt disconnected. I'm like, Where are the people? Why am I? Why am I doing more research and talking about more theory and presenting at conferences? But I don't feel like I'm having the effect that I can to help people navigate in this world. So I went through a period of disillusionment, of feeling very lost, very disconnected and questioning myself. Is this the path that I'm meant to be on? Is this something that my heart is truly connecting to? And I realized it wasn't, and I tried, because of all of the work that I've done, I feel like this was so similar to so many other people that I've spoken to. I'm like, let me see how I can salvage all of this experience, all of my hard work. And I pivoted to the nonprofit in a similar background in human rights, particularly human trafficking, and I tried. I was like, You know what? Let's continue doing what I did in a different way. I just felt like my life was disappearing, and that was not a very positive experience for me, though I learned a lot, really grateful, because something I think that you touch upon in many of your episodes with other folks and even with your own personal story, Michael, is challenges. As humans, we experience a lot of challenges, and it's your attitude that really defines the next step, and I realized this wasn't probably the best, maybe most highlighting or illuminating experience of my life, but I learned something here in this space, and that pivoted me to creating my business eventually, a few years later.   Michael Hingson ** 08:16 And what is the new business about compared to what you'd been doing so   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 08:20 prior, I was really delving into human rights, human trafficking, conflict to an extent too, and working more from that theoretical, academic, research oriented, and also teaching perspective. And I completely crossed the bridge to something very different, and I entered more into the spiritual realm. And this is a broad term, because it encompasses many different elements. Some people say metaphysical. Could say occult, but it was a very non traditional, or maybe alternative field that I never thought that this was something I was going to pivot to, and it connects to a lot of what I experienced in my life, things that I was healing, and that came up for me to heal, especially after leaving that a toxic job, and it provoked a lot of things in such a fast, perhaps accelerated way that made me realize I'm being called to do something on a scale where I might not feel completely comfortable yet, because there was a lot of foreign perhaps feelings or just emotions. When you sit with them like this is new. I kind of felt like a kindergartner, because I was essentially re crafting my identity, who I was and what I was doing. And it's so easy to become attached to who you are, whether, again, it's a political scientist or a teacher, whatever it is, and that's what happened with me. I had to unravel, undo, unlearn a former Christine and completely step into this new role of what my own heart was calling me towards. So my own business focuses on helping people connect to. They really are and learning to trust themselves. And you mentioned this perhaps when we opened up Michael about listening to your intuition of what you're feeling and sensing. And sometimes it's scary, because it may be telling you or bringing up to you, it's time to go. It's time to leave. It's time to end this way of being or doing, existing or identifying, and a lot of times our human selves are like, we're going to hang on.   Michael Hingson ** 10:29 Well, give me a little bit more if you would insight into so exactly, what is it then that that you do now, as opposed to kind of what you were doing before,   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 10:38 well before it was training and helping people in human trafficking, whether it was understanding what the dynamics were, educating students through coursework examples, for example, and now I connect with people generally, one on one through a Coaching environment where I help people transform different obstacles or different experiences that they want to overcome. A lot of it has to do with shining or empowering themselves, showing up as who they who they are, excuse me, and also grappling with anything around fear, whether it's fear of the unknown, fear of change or fear of anything alternative, especially if they have followed a certain paradigm or belief system or religion or a philosophy. And it's like, I feel like I may have gifts in certain areas. Perhaps you can call them psychic gifts, or seeing or sensing things. And I work with people to also harness that. And I do that through through different modalities, intuitive, spiritual coaching when we work one on one, and it's really at the bottom root, it's not therapy. It's a lot about asking questions, because we're focused on solutions and moving forward. It's very forward or future oriented. And we do glean to the past to inform, but we don't stay there. And I incorporate also my own gifts, again, my intuitive and psychic gifts to help people through the questions that I ask, because ultimately, I believe everyone knows and has the answers to what they need and what they know is best for them. It's called our intuition. People know that for many reasons, a lot of times we feel stuck. We don't see things. We may feel like things are unclear, and it's simply getting rid of the noise or chaos around us. So there's a lot of simplifying on so many different layers, and that's what I help people do, because sometimes we have to zero in and it's helpful because other people can see things you don't always see.   Michael Hingson ** 12:42 So how do you how do you do that? How do you get somebody unstuck or open to thinking about doing something or reacting in a different way than they have? A   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 12:54 lot of it takes awareness first. You have to be aware first of maybe any disconnection or what I call similar to what we used to coin in political science, relative deprivation. Sometimes you're seeing things from a certain perspective, where what it is that you want, but where it is that you are existing, or perhaps acknowledging there is some type of distance there. And that's where people maybe fall into a point of suffering, because they're trying to resolve things with what they know, what they've brought in their current belief systems. I call it Life suitcase. Basically everything they know up to that point they're still holding on. And what I do generally, for example, in the first session, I ask a lot of questions about the background, why they're coming to me, what their goals are, what's been going on, to learn a little bit more about who they are as a person, too, but more importantly, where they want to move, what direction generally. And through these questionings that come up a lot of it's intuitive, because once people start talking to me, and even beforehand, I just the best way to explain this is I just get, like a knowing and questions come to me that help unlock some of this for people where they say, Wow, I didn't even realize it about myself. This is what has been holding me back, or this is why I feel scared around this particular issue or being seen. So a lot of it is it happens organically. It happens through me, conversing one on one with people, and all those lines, they connect kind of like connected dot. There's a game. I don't recall a name, but it's a kin of, okay, we have one nugget that has appeared, and we keep following the rest. And I wish I could say this happens in 24 hours, or in a week, where people are like, okay, I'm good to go. We've got it. I'm unstuck. Generally, it happens, I would say, over a period of time, and it depends with everyone. Because, again, awareness is key here. And my point is not to tell people this is what you're doing wrong, or this is what you need to see. Is to help people see that for themselves.   Michael Hingson ** 15:02 Uh, spiritual healing and transformation is something that probably a lot of people look down on. They say that there's nothing really to all that, but leaving what people think aside and maybe, maybe not. But what are the major blocks, or roadblocks, and how do you get past that to say, look, there really is something to be said for this whole idea of you can transform yourself, you can heal yourself. And doing spiritual healing techniques is an IS and ought to be a very important part of what you do.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 15:40 Thank you for that question. Those were things that I pondered myself, and what I have found that generally, in whatever modality you choose, it's important to know that I and others, in whatever tool you use, it's a facilitation. I'm not here to tell you. I'm going to heal you. I have a magic wand. I'm a fairy godmother from a Disney movie, and poof, you're going to come out of this 100% yield. But what I can tell you is many of the factors, or many of the challenges or blocks, as you name them, that come up for people, they're universal themes around fear, doubt, allowing ourselves to be seen a certain way or to express a certain way. In other words, maybe stepping into what it is that we feel passionate about. And a lot of times I tell people, what makes you excited, what makes you joyful, or what brings up those feelings of, oh, I can't wait to do this. I want to go into this, because that's also telling you a lot about where you might want to go next. And I want to speak a little bit more about the fear and doubt, because, again, depending on many factors, where you've grown up, your family, your society, your culture. And I'll say that broadly speaking, because culture is very multifaceted, multi dimensional, we have a lot of layers that we may be undoing and we may be relearning things, perhaps setting boundaries, speaking up for ourselves, realizing, Wait, I can put my needs first before others, or I can say no, I can also know and realize it's okay to be afraid most of the times, many things that we do, even if we're passionate about them, there could be some fear, like maybe speaking in front of a crowd, You can feel that through your different senses, people get butterflies in their stomach, right? You feel a sensation, or even when you are doing something for the first time that is new, people generally feel it in their body first. So fear is an element. I feel that it's always present. It's about realizing taking that first step forward, no matter how small is, what's going to eventually help dissipate that. And what I have found is not thinking about that long term picture, because a lot of people, and I think it's very perhaps human of us, we want to know the whole picture. If we're leaving a job, we want to know all the steps and what our next job is going to be and what exactly we are going to do. And we want to have that outlined akin to a board game where we want all the answers, because that gives us control. It gives us safety, it provides security, and it allows us to say, well, we can follow the steps because they're already here. And what I've come to realize working with some of the people that I've worked with is many of them are on paths where there aren't steps in front of them, they're doing things that are very different, perhaps different from their family systems, different from their society or culture, or completely different, like I did, where I didn't really have other steps in front of me to follow. There was no manual or rule book. And so a lot of these challenges about overcoming these blocks, they first start with that awareness that I mentioned, and then taking, I call them many action steps. They don't have to be big and they don't have to necessitate planning, and I think that's key, and it's important to remember and in this process itself.   Michael Hingson ** 18:53 So in in dealing with all of this, I know you talk a lot about the whole concept of spiritual connection. What? What exactly is that? And I think maybe the real question is, why is spiritual connection so very important, and how do we really work toward getting there?   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 19:18 You squeezed in three questions. In one,   Michael Hingson ** 19:19 okay,   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 19:21 I love that. I'm the same way. It's like little sub button, you know, something that,   Michael Hingson ** 19:27 what can I say? What can I say? I don't mind it at all.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 19:31 I think it's a they just they pop out. That's how it works with me, too. I get questions that pop out in very much the same way. And right now, so many changes have been happening, I would say, in such an accelerated speed in many different areas of our lives, and connecting to so many people, whether it's neighbors or clients or friends and family, there's very resonant themes where some excuse me, where people are going through some. In their life, or several something. And a lot of this has to do with coming back to self. And when you mentioned what is spiritual connection, it's simply your connection to something higher, a belief system. Many people call this god. It could be universe, spirit, source, energy, or even your higher self. It varies. I usually just say God for myself, but it's a higher energy source. And realizing sometimes there's a lot of things we as humans want to control. We want to dictate how things will go. We will push and resist. We'll try to fit everything in our suitcase. And when things don't go that way, when the suitcase pops open and we have challenges, the more we resist, the more we suffer, because we're trying to make things happen in our own way. And as humans, we only have a limited ability for certain things to go in that way, except for our mindset, our beliefs, our thoughts, our attitudes. And so the spiritual connection is something bigger you may not always understand, you may not always see, but you you can feel it, and that's something you can cultivate and nurture. And a lot of people have been turning to that, I would say, especially post pandemic, when so many things fell apart, that perhaps is another conversation, but so many things were brought up for people. Am I truly happy doing what I'm doing? Am I in the right relationships? I feel like I'm supposed to be moving on to something else, etc. So many questions came up, and people I found were feeling lost because they were placing a lot of this outside of themselves, perhaps in institutions, in different people. And when those things dissolve, what do you have? And that goes on to the next question is, well, why? Why the spiritual connection? Because the connection we have with God, with the universe, with source, and generally with something divine. We may not always see, but we feel it, something that can never be taken away from us. And I like to relate, relate it almost like an umbilical cord. Think of all of us being in imaginary little bubbles. We all have our own connection to this source, to this divinity that cannot be taken away. And I've been mentioned mentioning this frequently with people. You may have read the book by Victor Frankel in answer for meaning about his experiences in the concentration camps and something he brings about, which you also talk about too, is your attitude towards life, your thoughts, your beliefs, and how that can dramatically change how it is you navigate through life in general, but also challenges. And that's something too with the spiritual connection that can help nurture this too, because you again don't, we don't always have the answers to everything. And the moment where we say, You know what, I give this up to either something higher or I surrender this. More importantly, I'm leaning into faith and hope that things are going to work out in the way that they can. And that's a that brings in a level of acceptance, which doesn't mean that you acknowledge and you say, I'm happy. These challenges are, are are going on in my life, or the others are experiencing this? No, it's simply saying, okay, it is what it is. This has occurred. I can't, can't change it. What can I do moving forward? And for me, one of the best ways that I have found to cultivate or nurture the spiritual connection is by learning how to take time to embrace solitude. And that's again, something that many folks experience with the pandemic. We heard a lot of either anecdotal stories and narratives where people realized, quote, unquote, I found myself, or I realized this is what I wanted in life. Or lot of people saw the duality of the lives they were living before and the lives they were currently living, and how much control a lot of folks had to give up during the pandemic, where they realized I need to make changes, and this is the direction that I feel like I'm being called into and for me, the best way that I saw, perhaps this is what the pandemic. I tend to look for silver linings in hardships and challenges, so in reflection to the pandemic. For instance, one of the things that I saw, that it brought to all of us was how to lean into solitude, how not to be afraid of your own self, your own fears or things that are changing.   Michael Hingson ** 24:25 You know, you said something interesting about people wanting to control everything and they can't. Why can't they so? And that's an interesting discussion. You could you could immediately say, Well, what about things like the pandemic? We didn't have control over the pandemic. And, yeah, that's true. We didn't have control over the pandemic happening. But like with anything, what we do have control over is how we deal with things like the pandemic. So in in terms of that, what can we learn to have better control over the things that occur in our lives, or or, can we   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 25:14 That's a big question, and I do think we can find safety and security in ways or different things we can control, namely, again, what's within us. Think about our circle or bubble of influence, and a lot of it pertains to ourselves, how we react, how we view things right, like putting on maybe a different shirt, some people feel like when they wear something, a certain something, it feels different, and they may feel more confident or vibrant. Maybe it's the material. It honestly doesn't matter, but the way that we try to control things, it all relates down to safety and security. And I feel like the pandemic really blew that out of the waters for so many people, because, again, things just happen that we may not even understand fully. And for me, my own personal belief, I do believe in an afterlife, and I do believe that when our physical bodies end here, we continue on in Adriatic form. And so some people, we may not understand that until that time. We may never understand it, but so many things happen so quickly that we're forced to confront a lot of things that may have been left untouched unseen. That's why there was a lot of healing that came up for people, generally and individually around so many topics, and what I've told folks repeatedly, and also what I've learned my own self, because I didn't come into this world thinking, You know what? I don't need to react to this. I have to learn this too as a human. A lot of this has to do with, again, how we approach things, and that can be something that's difficult to learn because we're unlearning different behaviors that were inculcated from our own family systems, from the way we've grown up, from society and the way we navigated and many of us tapping in to these different issues or problems that have come up. We're adults. I never questioned this when I was five years old, I didn't question, Should I be responsive or reactive at this time? Why am I losing control over this? That's why it's beautiful. Children have a different way of approaching things. If something doesn't work, they may express it through their emotions, right? Tantrums? That's one way they express this energetically. Then they go about like, two minutes later, playing they carry on with adults. We tend to hold on to that and maybe perhaps over identify with some of these things that are not controllable.   Michael Hingson ** 27:53 Well. The other part about it is that as we are dealing with things that happened to us. It seems to be that we can learn to be better prepared for things to happen to us. And what I'm kind of saying about that is all right, so let's take the pandemic. We didn't predict it. Probably couldn't predict it. Well, I'm pretty sure we couldn't predict it, but so many people just were going around trying to figure out what to do with themselves. The government wasn't helping with that. For a while, we got a lot of mixed messages, but at the same time, what comes to mind is that we could learn more about being able to face unexpected situations. I'm hesitant to use the word control, but we certainly but we really can learn to control how we deal with them, but we don't learn and and have been, in a sense, spoiled, and don't learn how to deal with things that we don't expect to happen. And the result of that is that, because we don't learn anything or give thought to it when something happens, then we don't have, or we haven't created, the tools to deal with it. Does that make sense?   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 29:29 Absolutely, and I will say I agree with all the points that you made, but there are many people that have pivoted and were able sure to change, or perhaps to move with the ways, with the pandemic as a prime example, because they've experienced a lot of different changes in their own life, whether it was growing up in a dysfunctional home or simply maybe moving a lot, or changing schools, or whatever it is that entailed, it's time to adapt to a new way, to a new environment, perhaps to new people. Systems and institutions. So I heard from some folks that this pandemic, for many of them, they embraced it, especially maybe people that were more introverted or that really value that solitude. They really realized it's time for me to go out on my own, maybe work for myself or do things differently, because it created a massive shift in movement around how people work and interrelate   Michael Hingson ** 30:24 well. And I think you're absolutely right. I think it's important that that we do more of that, and we we tend to fear, and we have allowed fear as an entity mostly to overwhelm us, or, as I put it, blind us, or paralyze us, whatever word you want to use, but overwhelm. And so when something happens that causes a fear reaction, we tend not to be able to face it very well, because we've never learned how to harness that fear and use it in a positive way, and I've talked about it before on this podcast, that that was one of the things that I was able to deal with on September 11, because I learned what to do in the case of an emergency, and it created a mindset within me that said, when Something did happen, okay, you know what the options are. Now assess your situation and then deal with the appropriate option based on the situation. Well, there are actually lots of options, because the situation was, there was fire in the building, but the fire wasn't anywhere near us. I knew that because my dog, my guide dog, Roselle, was giving absolutely no indication that she felt fear. And dogs have, I do believe, a much greater sense of some things than people do, and if she had sensed anything that caused her to be concerned, I would know it well she wasn't, which told me that whatever was going on wasn't such an imminent emergency that we couldn't evacuate in an orderly and calm way. And so I worked to get other people in the office calm and got them to the stairs. I didn't a colleague, David Frank did, but David was pretty worried and scared. And in fact, at one point, when I kept saying, slow down, don't panic, he said, You don't understand. You can't see what's going on outside. The problem was that David wasn't seeing what was going on inside, namely the dog that wasn't reacting. And I knew the dog, and I knew that that was part of my world that gave me information that I could use. If Roselle had been acting differently, we would have done things differently, but she wasn't well, so guests got to the stairs, and David and I went to the stairs, and we started down, and we went downstairs. But the bottom line is that it was because I had taken time in advance to prepare and didn't rely on reading signs and other things, that, as I said, it created a mindset. And I think that more often than not, we collectively as people, can learn how to deal with fear in a different way than we do, and that we can use fear as a tool to help heighten our senses, focus us and not overwhelm us and create a situation where we can't make decisions.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 33:33 Ditto. I loved your example, and I remember reading that and also hearing that about you and Roselle, when you were waiting and kind of feeling into results response, and that was your indicator of like, Okay, do we have anything to be alarmed or not? And that's the same. And I agree with you about animals, they have a high incense, I'll just say their own intuition, but also internal alarm rating that you can sense how animals behave a lot and see what's going on, because they pick up a lot of things, and we don't for so many, for so many reasons. And practicing this fear is key, knowing what you do and how you navigate the world, preparing yourself right, looking for emergency exits, knowing the layout, etc. That's one such way. And in certain circumstances, I think we can prepare to an extent, right? That's one amazing example, if you are traveling, if you're on the plane, if you're in a hotel or in your own home, you can prepare certain things, like safety procedures, making sure you have alternative ways to enter your home if you get locked out, whatever it is. And I think to an extent, we can prepare for certain situations. We see that with natural disasters, right? We can learn a lot from historical events or different types of conflicts. Yeah. But sometimes there's things that happen in our life that we may not always know how to prepare, and a lot of this taps into the emotional response. And something that I have found too is sometimes over preparing for things can induce anxiety in people, because it may provoke fears of, well, wait. What if this happens? And it's not so much about identifying with that potential situation or event that could happen, but simply having some, maybe some type of contingency plan or a backup plan where you can say, how would I approach this? Because when unexpected things happen in our lives, whether it's an unexpected relationship loss or grief that pops up a memory or even an event like you experienced with September 11. We may not always appear or know how to respond, even if we plan for it, but I love the example you gave, because it's an excellent, excellent way of practicing this. We can simply practice and lean into some of the fears by doing a little bit every day, and some may call it a form of exposure therapy. But the more we practice with the unknown, with changes, with navigating things that come in our life, I think the more it gives us that sense of empowerment and also perhaps a calm inner confidence, like, hey, whatever comes our way, we'll be able to navigate this.   Michael Hingson ** 36:24 What I think is is really the issue is that it isn't necessarily planning for every contingency that that is difficult at best anyway, because there are so many contingencies that we don't necessarily know about, but we can learn to know ourselves. And we can learn to say, Okay, I observe this happening. And this is the kind of thing that can happen in an instant, if we work toward it, something does happen, and because we have learned to know ourselves, we've learned to know that we don't need to be afraid to the point where we can't make decisions. We've taught ourselves to be able to make positive or make some sort of decision. By observing those are things that if, if we teach ourselves how to do it, we can learn to very quickly, make the decision that would be best for us. And of course, part of that has to do with learning to listen to our inner selves. And I know one of the things that you talk about is people learning to interpret and understand their own psychic gifts. So how do people learn? Or how can we teach people to learn, to be able to harness and tap into their own intuitive and psychic gifts?   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 37:59 That's, I think, such a fascinating question. And I it repeatedly comes up where so many people now are being put in situations that provoke or prompt this question. Because a lot of people we know and we feel it, that's the thing. It's another sense many people are leaning into now, is what's coming up in their body. It's almost when you meet someone. This is the best example of how you can tap into some of these intuitive and psychic gifts that everyone has, but some people choose not to nurture for many reasons, including fear. But ever meet someone, and it's just their presence, which is, you could say energy, but it's just the presence of a person, whether it's their voice, or when you shake hands with someone, or just being in their proximate vicinity, you may feel off. You may feel certain, certain something is not quite right, and a lot of people have mentioned in so many various circumstances, something feels off about that person. I can't put my finger on it, but I just don't feel comfortable. Or likewise, people come into a room and sometimes they're so full of vitality and life, and you just feel uplifted and energized. And we get certain sensations in different ways that everyone receives them. And that's the first point of our intuitive and psychic gifts, is realizing I'm feeling something. But many people, they're like, Nah, that can be right, or they just count it, or they dismiss it, as I'll say, especially with what I call red flags, right? When you feel something is off, or you're like, I'm not really sure this interaction is best for me or this job, or whatever the circumstance, it's only in retrospect. People are like. I knew it. I felt it. I felt the science. Because we don't see something come up in our inner mind where it tells us, okay, this computer is registering. This person is XYZ. We feel it. So the first step is. Really harnessing your gifts. For those that are just embracing them, they're popping up, or you're wanting to strengthen this is to start paying attention to these moments and to trust what you're feeling. A lot of times, I always suggest to people write them down, whether it's in your phone, in some type of computer application, or you can write it in a way that helps you, or you can a lot of you know what's interesting? I connect to a lot of people that like using video recorders, and they record. You know how some people like to express through journaling, right through words now, and that's another powerful way. But the point here is to take account and to start becoming aware of all those different instances where you may have discounted yourself, and more than likely, the majority of those times you were right, you had some type of feeling where you felt something was off, and that's one of the first things you have to become aware of that, because there's a level of trust that then comes in. Many people don't trust themselves. Or, like, No, this can't be right. Or they say, quote, unquote, I'm crazy, or I'm seeing things, or I'm making things up, or it's just me. Everyone likes this person, or this is a great work environment. And then later on, they're like, I knew something was off. So it takes practice, which you infer of right with leaning into fear. It's the same way with your psychic and intuitive gifts, and we have to practice that continuously. It's a muscle whenever you are Go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, whenever we are experiencing those moments, it's important to say, Okay, what's coming up for me? Yeah, and a lot of different emotions, and this can stem, again, from your own personal, lived experiences, maybe growing up where people discounted what you said. You weren't allowed to speak or communicate or express yourself in a certain way. Maybe you were invalidated, or people subjugated you to a certain way of being. There's so many different circumstances that I found, but a lot of the stems from earlier parts of our lives, and we're honing this too, and that's just one part of trusting yourself. And for me, I take a very practical approach, because the more I've leaned into trusting myself in my own intuition, and we've all received the psychic messages very differently, too. That's something else very briefly to say, some people may just know things or send things, and that's clear cognizance or clear sentience, or they may see things visually or through dreams, clairvoyance, for example. And so there's different extra sensory ways that these messages come through. And a lot of times I'll say again, like I've said, we feel it in our body first, and it's not something we should intellectualize or something that you can try to analyze. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 42:51 And what I was going to react to was the fact that you, you referred to it as a muscle, and it is, and I think it's important that people think about it in that way. My favorite example, and I've used it lots, I hope people aren't getting too bored with it, is trivial pursuit, which is a fun game, and I think of so many times I've played it with people, and I've been a victim of it, and others have been as well. A question is asked, an answer pops into our head, and then we think, no, it can't be that easy. And we think about it and we give a different answer, and invariably, the answer that we originally thought of was the right answer. Our inner selves knows a lot more than we give it credit for, and by practicing to listen to it, I think we all can benefit a great deal, but we do really have to practice and listen to it, because I think that it won't steer us wrong, although I think a lot of people will poo poo that, but it is, it is absolutely true, and there are so many examples of it, so I think it is important, and it's Part of what I put in my new book that's coming out called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. It's all about learning to deal with fear and learning to listen to ourselves and learning not to second guess, but really learn to know more than we do and we can.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 44:29 Oh, you just beautifully packaged that that could be like the little bow or ticket on a gift. I think you summed it up perfectly. And just to reference Roselle during your time when you are working at the World Trade Center, and even now with your guide dog and any animal in particular, you'll notice that, how many times have you seen a dog or an animal or felt it doubt themselves? I've never because I have two wiener dogs, and you may have heard them, hopefully not loudly. You have two wiener. Dogs. Here dachshunds. I   Michael Hingson ** 45:01 was listening for them. I haven't heard the doxies.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 45:04 I've never in my life thought, wow, he or she second guessed themselves. They don't need to go to the bathroom. Or if they bark for a reason, because animals are so attuned to different we'll say frequencies like a radio than we are. And again, many stories around how animals will bark at certain people or see things we don't. And brings to mind, they're not second guessing themselves. They know exactly what they've seen, and they will stay very fervent in that position, whether it's barking or they're like, hey, I need to go out, or whatever it is. And they'll let you know, similar to what you brought up with Rosella and how she didn't indicate any fears, which help you tune in and say, Okay, we're good right now at this time. So in the same vein, we can learn a lot from animals. And it seems like your book is tapping exactly into this where animals, they just do it. They don't themselves, they don't question themselves, they don't ask the next dog over. Hey, did you see what I see   Michael Hingson ** 46:02 they don't do, what if they don't? And   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 46:06 that's the beauty that we can learn from from other creatures around this, but also to ourselves. And again, it's just practicing. And this is probably the most boring, unglamorous aspect of this work that I do, because people tend to see it in perhaps a particular way. When you talk about this field of spirituality and psychics and intuition, people see it a certain way, and it's really not this is the boring work of you got to trust yourself first, because if you are receiving those intuitive messages and you don't trust that, there's going to be no one else you can listen to them, but what if they're deceiving you? You got to trust what it is that you're feeling and what's coming up to you, and you've said it, it never leads you astray.   Michael Hingson ** 46:52 As I said, animals don't do what if. But make no mistake, they learn. So there are so many examples of somebody being in a situation like family in a in a building and it catches fire, and the animal comes and it bothers people, until they pay attention and it gets them out. The animal didn't do a well, what if this building catches on fire? What am I going to do? The animal does learn, however, how to move around their place. That's one example. The bottom line is, we can all learn those same sorts of things, and we do have the extra gift of being able to do what if, but we need to learn how to use that too. And again, the best thing about what if is that we learn to build that muscle, that mental muscle, and learn how to know ourselves better so that we can deal with situations that come up. And although not every situation will be the same, and we may not have predicted a particular situation, we can learn well enough to have a pretty good idea of how to deal with most things that come into our lives if we choose to.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 48:07 I agree. That resonates so much. I always like to say we have our own sniffers, kind of like dogs, because their sense of smell is so acute, and some I would imagine breeds, especially carriers. I'm not a dog expert, but this is just from my experience, and what I've read, they have an even greater sense of smell, where they can send things that we can't. And to your example about, you know, a dog that maybe awakens the family, or even cats or any other animals. I've read so many accounts because I'm an animal lover as well, and I'm just fascinated by they don't question things. They follow their senses. And for many reasons, I feel like animals are also like our own angels, our own guardian angels. They help us in many ways, and we can learn so much like they do, because they adapt. They're super intelligent creatures, and I speak for many different types of creatures, rodents, birds, could be reptiles, dogs and those in the wild that we make there was ways that we can also start practicing and adapting to having that keen sense of knowing who you are. And perhaps that's something people are learning, especially post pandemic, is who am I? And connecting to yourself through those moments of solitude, but also in your surroundings, that's it helps you keep in touch with what's going on, like your own antenna.   Michael Hingson ** 49:33 Well, there's, there is a lot we can learn and hopefully live like a guide dog will help people think about that a little bit more and maybe not fear so many things. Or, you know, another aspect of it is we've got some people who just say, Trust me, I know what's best. Just listen to me. You don't have to worry about it. That never works. And what we really need to do is. Is to not just trust, but make sure that somebody earns our trust, and we really take the time to think that we've really analyzed what they say, and then we can trust perhaps. But even then, it does go both ways, but it is a it is a challenge. Well, tell me something that people don't know about you, just to change the subject.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 50:30 Wow. You know, I've asked myself this question, and   Michael Hingson ** 50:33 you're still trying to figure out what what you don't know about you, right?   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 50:38 I think that's an ever longing journey or quest. And I think something folks may not know about me is how much I really like to learn. I'm generally a very curious person, and I love asking questions to people. Things pop up and things like sometimes when I speak, it could lead, it could appear or feel like I'm going off a tangent. That's because I get so many things that pop up in my head. I'm like, Oh, this is fascinating. And I can really go down a hole in trying to learn, perhaps over consume or simply engage with someone or something, whether it's a topic, a theme, or something I'm really passionate about, until I know all facets. And when I say all facets, obviously it's not going to happen, because there's something you can always keep learning. Yeah, so simply learn to lean into that, because I'm a lifelong learner, and I've always considered myself like a student in life, a traveler in life and through the world, and I constantly learn new things, and some people when they either sense being in my energy, or if they see me, they judge, because I can be quiet, but that's because I'm observing first, and I'm someone that likes to observe and kind of get a feel. Would this person be open to talking? Do they like to engage? So that's just something that most people don't know about me. It's really easy based on many assumptions, whether it's through personal experiences or maybe something people see in themselves to make those judgments. But I'm a questioner. I just question I love asking people questions about themselves, what, why they do, what they do, what led them to this? And more questions pop up, so it's infinite. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 52:24 that's there's nothing wrong with that curiosity, I think is a good thing, and I love being curious, and I wish more of us would have been taught more about being curious and not discouraged as children, which happens so often. But I think the curiosity is a very important thing to do. So I'm glad you like that, and I'm glad that you talk about that. What kind of advice might you have for others who want to make a big change in their life?   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 52:53 Don't overthink it, just do it. And I also want to preface this, perhaps a mini disclaimer here, obviously, make sure your basic needs are taken care of. You know, like paying your bills and things around those elements. But when it comes to making a change, I find that so many people, and I say this particularly from personal experience, we may lean into it. We may take time. It may be years. I'll just tell you my leap from academia into doing what I am now. I received just knowings just guidance. It's time to end your time here, similar to yours when you left your position at the World Trade Center and you left that career to start speaking, and I've received messages like Diana ignored it, and I took a lot of time. We're talking more than a decade. I'm like, Nope, I'm going to keep pursuing this. So I would say, when you feel something, explore it, and don't be afraid to take action. That doesn't mean, okay, I'm going to quit my job the next day. Can mean maybe it's time to update my resume or CV. Maybe it's time to reconnect to my network and start exploring new opportunities, or hey, that event is calling to me about maybe basketball popped up in my head, or sports, or whatever it is. Take action. Don't put it on pause. Don't wait. Don't say another day, because we tend to analyze things, and then that wheel is fomenting, perhaps of discontent or unhappiness or whatever it is.   Michael Hingson ** 54:32 Yeah, I think again, you're right. You can't, you shouldn't overthink. And if you think about things in the right way and analyze it, you can come to the right decision. And that's really what you're you're looking to do, which is as good as it gets, and that's important to do. Well, tell me, if people tell me a little bit about you and your business. So how do you meet people? How do you reach out to people? How do they find you? And so on.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 55:05 So I encountered and connected to clients in so many ways, usually in unusual ways, where I'm shopping, maybe at the market, I'm reaching for a fruit and someone's like, hi, I don't know them. And then they start telling me about themselves or life story, and next thing you know, I'm still with the pair in my hand 30 minutes later, and you're like, what do you do? And I let them know, like, wow. I'm like, yeah. And so I meet people in unusual circumstances like that, where I'm just going about my routine other ways, is through connecting one on one, like coffee chats, and that's not usually my main intention. One of my values is connecting and creating bridges with people. I simply like connecting and asking questions, getting to know people, and supporting other people. And many times, folks are interested in what I do, and that's one way that I've gotten clients. I also have a YouTube channel where I talk about astrology, spiritual topics, also real life, everyday topics, because I'm a practical person, and it's important to be grounded in this world and not just completely think my head is in a certain cloud or on, existing on whatever dimension you feel you may be existing on. Very practical here, because we're all here to contribute in some facet, our own lights in this world. So YouTube is another way. I've met people LinkedIn too. You may have experienced this on LinkedIn. I'm sure many folks have where you've had people reach out, whether it's cold calls, I've had people reach out to me where we have no related work, but they may be trying to sell me something, and I've gotten clients in that way. So I don't do traditional forms of marketing. I'm someone that really values creating genuine relationships, rather than something transactional. I hope and try to create, maybe you could say, like a friendship, family, type of connection with people, because trust is really important in the line of work that I do, there are a lot of charlatans, like in many other fields, but I would say more so in this field, and that's why, going back to some of the really great questions you asked and the responses and examples you gave, it's important to trust yourself when you meet. That's why I like offering people the opportunity to engage in video calls with me, because if we don't connect, if you you're not feeling it, I don't personalize it. Um, to me, I think, Okay, I have one new friend that I know in this network. Good luck. Maybe I can offer you someone else that does something that you may connect to, sure. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 57:38 if people want to reach out to you. How do they do that? They   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 57:42 can email me, Troy, provide my email or yes please, it's and spell it out. Okay, it's Christine. I'll spell it in a sec. It's Christina @Christine Balarezo.com so it's C, H, R, as in Robert I S as in Sam T, as in Tom I N as in Nancy E. At, what is that? Called the ampersand?   58:15 No, at, at,   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 58:17 you have it? Christine, again, C, H, R, i, s, t, I, N, E. Valero, so B, as in boy, a, l, a, r, e, Z, as in zebra, o.com, that's one way, email, YouTube channel, my first and last name, Christine valarso through my website, same christineballarso.com Those are many ways to connect with me, and I offer opportunity to connect in one on one chats too.   Michael Hingson ** 58:56 Well. I hope people will reach out. This has been very insightful and very useful, and I hope that it gives people a little bit different slant on some of the things that they may be thinking or hearing within themselves, and that they'll maybe listen a little bit better. So I hope that will happen. And I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today. I'd like to thank all of you for listening to us. We really appreciate your time. I'd love it if you'd give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to unstoppable mindset. And if you know anyone who ought to come on our podcast, we'd love to hear from you, and Christine for you as well. If you know anyone we're always looking for for guests. And so I hope that that you all will do that, and again, wherever you are, please give us a five star rating. So thank you very much for listening, and we will be back in a little while with another episode of unstoppable mindset. And you can reach out to me, and I'd love it if you would.  you can email me Michael h i@accessibe.com that's m, I C H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, w, w, w, dot Michael hinkson.com/podcast and Michael Hinkson is m, I C H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O n.com/podcast so once more, Christine, thanks very much for being here, and we really appreciate your time.   Dr Christine Belarezo ** 1:00:28 Thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you all great.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:00:37 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

