change but before we dive into this topic i'll let you to introduce yourself to my to my audience well the most wonderful thing is that i have spent twenty five years working in hospitals and so being here is actually a part of my dream because i've always wanted to take the work beyond the walls of a hospital and really give people the tools to deal with change to empower people and so it's really for me that chance to do that and that was why i started the show was to be able to give people those tools to be able to build the lives that they really deserve and really can have it to be more about who will university well i created this company back in two thousand and eight to do just what i said to and my books that i've written have actually i think of them as little workshops in a book and what i did for twenty five years working in hospital settings was actually doing groups in the classrooms and really giving people kind of the education because we don't get to learn east things in school or a lot of times in families and so that's why your show is so important because it empowers people with the knowledge and the wisdom to kind of build to build up their lives what motivated you to to start the way university i know to talk about you know yeah yeah well you know what it goes back even to my childhood when i was fourteen years old i overheard a conversation that i wasn't supposed to and i figured out that my father was dying and i grew up in one of those families where they