How do you balance debt repayment with the rest of your financial life? In today's episode, certified financial planner David Frank returns to the podcast to talk with Linzy about one of the most common and challenging questions among Money Skills for Therapists students: how to prioritize debt repayment without sacrificing quality of life.Linzy and David explore the emotional weight of debt, discussing how shame and societal expectations often shape our views on borrowing and repayment. David explains the key differences between simple and compound interest, laying out how to assess different types of debt and make more informed choices. He also offers a clear approach to calculating the real costs of debt and shares why overly complex financial advice can sometimes be a warning sign.Linzy and David emphasize the importance of finding a middle ground that aligns with your financial goals and personal well-being. Tune in to hear practical advice about how to take steps toward building a balanced and confident financial life.For a full transcript of the episode and much more, check out the blog post on our website! https://moneynutsandbolts.com/?p=16122To watch a video version of this, check it out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lRSBCcvC-nE To tune into the coaching episodes Linzy mentioned related to paying down debt, see episode 114 with Jenet Dove and episode 88 with Erin Davis. For more from David and Linzy, check out:104: How Deep Work Can Enhance Your Business with David Frank83: Embracing Emotions for Financial Wellness with David FrankConnect with David FrankDavid Frank has a lot of free resources & webinars on his website, like his training “Retirement Plans Fundamentals for Private Practice Owners”, or his “Finance Quick Start Guide for Therapists”. Check those out here. You can also find David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwfrank/ Want to work with Linzy? Check out the FREE masterclass, The 4 Step Framework to Getting Your Business Finances Totally in Order, where you'll learn the framework that has helped hundreds of therapists go from money confusion and shame to calm and confidence, as well as the three biggest financial mistakes that therapists make. At the end, you'll be invited to join Money Skills for Therapists and get Linzy's support in getting your finances finally working for you. Click here to find a masterclass time that works for you! https://moneynutsandbolts.com/masterclass-signup/ Mentioned in this episode:Check Out Relay for Business BankingSkip...

Financial Mastery for Therapy Practice Owners: Investing, Retirement, and Real Estate InsightsIn this episode of Therapy for Your Money, host Julie Herres discusses essential financial strategies for therapy practice owners with certified financial planner David Frank. The discussion spans various areas, including the importance of emergency funds, distinguishing between personal and business finances, and the advantages of fee-only financial planners. Listeners will gain valuable insights into managing excess cash, understanding tax-advantaged accounts, and setting up business emergency funds. Simplified retirement planning is also covered, emphasizing target date funds and consistent savings. The episode touches on the intricacies of financial planning, including risk management, estate planning, and real estate investments. Practical advice on life insurance options and detailed resources on retirement plans are provided to help ensure the financial stability and growth of therapy practices.Episode Highlights00:00 Welcome to Therapy for Your Money00:50 Introducing David Frank: Financial Planner for Therapists01:15 Investing Basics for Business Owners04:34 Emergency Funds: The Foundation of Financial Security08:14 Navigating Taxable Brokerage Accounts15:10 Retirement Planning: Choosing the Right Accounts20:01 Solo vs. Group Practice Financial Strategies21:03 Calculating Your Retirement Number22:04 Approaching Retirement: Financial Tips23:52 Overcoming Financial Anxiety25:41 Risk Management and Insurance26:40 Real Estate Investments: Pros and Cons34:33 Life Insurance for Practice Owners38:04 Free Webinar and ResourcesLinks and ResourcesGet a Free Initial Fit Meeting: https://turningpointhq.com/ Money for Therapists Practice Startup - https://www.greenoakaccounting.com/startupGreenOak Accounting - www.GreenOakAccounting.comTherapy For Your Money Podcast - www.TherapyForYourMoney.comProfit First for Therapists - www.ProfitFirstForTherapists.comProfit First Academy - www.ProfitFirstForTherapists.com/Academy Podcast Production and Show Notes by Course Creation StudioGet our free KPI tracker to see how you practice measures up to others in the industry! www.therapyforyourmoney.com/kpi

Alison plays new music from Mau P, San Holo, Tchami, Luci, ISOxo, Anna Lunoe and more!Don't forget to rate & review on all of your favorite podcast apps! Post your comments on twitter @awonderland #RADIOWONDERLANDTracklist:1. RADIO WONDERLAND OPENER2. Mau P - Merther3. PLS&TY - Breakaway (ft. David Frank)4. zensei ゼンセー - fun.5. CloudNone, Direct, Mr FijiWiji - bayb336. Mha Iri - The Unexpected7. ISOxo, fussy - STARsound (pt2)8. Anna Lunoe - Polite (feat. Shanique Marie)9. San Holo, Tchami - feel again10. Luci & Dirtysnatcha - She Bangs Like a Fairy on Acid11. ESPER, Janus - DOTA12. Slow Magic - Closer (feat. Angela Krüsi)13. Rootkit & Melano - One More14. TWONSKi - EONZ15. Silcrow & Capshun – DAMNED16. if found & GLNNA - WORTH.the.CRASH (VIP)17. Jersey - Giant Cotton Ball18. REZZ x X1 - Y2 - PROXIMATE19. What So Not, Habstrakt - Realise (feat. Maiah Manser)20. ISOxo - SHYPOP (REDUX)

Alison plays new music from Mau P, San Holo, Tchami, Luci, ISOxo, Anna Lunoe and more!Don't forget to rate & review on all of your favorite podcast apps! Post your comments on twitter @awonderland #RADIOWONDERLANDTracklist:Mau P - Merther PLS&TY - Breakaway (ft. David Frank) zensei ゼンセー - fun. CloudNone, Direct, Mr FijiWiji - bayb33 Mha Iri - The Unexpected ISOxo, fussy - STARsound (pt2) Anna Lunoe - Polite (feat. Shanique Marie) San Holo, Tchami - feel again Luci & Dirtysnatcha - She Bangs Like a Fairy on Acid ESPER, Janus - DOTA Slow Magic - Closer (feat. Angela Krüsi) Rootkit & Melano - One More TWONSKi - EONZ Silcrow & Capshun – DAMNED if found & GLNNA - WORTH.the.CRASH (VIP) Jersey - Giant Cotton Ball REZZ x X1 - Y2 - PROXIMATE What So Not, Habstrakt - Realise (feat. Maiah Manser) ISOxo - SHYPOP (REDUX)

Nicole O'Byrne talks to David Frank about his book, J.B. McLachlan: A Biography: The Story of a Legendary Labour Leader and the Cape Breton Coal Miners. J.B. McLachlan: A Biography presents a vivid portrait of a significant early twentieth-century Canadian rebel. Recognized as a remarkable biography, it chronicles the life of a Canadian labor hero and provides an unparalleled account of twentieth-century Canadian labor history, inspiring readers who seek social and economic justice. David Frank is a leading figure in Canadian history. He taught for over 30 years at the University of New Brunswick, and he has written six books on Atlantic Canadian labour history. His articles on labour and social history have appeared in numerous books and journals. Image Credit: James Lorimer & Company Ltd. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society's mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada's past.

Nick sits down with Eric Kirk and David Frank to discuss the 2024 presidential election, conflict in the Middle East, accountability in the government, propaganda, speech and more!   08/29/2024

David Bennett has a lot to say about erotic relationships with God—but it's probably not what you think! As a former atheistic gay activist now turned celibate gay theologian and follower of Jesus, David's reflections on Christian sexuality and discipleship are both personal and deeply informed by Christian historical tradition. David sat down with TJ and David Frank to talk about a theology of desire, Christian thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to today, Side B activism, and practical discipleship for Christians today. Join us!Note: This episode uses the terms “Side A” and “Side B” as shorthand quite a bit. If you're new to the conversation, you might find it helpful to check out Communion & Shalom episode #3, where we talk through the four “sides” in our conversation: ⁠#3 - A-B-Y-X | 4 Sides on SSA/Gay Sexuality⁠—★ About Our GuestDr. David Bennett recently completed his doctorate (DPhil) in theology at Oxford University where he now works as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Theology and Religion Faculty. His thesis is in the process of being published, tentatively entitled, Queering the Queer: A Theological Ethics of Same-Sex Desire and Gay Celibacy in Contemporary Anglican Thought. He specializes in the relationship between the Trinity, Christian ethics, patristics, queer theology, discipleship and contemporary Anglican theology, especially the role of desire in knowing God. David also serves as a theologian in residence at Reality San Francisco and Church of the City, New York, and an Associate Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall. Find him on Instagram or X (@DavidACBennett) or on his website at dacbennett.com.—★ Timestamps(00:00) Introduction(s)(05:00) The heart desires, the will chooses, the mind justifies(16:11) "You're just denying your sexuality" - defining “erotic”(25:45) How many kinds of love are there?(33:04) Eros and fear-of (or "Lutheran pietistic excess")(44:25) We need more Side B activism(56:58) What's going on with the Church of England?(01:13:20) Beyond an “ethic”: pursuing personal integration—★ Links and ReferencesEros and Agape (1930, 1936) by Anders Nygren (Wikipedia)Deus Caritas est (2005), Pope Benedict XVI (Wikipedia)—★ Send us feedback, questions, comments, and support…Email: communionandshalom@gmail.com | Instagram: @newkinship | Substack: @newkinship | Patreon: @newkinship—★ CreditsCreators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ Espinoza | Audio Engineer: Carl Swenson, carlswensonmusic.com | Podcast Manager: Elena F. | Graphic Designer: Gavin P. ★ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newkinship.substack.com

Kurt Bartel of David Frank landscaping provides the latest on EABs in Wisconsin.

This episode of Unstoppable Mindset is for me a special one. It has been three years in the making. It is a celebration by any standard. At the beginning of the pandemic, I began realizing that while I had talked for years about escaping from the World Trade Center I had not begun teaching people to control fear: something I did successfully on September 11. So, I began working toward writing a book about the subject. I approached my co-author of Thunder Dog, Susy Flory, but she was quite busy studying in a PHD program, her own writing and running a writers conference. Susy introduced me to Keri Wyatt Kent. A friendship and team bond were formed. Today, August 20, 2024 the fruits of Keri's and my labors are released in a new book entitled “Live Like A Guide Dog: true stories of a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith”. The book is our effort to help people realize that they can learn to control fear rather than being “blinded by it”. On this episode, Keri, Susy Flory and I discuss the book. Lots of stories as well as a discussion of what went on behind the scenes. I hope you like the episode and, if you haven't done so already, please order a copy of the book. About the Guest: Keri Wyatt Kent is the author or co-author of more than two dozen books. (see her website portfolio at www.keriwyattkent.com) She has been published in Christianity Today magazine, Today's Christian Woman magazine, Outreach magazine and many other publications. She is the founder and principal of A Powerful Story, an editing and publishing company. She publishes two newsletters on Substack: Welcoming and Wandering, which explores hospitality and travel (at https://welcomingandwandering.substack.com/ ); and A Powerful Story newsletter, which offers writing and publishing advice (see https://keriwyattkent.substack.com/. Susy Flory is a #1 New York Times best-selling author or co-author of fourteen books, including The Sky Below, a new memoir with Hall of Fame Astronaut/Explorer Scott Parazynski, and Desired by God with Van Moody. Susy grew up on the back of a quarter horse in Northern California and took degrees from UCLA in English and psychology. She has a background in journalism, education, and communications and directs a San Francisco Bay Area writers conference. She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood Typewriter. She taught high school English and journalism, then quit in 2004 to write full time for publications such as Focus on the Family, Guideposts Books, In Touch, Praise & Coffee, Today's Christian, and Today's Christian Woman. Susy's books include So Long Status Quo: What I Learned From the Women Who Changed the World, as well as the much-anticipated 2011 memoir she co-wrote with blind 9-11 survivor Michael Hingson, called Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. Thunder Dog was a runaway bestseller and spent over a dozen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Ways to connect with Kerri & Susy: www.facebook.com/keriwyattkent www.instagram.com/keriwyattkent https://www.linkedin.com/in/keri-wyatt-kent-328b2810/ http://www.susyflory.com/ https://www.facebook.com/everythingmemoir About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. .   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, Hi again, everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today is a special one. I think it's special anyway, and I think our guests will agree today you're listening to this. It's It's August 20, 2024, and it's special because for the past almost three years, I and Kari Wyatt Kent, who you'll meet in a moment, have been working on a book. It's my next book, and the we had various titles, but we ended up deciding with the publisher, Tyndale house, to call it live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. All three of those are relevant, and we can talk about those. And along the way, we've also had a lot of help from Susy Flory, who worked with me when we did thunderdog, and we wrote thunderdog, which was a number one New York Times bestseller and was published in August of 2011 I don't know what it is about August, but, oh, that's okay, but I think there's relevance to it being August this time anyway. Susie Flory was on Episode 10 of unstoppable mindset, way back in December, December 1, specifically, of 2021, and 12 days later on the 13th of December, Keri Wyatt Kent was on episode 12 of unstoppable mindset. So if you guys want to hear those two episodes, you can go back and find episodes 10 and 12 and hear our individual conversations with Susie and Carrie. But now I'd like to introduce you to both of them and all three of us, I think, we'll tell you a little bit about ourselves, and then we'll get into other things that are related to what we want to talk about, unstoppable mindset. But the big thing is, today is the day we're celebrating that live like a guide dog is released. It was released today. It's out there. If you haven't ordered it, we hope you will from wherever you want to order books, and if you have pre ordered it, you'll be getting your copy pretty soon. So anyway, welcome Susy and Kari. I'm glad you're here. We really appreciate your time, Susy. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you? I   Susy Flory ** 03:33 certainly will. But first I want to say congratulations to the both of you. I'm so excited about this book. Can't wait for it to get out there and for people to enjoy it. Mike, I was thinking I did a little quick math, and you and I have known each other for 15 years now we have we How many marriages don't even last 15 years? Right? Really,   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 well, we we met because you called one day and were writing a book called Dog tales, and you wanted to include Rozelle story, and you asked me to tell what happened on September 11. And so I bit I did, and I took maybe, I think, close to 45 minutes, and then afterward, there was this pause, and all of a sudden, Susie said you ought to write your own book, and I want to help you write it. And I sort of was a little bit reluctant, because I'd been working on it for a long time and had some ideas and advice from people, but it just wasn't going anywhere. But it did with Susie and her agent became my agent. He got a contract with Thomas Nelson publishing, and the rest, as they say, is sort of history, yeah. And I   Susy Flory ** 04:43 have always loved animal stories. My first few books, I didn't get to do anything like that, but as soon as I could, I started writing animal stories. Dogtails was the first one, and then working with you on thunderdog was the second one. Yeah. And that's kind of been a theme of my life. My dad was a Texas cowboy, and I grew up on horses. He was kind of a horse whisperer. My daughter works in wildlife rescue, and she's a squirrel whisperer. And I just love the way that animals sort of make their way into your heart, and there's a healing and bonding process that happens that so gentle most of the time you don't even realize it's happening until you need them. And that really, has truly been my experience. So Mike, that's really a part of your story that captured my heart, along with a lot of other elements of the story, I've been writing now for about 20 years, writing and publishing, I direct a writer's conference, and Carrie's actually part of that. And we try to help writers become the best that they can be. And then in the last few years, I've been in seminary, furthering my education. Right now I'm in a doctoral program and working on my dissertation, so my hair is becoming more and more gray in that process. Well,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 06:17 and I met Susy probably at least 15 years ago, maybe more, I'm not sure when it was, but we were both writers. We worked with the same agent at the time, and then I pretty soon got involved with the West Coast Christian writers the conference that Susie was leading, and we just clicked. We We are both animal lovers. I think that's part of it. I love dogs. I also grew up riding horses, as she did and and we both had horses later in life at at the same time. And I agree there's that there's just something that animals kind of intuitively know and connect with you on this emotional level. And, you know, the the dogs that that I met through helping Mike right live like a guide dog, when we initially started it, we were going to do, we were going to include some other dogs, you know, service dogs and other people's dogs. And so I just, I got to meet some really cool dogs during this whole research project. And so I think that people who you know, if the idea of this book is about overcoming fear and managing our fear figuring out how to live courageously. And I think even if you don't have a guide dog or a service dog, animals can help you do that. They force you to be in the moment, which is one of the one of the ways we that we can deal with fear and anxiety, is to be in the moment. And animals sort of force us to do that   Michael Hingson ** 08:02 if we pay attention to them. I think you're absolutely right. And one of the lessons that we talk about in the book is the whole issue of living in the moment, not doing so much, what if? Because, if we What if everything to death, we create a lot of fear in our own lives. And one of the the basic mantras I have lived by, especially since September 11, although even before, but mostly after September 11, is don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can, and the rest will take care of itself. And the lesson really comes from dogs, because after September 11, I contacted the veterinarian department of Guide Dogs for the Blind, and also talked to Roselle trainer and so on and and said, How do you think that this whole event would affect Roselle? And one of the things that they asked me was, was Roselle threatened along the way? And I said, No. And they said, well, was she hit with anything? Or did anything endanger her? And I said, No, not that she would notice at all. And they said, Well, there you are. Dogs. Don't do what if and when it was over. And we got home on the night of September 11, I took Roselle harness off, and I figured I was going to take her out. She would have none of it. She ran off, went to her toy box, grabbed her favorite tug boda bone, and started playing tug of war with my retired guy, dog, Lenny, and that was it. The two of them just played. Eventually, she did have to go out, but by the same token, they played. It was over. Roselle was glad to be home, and we moved on from there, and I think it's an important lesson. When the pandemic began, I realized that although I've been talking for at that time, 19 years about surviving the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and so on, and being able to go down the state. And not exhibiting fear and not exhibiting panic. I learned to do that and created a mindset in my head, because I spent a lot of time prior to September 11, learning about all of the issues in the World Trade Center. Where do you go if there's an emergency? What are the rules? Because for me, of course, I'm not going to read signs, but also, I was the leader of an office, and I was responsible for the people in that office, or whoever might be in the office at the time. So it was really important for me to know that. And so as a result, I learned what I could I learned how to travel around the world trade center, learned where things were and all of that, although it wasn't until much later that I realized it. All of that created a mindset in me, you know, what to do if there's an emergency and when it actually happened, although certainly we didn't expect it, the mindset kicked in and when the fan, when the pandemic began, I realized we really needed to start to talk about teaching people how to deal with fear, and as I would put it, teach people that they don't need to be blinded by fear or overwhelmed by fear, that fear is an important tool, no matter what you might think about. Oh, well, if it happens, it's a natural reaction. You have control over what you do and how you feel when something horrific or something unusual happens, then fear can be a powerful tool that you can use to benefit you, rather than letting it overwhelm you and cause you not to be able to make decisions. And you know, today in our in our world, politicians and others are doing nothing but promulgating fear in so many different ways. And we don't learn enough about stepping back and really analyzing what they say, whoever they are, and going back and saying, wait a minute. Is this real? Do I need to be afraid of this? Or is there anything that I can do about it? And that gets back to the don't worry about what you can't control. Most of it we don't have direct control over, except, I would say, at the ballot box on november 5. But by the same token, there's so much that we take personally that we shouldn't because we're not going to have any effect on it. And so what we need to do, and what live like a guide dog allows us to do is to learn how to control fear. We talk about being introspective. We talk about taking time at the end of every day to look at what happened. Why did it work? What didn't work? I don't like the concept of failure. I think that failure is only a lesson that we can use to move forward and that it doesn't need to be bad if we don't allow it to be bad, but if we use it as a tool. So that's what live like a guide dog really is about, and it is one of the, I think, the books that can truly help so many people recognize that they have a lot more control over the specific things in their lives than they think they do. Or, as we say here on the podcast, they can be more unstoppable than they think they are.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 13:12 Mike, I think that's so good. And you know, some of the things that we have in the book, as you recall, um, are strategies like we can't worry about what we can't control. But for example, you mentioned, like learning your way around the world trade center. That was a step of preparation that enabled you to then in the moment when things were you know, where there's chaos. You had been. You had prepared yourself, and all of us can prepare ourselves, you know, for understanding the world around us, for gaining information that will help us in a long when, if, when, and if something happens, to deal with it in a in a brave way and not let fear get the upper Hand. Yeah, still feel afraid, but if we're prepared, we go, okay, I know we're I know what to do next. I know what you know. I know where the exit door is, whatever it was that you know, you were able to know your way around the world trade center that helped you as you were, you know, evacuating from a tower that was on fire, you know? Yeah, so it preparation was a great tool, and it's one of the strategies that we talk about in the book that can help us to not let our fear make us panic. So,   Michael Hingson ** 14:37 you know, one of the things that we do a lot in the book, at various places, is tell stories. And I, as a person who's been involved in sales most of my life, believe that the best salespeople are people who can tell stories that relate to whatever their customers are interested in, and so on. So one of the things that comes to mind is a story that took place a few years after September 11. I was in Oregon in. Working for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I had to go up to Gresham, Oregon, where the, well, our boring Oregon, actually, I love that name, where the second campus of Guide Dogs for the Blind is located. And I got there and put stuff away, and decided I was going to go out to dinner. And I had learned where a restaurant was and how to get there. And I got there, that was no problem. But coming back for some reason, and I don't remember what specifically happened, but for some reason, I couldn't get back to the apartment where I was staying, and I felt real concern when I when I first couldn't make it work, I retraced my steps, got back to the restaurant, and then tried it again, and still we didn't get to the right place. But what I also realized is you've got to deal with this, because it's not rozelle's job to know when Roselle was the guide dog at the time. Guide Dogs don't lead. They guide. Their job is to make sure that we walk safely. I have to give and had to give Roselle direction, and that is the case with anyone who uses a guide dog. People always want to say, well, of course, the dog just leads you around. No, that's just not true. Anyway, as I after the second time of not making it work right, I suddenly realized, wait a minute, I have in my pocket, and it was fairly new, so we didn't think of using it as much at the time, but I had a talking GPS system. I turned it on, I put in the address of where I wanted to go, and within five minutes, I was at the apartment where, where we were staying. But the issue is, I had to step back and recognize, don't be afraid. There are ways to make this work, and what you need to do is to use your skills to resolve the problem and solve the problem. And so many people won't do that. They they just get afraid. Blind people oftentimes do it. Sighted people do it in so many ways. But the fact is that it's it's a very powerful tool to use something that we call in the rehabilitation world with blind people today, and I think others, but the National Federation of the Blind calls structured discovery. You get lost, you start to go back and analyze where you were supposed to go and how you were supposed to get there, and maybe where you actually went wrong. And structured discovery is a very powerful thing. I also think that using technologies like GPS have, especially now, become a lot more dominant, and that's fine, because it's the technology's job to give me the information that allows me to decide what I want to do. But you know the bottom line is that the fear went away as soon as I recognized, oh, I know how to do this, and I'll just use the talking GPS system, and it should be able to give me what I want to know. And it did,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 18:07 yeah, I love that story. And I think one of the things I learned as as your co author, you know, it's your story, and I was, you know, helping, you know, you write it, but, but I learned so much about guide dogs. For instance, what you mentioned when you were telling that story, that the guide dog doesn't lead you, you don't say, go back to the apartment you've been to once, Roselle, she's, you know, it's not like Lassie, you know, movies,   Michael Hingson ** 18:35 and that's all right. And no matter what they say, Timmy never did fall down the well, but that's never fell down   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 18:39 the well, ever is that was just, anyway, the idea of, and I've, you know, when I was I got a copy of the book recently, and, you know, had a publication. And the I was explaining to my husband, well, the guide dog doesn't lead and he goes, Well, how does he know where he's going? I said, Well, the same way you do but, but it's, it's that the guide dog guides, but the the handler has to give direction to the dog. Because I think it would be more scary if, if the dog had the magical ability to just take you where you want to go. I feel like it would be scarier because that's literally you have no control or no awareness of what's going on, whereas the way guide dogs actually work, you're a team, and you're doing it together, so you both have agency and control over various aspects of your journey together, and I think that makes it less scary. So   Michael Hingson ** 19:41 it is a team effort, and, and you're absolutely right, and that the reality is that it's a team effort where we both learn to trust each other. And, yeah, I think that families who have dogs really need to learn more about their their dogs. Um. Or and other animals too, but we're going to talk about dogs today. The the fact of the matter is that, in reality, dogs love to be around people, and they actually want us and hope that we will set the rules so that they know what they're supposed to do. They love rules, and that doesn't mean in a negative sort of way. But you know, if you just let your dog run around the house, tear up the furniture and all that, and you don't do anything about it, the dog's going to do that until you say, wait a minute, this isn't what you're supposed to do, and you don't need to deal with that in a negative way. There are so many ways to train a dog properly with positive rewards and so on, food rewards and clickers and other things like that, to to really set the rules. But when the dog knows what the rules are, and you continuously say, Good dog, when they do the right thing, they love that, and they will be a much more value added member of the family. As I tell people, dogs do I think love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. And you have to develop that trusting relationship with your dog, whoever you are. It isn't just service dogs, but with service dogs especially, it is a true, absolute team effort that we need to deal with and that we need to form. I need to know that Rozelle is going to do or now Alamo, current black lab guide dog, is going to do his job and convey to him I trust you. And likewise, he wants to know that I trust him. It. It really does go both ways. And when you develop that trusting relationship, it's second to none. Just like any other kind of teaming relationship,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 21:52 I think you hit on something important, Mike, is that your dog wants the structure of of rules and knowing your expectations and wants to meet them, and you'll enjoy your dog more. And your dog will enjoy being a part of what he's considers the pack you know, of your family. Everybody will enjoy it more and feel safer and less fearful if they their structure. You know, I think sometimes dogs are when they're they act out it. They're kind of like kids who act out they are because they're afraid, and they don't know where, where the boundaries are, and   Michael Hingson ** 22:30 they don't know what you expect of them. And if you don't convey that, and again, it's a positive thing, you don't go up and beat a dog because it doesn't do what you want. That's not the way to handle it. And there are humane societies, humane associations, and so many organizations around the country that can help you appropriately train your dog. And you should, you should do that. You should really learn what training is all about. But if you do that, you're also training yourself, by the way, we used to live up in Novato, California, which was right by the marine Humane Society. And one of the things that we had discussions with people at the society about, many times, was, in reality, they do more training of people than they do of dogs, because it's really teaching the person how to address and deal with the dog much more than it even is just teaching the dog what the rules are. Right. Now, I don't know about squirrels, Susie, but you know,   Susy Flory ** 23:34 they're in a whole other category. They're   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 23:37 a whole other category, although I think your daughter, who is very good with all animals. I I remember seeing her with her dog when I visited, and she had an amazing bond with them, with with, you know, and, and that was really cool to watch. There was just this mutual respect between the two of them.   Susy Flory ** 23:59 Now, our career actually came as a result of my dog. I have a little Terrier named sprinkles, a Silky Terrier who's 14 now, and when she was really young, I had taken her out in the backyard. Teddy was, I think, 16 at the time, and sprinkles started pointing. And I didn't know these little terriers did that, but she just looked like one of those English hunting dogs. And she had her paw up, her tail out, she was pointing at something. And so I went over to look. She wouldn't come inside. There was a nest of baby birds that had the nest had been destroyed, and the birds were on the ground, these little, tiny babies, and I just left them. That's how heartless I was. I just thought, you know, they're not going to survive. They looked like they were dead. I just left them and picked up sprinkles, took her in, and Teddy came home from school. About a half hour later, I was telling her, you never guessed what sprinkles did today. Well, she didn't care what sprinkles did, but as soon as she heard the word baby birds. She ran out and back. She picked them up, she nursed them back to hell. She stayed up all night feeding them, and the next morning, she said, This is what I want to do for my life. And there's just sometimes an intuition that dogs have, you know, sprinkles found these baby birds, and that connection I will never forget, you know, that bond between her and the dog and the birds and many other animals afterwards. So there's sometimes a mysterious way of working in our lives that dogs can have.   Michael Hingson ** 25:36 Well, talking about bonding in mysterious ways brings up the memory of a story of how you two bonded. Does anybody want to tell that story? You told it to me. So now you're stuck.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 25:49 Susy, this is your favorite story so and I've been talking so go ahead.   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 Susie,   Susy Flory ** 25:56 yeah, you know how sometimes in a friendship, when you go through something hard that I know you and Rozelle went through, and you know many of the other stories you tell them in the new book, it brings you closer together. And Carrie and I had a moment. We were already friends, but we decided to go snow skiing one day, and we both were not like champion skiers. It was just for fun, and we were all dressed in our gear and headed up the hill, and a woman came running from the side of the road up at the top of the mountain and was yelling at us that there was a man in the ditch, and we didn't know what was going on. We stopped. We went over and looked, and there was a man unconscious in a ditch with this motorcycle on top of them. And so it turned out that he had passed away. But, you know, there was a good couple of hours of, you know, summoning the fire department. We had no cell service, giving statements to the authorities, you know, taking this woman back to a restaurant nearby for soup, and really just kind of going through this awful experience together. I mean, it's very traumatic, you know, to see someone who's just passed away from an accident. And, yeah, I think sometimes those things bond us and give us that, that relationship of trust and of teamwork that goes very deep. And Mike, I'm remembering how thunderdog had the working title of trust and teamwork, and I learned so much from you about that concept and kind of how that works. And it's not easy to have a relationship like that. Sometimes the hard things are what, you know, kind of forges that bond. Well, you know,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 27:45 Susie, as you were saying that, I thought, You know what? That's when I knew Susy was someone I could turn to in a crisis, and she would keep a cool head and know what to do, because you just went, Okay, this lady's crazy. You know, having this woman was, like, panicking. She was, she was having a panic attack, you know, almost ran in front of our car and, and you said, alright, we don't have cell service. Carrie, you're going to stay here with this lady and I'm going to drive to where I can get get help. And you just, like, kind of had very decisive, clear, but very calm, very nurturing kind of way with this lady. And I was like, I don't know what to do, and you're like, Carrie, you're going to do this, and I'm going to do this. And I was like, I really like how decisive and yet compassionate you are, and I think that's part of what bond just not just finding a dead guy, which makes for a great story, and, like, a traumatic experience we shared, but I saw you your leadership in action, and I was like, this is a person I can trust. And so I think sometimes that's true with our animals as well, you know, like but when you go through a difficult situation, a fearful situation, if, if you are with someone who handles that well, you learn from them, and you also learn to trust them.   Michael Hingson ** 29:06 So, you know, we talk about telling stories and so on, and one of the stories that I told a little bit in thunderdog, but didn't really, at the time, internalized it like I should have, and I have since is regarding going down the stairs. We got to about the 50th floor going down, and I mentioned it in thunderdog, and we also talk about it in more detail and live like a guide dog. But suddenly my colleague David Frank, who was in the office with me that day, because we were going to be doing sales seminars. And David came from our corporate office in California, and David's job was to deal with pricing models and all that, and he was going to teach our resellers all about the pricing options and so on, while I was going to do all the major technical stuff, because I was going to be the regular contact for these people. Anyway, we were going down the stairs and we got to about the. 50th floor. And suddenly David said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. And immediately I went, I got to stop that. I can't let him do that. We've been trying to keep panic off of the stairs, and various people at various times, help with that. So I just said in the sharpest voice, I could stop it, David, if Rosella and I can go down these stairs so can you. And that was intentional. What David told me later was that that did bring him out of his funk, and what he decided to do, and asked me if it was okay, and I didn't really care, but yeah, it really was okay. He asked if it would be a problem if I if he just walked a floor below me on the stairs and shouted up to me everything that he saw. And I said, Sure, go ahead. So we start down the stairs. I get to the 49th floor, and all of a sudden I hear, Hey, Mike, I'm on the 48th floor. All clear here, going on down. And he told me that he wanted to do that because he needed to take his mind off of what was bothering him, which was, who knows what and what are we going to get out of here? So then I get to the 48th floor, and he's on the 47th and says, 47th floor. All good couple floors later, I'm on floor 45 and he goes, Hey, this is the 44th floor where I am now. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is not stopping going on down the stairs, and he went all the rest of the way down the stairs shouting up what he saw. Did I need it? No, was it helpful? Sure. It was. Because we got to the 30th floor, and all of a sudden, David said, hey, the firefighters are coming up the stairs. Everybody moved to the side. Let them buy and we had some interactions with them. But the point of telling you the story is that I realized, actually only in the last few years how important and how absolutely useful and necessary what David did was all about that is to say he kept saying, I'm on whatever floor he was on and going on down the stairs, he became absolutely a focal point for anyone on the stairs who could hear him. So anyone within the sound of his voice knew that somewhere on the stairs there was someone who was doing okay, or at least who sounded okay, and that had to keep so many people from panicking going down the stairs. 19th floor. All good here, and I think that's so wonderful that he did that. And he was doing it, I think, and he said to keep his own fears in check, but he was helping so many people go down the stairs and that that kind of thing isn't really talked about so nearly enough, but it helped him deal with his own fear, and it helped so many people as we went down the stairs. It   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 32:53 was just very reassuring, not only, you know, to every like you said to everybody who could hear him, and you know, sometimes we just need to know it's going to be okay. There's somebody you're not alone, you know, well,   Michael Hingson ** 33:04 and the re the reality is that he conveyed that message to so many people, probably 1000s of people, because, you know, we were all on these open stairwells, and so so many people above and below him could hear him. And I think that I love how important?   Susy Flory ** 33:22 Yeah, I love how he was keeping people in the moment. You know, everyone was focusing on the task at hand. And I think that helps keep fear at bay. It   Michael Hingson ** 33:33 does. And you know, the other part about that is we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know that it was a hijacked aircraft that crashed into the towers. We figured that an airplane hit the building because we were smelling burning jet fuel, but we didn't know what the details were. And so I'm sure minds were going in so many different directions as to what was going on. As I tell people, I love to read science fiction, so I was imagining all sorts of things. But I also knew that no matter what I was imagining, we got to deal with going down the stairs and focusing and all that which which we did. And I know people followed me because they kept hearing me telling Roselle What a good girl she was. Good dog. Keep going, what a good dog you are. And they, they, they told me later, look, if you could go down the stairs and just encourage Roselle and all that, we're going to follow you. Which is, which is what they did. And you know, the reality is that we can control fear. Fear doesn't need to overwhelm us. And again, as I've said, it's a it's a very powerful tool. And we talk about ways that you can learn to do that, ways that you can learn to calm and quell fears in your own lives, by introspection, by thinking about what goes on on any given day, and anybody who says that they don't have time at the end of the day or at the very beginning of the next day, but I think especially at the end of the day, to take a few moments. And go. How did it go today? What worked, what didn't? Why didn't? What didn't work? Why did that happen? What do I learn from that I'm a firm believer, not that I'm my own worst critic in everything that I do, although that's what I used to say, I've learned that I'm my own best teacher. Because ultimately, people can provide me with information, but I have to teach it to myself, and I have to take the time to allow myself to learn from what I'm thinking. And I believe that all of us are our own best teachers, and that we need to take into account what we feel and analyze it, and the more of that that we do, the more introspection, and the more self analysis that we do, the the stronger that mind muscle becomes, and the less we're afraid. And that's, of course, a lot about what live like a guide dog is really about.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 35:55 Mike, I'd love to share with your the listeners some of the strategies that, as we talked through, you know, your story, and the way that you have, you know, figured out how to, like you said, become more self aware, some of the strategies that are, you know, offered to people so that they can learn. In the book, we talk about awareness and we talk about preparation, which mentioned that before we talk about flexibility, we talk about perseverance, empathy, trust and teamwork, which, obviously that's a big one, right, even things like listening and rest, which seem more passive, actually help us to do like what you're talking about, live in the moment, right? And of course, Faith is an important part of of not being afraid, and we talk about that a lot, and just of listening to your instincts, listening to your own, you know, your own intuition. Um, so those are some of the like, the strategies in the book. And I think if people will, you know, read the book, they'll, they'll learn how to implement those strategies and teach themselves how to turn their Fear into Courage. And that's one of the reasons I'm excited about this book,   Michael Hingson ** 37:17 and the reason we call the book live like a guide dog is that it's all about all of these lessons that we're talking about are lessons that I learned from observing dogs over the years. I've said a number of times, no offense to them, but I've learned a whole lot more about trust in teamwork and dealing with life from working with now eight guide dogs and my wife's dog, Fantasia, who was Africa's mother, and Fantasia was a breeder for guide dogs also. But I learned so much more from those dogs than I ever learned from all the team experts like Tony Robbins and Ken Blanchard and all that, because it's no offense to them, they teach a lot of good things, but it's personal and internalized when you have to live it, and you live it working with dogs, when the team learns how to to work well together, and I think it's so important to do that. So there's no doubt that in so many ways, this is a book about dogs, but it's also a book about more than that people and the relationship between dogs and people, the human animal bond, and something we haven't talked a lot about, which we can talk about briefly here, is that this book, just like thunder dog, since I am a firm believer in teamwork, was a collaborative effort. Susie and I worked together on thunderdog. We both wrote, we we evaluated each other's writings, and we put together a book that was very successful. And Carrie and I have done the same thing with live like a guide dog. It is a collaborative effort, and I think that's so important, because I think that the whole idea of teamwork brings different perspectives and different ideas that all ended up going into the book, and I think will make it a very successful book.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 39:13 Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike. It's been a really a lot of fun to work on. And like I said, I learned a lot. You know, it's interesting. You talked about learning from the dogs. There were times where your dogs had to learn from you, not to be afraid. Like, I don't know if you want to tell the story, sure, Klondike, when you were training him.   Michael Hingson ** 39:32 Well, let me, let me first of all say, Well, I'll tell the story, and then I have a second Klondike story. So, and by the way, we talk about these in live like a guide dog, and some of it was referenced in thunderdog, but we get more relevant and detailed in live like a guide dog. But when I first met Klondike at Guide Dogs for the Blind, the class supervisor was Terry Barrett, who. Who I hadn't really gotten to know. But because of what happened, we became pretty close afterward. And what happened was when about the last week of the class, we started going into San Francisco to get good city work in and more populated areas and so on. And the first time we went in, everything was fine, but the second time we went in, when it was my turn to get off the bus, I stood up with Klondike, and as the closer I got to the front of the bus, the slower Klondike walked, and he started shaking and shivering and didn't even want to get off the bus. And so everybody else was off, and Terry came on and he said, what's going on? And I said, Well, I'm really concerned about this. And he said, Just be patient with him. Work it through. Dogs do develop beers from time to time, but they also are depending on us to show them the way to to to be calm. So we finally got Klondike off the bus, and as soon as we got off the bus, he began to work pretty well. The next day, the same thing happened, and again, Klondike was very fearful. By the third day, being patient with him and encouraging and supporting him, saw Klondike actually becoming less fearful, and we were able to work through that. You know, dogs do have fears. Roselle became afraid of thunder. And, in fact, the night before September 11, well the morning of September 11, at one or 12th midnight, or 112 30 in the morning, we had a thunderstorm, and Roselle was afraid of thunder. And I took Roselle downstairs, and she was shaking and shivering, but she was under my desk, and we got through it, and then we went upstairs, and we got some more sleep. And then, of course, we went into the World Trade Center, and people have said, well, she was afraid of thunder. Why wasn't she afraid when there was an explosion or whatever happened in the World Trade Center? The answer is, first of all, it wasn't that loud, but second of all, it wasn't thunder, they know. And so Roselle didn't have a problem with all the other stuff. Now, Klondike, let's just point out that Klondike is one of those religious dogs. One day we we were members of the San Marcos United Methodist Church, and the church had invited itinerant Minister Kimball Colburn to come and and do some some teaching. And that night, then the main night, he was there. He did an altar call, and Karen and I decided we'd go up. Karen was in her her wheelchair and and I said, you want to go up? And she said, yeah. So we, we were there. Klondike was there. And I told Klondike, just stay here. We'll be back. Just stay we get up to the front of the room. We're standing in line, and all of a sudden, right in front of us, comes Klondike and sits down. He wanted to be part of the altar call, and Kimball gave him the sacrament, you know, which? Which was great. But he was that kind of a very sensitive dog in so many ways, and so it's fun that he he did participate, and was such a wonderful companion for so many years.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 43:24 You know, Mike, I um, you said something about like when Klondike was afraid to get off the bus, and you didn't get mad at Klondike, you didn't shame him. You were just patient and reassuring and encouraging. And I think that you know whether you have a dog or not, when, when I feel afraid, one of the things I think that I live more like a guide dog now than I used to, is I try to be patient with myself and be okay. Kari, what's going on? Like, what's this fear? What? And instead of going, Oh, why are you so dumb, you should just be you should, you know, just tough it out and be brave and be strong. No, I'm patient with myself, I think, more than I used to be before I worked on this book. And I encourage myself. You can do this. You know, your feelings make sense. It's okay. Just stay in the moment. I kind of pep talk myself, but I'm very patient with myself, and I think that's a hard thing to do. We're all harder on ourselves than we are on other people. We say things to ourselves that we would never say to someone else, like, how many times you go I'm so that was so dumb. You know? You wouldn't say that to somebody else.   44:38 Some people do anyway,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 44:41 and and we don't, because that's not helpful, right? So it's more helpful to be kind to yourself, and I think that's one of the things I learned from this that has helped me deal with when I feel anxious or afraid, to just be patient with myself.   Michael Hingson ** 44:56 Lashing Out is usually something that occurs because. Are afraid, and we've we've grown up learning those kinds of things rather than learning. Wait a minute, there are better ways and and unfortunately, as a society, we don't really teach people how to learn to deal with fear and to make it a positive attribute in our lives and help us stay more focused on whatever it is that we need to stay focused on, and that, in reality, the fear isn't the problem. It is how we deal with it. That's the problem, and we don't learn enough about how to step back and go, Wait a minute. We can do this differently. And the reality is, the more that we take the approach of Wait a minute and really analyze, the quicker the process becomes, yeah, the first or second or third time perhaps you do it, it's going to take you a while and you got to stop and analyze and so on. But that's why I say that the mind is a muscle, and you can develop that muscle and get yourself and your mind to the point where when something happens that's unexpected, you can have a mindset kick in that says, Wait a minute. Let's look at this, and very quickly, make the kind of determinations and decisions that you really want to make and that that other people learn to make, you know, I talk about steel Team Six and other kinds of military things, and all the things that that that they learn to do, and they do learn to do them, it's learned behavior. And the reality is that we all can do that we all can recognize that we can live in the moment, we can function in very productive ways, and that we don't need to allow fear to blind us or overwhelm us. I will not say, Don't be afraid, but you don't need to let it overwhelm you.   Susy Flory ** 46:59 Yeah, Mike, I have a question for you that I don't remember if I've ever asked you this before, but it seems perfect for this concept of live like a guide dog, and that is, I know you were really quite young when you had your first guide dog. They made an exception for you, and I'm wondering what was the very first lesson you learned as a teenager from your very first guide dog.   Michael Hingson ** 47:23 I think the very first thing that I learned, well there, there are a couple. The first thing that comes to mind is responsibility, because I was responsible for that dog, and at 14 years old, that's a pretty awesome kind of a task to be able to perform, and it isn't just feeding the dog, it's supporting the dog. And I had a month at Guide Dogs for the Blind where the trainers really talked a lot about that, and being the youngest kid there, it is something that I didn't necessarily learn instantly, but I did learn well over a few years. But the other thing that I did learn was a lot about trust. The the the trainers always said, Follow your dog. And I think some schools for a while were were very much in the mindset of your dog never makes mistakes, just follow your dog. Well, that doesn't work, and we all, I think, understood that, at least over time, but following your dog and learning to trust your dog and learning to establish that relationship with your dog was important. And what what happened was things like, I get to a street corner, and now, of course, it's even more relevant than it used to be. I get to a street corner, we stop. I'm listening to hear which way the traffic is going, and I will cross the street the way I want to go when I hear the traffic going parallel to where I want to travel, because if it's going across in front of me, it, you know, I have a master's degree in physics. I know about classical mechanics. Two pieces of matter can't occupy the same space at the same time. And classical mechanics, and I don't want the second piece of matter to be a big car that hits me, you know. So I need to make sure that the traffic is going the way I want to go before I cross, but I tell the dog forward, and the dog doesn't go. I have learned instantly, probably there's a reason. Now, it could be that the dog is distracted, although that's rare, because I've learned to trust my dogs. I mean, the dog could see a duck and wants to go visit, but typically, that isn't what happens, especially the more you get to know the dog and you realize there's a reason for the dog not moving. When we were running away from tower two, and we came to a place where there was an opening in the building next to us, and then we wanted. Get in and out of the dust cloud. I didn't know whether Roselle could hear me or see my hand signals, but I kept telling her right, right, right. And I heard an opening, and she obviously knew what I wanted. She turned right, she took one step, and she stopped. She would not move. And it took me a few seconds to realize, wait a minute, she stopped for a reason. It's what we call Intelligent Disobedience. That wasn't the term that we learned when I got squire my first dog. It was all about follow your dog, but Intelligent Disobedience is a very important part of working with a guide dog. The fact of the matter is that I need to trust the dog. When the dog stops and doesn't do what I expect, there's probably a reason. Well, Roselle stopped and wouldn't move. I investigated and discovered that we were at the top of a flight of stairs, and when I said forward, we went down the stairs, or likewise, getting back to the street corner. If I say forward and she doesn't go, or he doesn't go. There's probably a reason, and the reason, most likely today, is quiet cars or hybrid vehicles that are running in electric mode and I can't hear them, and there's one coming down the street and the dog doesn't want to get killed, much less get me killed, unless the dog doesn't like me very well. But I don't want that to be the case. So the fact of the matter is that we we develop that level of trust, and when the dog doesn't move, I'm going to stop and try to analyze and figure out what's going on, and then we go. But that trust was one of the most important things that I had to learn a lot about in ways that I had never learned before. You know, I've been blind my whole life. I trusted my parents and so on, and I I trusted my own skills. I walked to elementary school every day until we went to the fourth grade, and then I took bus to a different school, and I was able to learn to travel around the campus and all that, but still, creating a team was pretty new to me overall, when I got squire. And so learning that trust and learning that that's a very important thing, was something that that I had to do. And again, I think it's also important to recognize you don't trust blindly. And as I said before, dogs don't trust unconditionally. They're looking to develop trust, and dogs want to develop a trusting relationship with us, but it is something that that has to be done. So even today, if the dog stops and doesn't move, I'm not going to yell at the dog. I may be wondering, well, what's the issue here? But I will stop and recognize that most likely, there's a reason. And like I said, there's always that one possibility that it could be that they see a bird and they want to go visit the bird, but guide dogs generally are are chosen because they're not overly distracted. And I want to keep it that way, so it is all about trust. And that's that's something that we all need to learn. You know, I keep hearing people talk about in our political world, well, I trust this guy. He's talking to me. Sorry, that doesn't work. Trust has to be earned, and we have to each step back in whatever we're doing and look at what's going on around us, and when somebody says something to us, I'm generally going to take the time to analyze it and see if that's really true or not, and and the more that I find that I can relate to what someone says, the more I'm really apt to trust them. But I'm not going to trust them arbitrarily or, as I would say, blindly. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, that's great   Susy Flory ** 54:02 trust, but verify.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 54:04 Yeah, it's important Exactly, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 54:08 But you know it's, it is? It is so wonderful when that kind of a relationship does occur, working with a guide dog, when the teaming relationship is there, working with people, when the teaming relationship is there, is so important and it's it's such an awesome experience to have.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 54:34 I think if you have trusting relationships, whether with an animal or another person, you will be generally less afraid because you feel a little safer in the world, not that you trust everyone, and not that you're never afraid, but if you have safe people or animals, or you know connections with others, that builds sort of a a. Reservoir within you of of goodwill that you are not afraid of everything you know. I think that's why you know people or animals who have been who have suffered abuse, are less are more fearful, right? They're less likely to trust because their trust has been betrayed in the past.   Michael Hingson ** 55:21 We had one of those in 2003 we indicated, when I was at guide dogs that we would care for geriatric dogs. And in 2003 I was called. I was in my office at guide dogs, and the veterinarian department called and said, we have a senior dog. She's 12, and we were wondering if you could take her. She's fearful, she's deaf, she's got arthritis. She's got a big lump on her back, which we think is an infected cyst that we can take care of. But she had never been a guide dog. She was career changed before becoming a guide dog, and they just said it was temperament. We figured it probably later we realized it was very strong willed. It wasn't a bad thing, and that today, or in 2003 they knew more about how to deal with that, and she would have made a great guide dog. But anyway, I called Karen and told her about this dog. And so we met Panama, who was a 12 year old golden retriever. She was very fearful. They thought she was deaf because they dropped a big, large Webster's Dictionary right by her in Panama. Didn't even respond. We took her home, and over a couple of months, we discovered that she wasn't really totally deaf. She was she was old and she was fearful. We think that the people who had her last had just locked her in a garage, and they maybe abused her, I don't know, but we just supported her. She was afraid to go on walks with Karen in the wheelchair, but eventually she decided that that was okay, and so Karen and she would walk. And you know, of course, all of us supported her. She was she had enough arthritis. She really couldn't play roughly with the other dogs, but she liked to be around them. One day, we were going up to Oregon for a guide dog event from where we were in Northern California, and I was putting luggage in our car, so I opened the door going from our house into the garage, and all of a sudden, like a shot, this dog ran past me out into the garage, and the van was open. She ran up into the van and went into the main part of the car, the vehicle. We knew when that happened, that Panama had gone somewhere, she had crossed a line and developed enough of a trust that she was willing to go out and get in the car and be more a part of the family. But she was very fearful, and there were still a lot of other issues with her, but the more we worked with her, the more she realized that she could trust us and we had her. For before that, she had been afraid of the car, she had been afraid of the car, she had been afraid of people were afraid. She was afraid of everything. She was afraid of everything. And it was pretty amazing when suddenly she took that leap, and it got better from then on, but she knew that we were with her and that we would support her.   58:35 Yeah, that's a great story.   Michael Hingson ** 58:36 Well, Susie, any any other thoughts or questions that you might have you you've been quiet lately.   Susy Flory ** 58:45 What is your newest lesson? I that makes me curious too, because you've had Guide Dogs for a while now. You had a number of them. Each one's different. Each relationship is different. So with LMO, what might be your latest lesson that you're learning? Because we're all lifelong learners, right?   Michael Hingson ** 59:05 I have been really impressed with some of the new training techniques that I've seen at Guide Dogs for the Blind. I mentioned clickers, which is sort of like a, you know, those metal crickets, you squeeze a minute ago, something like that. But the idea is that when I got Roselle, they had started really investigating new and better training techniques. And what I have found is that they actually have developed techniques using technologies and just different processes that they've been able to shorten the length of time it takes to learn to use, or it takes shorter times for the guide dog to learn to be a guide dog. When I went up to Oregon to get Panama. On excuse me to get Alamo, which was the first guide dog I've gotten in Oregon. So we went up in 2018 to get Alamo, and we graduated on my birthday, so he's a great birthday present. But anyway, when I was up there the first day we started walking, the trainer was right behind me, and I knew that she was carrying a clicker. We cross the street, and actually we got to the curb and and stopped, and she immediately clicked the clicker. What a clicker is is a device that's a demarcation. And when the dog does what you want, if you immediately click and then you follow it with food rewards, the click really tells the dog, good job. You don't use it in a negative way, and that's one of the positive ways to really work to develop good, strong relationships with dogs. Well, anyway, we crossed the street, and then we walked a little bit further, and suddenly we came to the opening to an alley, and the trainer said, Let's try and experiment, because Klondike or rose Alamo was going to just go across the alley, she said, the trainer did stop and back up. And when you get to the end of the alley, stop and tell the dog halt. I did. The trainer clicked. I gave Alamo a food reward. We went back a little bit and did that two or three times, and suddenly Alamo regularly would stop at the opening to that alley, which was a wise thing to do, because cars could come out. I don't know, but I bet today, six years later, if I were to go up to warring and we went down that same sidewalk and we got to that alley, Alamo would stop because the clicker reinforced the behavior in a very positive way, so much that he'll remember it. He's a very bright dog, and I'm absolutely confident that he would so some of the new training techniques and the brightness of the dogs to be able to take advantage of those things, I think, is so important. And I think one of the things that I found most intriguing going forward.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:02:06 I think you know that really points to positive reinforcement again. You know, with ourselves, with others. You know, if we're you know, you know, if we say we have a friend who is always fearful, and we if we just say, Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, that doesn't really help, but if we notice them doing the right thing to point it out, I think that improves our relationship, and it can help that person overcome fear. Yeah, you know, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:32 And we've got to get away from so much negativity and really find more positive ways for us to reinforce ourselves and also to get that same behavior from other people. I think it is so important. Yeah, well, we've been doing this for a while. I guess I would ask if there are any kind of last thoughts that either of you have. We're, of course, excited that little like a guide dog came out today, and that hopefully everyone will now even be more intrigued and go buy it. We'd love it to be another best selling book. So we hope that you'll really join us in that journey. And so if anyone, if either of you have any other final comments or whatever, let's go ahead and do them. Just   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:03:20 you know what? I hope that people will get this book and tell others about it, you know, write a review, tell a friend. You know. I'm sure we all have people in our life who love dogs and people who wrestle with fear, and either those type people would love to get a copy of this book. I   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:41 think between those two classes of people that takes in everyone and I'm, I'm everyone   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:03:46 in the world, everyone they either love dogs or they're afraid,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:51 or both, or both, and dogs can help teach us so many things.   Susy Flory ** 1:03:57 Dogs are bridge builders. You know, everyone, almost everyone, can look at a dog and, you know, kind of feel that connection to the dog. Dogs feel the connection to people. And dogs don't care what political party we are or what we think about the news or which way the economy's going. I love how they live in the moment. They look for opportunities to connect, to play, to rest and just the rhythms of life of a dog. I think, you know, there's something that we can learn there about what's important and what is not as important. And the people in our lives and those we connect to are important. The labels, not so much.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:04:45 Yeah, love that. That's good word, Susy.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:48 And as long as at the beginning and end of the day we get fed, we're happy. That's what Alamo said. We   Susy Flory ** 1:04:55 get our treats, then we gotta get our toys. Yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:03 That is what matters. Well, I want to thank you both for being here and if, if either or both of you want to come on again. We we should do it, but I really want to thank you for taking the time to be here with us today. I would love to hear from all of you out there. Love to hear your thoughts about what you've heard today, what you learned. We would certainly appreciate it wherever you're listening or watching. If you'll give us a five star rating, we value those ratings very highly. If you'd like to reach out to me, it's easy. You can email me at Michael h i@accessibe.com that's M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, E.com, or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S O N.com/podcast, and for you, Kari and Susy, both of you, how do people maybe reach out to you.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:06:02 I have a website, Carrie Wyatt, kent.com it's K E R, I, W, Y, A, T, T, K E N T. I'm also easy to find just by Googling and on on social media. My My full name is my handle on everything. So I'd love to connect on Instagram or Facebook. Um, it's my where I'm mostly at, or LinkedIn. Um, so yeah,   Susy Flory ** 1:06:30 Susie, Yeah, same as Kari. You can find me kind of in those different places. And if you have a cute dog video or squirrel video, be sure and send it my way. And   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:40 so what's your website? And   Susy Flory ** 1:06:43 it's my name? Yeah, Susy flory.com my name is

In this episode of The Private Practice Elevation Podcast, Daniel Fava chats with David Frank, founder of Turning Point Financial Planning, about the intricate relationship between money and psychology.    Both professionals share their journeys, showing how their careers transitioned towards serving the mental health community.   David provides insights into his role in assisting therapists with their financial planning, covering both personal finance and business structures.   Throughout the episode, David Frank delves into the psychology of money and common mindsets that arise for business owners, particularly therapists.    He explains how deep-seated beliefs and patterns from childhood influence financial behaviors and decisions. David also discusses the crucial role of conversation and speaking with trusted individuals in overcoming financial shame and anxiety. The importance of community, having professionals like financial planners on your team, and maintaining a stance of curiosity and non-judgment about financial matters are emphasized.    The episode wraps up with actionable advice for therapists and business owners on managing their financial lives more effectively and with greater insight.   Key Takeaways: Influence of Childhood on Money Mindset: Childhood experiences significantly shape financial behaviors and attitudes. Awareness and exploration of these can help in overcoming financial blocks. The Role of Community and Conversation: Sharing financial concerns with trusted individuals or professionals can alleviate shame and provide new perspectives, reducing anxiety. Curiosity and Non-Judgment: Adopting a curious, non-judgmental approach to financial issues can foster better understanding and more effective decision-making. Investing and Patience: Success in investing often requires patience and the ability to endure market fluctuations without reactive decision-making. Financial Planning for Therapists: Tailored financial planning services can bridge the gap between personal and professional finances, providing clarity and reducing stress for therapists.   Links mentioned in this episode: Turning Point Financial Life Planning  

How can district and state leaders identify signs of school distress long before they are designated as in need of improvement by state accountability systems? In 2020, WestEd partnered with the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC) to develop and conduct a portfolio of  research (listed below) that identified signs of early distress in schools, or "indicators of distress," and described an approach to support school improvement efforts. When states and education decision-makers wanted to take the work further into implementation, what emerged is WestEd's Indicators of Distress, an evidence-based early detection system that can help charter and traditional schools meet and surpass accountability standards while fostering positive learning experiences for students. In this episode of the Leading Voices podcast, host Danny Torres talks with Aimee Evan, Senior Research Associate and School Improvement Specialist with the School Choice team at WestEd and co-author of the NCSRC reports, and two state education agency leaders, John Carwell Jr., Education Associate at the Delaware Department of Education, and David Frank, Chief of Staff and Assistant Commissioner, Education Policy, at the New York State Education Department. They discuss the Indicators of Distress approach and how the Delaware Department of Education and the New York State Education Department worked with WestEd to identify needed systemic improvements and implement processes and procedures that helped lead to sustained success. Their conversation covers the following topics: Implementing the Indicators of Distress approach in Delaware and New York Using data to inform decision-making Building a reliable model for school improvement Resources Mentioned in this Episode Indicators of Distress (Webpage) Indicators of Distress: A Proactive Approach to Identifying and Supporting Schools in Need of Improvement (Blog) Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools: Part 1 – The Role and Perspective of Charter School Authorizers (PDF) Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools, Part 2: The Roles and Perspectives of Charter School Leaders and Board Members (PDF) Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools: Tools to Support Authorizer Data Collection (PDF)

It's hard to know how to approach a topic that is simultaneously so personal and so full of theological implications. We, David Frank and TJ Espinoza, open up about our developing thoughts on trans experiences as it relates to the complexities of gender as both a social construct and part of biblical theology. In light of this, how might Christians consider ideas around third genders? How should they address violence against trans individuals? Are chosen pronouns an opportunity to manifest neighborliness or courage? Listen in as we try to lay some foundations, as we begin to wade into these sensitive challenges.__Timestamps(00:38) Today's snapshot: a preliminary-thoughts episode(06:43) Defining Transgender(08:00) Definitions and cultural uses of sex vs. gender(21:41) Acknowledging intersex(24:06) No violence is ever Christian(25:49) Pronouns, but we didn't get into it(26:43) Sex isn't a social construction, but gender is(32:43) "Third gender" concepts in different cultures(50:20) Questions we still have for trans people__If you like this podcast, please consider…→ Sharing feedback or questions! communionandshalom@gmail.com→ Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom→ Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom—CreditsCreators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ EspinozaAudio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com)Podcast Manager: Elena This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communionshalom.substack.com

OTP yea you know me Make methadone a part of your practice. Learn how the methadone system in the US works and how you can play an active role in improving care for people with opioid use disorder treated with methadone. We're joined by Dr. Ruth Potee @DrRuthPotee (website) and Dr. David Frank @highway_dave  Claim CME for this episode at curbsiders.vcuhealth.org! By listening to this episode and  completing CME, this can be used to count towards the new DEA 8-hr requirement on substance use disorders education. Episodes | Subscribe | Spotify | iTunes | CurbsidersAddictionMed@gmail.com | Free CME! Show Segments Intro, disclaimer, guest bio 5:00 Guest one-liner 10:25 Case from Kashlak; Definitions 11:19 Methadone pharmacology and evidence 17:08 What an OTP feels like 20:25 OTP intake 24:45 Talking through methadone with a patient 28:15 Personal impact of methadone 30:20 Requirements at an OTP 33:43 What your patient needs to access an OTP 37:25 The line 39:06 Dosing/Take homes 44:48 Loss of take homes 48:39 How to interact with an OTP as a PCP 52:50 Methadone at STRs 57:03 How to clinicians use their voice to improve things 1:00:45 Take home points 1:03:00 Plugs 1:04:24 Outro Credits Producer, Writer, Show Notes, Infographic, Cover Art: Shawn Cohen MD  Hosts: Carolyn Chan, MD. MHS and Shawn Cohen MD Reviewer: Payel Jhoom Roy MD, MSc Showrunner: Carolyn Chan, MD, MHS Technical Production: PodPaste Guest:  Ruth Potee MD, David Frank PhD

OTP yea you know me Make methadone a part of your practice. Learn how the methadone system in the US works and how you can play an active role in improving care for people with opioid use disorder treated with methadone. We're joined by Dr. Ruth Potee @DrRuthPotee (website) and Dr. David Frank @highway_dave  Claim free CME for this episode at curbsiders.vcuhealth.org! By listening to this episode and  completing CME, this can be used to count towards the new DEA 8-hr requirement on substance use disorders education. Episodes | Subscribe | Spotify | iTunes | CurbsidersAddictionMed@gmail.com | Free CME! Show Segments Intro, disclaimer, guest bio 5:00 Guest one-liner 10:25 Case from Kashlak; Definitions 11:19 Methadone pharmacology and evidence 17:08 What an OTP feels like 20:25 OTP intake 24:45 Talking through methadone with a patient 28:15 Personal impact of methadone 30:20 Requirements at an OTP 33:43 What your patient needs to access an OTP 37:25 The line 39:06 Dosing/Take homes 44:48 Loss of take homes 48:39 How to interact with an OTP as a PCP 52:50 Methadone at STRs 57:03 How to clinicians use their voice to improve things 1:00:45 Take home points 1:03:00 Plugs 1:04:24 Outro Credits Producer, Writer, Show Notes, Infographic, Cover Art: Shawn Cohen MD  Hosts: Carolyn Chan, MD. MHS and Shawn Cohen MD Reviewer: Payel Jhoom Roy MD, MSc Showrunner: Carolyn Chan, MD, MHS Technical Production: PodPaste Guest:  Ruth Potee MD, David Frank PhD

Coming in hot, folks… David Frank and TJ Espinoza reflect on sex positivity and how they see parts of the Christian Bible interacting with sexual desire, goodness, transcendence, and meaning. There's nothing simple about the relationships between sex, marriage, having kids, pleasure, and our spiritual callings. But in those tensions, we also see goodness and fruitfulness. We hope that this discussion prompts more thinking for you all on what a comprehensive Christian sexual ethic can look like.This episode includes content suitable for adult audiences; listener discretion is advised.Note: This episode uses the terms “Side A” and “Side B” as shorthand quite a bit. If you're new to the conversation, you might find it helpful to check out Communion & Shalom episode #3, where we talk through the four “sides”: ⁠#3 - A-B-Y-X | 4 Sides on SSA/Gay Sexuality⁠.__________Timestamps(03:23) What Sex Positive Usually Means(10:48) Evangelical Churches Are Just As Pro-Sex(16:55) Genesis, Song of Songs, Leviticus, Matthew, Revelation(17:51) Sexual Difference in the Garden (Genesis)(19:02) Consent Is Biblical (1st Corinthians)(20:13) Erotic Poetry Isn't Smut (Song of Songs)(26:04) Sex Is...Transcendent?...But NOT Worship (Leviticus)(45:33) Jesus: Yeah, but... there's no marriage in heaven (Matthew)(51:32) The (Sexless?) Bride of Christ (Revelation)(53:31) Let's Hear It for... Sex Mediocrity!__________Links and ReferencesWe referenced these sections of the Bible in this episode:* Genesis 2-3* Songs of Songs/Solomon (whole book)* Leviticus 15:18* Matthew 22:30* Revelation 19* James 1:17* Isaiah 56:3-5__________If you like this podcast, please consider…→Sharing feedback or questions! communionandshalom@gmail.com→Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom→Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom—CreditsCreators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ EspinozaAudio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com)Podcast Manager: Elena This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communionshalom.substack.com

Bob Wright is an Illinois guy through and through. He grew up just outside of Chicago. Interestingly enough, he decided much of Psychology was balderdash until he spent time in France. He will tell you this fascinating story.   After returning to the states, he took up the subject for some of his Master's Degree work and then beyond. Although he didn't say it in so many words, once he began truly delving into Psychology, he was quite hooked and made aspects of it his career.   He has been coaching for more than 40 years. He also understands sales and led his first sales course in 1981 for a part of Prudential Insurance where he vastly improved the performance of the group.   Bob and I have quite the conversation as you will see. He even analyzes me a bit. We agreed that we will have a second episode later, but first, I will have the opportunity to talk with his wife, Judith, who is deeply involved with Bob's work at all levels. Stay tuned.   About the Guest:   Bob Wright is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and educator. He's a cutting-edge thinker, called upon by top leaders across the country. He coaches Fortune-level CEOS from coast to coast, as well as entrepreneurs. Part of what Bob loves is hitting every level, people that want to make a difference, people who are movers and shakers in the world, that's where his sweet spot is. In fact, he was called one of the top executive coaches by Crain's Chicago business. He led his first sales course in 1981 for Prudential Insurance, for a division of the organization that was ranked 200th out of 2000 nationally—within a month, they shot up to #16.   He is also a dynamic entrepreneur who has founded several successful businesses His first venture, Human Effectiveness, was ranked tops in the country by the Mercer, as well as Arthur Andersen. He sold that business in 1994 to focus on consciousness, maximizing human performance, and the fulfillment of human potential.   He has sold to Fortune level companies from coast to coast, has managed his own sales force, and was one of the first people in the country to develop a Neurolinguistic Programming Training for sales professionals. Likewise, he is the developer of The Wright Model of Human Growth and Development that we will work with this evening. This is a distinct opportunity to learn some concepts from a master who actually developed this and has helped numerous worked with it over time.   Highly respected by major business figures – he has coached and trained leaders who have risen to national prominence in the areas of finance, technology, retirement, economics, compensation, governance, and the list goes on and on. Bob has trained and supported hundreds of sale professionals to higher levels of performance and satisfaction.  It is common for people he supports to triple and even quintuple income while learning to have greater satisfaction and fulfillment in all areas of their lives. His cutting edge approach to selling is empowered by his revolutionary integrative model of human growth and development. Sales people he coaches find themselves enjoying life more, and succeed even in down markets. The people that he has coached and trained over these years are movers and shakers making a major difference in the world today.   Ways to connect with Bob: drbobwright@judithandbob.com https://drbobwright.com/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi, welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here I am your host, Mike hingson. And today we get to talk with Dr. Bob Wright. Bob is by any standard and entrepreneur and I would say very much an unstoppable one. He has started and, and sold many businesses in his life. He actually conducted his first sales course with a division of Prudential insurance in 1981. Now we're starting to pin down his age. And he he made that division go and sales from number 200 In a few weeks to number 16. I liked that. Having been in sales, a lot of my adult life. He loves to coach CEOs and entrepreneurs. And we'll find out what else So Bob, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:13 Thank you so much, Michael, I'm looking forward to talking with you.   Michael Hingson ** 02:18 Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And as I said, we got to have fun doing it. So I think we'll we'll do that. Tell us a bit about tell us a little bit about the early Bob, you know, growing up and all that sort of stuff that sort of shaped where you went and where you have gone in life?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:37 Well, yeah, I was the almost the ultimate good boy. Everything My mom wanted me to be going through high school and then college begin throwing some monkey wrenches in the story. And it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when I went to Germany. And I discovered that the narrow world of wooddale, Illinois was far from all that was the world and that the values I learned there were the only values were not the only values in the world. And it was like this. Consciousness shock.   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 What a concept, right? Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:19 Now where's wooddale? West of O'Hare. Back in the days when Midway was the busiest airport in the world. Yeah, we're about 15 miles west of O'Hare.   Michael Hingson ** 03:30 I have relatives in Genoa and DeKalb. So, and I was born in Chicago, so I'm a little bit familiar with the area, but I don't think I've been to wooddale   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:41 Oh, you've probably been through it if you know, Park Road. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 I might have very well been through it. Well, I live for my first five years on the south side of Chicago 5017 Union, and it's changed a lot since we moved in 1955. So that's okay, though. Things do need to change. It makes it makes for an interesting world otherwise, so where did you go to college?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 04:06 Oh, well, I started at Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ah, I went to school in Germany. Left Lawrence came back to the quarter at the College of DuPage. west of Chicago, graduated with my bachelor's from the University of Illinois, Chicago in sociology, because that was the subject that gave me the most credits and everything else I had done in my life. And so then I went to school, in in, in France after that, and that blew my mind even further. I mean, just horrendously drew mind blew my mind even further. Because I was always looking for what I thought of as ultimate truth. And the French experience just was the mind blowing, launch in some ways of my, my my life   Michael Hingson ** 05:04 a lot different than even Germany, right? Well, it was different   Dr. Bob Wright ** 05:08 than Germany and I had a database. The irony is that I'm in something that people think of as psychology, positive psychology, performance psychology, I think of it as my research in my life work as optimizing adult development. And going into high school, there was this really, you know, good counselor, we thought that my friends went to see. And I was already kind of against counselors because the the social worker and the grade school my mom's friend, and she would be sitting in our kitchen crying in our coffee about boyfriends every Saturday morning. And so I was going already these people are pretty darn weird. But my friends start seeing this woman, and and she starts telling these best, brightest kids in high school that they're latent ly suicidal. And they go, Whoa, this is really sick. Oh, stuff. And so then I was rapidly against psychology. Now, the rest of that story that is public domain, is there a husband was this guidance counselor down the road, Irving Park Road, another 20 some odd miles at Lake Park High School, they were a murder suicide. He boy, so that's nailed down my assumption. This is all inland as sickos know, I'm in school in France, and I'm going to study phenomenology. But my in six months, my French wasn't good enough to understand philosophy classes. So I ended up taking psychology classes, I could understand them. They were an English, that got me into group dynamics, which led to the rest of the story that I have discovered, there are well Valid Elements of psychology. And it is really the people not the discipline. That was the problem back then. So   Michael Hingson ** 07:07 they weren't all just sickos after all? I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:11 don't think so. Either that or you joined the ranks? No, no, no, not at all. But the profession in search of validity for a long time, right, so profoundly insecure? Well, it's   Michael Hingson ** 07:23 a it's a tough subject, because a lot of it is is so I'm not quite sure how to describe it. It's so nebulous, it's so much that you can't really just pin it down and define it. You're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with people's attitudes, and so on. And that's really pretty nebulous, it's really kind of hard to just define it in so many words. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:51 if we don't go to human experience, then we'd have nothing. But you've got to figure back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, the humanistic psychology movement was transforming businesses, or Life magazine had an issue that said, sooner or later, everybody's going to be an encounter group at their church or somewhere else. And so what what happened was, they still never tied that up to performance. And so you fast forward, and you get a guy named Goldman who bring in Oh, psychology, so wanted to be as science. And he starts out with positive psychology. He denies everything before, which is just absolutely not true. He and I are similar ages, and we grew up breathing those things. But positive psychology now has a deep research base that is becoming less and less nebulous, whether it's the emotional part with Frederick SENS Research, or his his part with other positive psychology research. So it's kind of cool, what's happening. And it just, unfortunately, doesn't include what happened before because it was so thoroughly attacked.   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 Well, and it's, it's an evolutionary process, right. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Which is, which is exactly the issue. And that's, that's true of a lot of sciences. I mean, we can go back and look at physics and look at any any of the sciences and they've evolved over the years for a long time, classical mechanics, was it everything fit Newtonian law, but then we discovered that well, it's not quite that way, especially when you get closer to the speed of light. A lot of things change, but also, attitudes and philosophies of of sciences have have changed. So what you're saying certainly is no surprise, psychology as a science, social science or whatever, is still a pretty new science by comparison. So you're   Dr. Bob Wright ** 09:47 obviously a science guy more than I knew. And so, did you read Boones structures of Scientific Revolutions a long time ago. So that is where the term is. Trent was a sap perspective transformation, a new paradigm. That's yeah, he coined the term paradigm as we use it today. And he's in particular talking about the disconnect between Newtonian physics and einsteinium physics. And that gets us down to all the different paradigms, because a paradigm is a shift in knowledge. And the paradigm that psychology is wrestling with, is the shift from pathology and problems to potential and realizing making real our potential. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 And again, still, that is a harder thing to quantify them what you can do with a lot of physics, we also know that Einsteinian physics doesn't go far enough, but it's what we know, or what we have known. And again, we're evolving, but in the case of what you're talking about, it's a lot harder to pin down and put an exact number two, which is what also makes it a little bit more of a challenge. And we need to learn better how to define that, and communicate it as we move forward.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 11:03 Well, you know, that's the bind of pure research, but I've got a slightly different perspective on this. So what we measure our success against is the total quality of somebody's life, their relationships, their work, their personal concept, and their spiritual and their service to our world. And so in our work, now, our foundation is closing down in December, sadly, because we didn't survive COVID. But we had more than 90% of our students felt that they were living with a higher sense of purpose and spiritual integration. They tended to make more money by 30% or more in the first year of working with us. And and the divorce rate in our advanced couples was under 4%. And in the entire school, was under 9%. The last time we took a survey on that. So when if you've got the elements that typical markers of a quality of life, looking there, and they their self esteem was higher, people gave them comments that they looked better, and even commented to a lot of them that they look younger. So if you take those variables, we're now starting to find something for which everyone is reaching, whether it's better relationship, more money, more career fulfillment, or more contribution to the world, we help you be more you. And our core assumption is, then you will automatically grow in all those areas, the mistake so many disciplines make is they forget that the core element of that entire formula is the individual. And if we can help the individual optimize their self them themselves, then they are going to automatically begin shifting how they operate in those areas and get stronger and stronger in directions that are more satisfying, fulfilling, fulfilling and contributory to our world. By   Michael Hingson ** 12:52 definition. Yeah.   12:54 Isn't that cool?   Michael Hingson ** 12:55 Which makes a lot of sense. Well, some for you. You went on and got a doctorate and so on. But when you when you started coaching, I guess really the question is what got you into the whole environment of applied integrative psychology and coaching? What what really got you there? Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 13:16 so, remember, we have a totally anti psychology, right? I have a taste of what we called existential psychology and group dynamics in France. So when I came back from France, I looked for the strongest program to get more training. And it was training in, in all the existential application of Gestalt transactional analysis. And the various body works and things of the time. And I studied those, I became a trainer in those. And it was wonderful to watch people learn and grow. But you still couldn't make a lot of money that way. So I went back to school and got an MSW and I, my goal was to be a therapist, therapist, and my partner Bob Kaufman was my supervisor and my MSW. And we built a business called human effectiveness. And by the mid 80s, we were doing 300 services a week, a third of whom were psychology types. And, and so that was my retirement goal. And in addition to that, we were leading in a lot of ways in what was called employee assistance and manage psychiatric care. And we were doing consulting and training, which is where you heard the story about Prudential. And so that was kind of the way to make money doing it and get licensed because I knew I was good at helping people and I just wanted the easiest and quickest license to get and that was an MSW   Michael Hingson ** 14:49 said then you got that and what did you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 14:51 So human effectiveness was our was our business from the 1979 To 1994.   Michael Hingson ** 15:02 And that was a business you started human effectiveness. Yeah. And   Dr. Bob Wright ** 15:05 so we had a very unique model of therapy using individual and group off of what Bob postle called contemporary Adlerian. Therapy. And we developed that more and more and more. And we started getting higher and higher functioning clients. And our clients were moving way beyond the therapy ideal. Their lives were taking off in all the areas we've discussed. And we started that we're doing well, in 82, we hired a PhD, you have to be dissertation approved, PhD from Yale, they had him start doing consumer research, found out that people loved what they were getting one time, near the mid 80s, I had a two year waiting list. And so when we asked our clients what was going on, and they said, We love it, but you're not telling us everything they wanted to know. And my first master's, which was in communications, was helping people in a psychiatric hospital, oriented to that psychiatric hospital. And so, what what, I've always been a consumer guy, and so we started putting together seminars to help our clients understand what was going on. So that changed our model, from individual group to seminars to training them, we did more and more research and they kept telling us more and more of what they wanted. So the model eventually, included Alfred Adler, existential developmental Albert Adler's areas of life, existential principles, and developmental levels, all in an axis of consciousness, helping people grow their consciousness, awareness and responsibility in life. And so those seminars were training people, many of whom could analyze their own life situation and strategize better than licensed psychologist. So we begin, we begin going, why why aren't people getting credit for this. So that's why we started graduate school on the road. And I left the therapy metaphor in 91. We started working towards developing our model in our seminars to be more and more effective with Judith in 9495, which led to the right foundation for the realization of human potential, and the right graduate university for the realization of human potential, offering master's and doctoral degrees in transformational leadership and coaching. We even got an MBA credited. Now that is, now that the foundation is closing down at Maharishi University in Iowa. So the program goes on. But the foundation is no longer running   Michael Hingson ** 17:40 it. And Judith is   Dr. Bob Wright ** 17:43 Judith and I are stepping into what we think is our ultimate mission is couples, couples, and helping people come become more conscious, responsible, satisfied in service filled couples. And so we're kicking that off in January.   Michael Hingson ** 17:58 And how long have you guys been together?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:02 We got married in 81. So it's 42 years or two years? Yeah. Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:08 Well, you have beat Karen and me by a year. But as I think I told you, she passed away last year. So we were married for two years and loved it and lots of memories. But I can appreciate the fact that you guys have made it work. And you've also worked together, which is as good as it gets. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:28 so so the last two books we've written together, and to understand so the last book is called battling to Bliss. The couple's Guide to 15 Common fights, what they really mean how they can bring you closer. So our previous book called transformed. We had one paragraph as we were driving back from Texas to Illinois, that we fought over for probably an hour. And Judith has this wonderful mind. And I just, I'm the one that pushes things to get done. So I said that that sentence is good enough. She says, No, that sentence doesn't work with this. I'm going to come on down it. So she wins that sentence. And she wins. She ended up winning all four sentences. But I ended up winning and moving on. So movement is more my specialty and accuracy and depth is well we both do depth is Judith. So battling to Bliss is really about people people think fights are a problem. They don't understand fights are a symptom that you're dealing in, that you're working on becoming a better stronger couple together.   Michael Hingson ** 19:36 Yeah, and so there's nothing wrong with disagreeing as long as you eventually work together and recognize what you're doing and need to do. So. You're both one which is what it's really all about.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 19:50 Amen. You got it. So you develop   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 this thing you call the right model of human growth and development. And that's I guess what you're basically alluding to in the early 1990s? Well, I actually   Dr. Bob Wright ** 20:05 had Scott started with that research in 1982. And it developed. So the first thing we did was help people vision. Now, the work from Dr. Boyd says that Case Western is that vision is way more important than goals. So we'd have people write a vision in seven areas of life and measure their progress against that every four months. And they go, Wow, man, we're growing twice as fast. But you're still not telling us everything. We said? Well, the truth of the matter is, we think of you developmentally and we're seeking to help you develop in ways that you didn't get developed are all like plants that never got perfect nourishment. And we're helping you fill in those things. And so that led to a developmental axis of consciousness for them. And then we did another round of research. And they said, we're still not telling you said anything. We said, Well, the truth of the matter is, we're existentialists. And we, we just think if you're fully present in here, now you'll learn you'll grow, and you'll become the best you you can become. And so that brought in an existential aspect about the here and now, people engaging. And it's all driven by what we call the assignment way of living, which was started by Bob postal, who was part of the Alfred Adler Institute in Chicago back in the 1970s.   Michael Hingson ** 21:24 Okay, so but you developed it, and is that what you use in the the coaching that you did? And that you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 21:33 That? Absolutely. I'm working with. I'm working with an attorney who's shifting professions now, from law to coaching. And so what I do periodically is help her understand when she has a win. How did that win, take her on a step forward in her development, and then I help her understand how that win actually can be leveraged if she will have the discipline to keep doing it. Most. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. And most of the world is a little bit over in love with it. Because thinking oh, yeah, we can automatically change No, it takes 1000s of repetitions. So help her understand a vision of what it's going to mean to consistently redo that way of doing things. She challenges unconscious limiting beliefs, because our program was pretty much done by age seven, we are living out a self fulfilling prophecy off of our early programming. If we don't do things to transform, we can learn and grow. But transforming is the challenge.   Michael Hingson ** 22:39 Yeah, so what's the difference between growth and transforming?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 22:45 We're working on that for the founder of an incredible Japanese coaching group called coach a and his name is Ito son. And, and so learning is knowing something I didn't know before. Growing is doing something I've never done before. But in Judas research, the people who are in touch with their deeper yearning, engage more, and they learn more, it reveals to them regulating their limiting beliefs and their skill deficits. And it also causes them to share with other people that causes them to begin challenging their limiting beliefs. And so learning and growing can be yearning, it can be learned, knowing things and doing things who would have never done we call that liberating. When you're doing things you never would have done. Transforming requires that you pray that you that you strategically do new things in the direction that will consistently challenge some of your unconscious limiting patterns. If you think about what we have our neural pathways imagine we have a neural highway. And everything we do runs along that neural highway. But we want to cut a take a shorter road from Highway A to highway B. So we go into the jungle. Well, we get into the jungle halfway and we look back, we can't even see where we've gone. To get to highway B, we may get to highway B, but we will find out how to get back to Highway A. So we're still going to be doing the same thing. So we the first level of of as we think about it of transformation, neuro transformation is going back and forth along that path enough that we can see where we've been and we can repeat it. Then we have to widen that path. And we have to turn it into a well trodden path. And eventually if it becomes a superhighway, we have transformed and we are doing things that we never could have done before.   Michael Hingson ** 24:49 How do you get people to really overcome their limiting beliefs what what is it that you do as a coach that brings people maybe To that aha moment, and maybe it isn't quite so dramatic, maybe it isn't that at all, but it's more subtle, but how do you get people to the point where they recognize, oh, maybe it's not really quite what we thought, because not everybody's gonna go to France. Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 25:16 so first of all, none of us has ever done. So I'm still dealing with my own limiting beliefs, and, and building new neural pathways the same way. But there's a way we start is what we call an Adlerian Lifestyle Analysis, Alfred Adler helped people understand there are perceptions, the unconscious beliefs that guide us, we have empowering our perceptions, limiting beliefs, empowering beliefs, that we we have limiting beliefs is our language for the limiting perceptions in Adlerian terms. And so when we understand that most of those were installed, by the time we were seven, we can do a lifetime and Adlerian lifestyle analysis that will help you understand your early programming in a way that can empower your growth the rest of your life or inform your growth the rest of your life and your learning and ultimate transformation.   Michael Hingson ** 26:15 Okay, and how do people perceive that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 26:21 Well, the first time I experienced it was in front of a room of maybe 50 therapists. And it was a demonstration by Bob postal, the Adlerian, I mentioned. And I went up front. And in about 1510 minutes, I'm bawling my eyes out, as he's basically telling me my life story in ways that were profoundly true that I had never imagined. And most, most people except the most defensive, are blown away, that it can be that easily accessed.   Michael Hingson ** 26:54 So, alright, so he, he demonstrated that he knew you better than you thought he knew you and perhaps better than you knew yourself, then what?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 27:05 Well, first of all, he called it like mind reading. And it's what it feels like it feels like he's talking to somebody who's doing mind reading, and Bob postal it, boiled it down to like seven questions. Your birth order is super important in how you look for affection and affirmation in life. If you're the firstborn, did you win? Did you maintain what Adler called a position of primacy? Or were you overrun by a second, third or fourth born? In which case, that's a terrible blow to your self esteem? And so, how we negotiate birth order is probably the most important element of that. And then there are other elements, like who was mom's favorite? Who was dad's favorite? And we get everybody you know, most 90 90% of people say, Oh, no, my mom and dad, they were equal. That's absolute horse manure. And so what we get to that by is who is most like dad, who was most like, mom? And if you were in the zoo, walking and looking at things who would mom who would be holding Mom's hand and who would be holding Dad's hand? And then once we get to larger families, it gets even more complex?   Michael Hingson ** 28:15 How do you deal with that? And I asked that, knowing that in my family, of course, I was blind, I was the second child. And I think my brother always felt like he wasn't quite as well received, even though he was two years older. But in reality, when I look back on it, what my parents did was really worked, not to show favoritism, but they did have to do things differently with me than they did with him because he could see, and I didn't, but I think they really worked at it. But I think his perception always was that he wasn't the favorite, even though that I don't think that really was the case as I sit and analyze it even now.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:03 Well, you know, he may not have been wrong. He might not have been got more attention. So the primary indicator of a favorite is attention. It doesn't necessarily mean for what, because you get seen more, you get more interest more, you develop a sense that you matter. And he's developing a sense that he doesn't matter. So in Adlerian terms, you may have overrun him, and that was a terrible blow to his self esteem.   Michael Hingson ** 29:33 Yeah. Yeah. Even though this Oh, sure. If you want   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:38 go ahead. So how's he doing today?   Michael Hingson ** 29:40 He passed away in 2015. So he died of of cancer.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:45 How did he do in life? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 29:47 fair question. He ended up working for the Customs Organization, the US customs in communications. He was married for, gosh, probably close to 40 years as well. I'm not sure that he was as happy as he would like, just in looking at it. He tended to want to be very controlling. And his wife didn't have a problem with that. But I think that I think there were some issues, but I think he did. Okay, but not great.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:28 So you've been happier in life than he has, even though you have a profound challenge. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:35 I think the challenge is more perceptual than in reality, but Yeah, probably. That's it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:41 Thanks very much.   Michael Hingson ** 30:44 That's probably so.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:47 But I also so your dad overran him. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson ** 30:51 hear you. You did. Even though we even though later in life, he was in Florida, and I was in California, or in New Jersey. I think I appreciate what you're saying. Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:05 Yeah, it's it's hard for us to accept when we start looking at these unconscious elements of what's called the family system. And and the system is there's no blame. There's no blaming. Yeah. But But who is your mom's favorite?   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 Well, I'm sure that that there are those that would say it was me. I'm not, I'm not really so sure. Because the way my mom interacted with us, was was different with each of us. She had to help me learn braille again, when I was going from third to fourth grade. And she took the time to do that. But she also did take the time with my brother, but I'm sure that he would tell you that I was,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:48 well, what was your dad's favorite? Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 I'm sure that, that my dad and I spent more time together because I was interested in things that he was much more than my brother like electronics and science. So I'm sure I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:02 was, who was murdered?   Michael Hingson ** 32:06 Gee, that depends, I guess, on everything, but probably I was. Nobody ever wants to answer this, by the way, probably. But probably for a lot of reasons. I would say I was. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:15 pretty obviously. So we don't know what his potential would have been. Right, who got developed? And so my guess is he was actually your mom's favorite. He might very well have been. But But I think it was your mom's favorite because your mom counted on him to keep things working in the family while he was hungry, but didn't didn't know how to do anything. But please her as she was ministering to you. And as your dad was enjoying playing with you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's   Michael Hingson ** 32:50 a lot of there's a lot of truth to that.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:52 Yeah, I know. I just, it's so much fun to get out of this. Michael. Yeah. It   Michael Hingson ** 32:59 makes a lot of sense to, to really look at it in the in the way that you're doing. But I think there's there's another aspect of it, and it's part of human nature, that gets to be a challenge. Because he was probably a person who felt not as happy, not as loved and didn't know how to deal with that, and maybe address it in his own life. And I learned how to do some of that, and learn how to deal with a lot of the challenges that I faced socially, and, and economically. But I think that one of the things that he never did learn was how to go back and look at himself and look at his life and grow in the same way. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 33:50 amen. Probably wasn't as inquisitive as you know,   Michael Hingson ** 33:54 I'm sure he was not. That I'm very sure of. And it's it is a it's an issue because one of the things that I maintain today is that all of us can do so much more to grow. If we would spend more time even just in the evening before we go to sleep, being introspective, looking at whatever happened on a given day. And why it happened the way it did, what could we improve? What went great, what could we even have done to make what went great greater? And I know that he didn't do a lot of that,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 34:28 you know, there's actually a spiritual discipline with the max handle Rosicrucians that, that goes into that. I'm not a follower of theirs, but this they call it a retro flexion or retrospect, I forget what they call it. Exactly. Because when I was in school in France, the game was the minute your head hit the pillow. You were to rewind your day in reverse to when you first woke up. Yeah, and it's incredibly challenging. It is our emotions get I get sparked off, we get to see where we had unfinished business during the day. And it took me all of pretty close to a year before I got back to a morning, and that was pretty diligence, did diligent application. And so I think you're absolutely right.   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 There's a lot of value in in doing it. Because no one can teach us anything people can give us information. But we have to teach ourselves. And I've learned, even just this year, I now hate calling myself my own worst critic. When I listen to speeches and other things I always have said, I'm my own worst critic, and when in reality is the case is I'm my own best teacher, because I'm the one that can teach me. And it's always good to take a much more positive approach. And recognizing that actually helps when I go back and analyze the day and analyze the things that have gone on. Because I look for the lessons. And the lessons aren't just in the things that went wrong or the difficult things. The lessons can come from anywhere, but we have to look for them.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:08 So you just defined the transformation of a perfectionist, perfectionist, criticized because it's the work outcome that matters. And people that are learning and growing and stepping beyond perfection. Look for the lessons. So you just described you growing, from avoiding mistakes, to feeling more and more success and satisfaction in learning and growing. Congratulations. Well, thank   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 you. And even the so called Mistakes You know, there aren't they're not a mistake until it ended up being one. And again, the lesson is, what do you learn and do about it? Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:46 but you're unusual, Michael, because you've actually taken a philosophy and applied it. A lot of people would say the same things you just said. But they don't practice it. I believe you practice it.   Michael Hingson ** 36:58 And you know what? It's fun.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:01 It says pretty clear. Yeah. You have fun way before now. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 37:05 Well, I like to look for the for fun. Personally, I think life is an adventure. For years, I've called the Internet, a treasure trove an adventure. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff. And there's a dark side. And there are all sorts of different things that go on. But there's also so much information that's out there if we bought look for it and use it. Amen. So it really, it really helps a great deal. And you know, so it's, it's worth doing well, in your case. So, you you have been so what business do you own? Now? What What's your business called? Or do you have one right now? Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:47 we write business Inc has been our flowthrough business forever. But we are reemerging to the world as live right? Li ve WRI ght with Judith and Bob. That is our new go to market identity. Pool.   Michael Hingson ** 38:07 That's a great name. And certainly, from a marketing standpoint, one that somebody can remember.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:14 Well, right now we only exist online is D r B o b.com. And Dr. Judith, Bob Wright, dot com or Judith wright.com I think or at any rate, we don't have a joint website yet. We'll be launching that in December, God Willing and the creek don't rise   Michael Hingson ** 38:35 well and make it accessible. And if you want help with that, I can help   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:41 you. So so cool. Cool. I'm gonna have to find out more about what you can do them. Because I really don't know,   Michael Hingson ** 38:48 we can talk about that. And we can talk about ways to do it. And it's and it's something that that you should do. Because the reality is what most people don't realize is that the cost of doing business should really make sure that inclusion is part of it. You know, I when looking for jobs and talking to many, I'll just use blind people as an example. We've had companies say but I can't buy a screen reader for you. That's not in our budget. Well, you know, sure it is you buy computer monitors for everyone. I don't need a monitor. But I do need a screen reader. Inclusion ought to be part of the cost of doing business.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 39:26 Well, which is why you're going to be our consultants. So we our desire is to have our work available in all languages. We're going to be putting out our couples book the heart of the fight in Spanish. The heart of the fight reached number one nonfiction best seller in China, Judas soft addictions solution is, as of our last knowledge, number 10 self help in China. And so the languages aren't just words and spoken are they but there's I mean, there's there's what do you call blind accessibility? Michael?   Michael Hingson ** 40:06 Well, there are a couple of ways to do something like that. A lot of it is just doing the right things on on your website, or when you produce a book, if you have graphs, they should and pictures, they should be defined. You can do an electronic version, you can do an audio version. And there are ways also to put the book in Braille. And again, we can we can certainly talk about that. Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:28 I'm zipping myself an email to circle back with you on that. So let's keep going with what you've got today.   Michael Hingson ** 40:36 Well, definitely one thing I need to say, because I was looking for when I was getting ready for now, is I would like to have pictures of your book covers that we can put in the cover notes so that people can go off and find them later.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:51 We'll get it. Perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 40:53 Well, tell me a little bit more about you and coaching. What ultimately do people get out of what you do? After a question,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:07 you know, I'm gonna go back a little further, we get everybody knows we get what we put into things. Yeah. And so to get   Michael Hingson ** 41:16 the most out of coke, good psychological answer, go ahead.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:19 Well, I'm actually going to answer it. I appreciate the work up to I'm gonna work up to it. So the investment is time, money and personal upset. The price most people are not willing to pay is the person will upset we have to do to stretch beyond our own serious limit deeper mental limitations. And when we do that, for me, I had a lot of limiting beliefs about money. I could give you stories, we talked about the mythology rules, myths and beliefs about money when I looked growing up, my dad's brothers, who had way more money than we had, didn't have a marriage as good as my dad's marriage. And one of my dad's brothers was a particular jerk. And he was the wealthiest of them. And so I draw this conclusion from early on in life, because we all grew up within miles of each other, or blocks, actually, that it's either money or relationship. So a limiting belief I've had to challenge forever, is money and relationship. And fortunately, I'm making some progress on that and intend to make even more before I'm done. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 42:37 it's interesting. People think that if they have a lot of money, they're successful, and they're happy. And what pops into my mind? And I'm not going to try to get political here. But what pops into my mind is Donald Trump, I wonder how happy he really is.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 42:54 You know, we can actually dive right into the happiness things. First of all, there's a lot of research on it that would show that he doesn't have the characteristics. But that's another story. But right, I hear you. But I think everybody has a formula for happiness, most of them are wrong. Yeah. And I think the good fortune in my relationship foundation is relationship. You know that happiness research says, the biggest variable is learning and growing. The happiest people are engaged in learning and growing. There, they have New Horizons coming up, that they can learn and grow together and a couple or whatever they're doing, but they learn and grow. That's happiest.   Michael Hingson ** 43:33 That's the most successful thing that one can do. And it is all about learning and growing, and wanting to learn and grow. And I think he pointed out very well, a lot of people will provide lip service to a lot of this. But the reality is, they're not really growing. It's just a lot of talk. Habits are hard to break it. I've heard all sorts of different numbers about how many times you need to do something to change a habit. But still, ultimately, it doesn't happen until you can, not only intellectually but emotionally recognize that the change needs to happen and then do it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 44:15 So that's that's the end the cost. So Judas seminal work on soft addictions was looking at the cost that turned out causes a lot of people to take on the habits. However, a habit is a behavior to order to change the deeper level behind that habit. Because they have, it's always doing something for us in service of a limiting belief. And so a limiting habits because we remember two kinds of beliefs, two kinds of habits, empowering and disempowering. And so it's really important to understand, if I really want to learn and grow to the max, I have to go through the discomfort of not just changing the habit, but changing by myself my thoughts, feelings and actions at the foundational level   Michael Hingson ** 44:59 and that's The cost. Yes, sir. And it's it's not as expensive as one might think, if you really apply it and do it. But the problem is, so many of us don't want to do that, because we're just, I hate hearing while I'm, you know, people are in their comfort zone, they don't want to change. We talk about change all the time. But I think people don't want to change I think we we are brought up to just like our comfort zones and not wanting to change, we don't do what we talked about before retrospection or introspection, that's too much work. And so we we don't get taught by others nearly as much as we should. The real value of change, but change is all around us. And change is going to be everywhere. I after September 11, I kept hearing, we got to get back to normal, we got to get back to doing things the normal way. And I bristled at that. And it took me a little while to understand why I was so upset with it. But I finally realized, normal will never be the same. Again, we can't get back to normal because if we do, we're going to have the same thing. And we will have learned absolutely nothing. Even with a pandemic, I hear about getting back to normal, but normal will never be the same again, the   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:17 problem that you're getting it from me that I think about with that usually is that normal is is average, and none of us really want to be average, we want to be better than normal. So why would we want to get back to normal when we still haven't hit our potential? Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 46:36 But we're not thinking about that. And we haven't learned to think in that way. Until we   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:41 understand Judith research. So there's yearning, engaging, and regulating seeing where my limitations come in. Then liberating challenging those limitations. It's so challenging those limitations, and then re matrixing. And then I have to keep stretching myself towards the new, further goals. That forced me to look beyond my limiting beliefs, because they're always there. And they're always are rising beyond them.   Michael Hingson ** 47:07 How do we get people to be able to do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 47:10 I don't, we don't get people to do anything. It's all about investment. Will they pay the price? Spend the time reading the money, what they need to do? I was talking to a guy today who's ultra ultra wealthy, who started out with my former partner. And he would never have been able to pay my partner's rates today. And I said, You mean, you wouldn't have charged it on your credit card at least to find out? You know, what he could do for you? And so the people that I see that really want it, some people just charge it on the credit card, but they don't do it. Others? Do, they charge it on the credit card, and they've got that credit card paid off and are able to really fly with the overtime? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:00 so and I was delivered and asking the question the way I did, but it isn't how do we get people to do things? What is it that will make people understand that they need to change? I mean, you've been coaching a long time. And I know there's not one key but what, what, more often than not is the trigger that make people go, Ah, I gotta really think more about this.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 48:27 You know, there are a lot of things in life traumas, car accidents, deaths, losses, that move people into that. There's a thing called a sociopath is sociopaths, not wanting to get divorced, will sometimes start looking at themselves for the first time. And so but but I think that, that Adlerian analysis, when people understand that there is an objective way to look at who they are today, it's your strengths and your weaknesses, as revealed by that lifestyle analysis we started playing with with you, then as you understand that there really is a way to do it, and it is systematic and reproducible, then the game starts really shifting, but most of the world doesn't believe it's possible because so many people are selling so much horse manure. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 49:21 And we haven't learned to separate all the negative negativity in as you said, the horsemen or from from the positive stuff, we, we just haven't really learned how to do that and the people who have can really start to deal with it. One of the things that I have experienced over the past several years, especially with the pandemic is that for years I would travel and speak and tell people about my story and people said, well, you're blind. Of course you didn't know what happened. I point out well, the airplane had 18 floors above us on the other side of the building I got to tell you, nobody knew Superman and X ray vision are fictitious. Right? Well, but then the the other part about it is that what I realized over time was that the reason I wasn't afraid was that I prepared. I learned all about the World Trade Center, I learned what the emergency evacuation procedures were, I learned why they were as they were. And so when something actually happened, I was prepared for it. I didn't need to worry about reading signs. And if I had been in the building alone, I would have just been able to evacuate. But I wasn't alone. And we got some guests out. And then a colleague who was in from our corporate office, David Frank, and I went to the stairs, and we started down. But the reality is that what I learned was that for me, I, in fact, was not talking about why I wasn't afraid. And I didn't teach people how to learn to control here. So we're writing a book about that. And, and so I'm, I'm realizing that what I can help people do is recognize that you can learn to control fear, it's not that it's going to go away. And if you tell me, you're never afraid, I won't buy it. But you can learn to use fear in a powerful way, rather than letting it as I put it, blind you or overwhelm you,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 51:27 by preparing as you prepared the primary formula. First of all, we don't control it. But by preparing it doesn't grip us at the same level. We have pathways that we've already created. So you had created those pathways inside of yourself. And so sure you were afraid, but you had the fear motivating you along pathways for which you had prepared.   Michael Hingson ** 51:51 That's right. Help others. That's right. And we did and at one point going down the stairs, David panicked and said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here and then and I just snapped at him. I'd love to joke about it and say, since I have a secondary teaching credential, I took that secret course voice 101 How to yell at students but you know, the the reality is that that what I did it I just snapped at David. I said, stop it, David, if Rosella and I can go down the stairs, so can you. And after that, he said, I'm going to I got to take my mind off of what's going on. And he walked the floor below me, went all the way down the stairs, he shouted up to me what he was seeing on the stairs. Now, did I need David to do that? No. But I knew that it would help David be more comfortable. But it had another effect, which again, was something that I figured out later. And that is that, as David was shouting up, hey, I'm at the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is, we're not going to stop we're going on down. People above us. And below us. Many, many floors hurt him. And he gave them something to focus on. And I think that he did so much, not even thinking about it or realizing it to help people not panic as we went down the stairs, which was so cool. Oh, I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 53:07 just love it. So let's but let's go back. So, So fear is the primary the most basic emotion if you stay alive, sure. So you were afraid for him, not for you, but for him. And so you slapped him out of it. So you harvest your anger. So fear, fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy are the critical emotions that are fully foundational emotions. And so you have a relationship with your fear as few of us but in some ways, maybe. And you actually were able to harness anger as the crossover emotion between fear and joy. So you kept him alive, harnessing your anger to slap him out of it. And he became the leader he could become. Yeah. And needed.   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 Right. Well, and that's it's part of the story that that I think is he's such an unsung hero and what happened on September 11, because I know he had to keep so many people focused because they had someone to focus on. And someone who they could hear who was all right, no matter where they were on the stairs. Somebody else was okay, somewhere.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:21 So first of all, he was a leader right in relationship to you,   Michael Hingson ** 54:25 by definition. Well, in some ways, yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:29 So you slapped him back into his leadership mode. And even though you didn't need it, he started leaving you in his own mind, but he was actually leaving everybody down those   Michael Hingson ** 54:40 steps. He was, you know, that was one of the things that he did his he was only in for the day from our corporate office. But but he but you know, the two of us, between us there were a lot of ways people also said to me later, we followed you down the stairs because we heard you praising your dog and We heard you staying calm. So we were calm. We followed you. Yeah. So we, in a in a very well, unpredictable isn't the right word but a very subtle way we the two of us really helped a lot of people. Oh   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:15 my god, you guys formed the most amazing impromptu leadership team.   Michael Hingson ** 55:19 Right. Holy cow. I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:21 love it. Yeah. Well, isn't that cool? Oh, it's beyond cool. That is way beyond Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 55:27 Well, this has been fun. We need to do it again. And we need to get Judith involved. So we got to do   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:33 another one of these. Absolutely looking forward to it. But   Michael Hingson ** 55:37 I really appreciate you being here. And I want to thank you and I want to thank you all for listening to us today. I hope that you enjoyed it. And and you heard Bob analyze me a little bit and it was a lot of fun and No, no problem at all. So we'll have to do more of it and and have another time together which I think would be fun. But I want to thank you for listening to us. Love to hear your comments. Please reach out. You can reach me Mike hingson at and my email address is Michael h i m i c h a e l h i at accessiBe A c c e s s i b e.com. Michael h i at accessibe.com Or go to our podcast page www dot Michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast love to get your thoughts please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. We value that and really appreciate all that you have to say. Bob if people want to reach out to you how do they do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 56:37 Well my website for now until we put them all together is Bob Wrightdot com or D r. B o b W r i  g h t dot com My email, which is easier right now we're in transition. The new company, as you heard will be live right with Judith and Bob. But right now D r. B, o b at Judith and bob.com D R B O B at J U D I T  A N D B .com. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 57:04 Well, thanks again for doing this. It has been fun. And let us definitely set up another time and do another one of these.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:13 We've got more to talk about in so many ways, sooner than later while we're still putting together the web universe.   Michael Hingson ** 57:20 Perfect. Glad to do it. Well, thanks again for being here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:23 Thank you so much.   **Michael Hingson ** 57:28 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

What is deep work, and how can it help your business? Linzy and guest David Frank dive into what deep work means to them and how they each incorporate deep work into their work lives. David and Linzy discuss how adopting deep work and digital minimalism, concepts introduced by author Cal Newport, have transformed their work lives and enhanced the quality of their work.Linzy and David have different approaches to deep work in their schedule, which they discuss, and they both share specific, practical ideas about how intentional focus on deep work can enhance the work lives and financial well-being of health professionals. For more about the concepts discussed in this episode, check out Cal Newport's website. For a full transcript of the episode and much more, check out the blog post on our website! To watch a video version of this, check it out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9QXcUBV2BMkConnect with DavidDavid Frank has a lot of free resources on his website, like his blog posts about retirement,  or his finance quick start guide for therapists. Check those out here. Find David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwfrank/ FREE Money Momentum Challenge Are you avoiding your private practice finances, because you feel completely overwhelmed by them, and you have no idea where to even begin?I'm hosting a FREE, live, 4-day Money Momentum Challenge from June 18th to the 21st, where you'll get my support and guidance to step out of avoidance, take real action, and create ease and flow around your private practice finances.In just 5-10 minutes each day, you'll complete one small task that will help you move from money avoidance to financial clarity. And as a bonus for participating and completing the simple daily tasks, you'll be entered into a draw to win daily prizes. Plus, one lucky therapist or health practitioner who completes the challenge will have a chance to win the grand prize of $500 cash! Are you in?I can't wait to see you inside! Sign up for the FREE Money Momentum Challenge here Have a question for Linzy for the Feelings & Finances episodes? Click here: https://www.speakpipe.com/MoneySkillsForTherapists

As a business owner, knowing how to organize your taxes can be vital to the continued health and growth of your practice. Could you do with a few good financial pointers, tailored to therapy practices? Me too! Join me in as chat with my good friend, David Frank from Turning Point HQ, as he shares some super-helpful tips you can use today. Click to listen now!

Send us a Text Message.Dive headfirst into the heart and hustle of high school sports with David Frank, an Erie native with a playbook full of wisdom from his coaching career, which spans the fields of Pennsylvania to the courts of North Carolina. This episode is an intimate huddle that will have you reminiscing about the golden days of high school athletics and the coaches that shaped us. We're tackling everything from the cultural melting pot of sports loyalties in Erie, to the emotional rollercoaster of rooting for the underdog Pittsburgh teams. David, with his rich storytelling, brings to life the stark contrasts and unifying spirit that mark the high school sports scene.Laughter and strategy collide as we examine the parallels between commanding a football team and commanding a stage. It's a discussion that's as profound as it is entertaining, with David's  journey as a coach shedding light on the art of connection. We share memories of athletes who chased college dreams alongside those who played for sheer love, and celebrate the unexpected joys of delivering punchlines to unconventional audiences. If you ever wondered how the lessons of the locker room might just be the secret to killing it in comedy, you're in for a treat.As we round off this episode, we embrace the essence of mentorship in coaching, revealing how the game goes beyond X's and O's to the heart of personal relationships. From David's encounters with powerhouse football programs to the touching tale of Thanksgiving generosity, this is more than just a conversation about sStupid Should Hurt Link to my Merch store the Stupid Should Hurt Line!Reaper Apparel Reaper Apparel Co was built for those who refuse to die slowly! Reaper isn't just clothing it's a lifestyle!Subscribe for exclusive content: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1530455/support Big Labia EnergyBig Labs Pod harnesses the big labia energy of three comics at varying stages of...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify MonstrosityMonstrosity has celebrity guests, deep paranormal discussions, and comedy gold.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifyTactical BrotherhoodThe Tactical Brotherhood is a movement to support America.Sweet Hands SportsElevate your game with Sweet Hands Sports! Our sports gloves are designed for champions,Dubby EnergyFROM GAMERS TO GYM JUNKIES TO ENTREPRENEURS, OUR PRODUCT IS FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO BE BETTER.ShankitgolfOur goal here at Shankitgolf is for everyone to have a great time on and off the golf courseDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the Show.

Tim Otto is a man of intentional commitments: he lives in intentional Christian community; he pastors a church in San Francisco; he's also gay and celibate, while still affirming gay marriage (Side A). Tim talked with co-hosts TJ and David Frank about his book Oriented to Faith, compassionate approaches, “third way” communities and “disputable” theological differences, celibate partnerships, and the importance of close community living.Tim was a kind and engaging dialogue partner and we loved having this conversation with him! No matter where you land on the faith and sexuality topics, we hope our discussion ministers to you also.About Our GuestTim Otto has lived in an intentional Christian community called Church of the Sojourners for 34 years and is one of its co-pastors. He has a Master of Theology degree from Duke Divinity School, is the author of Oriented to Faith: Transforming the Conflict over Gay Relationships, and loves walking around the Mission District of San Francisco, where he lives. You can find his recent writing on Substack at “Living in Extraordinary Love”: https://timotto.substack.com—Note: We use the terms “Side A” and “Side B” as shorthand quite a bit. If you're new to the conversation, we recommend listening to our episode #3, “A-B-Y-X | 4 Sides on SSA/Gay Sexuality.” Here's a quick summary:* "Side A" generally refers to the perspective that affirms God can bless same-sex marriage and sexual relationships.* “Side B” recognizes people experience same-sex sexual attraction and may describe that experience by a variety of words or identity terms while still holding to the historical Christian sexual ethic of marriage between a man and a woman, and sex within marriage.Timestamps(1:13) Tim's book: encouraging dialogue and love across sides(8:03) Idolatry of the "traditional family"(16:11) Taking a vow of celibacy as a side A gay man(21:38) Our takes: on the authority and continuity of Scripture(34:27) What traditionalist viewpoints do you find most compelling?(38:54) What has moved you toward an affirming position?(42:55) Are celibate partnerships gnostic?(52:56) What makes a healthy/acceptable marriage? (same-sex, polyamory, polygamy…)(1:07:18) How does San Francisco influence you?(1:14:24) Bonus question: the "common purse" in Tim's communityLinks and ReferencesFor your easier searching…* Sacred Cows: Exploring Contemporary Idolatry by J.A. Walter* The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig Bartholemew and Michael Goheen* Kevin Vanhoozer, theologian* Tenderness: A Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love by Eve Tushnet* “Century of the Self” documentary is on Youtube* Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul'sIf you like this podcast, please consider…→ Sharing feedback or questions! communionandshalom@gmail.com→ Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom→ Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom—CreditsCreators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ EspinozaAudio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com)Podcast Manager: Elena This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communionshalom.substack.com

ANNNNDD WE'RE BACK! In this episode  continue the third series where we speak with southeastern folks who have received and bear their traditional tattoos. This time we're speaking with guest Jenna Walkingstick (Cherokee) and guest hosts Lisa Fruichantie (Seminole/Mvskoke) and Angie Comeaux (Mvskoke/Choctaw). We cover a range of topics including Jenna and Lisa's experiences receiving and bearing traditional southeastern facial tattoos, positive and negative experiences around receiving traditional tattoos, body sovereignty, accountability, diversity in NDN country, interconnectedness to land and of tribal nations, the role of plants, and more! Additionally we make some major announcements:Lisa Fruichantie has become the first Executive Director of Inchunwa!She'll be representing Inchunwa at the Bioneers conference in Berkeley Inchunwa will be at Indigi Pop X (IPX) April 12th-14th at the First American's Museum in Oklahoma City! We'll have a booth the whole time and will have educational and interactive activities - and maybe even a chance to experience what it might be like (briefly) to bear traditional designs. Like the Indigenous Futurisms Festival back in June of 2023, Brit'll be doing a live food demo on Saturday April 13th.  On Sunday April 14th, Inchunwa will host a panel with Chickasaw Artist Dustin Mater (@dustign); Cherokee Artist Keli Gonzales (@sideshow_kel); Cherokee & Mvskoke Tattoo Practitioner and Actress Nathalie Standingcloud (@nattatt8); Chickasaw Artist & Language Advocate  Faithlyn Seawright (@faithlyntaloaseawright); Mvskoke Artist & former Inchunwa podcast guest host Brit Postoak (@brittpostoak); Seminole elder & knowledge keeper David Frank; Seminole Nation member & Inchunwa Executive Director Lisa Fruichantie (@fruichantie), and Choctaw descendant and Inchunwa team member Brit Reed (@nitaohoyo). The panel will last for two hours with an intermission and a Q&A. Get your tickets at https://indigenouscomiccon.com/. In May, the Inchunwa Project leadership will be hosting a retreat focused on the design and build of our apprenticeship program. This closed gathering will include a diverse cross section of SE tribal culture bearers and wisdom keepers and made possible by a grant from the Southern Movement Media Fund.To celebrate officially stepping into the second phase of Inchunwa and the amazing things to come, we will be hosting a raffle that will begin Saturday March 23, 2024 and end Friday March 29th, 2024. This raffle is a two night stay at the Golden Moon Hotel & Casino in Choctaw, Mississippi. In addition to the two night stay at the Golden Moon Hotel & Casino, it includes dinner for two at Phillip M's, Breakfast for two at The Bistro, and - most excitedly 1 round of golf for two at Dancing Rabbit Golf Club and/or Spa Treatment for two at The Spa. Raffle tickets are $20 eachProceeds will be going towards raising funds for the creation and development of the traditional tattoo apprenticeship program and building the Inchunwa Project admin & capacity structure for key items such as a website. Package can be used any time up to April 30th, 2024. As travel to Choctaw, MS will not be included, we encourage folks who live close enough to drive or are able to purchase airline tickets before April 30th, 2024 to participate. To purchase raffle tickets, go to our paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/inchunwaPlease include your email and social media handles in the description so that we can alert you if you win. 

New music this week from Redub, Brandon Michaels, Steve Lake, Catchfire, Driftmoon, Spy, Rhys Elliot, Michael Kaelios, N-sKing and many more.   Choose your player

On this Episode of The No Ideas Original Podcast the crew interviews RnB group "The System" Mic Murphy and David Frank! The guys talk about their musical roots as well how the group was formed. They also talk about the state of RnB music today, working with Madonna and other artist and the importance of incorporating theory and feel when making great music. This is a can't miss episode! #thesystem #thesystemmusic #davidfrank #micmurphy #podcast #hiphop #rnb #noideasoriginalpodcast #dontdisturbthisgroove #inmysystem #nyc #losangeles #spotify #youtube #instagram #songwriter #songwriting #songwriters #producer #production #80smusic #funk #popmusic

David Frank Spanbauer could be the poster child for recidivism. A man who never felt bad for what he did, just looked forward, towards a day when he would be able to do whatever he wanted. He already knew he'd be out again, it was just a matter of… time. SOURCES: David Spanbauer, Serial Child Killer and Rapist by James Card, from crimelibrary.org. David Frank Spanbauer v. John C. Burke, Warden, Wisconsin State Prison, 374 F.2d 67 (7th Cir. 1966) Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Filed: December 28th, 1966‘Pure evil' serial killer Spanbauer dead at 61, By Dan Wilson and Ed Culhane - Appleton Post-Crescent July 30, 2002Access ad-free episodes, bonus content, and get all of the 11:59 Media Podcast library!Access hours of extra content each week, exclusive merch, and early access to new podcasts.Visit https://1159plus.com

Join Jess Larsen as he chats with financial maestro David Frank, CEO of Stonehaven, about the art and complexity of capital raising and investor relations. In this episode, David unravels the workings behind Stonehaven's innovative platform that supports a vast network of investment professionals. He reveals pivotal strategies for surpassing $10 billion in transactions, the role of detailed data in selecting the right projects, the anatomy of an effective pitch, and the growing importance of a strong online professional profile in the digital age. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Frank (you know him) and Elena (podcast manager) gave a workshop talk at Revoice 2023. It was pretty great, and also, predictably, hit-or-miss with sound quality. Enjoy! __________ Links and References The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch (publisher's link) Our workshop presentation: [Link to Google presentation] Our worksheet and resources handout: [Link to Google doc] __________ If you like this podcast, please consider… →Sharing feedback or questions! www.podpage.com/communion-shalom/contact →Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom →Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom — Credits Creators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ Espinoza Audio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com) Podcast Manager: Elena

Joseph Pearce's book Small Is Still Beautiful is a compelling spotlight on the "well-kept secret" of economist E. F. Schumacher. David Frank and Brendan Johnson (from episode 30) talked with Joseph about small localism versus globalism, cooperatives and sharing versus capitalist individualism, and the like. Join us for a delightful conversation around the commons, community, and collaborative flourishing. About Our Guest A native of England, Joseph Pearce is the internationally acclaimed author of many books, which include bestsellers such as The Quest for Shakespeare, Tolkien: Man and Myth, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis and The Catholic Church, Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. He is an author, publisher, editor, lecturer, and professor. His personal website is www.jpearce.co. __________ Timestamps (0:26) Introducing Joseph Pearce (2:51) Encountering E. F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful (5:38) Modern economics that don't lead to flourishing (7:45) Distributing wealth, local solidarity (15:13) Mondragon Corporation: Solidarity in practice (18:03) The world since 20 years ago: what's changed? (22:01) Advice for voting with your dollars (27:45) Is there a risk in things being too small? (32:47) Reading recommendations __________ Links and References Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered by Joseph Pearce (2006)- link to publisher Joseph Pearce - Facebook, Instagram Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher (1973) - link to publisher Thomas Storck Wilhelm Röpke __________ If you like this podcast, please consider… →Sharing feedback or questions! www.podpage.com/communion-shalom/contact →Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom →Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom — Credits Creators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ Espinoza Audio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com) Podcast Manager: Elena

New music this week from Hypersia, Maarten De Jong, Bruno Oloviani, Zach Zlov, Michele Cecchi, Kollider, Tony Hang, Cloudriver and many, many more!   Choose your player

How do you handle emotions that come up around money? As guest David Frank and Linzy discuss, instead of avoiding or combatting the emotions that come up around money, working with our emotions can strengthen our financial success. David, a financial planner who works with therapists, shares that focusing on our emotional responses to money and using those emotions as a way to strengthen our financial plans can be beneficial.David shares that people who connect financial goals to specific emotions and outcomes are more likely to be successful with their planning. By accepting our emotions and tailoring our financial goals to specific outcomes, we can find success in our financial planning. Having a plan, some accountability, and a willingness to be open to the emotional aspects of the journey can go a long way toward successful financial planning.  For a full transcript of the episode and much more, check out the blog post on our website!Connect with Davidhttps://turningpointhq.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwfrank/Get Unstuck in Your FinancesDoes this sound familiar?“I have a lot of anxiety around money, so I just avoid it.” “I'm just getting by with money, but that's it. I know I should be saving for my future, but I'm not.”If this sounds familiar, you're probably stuck in your finances. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is a reason things aren't changing for you. It's that your relationship with money needs to change!Get the FREE mini training, The Secret to Getting Unstuck in Your Finances: http://workshops.moneyskillsfortherapists.com/gettingunstuckWant to work with Linzy?Are you a group practice owner who's tired of feeling overwhelmed and stressed about your finances? Do you feel like you're doing all the work for none of the money and are tired of constantly worrying about your bank account? Do you want to create a group practice that is financially stable, reflects your values, and takes good care of you and your team?If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're going to want to hear all about the new cohort for my course Money Skills for Group Practice Owners!  This six-month course will take you from feeling like an overworked, stressed and underpaid group practice owner, to being the confident and empowered financial leader of your group practice.To learn more about Money Skills for Group Practice Owners and apply click here.

Wow is all I can say about our guest in this episode, Suzanne Jean. Suzanne has spent more than 50 years in the social services arena. Much of that time has been creating and promoting a program called PowerED. She is the Director of Fit4Defense Consulting Ltd which is her springboard for bringing PowerED into schools and classrooms.   As Suzanne will tell us, bullying, especially of children, is significantly on the rise. She has reasons for this increase and will illustrate what is happening in our society that permits this to happen.   I believe this episode of Unstoppable Mindset is one of the most powerful ones I have had the privilege to conduct. Enough from me. I hope you will listen to Suzanne and take her observations and lessons to heart.     About the Guest:   Bullying Stops Here Bullying hurts! It is not merely physical aggression but includes persistent disparaging condescending, demeaning comments and behaviors that cause physical and mental anguish to others. The harm and costs are well documented, examples are illness, addiction, suicide, anxiety, depression, unemployment, and domestic violence. Under the umbrella of Fit4Defense, PowerEd classes work to help children, youth, adults, and seniors build a sense of confidence and self-worth through a variety of discussions, exercises, and self-defense techniques. The 4 in Fit4Defense's name represents "the four As," and this forms the pillars of the program. This training examines how attention, awareness, avoidance, and action can help people to break through self-imposed limitations and habits. Attention: It's about tuning in to the here and now. Observing others and the environment around you. Expanding perception and mindfulness. Awareness: Self-study-discovering what do you believe, feel, need, and want? Gaining skills to effectively communicate this. Feeling seen, heard, valued, and safe. Loving yourself and caring for others. Avoidance: Taking steps to stay safe, not only physically but emotionally. Action: The last resort, is to defend yourself if you are bullied or threatened. How do you stop bullying? You become 100% responsible for your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and learn how to communicate them assertively   Ways to connect with Milam:   Website and Programs Offered: https://www.fit4defense.ca     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello once again, and welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet. And as I always love to say the unexpected is the fun part about it. And I just learned how unexpected this is. I told her I was going to do this. Our guest today is Suzanne Jean who was on vacation in Maui. Can you believe it? Geez. And we didn't get invited along. And neither did any of you. I think that this is something that we need to discuss in some way. But Suzanne, seriously, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here and that you took the time to do this on a vacation.   Suzanne Jean ** 01:56 Oh, thank you my call and only for you when I get off the beach.   Michael Hingson ** 02:02 You couldn't have to be here. You couldn't have taken the laptop down and done it from the beach. Now there'd be too much surf. Well, well, yeah. Yeah. gotta you gotta do. Got to do what you got to do, right? I think you're the first person that I least recall, who has talked to us from Hawaii. If there's been someone else, I don't recall it. But Well, I'm glad you're having a good vacation over there. And you're in a wonderful place for it. So that's cool. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about you kind of as, as I described, I would ask sort of the early Suzanne growing up, what it was like being a kid or what anything like that, that you want to tell us so that we get to know you a little better.   Suzanne Jean ** 02:48 Well, the earliest is and growing up, it was pretty hyperactive, pretty busy girl, always moving. And it was quite interesting. Because I was living in Montreal, I am from Canada, and that's on the east coast of Canada. And I wasn't getting a lot of sleep. And my doctor said you have two choices, you have something called ADHD. And I'm gonna give you two choices. You either go on medication, or you take Tai Chi. And I went no, not Tai Chi, because I had seen people doing this very slow exercise. And I was very hyper. So not wanting to go on medication, I agreed to go down and check it out. And so I went to a Tai Chi class and I hated it. It's the very slow movement. But this woman said to me, Hey, after class, we all go to Chinatown and have a big feast. And it's only like 250 a person don't want to come and I said Now we're talking. So I had some motivation to go back to Tai Chi. And I I found it really did help me and helped me relaxed my metabolism. And it was the first beginnings of being mindful. And fast forward. I came to Vancouver and I went to find a Tai Chi teacher because now this is my, this is my prescription. I and I met this Tai Chi teacher and he said, Why are you doing tai chi? And they said, Because I you know, it's good for me. I'm, it's good for for my well being. And he said, No, you need to come to karate. And I said karate, I don't want to do karate and he said absolutely. You're born to do karate. He said, Come on over. So I said, I'll come to one class. He was also a tai chi. He was a Tai Chi teacher and he was just teaching Tai Chi to to make money to do while he was doing his PhD. So I went to his karate class and I never I walked out the door and bought my GI and I have never stopped. And I am now I just had my 70th birthday. So I've been doing martial arts since I was about 17. When did you move? Oh, go ahead. I continue to do Tai Chi.   Michael Hingson ** 05:18 Good for you, you know, stay loyal? Yes. When did you move to Vancouver,   Suzanne Jean ** 05:25 early 70s. So I moved to Vancouver, and I'm in social services. So I have about 5060 years of community based social service background. And I was working with at risk youth. And I was noticing that we were criminalizing their behavior that the caregivers, people working with these kids couldn't deal with the aggression and the anger and some of those behaviors. And rather than learn how to deal with that conflict, they were just, you know, putting them in jail, they were ending up. And then it's a vicious circle. So I began to become interested in how perhaps I could use martial arts and Self Defense in a way to give those workers more a feeling of security around those kinds of behaviors. And so I began to work doing that kind of de escalation training, and it was quite successful. And I, I began to see how I could build confidence quite quickly, through self defense. So that was the first seeds of realizing that there is some real power here. Because with with the dynamics of bullying, and aggression, and any kind of aggression, it's fundamentally a study of power. And when you can teach self defense and the pillars of the program as they evolved, you can see real substantial change in terms of, you know, giving youth and children insights into their strengths, and their unique qualities and their abilities to be safe. And so it kind of grew from there. I have written a book and and the first chapter of the book, there's a very interesting story, because I was teaching self defense to women, as well as and studying martial arts quite seriously. And I got a call one day, and it was from a woman and she said, your name Suzanne. I said, Yes. She said, I heard on the street that you're okay. And I said, really? No. Yeah, I said, and she says, I'm a sixth grade worker, and we're in trouble. There's a serial killer. And two of my friends have been murdered. And we need self defense. And I, and this took really took me aback, right. I was like, what? And she said, Will you teach us and I said, Well, I'll agree to meet with you, and see if that would be viable. I have no idea at this point. And so she set up a meeting and the meeting was at two in the morning at a restaurant, and I arrived, and there were 50 women showed up for the meeting, in the middle of the night. And we chatted and I had no idea if I you know, I've never done anything like this before. They had no idea. But I wanted to help them. Because they were so sincere. And I said, Look, there's we'll give it a go. I said there's three conditions you show up and you're not wasted on drugs and alcohol, you know, you're in good, fairly good shape, you show up, and that you just give it 100% You give it everything you have. So the woman, Rhonda, the the woman who was organizing the whole thing said, I know the minister at the church, and I'm sure he'll let us practice there. And I think the classes should be 730 in the morning before we go to bed after work. So I was like, again, just like okay, so mostly they could meet the condition of giving it everything but you know, they would come off their shifts, or they were and it was amazing. And to see the sentence of To see the change in them to see them grow, to start to recognize the community and support each other. And realize, you know, if a car if if Sunland felt the car was unsafe to get into, they would they wouldn't do it. They started learning the moves. And it was a remarkable learning experience for me, I was just so impressed with that. It's at least   Michael Hingson ** 10:32 good that they, they did it at a fairly decent hour in the morning, but before they went to bed, that's pretty cool. But 730 In the morning, better than 2am Every day, I'll say. But by the same token, I can see what you're saying that you are teaching them self defense. And probably a lot of them, maybe most of them felt somewhat defenseless right from the outset. And so you are instilling a lot of confidence in these women where they didn't have it before.   Suzanne Jean ** 11:07 Mm hmm. Absolutely. And so as my program, my program is called power, and as I said, you know, it is it is a study of power. And there's four pillars to the program. And the first pillar is attention. And that's around tuning into the here and now and really observing yourself observing others observing the environment around you. And the you know, as they say, where your attention goes, your energy flows, so much of, for young people, so much of the world is in this little box, right? It's in social media, it's on telephones, it's gaming, it's on computers. And they're not looking at words, they're not looking at each other. In, in a way, that's when I saw when I do these classes, and we have discussions, they think it's rocket science, Oh, can we do that, again, that was really great. No, we're just we're having a conversation. But if you think about their world, that kind of attention is not something that's, that's common. It's not common. And part of that also, what I teach is being able to recognize LOA allies and people that can support you in your life. The second pillar is really the heart and soul. And that's awareness. And that is building self study, bringing people to recognize what they truly believe and feel and what they want. And then having the skills gaining the skills to be able to communicate it. So in order to force somebody to say no to getting into a car, right, that could be a threat to them to their lives, they have to care about themselves, they have to take that step where I do care about myself, and I'm not going to take that chance. So having that awareness and that self love loving yourself loving others, that piece is all about the self awareness pillar. So this is not, you know, you think of self defense, you just think of the physical, and I take it to a whole different level, I take self defense to a whole different level, a psychological level. The fourth, the third pillar is avoidance. And that's all the things you do to stay safe. And again, it ties into attention, recognizing what those things are, but and not not safety just from a physical but from a most emotional. So kids do learn street smarts, and they learn that sort of thing. But then they learn a little bit more about how to set boundaries for themselves, how to be emotionally safe. And in the way the awareness piece helps them to communicate that to others and set those boundaries with other people. And then the final one is the action piece. So that's where they have the skills to defend themselves physically and emotionally. If they're bullied or they're threatened. And the action piece is doesn't stop again, with just the physical, it moves into being able to make good choices and good decisions for yourself. So all those four pillars kind of are they're interrelated. But they support they support it pretty good mindset. So the program the classes themselves, involve physical self defense. discussions, self awareness exercises, perception exercises mindfulness, and physical, you know, games, they're pretty well rounded, because it has to be fun, I'm not going to get children and youth doing this unless it's really fun.   Michael Hingson ** 15:18 You mentioned before about the fact that a lot of their behaviors, over the years have become more criminalized and so on. Do you think that the behavior of children and younger people has actually grown worse? Or a relatively speaking or that people perceive that it has? Or is that really something that's happening, much less the fact that now we don't want to deal with it, we just send them off to jail?   Suzanne Jean ** 15:50 Yeah, I think there's elements that really, that make it a little more extreme, like get the gang thing. I mean, we all want a sense of belonging. And if kids can, in a really nurturing community and a healthy community, they're going to find a sense of belonging somewhere else, and the gang is a is a perfect place for it. And so, you know, my job is to really try to prevent, to teach them how to how to have that sense of community without needing to go to those places. And we have to talk to kids, we have to talk to her children. And, you know, sometimes I'm criticize, or you're opening these cans of worms, you're talking about these subjects, you know, sexual abuse and these subjects that we shouldn't be talking about suicide, and I said, No, we need to talk about these things. And we need to talk about how we can feel different, like how we can feel better about ourselves. And so those, that's where they really do appreciate those discussions, you know, because they'll say, Oh, I didn't know, anybody else felt like that. Because they're not texting and you feel like, oh, that's how I feel, right? This is important to know that, you know, or if I do this, it hurts. And what does that feel like? And why do you want to hurt somebody? Right?   Michael Hingson ** 17:20 That's so much of we're losing in the whole art of conversation, I've read articles about how we're, even as adults, forgetting the art of conversation, and we go way out on power trips, and other things like that we don't talk, we don't discuss feelings at all. That doesn't mean that every other sentence has to be about how we feel. But we really should do a lot more conversing and interacting and true engaging than we tend to do these days.   Suzanne Jean ** 17:55 And I'll just do simple lead ins to that, like, I have a sheet of all these feelings, and I'll do what I call a parent shear, where I say, Pick somebody you don't know, and, and choose a feeling of fear that you felt recently and tell another person about when you felt it and why. And that's the exercise. And they love it. Because they're talking about themselves. Right. And it's the lead in for me, obviously, to go into anger and teaching them about anger. Which, you know, again, leads into aggression and violence. And understanding that, and so you're right, it's a wonderful opportunity to bring get to and, you know, I think, for sure, Zoom has brought us all together and certainly through the terrible time of COVID. But having face to face having kids face to face, is where it needs to happen. And the physical self defense obviously has to be   Michael Hingson ** 19:00 tastefully physical, right? But even with Zoom, there are a lot of opportunities to augment the process, although it's not quite the same as physically being there, but you can do a lot with Zoom. You certainly can't do with texting.   Suzanne Jean ** 19:18 Yeah, for sure. For sure. But it is, yeah, it's those groups that I can really build the awareness in.   Michael Hingson ** 19:29 Well, age wise, you and I are pretty similar. I'm three years ahead of you. So not much, but we came up in went to school in the same general era. So one of the things that it seems to me we are facing a lot more now is this whole issue of bullying. I don't remember even being a blind kid in school. Ever been a real victim of bullying? I think there was was one time when one kid did but I never really found that was an issue and I never heard about it growing up. And although I wasn't in the big city, but still, I think I hear about it a lot more. Was your experience the same? And if so, why is it that it is so much more an issue? Or why are we seeing so much more bullying today?   Suzanne Jean ** 20:19 I think it's because we don't have healthy, self confident, confident kids who really know who they are. And, you know, they don't, they don't can't describe their values, they they're uncertain about their strengths are so much I, I pick up so much fear, and so much uncertainty and kids today, they don't, they don't believe the world is gonna, you know, they, the climate change, and all of these different things are a major factor for them in terms of their security. And I think that, out of that comes this this easy place to just put down others to feel better, you know, in any kinds of differences.   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 Yeah, because we, we don't have support systems like we used to, I remember growing up talking with, with other kids. And even more important, talking with my parents, and we talked about feelings, we talked about any issues that we felt sometimes we were a little reluctant, as kids are with parents, but still, our parents knew how to bring things out of us and really have those discussions. And there's so many reasons why it doesn't happen today. How do you get parents to deal with that with kids? Because as you said, the problem is all too often now we criminalize things. And parents haven't really learned that they need to deal with creating more self confident kids. How do we deal with that?   Suzanne Jean ** 22:01 Well, we've got to give them more time. I think that one of the things that, you know, if you look at families, and you look at all the commitments, and two working parents and all the pressures, there's a lot of latchkey kids, that are just coming home, and there's nobody there. And they need to be listened to. And often they don't even want you to solve anything, they just want you to listen, right? But if there's nobody there to listen, I'm very adamant that we have to address conflict and bullying in the schools in the communities. And we have to say, Well, why don't you just say, No, we have to take a stance. I mean, it is a World Health Organization, major issue, now they've declared it, it is so prevalent compared to when you and I were were young. And I think if you don't take a stand and you don't deal with it, then it's just gonna continue. And I believe that it has to be everybody on the same page coming together. Because it's so it's so often people don't want to deal with conflict. And if you can teach people how to steps to deal with conflict in a way that's really positive and has an amazing positive outcome, then they're more apt to try to do it the next time. Right? Right. But if everybody just turns their head, I mean, as there's another story in my book, this was in Canada, um, this boy was being seriously bullied at school and the teachers knew the principal's knew. The parents knew, and they did nothing. And he, his mum arrived at school in time to see him being murdered. And everybody went, right. But there was no intervention. And all of those people, including those boys had, that were bullying needed to be part of something to make that difference. Because a life was taken. And yeah, it's pretty that's an extreme case, but it happens in so many ways. One of the things with the kids, I do this exercise, Michael, and it is the most amazing, I do it in the first session. And I divide the group into three, and they have a big piece of paper and they answer the question, what is bullying? Why do kids bully and what can be done about bullying? And they and the papers moved from person to person, right? So all three groups get to answer all the questions and then they choose somebody to report that. Well, this is the first time that the bully and the bullied are sitting side by side and it's all are often the first time that the bully gets to see what other kids think of them. And they're described as weak as having problems. Problems at home, as like, you know, how. And you I, as an instructor, I can just tell which, which kids or which, right that looks on their faces. Because they don't, they've never seen them that other kids saw them that way. So I, my daughter is an instructor in in a middle elementary school. And she said, Mom, I really want you to come and do this program with me because there's a kid in the program, and he's, he's a real bully. And he's a problem. And they're say, he's going to ruin the class. I'm not, and I don't have the skills to deal with his behavior. So I'd love it if you did it with me. And I said, Absolutely, I'll do. So yeah, the principal and all the teachers had nothing but terrible things to say about this kid. I call them Johnny in the book. And we were doing this exercise. What is it really? Why do people believe what can you do bubbling? And little, this other kid, I was in the group with Johnny. And this other kid looked at me, and he said, you know, you're a bully, don't Johnny. And I thought, oh, here we go. He's gonna escalate. You know, we're gonna have a big scene now. And Johnny looked at me said, I know, but I don't want to be. And my heart just broke. And it was like, after this exercise, he made a 360 change. And he was, because he just saw it. He saw how I love   Michael Hingson ** 26:45 me. But why did he bully in the first place? Oh, he had?   Suzanne Jean ** 26:49 Yeah. The usual has, he was beaten? At home. Right? Yeah, that's, that's how you solve problems. You just hit somebody. But he had never, he had never had positive attention. So he happened to be he was a little Irish boy. And he happened to be so good at the techniques. So suddenly, other kids present, Oh, Johnny, you're really good at that. And I always do this, this demo thing like demo, and everybody shows their stuff. And, and he chose stuff. And, and at the end, the principal came in to see a demonstration at the end of the program, and you shouldn't have seen that kid shine. And and the principal is just like, I don't believe this, you know, and I said, Well, that's, that's the power of awareness. That's the power of awareness. That's holding an app and saying this, I don't, I don't want to be this, I want to be something else helped me be that. And for a lot of kids, it's shining the light, it's shining the light for them. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 It literally is true that poor Johnny didn't know anything else until you had this, this class in this program.   Suzanne Jean ** 27:57 That's what he knew. That's what he knew. So he was a bully, and he happy and, and, which is another thing they say about, you know, the kids say about bullies as well, they're very unhappy. They're very angry, they're very unhappy. You know, they just want to let they just want to act tough. They just want to, yeah, they're just really weak. It's like, wait a minute, I'm the tough guy. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's the power, it's the power of awareness. So it's changing. It's really, you know, moving those topics through and, and, and then more and more, I've been experimenting with mindfulness, giving them some tools to calm their calm their mind self regulation tools, because there's a lot of anxiety. And I think that also feeds into bullying. And it's, it's that kind of nonspecific, general anxiety. Like, you know, you'd need to be a psychologist, I guess, to get to the bottom of it, but it, it's messy. And it has a lot of weird sorts of characteristics in terms of behavior. But yeah, so I'm doing more of that, like, you know, breathing and slowing it down looking and they really liked those exercises. They liked the body scans and and the little guys will say, Oh, could you do that thing? Suzanne, where you put us to sleep? Yeah, I can do that again. So this program is really eclectic. I mean, it's got all these elements but it as I said, it breaks very nicely into those four pillars of attention, awareness. Avoid Then Senate action and taking a real direct route to trying to put some strategies in place to avoid bullying. So, in the book, in one of the chapters, I talk about how any organization can set up an anti bullying program in school, and the steps to doing that, I have done this. And they can, they can change the culture of their organization, if they put the steps into place. And those steps involve the parents. They involve the teachers, they involve the students, the peers, they involve the bullies. And the administration. So it's, it's a real program.   Michael Hingson ** 30:49 Do the kids oftentimes as they become more aware, how do I put this almost take charge and really deal with the bullies in a in a positive way? And, and become part of the solution? Yeah,   Suzanne Jean ** 31:04 you got it, it changes the culture, they decide what's not okay. And in a really positive way, they they, they start to make that happen? What kind of world do you want to live in? You know, how do you want to feel? Well, and as you   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 said, it's all about belonging, it's about belonging. And certainly, if the, a lot of the kids say this is not good behavior, this is not acceptable. And convey that to the bullies or to the people who continue to behave that way, at some point, they're going to recognize we're being left out.   Suzanne Jean ** 31:45 Yeah. And it's, you know, it's not difficult, it's not difficult to, to put this kind of thing in place. And having fit for defense, having the power ed program in there really takes care of the peer part. Because you can do peer training, you can train those kids to be leaders very easily. I sometimes train them to be navigators to take you know, if kids after they've done the program, they often what happens is, they'll start moving again. And they'll say, ah, you know, I used to play soccer, or I used to dance or I used to, or I want to study a martial art. And it's really hard for them to walk through those doors without somebody helping them. So I will sometimes pay kids on our areas to be navigators and to go with those kids. And go to the first martial arts class, you know, figure out where, what a good place would be sometimes with low income kids, we find funding, and just open those doors and get them moving again. And again, as you say, That's connection back to the community. So that's priceless. In terms of, you know, we're, then then we're at a whole other level in terms of good citizens.   Michael Hingson ** 33:03 Have you can you give us a you know, I love stories, can you give us a couple of stories about bullies who completely turned around and became very successful? And I, you, you gave one, but I'd love to hear, you know, more real success stories and why they're so important, and maybe how that helped other   Suzanne Jean ** 33:25 people? Well, I, I see change often with the, you know, with the really at risk kids, the angry kids who, who kind of, kind of put that down, they they in the course of of this training, they'll they'll put that aside, and they become the ones there's the they're the ones who are in foster care, you know, 13 placements, they're the ones that have have those kind of histories that we would just go, how did they even get here out of the Union survive, right? Yeah. And I have one such girl who I've worked with, who went through the program, and I trained her to be an instructor, and she was very out of control in her youth, and hurt a lot of people and hurt herself and was involved in, you know, addiction and the whole nine yards, and came through it. And she just passed past. She just graduated with her degree in social work. Wow. And about a month ago, I got a call to provide a reference for her for a job. And I was so proud to do that. And it was like that the whole continuum, the whole thrown full circle, right? Because all she wanted to do at that point was to give back to other kids and help help other kids who might have had a life like her. So, at some level,   Michael Hingson ** 35:06 she must have wanted to succeed right from the outset, except just didn't know how to deal with that. And you showed the solution or you showed her away.   Suzanne Jean ** 35:16 And it's not a straight line, obviously. Right? There's, you think it's, you think you're through the woods, and then the next thing, you know, there's something else but but the out the final outcome, and I know that she's, she will just be so wonderful, working with kids, and that's who she's going to work with. So, that's a great story. And then there's, you know, there's, there's the little stories. For, for some kids, it's so normalized to be bullied, they don't realize that they're being bullied. And that's one of the things in terms of the awareness, they realize what it is, you know, they and what their rights are, what they should, should, how they should be treated. And there was this one, I was doing an elementary school, and this little girl came to me and she says, I'm being bullied. And I said, Oh, and she said, It's my, my brother, he's always hitting me, he pulls the chair out from underneath, and I fall, and he hits me, and he slaps me, and he punches me. And he knocks my books out of my hands. And I'm walking to school. And she said, and I'm always scared. And I use bullying me. But she, she had gone to her parents, and they just laughed, and they normalized it oh, oh, he's just a boy. Right? It's just being a brother, right? And it's through the course of of power. He goes, he's I'm being bullied in and I said, Yeah, you are, and what do you want to do about it? And she said, Well, you talk about having a difficult conversation. She said, I want to have a difficult conversation. And I want to tell him what he's doing. And I want to tell him how I feel, and that he has to stop. And so I worked with her. We did, we wrote a script, we went through the steps. She practiced it several times. But I was a little worried that he would get really angry and hurt her. So it would they were in the cafeteria for the difficult conversation. And I was kind of just outside. You know, he couldn't see me, but I could hear it. And she went in there. And she told him and I thought, you know, he's gonna get super angry, he did get angry. But she continued, and she continued to give him as met the message, I love you, you're my brother, but you can't hurt me anymore. This is not okay. And I thought for sure that he was gonna lose it. But he started to cry. And he, he started to cry. And he said, I am so sorry. And then she cried. And they both cried, and they hugged and changed the game. changed the game. Yeah. And that was that would have gone on probably into adulthood. That pain that she was carrying, not only physically but mentally, right.   Michael Hingson ** 38:33 It's still all about having a conversation.   Suzanne Jean ** 38:37 It's about having a conversation. And having the skills and having the support behind you. Like she knew I was behind her to like, so she gave her that little bit of extra. She got to practice, you know, she got to know be clear on what she wanted to say. So that's what are saying, knowing what what it is you believe what it is you want. You have to know that before you can express it to somebody else. Before you can have that conversation in the power elite. These are all really, really I think, Barry's important tools.   Michael Hingson ** 39:17 You sort of talked about a little bit, but why self defense as part of the whole process? And is that a regular part of all the power ed programs?   Suzanne Jean ** 39:28 Absolutely. Because you can learn something in your body much faster than you can learn it in your head. So I can teach a boundary, a physical boundary and then move that to a psychological emotional boundary and have the kids get it faster. From having that feeling. I can teach defense position and build more confidence in kids being able to step back and protect their vital points than I could for in a month a Sunday. is talking about it. Because they can feel what defense is. They can feel their strength, when they hit a focus pad, they can feel how strong they are. They can let that out that energy out. That pent up anxiety. And I can move them into the parasympathetic nervous system. So they start to let go of all that. And, and get rid of the crazy the crazy head stuff, right? Yeah. So it is, yeah. It's a direct route. And if when we're talking adolescents cognitive is not, it's not the best starting point. I mean, their brains aren't even developed for the, you know, by the time until they're 2627. So yeah, I kind of short circuit it, I go into the body into the strength into the temple. And, yeah, that's where it's, it's fast. I can teach lessons fast. And I've just kind of, I'm just kind of put this together as I go along, right? I mean, I didn't have a manual, I wrote the manual. But trying stuff, seeing how it works, evolving it. And I'm still I'm still evolving. As I told you, I'm now I'm adding much more around self regulation and mindfulness and into the program.   Michael Hingson ** 41:32 Have you ever had a situation where you've gone through and done a lot of the teaching that you've done, and someone feels now that I've learned to defend myself and so on that my only way to deal with the bully is through strengthen, go off and deck them or something like that? Or do you find that people really get it and don't need to go that way?   Suzanne Jean ** 41:55 No, it's, it's, it's not   Michael Hingson ** 41:59 acceptable. But I'm just curious, we have found that that happened throughout   Suzanne Jean ** 42:02 now. It's mastery over yourself is true power. Right? If you can master yourself, you don't need to duck the person. You know, there's no need, you can handle it so much. It just takes care of itself when you have that confidence and that strength and that strength. Over You know, your own emotion. Yeah, it just, it takes that response out of out of the mix. And I've never had it happen. And it's also I teach, you know, lots of schools, and it's something that teachers worry about, and I have never had any buddy use the physical techniques outside of the classroom. Even bullies? Yeah, never. And I my deal to is, the instructors say this is, you know, this is really, this is special stuff, and you, you use it wrong, no more, you know, you want to learn this, you gotta, you gotta follow the discipline. So there is a, there is a lot of that martial arts discipline that I bring in their, that they respect each other, they show that respect, they understand what hurting is, pain is. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 And they, and they learn to feel why all this is important. And I'm thinking especially of the bullies who catch on, and realize what they've done or should do. And they, of course, as everyone does, but they especially it seems to me, become all the better for it.   Suzanne Jean ** 43:52 That's right. And it's always a new day, they can leave it behind, like it's a new day, they're gonna learn new things, this is it, you know, this is how we are we become powerful and how we become happy, and how we make good choices for ourselves and good decisions in our lives and how we get the things that we want. And so, yeah, I have not had I have not had an incident of that.   Michael Hingson ** 44:18 And that is that is wonderful in such testimony are testament to the success of the program by any standard, which is which is really great. And it is so unfortunate that we have to encounter so many bullies, and we live in a world where it's it's so hard because we've got I mean all of our politicians who clearly demonstrate absolutely no respect for each other and are not acting as role models at all. It really makes it hard to view them as leaders because they're certainly not leading by example other than being jerks a lot of the time.   Suzanne Jean ** 44:58 Yeah, And the thing about the the thing about power as well is, and that power of awareness isn't so many of our behaviors and our patterns and our habits, like they're, they're really unconscious, right? They're, they're learned, we learn to be a bully. But they're not, it's not their habits. And when you kind of shine the light with like, with Johnny, that's the beginning of making a positive change. That's the beginning of change. And I think the main success of this program is that I'm super non judgmental in that, like, we're not judging, we're not judging it, we're together, and we're where we're at. And there's not this, you need to be like this, or that, you know, it's just, you know, let's just look at ourselves. Let's look at why we do things and how we do things. And, and let's be curious. And so when the light is shone, it's in that nonjudgmental and the the positive change can happen. Yeah, it just frees it up. It's I don't know, it's it's the magic to me.   Michael Hingson ** 46:18 I think one of the biggest blessings that I got growing up was that my parents, really in cure encouraged a curious mind and encouraged me to be curious, of course, for me, it was more of a challenge, I guess, in one sense, or more of a necessity, maybe as a better way to put it because being blind, I didn't necessarily see things the way other kids did. But my parents really encouraged me to explore, and, and ask questions. And as a blind person growing up much before GPS, and a lot of the technologies we had today, asking questions, was the chief way that I would get information. And I wish more people would do that today. And one of the things I say about blindness, people are always thinking they are experts on blindness. And what I tell people all the time is the biggest problem with blind people or people who say they're experts about blindness is I've never tried it. You know, the reality is, it's, there's, there's a lot to learn, it's not something you're going to learn overnight, but know, or understand or understand. But the reality is that you can learn to be a very curious person you can learn to explore, and good teachers understand the value of, of exploring and talking and, and truly mentally growing to understand as you go along.   Suzanne Jean ** 47:51 Yeah, I think that's really critical. And I think it's, it's where that kind of development can happen. That personal development and growth is through that is through that curiosity and that willingness to kind of, you know, suspend judgment. And kids are so critical of themselves. I mean, you know, it's just everything is like, Oh, this is no good. That's no good. I can't I can't, I can't, I can't. Yeah, you can. You can, you can. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 48:31 You may not be able to do it yet, or you may not know the right way to do it. But you can and yeah, that's the biggest issue. When I was born, my parents were told to send me off to a home for handicapped children, because no blind person could ever grow up to do anything in society. And my parents playing out now disagreed with that. And that started the, the pathway that they they and I went on, and I think yes, yeah, absolutely.   Suzanne Jean ** 49:06 Yeah. It's very special parents, because at that time, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't an open mindedness around any disabilities.   Michael Hingson ** 49:20 It goes back to the basic though philosophy of whether it's disability or not, it still goes back to the basic philosophy of dealing with with kids from a parent's standpoint. It's harder today because there are so many things that can get a kid in jeopardy. And I don't mean that in a negative way, or like bullying, but just in general, and it is so hard to I think it's really hard to be a kid today because there's so many dangerous things that you have to deal with. And it's hard for your parents to deal with, but at the same time, we've got to let our kids explore and grow and We have to figure out or learn ways to help them with doing that. And allow them to grow and ask questions and maybe make mistakes and help them, but be part of their lives all the way around. And I know it's hard, especially with families where you have both parents earning incomes to support the family. But at some point, you got to do some of that.   Suzanne Jean ** 50:25 Yes, you do. And that's what I'm trying to do. With my program, and the program is for all ages, children and mainstream youth, my particular niche is the more at risk kids and those kids don't have families. So I tried to work with teaching them how to create a family of choice. Right. Right. And, but yes, for sure. It's so important. And so that that's being available. I mean, I was talking about these busy lives, right, being just being around just being available for your kids to talk to you. I mean, if you're not there, you're not there. Yeah, yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 51:17 bottom line is you chose to be parents, mostly. There are some who probably didn't expect it, but it did happen. And if you keep the child, there are all the responsibilities that go with it. And so at some point, you've got to be able to make the time available to, to talk with them and to interact with them and make them feel wanted. And I know that's a lot of what happens to so many kids, they just really feel they're not wanted because the parents aren't around. And maybe they don't know how to express that to the parents to get the parents to understand why they have to do things a little differently, either.   Suzanne Jean ** 51:55 Yeah, they don't show important. They're not a priority.   Michael Hingson ** 52:00 And don't know how to say that.   Suzanne Jean ** 52:02 Yeah. Don't know how they don't know how to express it. But the thing when, when you when I was talking about the anti bullying strategy, when you get kind of everybody in the conversation, it's a great, it's, it's amazing how much people can bring to the table in terms of ideas, right, and commitment. And then nobody's nobody's feeling alone, right? Because they're actually doing something about it. And they're establishing some guidelines, and they're there. They're building an intervention, you have to I said that before you have to intervene, you have to be can't be afraid of conflict.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 And you have to be very important. Yeah.   Suzanne Jean ** 52:55 Yeah. But having said talked about all of these things, as I said, this program is super fun. Like, it's, there's a lot of play in it, I add a lot of games, and a lot of play. We do. You know, they do slow motion fights, they're 10 feet away from each other, and they do the slow motion fights, and they do, you know, all kinds of tank games and all kinds of building agility and, and strength, then there's, they work with focus pads and full noodles. And there's all kinds of all kinds of things going on. So it's really it is really fun.   Michael Hingson ** 53:39 What is the focus pad?   Suzanne Jean ** 53:42 A focus pad is a hard, well, it's not that hard. It's a target that you use that you hit. Okay, so you learn punches, and but you actually get to snack something. So you get to feel your strength, you get to feel your strength, right, you get to follow through, and you get to exhale and focus your technique on focus, Pat, Better that than on a person. And it's a great feeling.   Michael Hingson ** 54:09 There you go. Yeah, we've, we've talked about parents a lot and so on. What do you say to parents who say, Well, I just don't have any time because we're both working all the time. You know, we've talked about those double income parents, but what what do you say to them?   Suzanne Jean ** 54:24 Create, Create some opportunities, create some special special time? Right? If you're both working like take make Saturday. Family time? Yeah. Where everybody you know, every week you get different person gets to choose what you do, but you do something together every week, right? You have to set you have to make it happen. You have   Michael Hingson ** 54:49 to make it happen. And that's the real issue, isn't it?   Suzanne Jean ** 54:52 Yeah. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 54:55 It's it's got to be a priority. To keep the family together, and I think that's also partly something that a lot of parents haven't learned. And, you know, you said there's no manual for a lot of this, there isn't necessarily a great manual for, for being parents, or at least parents don't seem to want to read the manuals that might help them a lot or, or haven't found them.   Suzanne Jean ** 55:23 Yeah, so one of the manuals for parenting that I got being a parent is that the best form of discipline is natural consequences. Yeah, that if there is a punishment of some kind, it has to be a consequence of that particular behavior. And it has to be within a short timeframe. And it has to be, it has to make sense. And it has to be consistent. Yeah. And so that's with what I teach in terms of setting up interventions with bullying, that there's a natural consequence to things. And that the person that's been harmed and the person that's harming figure that out together, yeah, there you go. And it's a natural consequence. So if you, you know, if you ripped up my scribblers or they still called scrollers.   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 If you punched a hole in my, my mat,   Suzanne Jean ** 56:29 you broke if you broke my earbuds,   Michael Hingson ** 56:36 there has to be a consequence. And   Suzanne Jean ** 56:38 yeah, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna save up your money and buy new some new ear buds. And say, sorry,   Michael Hingson ** 56:46 right, and that saying, Sorry, is a significant part of it, it isn't just replacing the ear buds. It's very being sorry, 21. and a half years ago, I worked in the World Trade Center and an escaped, and for for all the time, since then, I have talked a lot about not being really afraid. And there were reasons I wasn't afraid. But the the biggest reason was that I had created a mindset by learning a lot of things like what to do in an emergency in the World Trade Center. Also, having at that time worked with five guide dogs, I learned a lot of the same kinds of concepts that we're talking about here. There's a consequence for bad behavior. And it's not just when the dog behaves badly. But if I don't handle things in the right way, then I have to make amends and deal with the two because we as a team have to respect each other and make no mistake about it. It is a two creature team, both of whom have feelings. And both of whom might sense when the other does something that isn't supposed to be done. And you do you do have to fix it. But during the during the pandemic, I've realized that we don't talk about how to control fear or anything like that. So we're actually writing a new book called A Guide Dogs Guide to Being brave. And the idea is to teach people also about the fact that fear is not something that as I put it needs to blind you, you can use it as a very positive powerful thing. There's a lot of physical, physiological natural reactions, but you can learn to use fear in a very positive way. And that's, in part the kinds of things you're saying as well.   Suzanne Jean ** 58:30 Absolutely, it is very much the same. And when, when you're doing physical techniques together, and you're practicing those things, you come face to face with, you know, your own protection. And it's an interesting thing, to believe in yourself, you have to trust yourself, you have to trust yourself, and you had to trust your dog as well, right. And it definitely, the fight or flight response is in that limbic brain it's in and it has to, in order to come out of that and be able to think, move breve function. These are the skills that you're building.   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 But it is a two way, but it is a two way street. So the dog has to trust me as well. You know, the purpose of the dog is to make sure that we walk safely, not to know where to go and how to get there and there are a lot of reasons for that. But the dog has to trust me as well. And one of the things that I have said many times is while dogs love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally but the difference between dogs or most dogs unless they're really abused But the difference basically between dogs and people is, dogs are at least open to trust and they're at least open to trying to develop a trusting relationship. And we've been taught in so many ways, not to trust, to be fearful to be fearful.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:00:17 And and when you were coming out of the Trade Center were you confident that you were going to make it I was confident   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:27 I was going to make it. But at the same time, I kept an ear open like listening for the first sounds of the building groaning or something like that. So I, I stayed observant. But what happened for us was that the airplane struck 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, so neither I nor anyone else in my office or around me, or as we were going down the stairs, any of the people near me on the stairs, knew what had happened, we figured out an aeroplane must have hit the building, because we smelled in the stairwell, the fumes from burning jet fuel. But we didn't really think, well, most of us didn't really think that we would perish. There were a couple of times that some people started to panic. And we we worked on that all of us knew we had to keep everyone focused and going down the stairs. And we did that. And one of the people who at one point, Panic was my colleague, David Frank, who was in our office that day from our corporate office in California, because he was going to be talking about pricing. We were doing sales seminars for 50 people. They hadn't arrived yet. But David was there because he was responsible for a lot of the distribution and reseller pricing. And David on the 50th floor, said, Mike, we're gonna die. We're not going to make it out of here. And I just snapped at him very deliberately, David, stop at a for sale, and I can go down the stairs, so can you. And what David then did was, he said, I want to walk a floor below you, and shout up to you what I see on the stairs, because I gotta take my mind off of thinking about what might happen. And he and he did that all the way down the stairs. Did I need him to do it? I didn't need him to do it. But when Gates did it, he needed to do it. But you know, what was even better about it was that he became a beacon for anyone within the sound of his voice. Mike, I'm on the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is going on down, not stopping. And so anyone who heard him knew there was someone on the stairs, who was okay. Now to David, think about that going down the stairs. I've never heard him say that he did. But still, he had to keep 1000s of people focused just by his shouting, as we went down the stairs, which I think is incredibly cool. Because he needed to do it for himself. And it turns out helped so many other people along the way as well.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:02:54 Amazing. Yeah, wonderful story.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:58 It is it is one of those things that, you know, doesn't get talked about much. But it but it did happen. But for me, I didn't worry about it. And as I would tell people now one of our biggest problems in the world is we worry about so many things, rather than just worrying about what we can control, we stop worrying about all the things we can control and just worry about what we can, we would be much less stressed, and much better off.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:03:22 And that's why I'm working hard to build confident, healthy kids. So we can control that we can give them those skills, we can give them the ability to make choices and to feel strong, and to be an entity and deal with their fears. And they have a lot of fears. Like I was saying, you know they're, they're pretty discouraged. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:52 And, and advice aren't helping.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:03:55 And when I first when I first started working in the field, kids, this kind of kids at risk kids, they were much more scrappy, they had more energy, they were you know, they had more resilience, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And now there's this sense of defeat, depress there. I was I had a recent class and we were talking about anger and triggers what like what, what makes you what pisses you off? What makes you angry? You know, what makes you go from zero to 10 in terms of a trigger, and all all 10 of them, there's 10 of them in the group and they want to Oh, nothing nothing bothers me. Nothing makes me mad and, and oh, no, I don't have any triggers. And we went around the group and there was this one guy was an athlete. He was a rugby player and he says, Come on, man. Like, you know, you're on the field and someone just says you you don't get pissed off, like in the sport. No, I expect that that's just part of the game. So we went all around the group, and in this program, staff bring their dogs to work. And the kids love the dogs. And the dogs come in the classroom all the time. And they love the dogs. So they got that we got back to the to me. And I said, Okay, that's amazing. None of you have any triggers. So it's like, perfectly okay for someone to kick a dog. And they just went ballistic. They were like, No, you can't kick a dog. What did the dog ever do to you? And oh, wow. And I, you know, and they were all 10 of them were chirping away. They were like, Yeah, bla bla bla bla. And I said, I think I, I think you have a trigger. And then some of them were took that and they said, and it's the same with people. Like it's not okay to diss people. It's not okay to just like, you know, just put them down for no reason. And suddenly, this whole discussion was happening with this, but prior to me provoking them, it was like, No, everything's cool now. Everything's cool. Everything's cool. Yeah, no, it's not. No, it's   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 not. You just aren't ready to admit it yet. You're just not ready to acknowledge it. But and it's to use the same terminology, sometimes a challenge, but you found the trigger?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:06:27 Yes, I certainly did. Which is, which is great. Which is really kind of funny is when we're, yeah. Anyway, that's a cute story that happened very recently.   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 What do you do when you're not doing Power ed, and teaching and so on?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:06:43 I worked in social services. For many years, I ran a couple of agencies and mental health agency and an addiction agency. I built them from scratch and ran them. I then went on to work in quality assurance, which is kind of seeing that organizations maintain a really high level of standards around service delivery, and business standards in social services.   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:11 But what do you do today to relax to get away from all of this, other than making a trip to Hawaii?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:07:16 Can I continue to do martial arts? I'm working on my third degree black belt. And I'd like to achieve this year I still do Tai Chi, I do yoga. I said before, I'm very hyper, I have a lot of energy. I wrote my book. And so I've been promoting the book I've been teaching developing instructors. So my program is that it's a train the trainer, so I trained instructors to run the program. So I've been doing lots of that. I have some grandbabies. I have three grandkids, here you go. And they are joy, a total joy. I'm loving that. And yeah, I think life is good. Life is great.   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:03 I mean, that's that's the way it should be, you know, you can always find negative things, but you can always find positive things. And there's, you know, there's no reason to consider life in a negative way of their lives. It's too much of an adventure, not to want to be part of it.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:08:18 And like you said, Michael, so much to be curious about, even ourselves learning about ourselves still. There's so much it's just I No two days are ever the same. Which is great. Yeah. So Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:36 this has been fun. And we need to let you go back to your vacation. And remember, I told you, we might go more than an hour, we have now gone 67 minutes. So we're doing well. We could probably keep going and you're very generous and kind of your with your time.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:08:53 Well, it's wonderful talking to you. You're amazing. If people want to   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:57 reach out to you learn more about the program or whatever. How do they do that?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:09:00 They can go to my website, it's fit4defense.com, and it's fit with a 4 pillars and defenses spelt with an S. So it's fit for defense.com and they can go on the website and learn all about it. Reach out to me. And if anybody is interested in starting an anti bullying program, I'd be happy to to guide them in that process.   Michael Hingson ** 1:09:29 I need to have you have a conversation with my cat. Oh, she's a wonderful kitty. She likes to get petted while she eats. Literally, she won't eat unless I'm in there petting her and she yells at me until I come in there and then pet her while she eats and she'll wake me up during the night. I've mostly got a little bit of a detente whether she can only do that once during the night and occasionally she tries to do it more than once and I'll wake up enough to say Ah, we didn't once but can't She's acuity and wouldn't have it any other way. It's great to have a cat that's engaged in Alamo who is my ace guide dog. And she get along. So that works out well.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:10:12 That's wonderful.   Michael Hingson ** 1:10:13 But I want to thank Oh, go ahead.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:10:15 It's been a pleasure talking to you. Well, I   Michael Hingson ** 1:10:17 want to thank you again. And I'd like to thank you for listening. Please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. We really appreciate those ratings. And also, feel free to give us comments, you can reach out to me via email by going out emailing Michaelhi at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. And AccessiBe is a company that makes products that help make websites more usable for a lot of different kinds of persons with disabilities. You can also go to our podcast page, which is www dot Michaelhingson h i n g s o n.com/podcast. But wherever you are, please give us a rating of five star rating. We always love those. And also your comments. And Suzanne, for you or anyone listening if you know of anyone else who we ought to have as a guest, I would sure appreciate you letting us know and giving us an introduction. We're always looking for people who want to come on and tell their stories like like you Suzanne did today. So hopefully, you might think of other folks. But one last time again, thank you very much for being with us and giving us all your time today. Back to the beach. Back to the beach.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:11:35 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

David Frank grew up in Denver, CO, and as expected, he grew up loving skiing. He mentioned that Vale was his favorite mountain, and continues to love it today. He graduated from the University of Michigan, and did investment banking in San Francisco, before starting his own firm. Outside of tech, he has two kids and by the time this episode releases, he will be a married man! His family loves to ski, especially his son, who races down the mountain competitively.From his experience in the industry and in the market, David saw a gap for small and medium size organizations to have a system to run financial businesses on. He and his team set forth to build the next generation, broker dealer platform - one that is better than they could build themselves, and better than what the large institutions have.This is the creation story of Stonehaven.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://stonehaven-llc.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-frank-cfa-68897a5/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

LifeBlood: We talked about private capital markets, creating a marketplace and operating system to bring together companies, investment bankers and placement agents, and how to get the support you need during tough times, with David Frank, CFA, Founder and CEO of Stonehaven, a private capital markets fintech operating system.       Listen to learn how the current economic climate is impacting capital markets! You can learn more about David at Stonehaven-LLC.com and LinkedIn. Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here: ​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast You can learn more about us at LifeBlood.Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood.Live.  Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood

If God calls us to seek the common good of our communities—what does that mean in real life? The commons, a shared community place or resource, is a critical idea in this conversation. Even better: it's not just an idea; it's been practiced around the globe in many times and places. David Frank talks with friend and fellow housemate Brendan Johnson about the ways we could start thinking differently—really differently—about our public, private, and shared resources. Our goal is to inspire you to imagine new ways of flourishing and to open the conversation further. Shoot us a message with any comments, questions, or critiques. There's so much around this topic left to discuss! __________ Timestamps (1:21) What is “the commons”? (5:47) Commons vs., say, a public park (14:24) Seeking the common good in common life (18:59) Rights to common air, water vs. privatization (24:50) Who are “the commoners”? (30:22) Example of 3M and the (failure of) water commons (35:53) The tragedy of the commons (39:17) “Beating the bounds” (42:47) Healthcare and the mental commons (45:23) Joy and the desire to contribute (50:15) What it means to be human (53:06) The commons of communion (57:23) What we can do now __________ Links and References Our Guest Today is D. Brendan Johnson: https://linktr.ee/dbrendanjohnson "A Short History of Enclosure in Britain" by Simon Fairlie (The Land, 2009; link to publisher) Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher (1973, link to publisher) Christ and the Common Life by Luke Bretherton (2019, link to publisher) “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin (Science, 1968; link to JStor) Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom (1990, link to publisher) Podcast: "Frontiers of Commoning with David Bollier" https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/ Free, Fair, and Alive by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich https://freefairandalive.org/ Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi https://cooperationjackson.org/ Mondragon Corporation in Spain https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/ __________ If you like this podcast, please consider… →Sharing feedback or questions! www.podpage.com/communion-shalom/contact →Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom →Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom — Credits Creators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ Espinoza Audio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com) Podcast Manager: Elena

This episode was produced remotely using the ListenDeck standardized audio & video production system. If you're looking to jumpstart your podcast miniseries or upgrade your podcast or video production please visit www.ListenDeck.com. You can subscribe to this podcast and stay up to date on all the stories here on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon and iHeartRadio. In this episode the host John Siracusa chats remotely with David Frank,  Founder & CEO at Stonehaven.  Stonehaven is a global private capital markets FinTech platform for a diverse community of investment bankers and placement agents. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon and iHeartRadio to hear next Thursdays episode with John Keidan from Torch Capital.   About the host:   John is the founder of ListenDeck a full-service podcast and video production company, which has produced over 1000 episodes of various podcasts. He is the host of the ‘Bank On It' podcast, which features over 500 episodes starring high profile fintech leaders and entrepreneurs.    Follow John on LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium

This episode was produced remotely using the ListenDeck standardized audio & video production system. If you're looking to jumpstart your podcast miniseries or upgrade your podcast or video production please visit www.ListenDeck.com. You can subscribe to this podcast and stay up to date on all the stories here on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon and iHeartRadio. In this episode the host John Siracusa chats remotely with Naftali Harris,  Co-founder & CEO at Sentilink.  SentiLink is a technology company that helps in detecting and blocking synthetic identities, fraud & identity theft.  Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon and iHeartRadio to hear next Thursdays episode with David Frank from Stonehaven.   About the host:   John is the founder of ListenDeck a full-service podcast and video production company, which has produced over 1000 episodes of various podcasts. He is the host of the ‘Bank On It' podcast, which features over 500 episodes starring high profile fintech leaders and entrepreneurs.    Follow John on LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium

In this episode David Frank from Turning Point Financial Life Planning answers a few questions from Uriah about productivity, business, success and favorite bands. Find out more about David and his services at https://turningpointhq.com/ Find out more about Productive Therapist and our services at https://productivetherapist.com/

Tarang Gupta hosts David Frank, Founder and CEO at Stonehaven. Stonehaven is a private capital markets FinTech operating system for investment bankers and placement agents to support companies and investors. In this episode you will hear about: - Pivoting a traditional financial services company into a fintech player - Building a capital markets operating system to automate fundraising and deal execution processes - Running a successful bootstrapped business and the right time to seek venture funding - His opinion on what makes a great CTO And much more! About David Frank David founded Stonehaven in 2001 and pivoted it into a fintech business in 2018. Prior to Stonehaven, he worked at Robertson Stephens in San Francisco. David graduated with honors from University of Michigan with a BBA, he is a CFA Charterholder, and holds the Series 7, 24, 31, 66, 79 and 99 registrations with FINRA. He is also an active member of the Young Presidents' Organization where he helps lead the Investment Banking Network. About Stonehaven Stonehaven's platform enables affiliate partners, companies, and investors to strategically connect across the globe, leveraging its operating system and collaborative community. Stonehaven, LLC is an SEC Registered Broker Dealer and FINRA Member Firm. Stonehaven is active across real estate, private equity, venture capital, private credit, hedge funds, long-only strategies, direct private placements, secondaries and M&A. For more FinTech insights, follow us on WFT Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech WFT Instagram: instagram.com/whartonfintech Tarang's Twitter: twitter.com/tg_tarang Tarang's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/taranggupta100

What is the current state of fintech, fundraising, and private capital markets? David Frank, founder and CEO of Stonehaven, a company that's developed a fintech operating system for investment bankers and investors in private capital markets, shares insights he sees through his company. From a high-level look at fintech and the future of AI to developing a global workforce and differences between venture capital, private equity, and public markets – this is much more than a high-level fintech conversation. View the complete show notes for this episode. Learn More: The Fungibility of Businesses as an Investment Tech & Software M&A Dynamics A Guide to Valuing Tech, Software & Online Businesses Additional Resources: Download a free pdf copy of The Art of The Exit: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Business. Purchase your copy now of A Beginner's Guide to Business Valuation | The Exit Strategy Handbook | Closing the Deal | Acquired Planning to sell your business? Schedule a free consultation today. To suggest guests, topics, or questions for future podcast episodes, contact Morgan & Westfield. Listen to Other Episodes:  How IPOs, SPACs, and De-SPACs Intersect with the M&A World How High-Growth Private M&A Works From the Inside The Basics of Private Equity 

“What is your relationship with money?” Is this a question that you can easily answer, or do you not really know the role money plays in your life and business?Do you ever feel anxious or lost around the topic of money and can't recognize how you are doing with your finances no matter how much you make or plan for?If you're struggling with money trauma, do you wonder where the healthy intersection of emotion and money is?Well, this episode is for you.In this episode, I talk with David Frank, owner of Turning Point Financial Services.Top 3 reasons to listen to the entire episode:Dispel some of the common myths around money and how to shift your thinking for more financial success.Understand how you don't need tons of money to start making your financial plan and that it's never too late to start.Identify ways to balance emotions and money to ensure healthy financial choices and mindset.So, if you are feeling lost around money issues or find yourself putting off important decisions involving your finances and preparing for the future, it's a good time to really look at more than just “the books” and start thinking about how to find a healthy relationship around the ebb and flow of money. Remember that money comes and money goes, and that is perfectly natural.If you can relate to this or just want to learn more about finances in private practice, this episode is a great place to start.More about David (Financial Planner for Therapists):David Frank is on a mission to ensure every therapist has access to unbiased and fiduciary financial advice!Through the firm he founded, Turning Point Financial Life Planning, he helps therapists navigate every element of their financial lives: from understanding your practice P&L and building a personal budget to managing student loan debt and investing for retirement... and everything in between.Dave earned both his undergraduate and MBA degrees in finance and he also completed a certificate in personal financial planning. He's worked for over twenty years in investment banking, corporate finance, and now personal finance. Don't let his love of the tax code and spreadsheets scare you off! You're just as likely to find him with his nose buried in one of Pema Chodron's books as reading up on the latest finance planning techniques.David is offering 20% off his Quick Start Coaching Intensive to listeners of the All Things Private Practice Podcast.David's Website: turningpointhq.comKlontz Money Script Test (created by Dr. Brad Klontz): www.bradklontz.com/moneyscriptstest-------------------------------------------------------

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David Frank is a financial planner for therapists. He helps therapists navigate every element of their financial lives: from understanding your practice P&L and building a personal budget to managing student loan debt and investing for retirement... and everything in between. But don't let his love of the tax code and spreadsheets scare you off! You're just as likely to find him with his nose buried in one of Pema Chodron's books as reading up on the latest financial planning techniques.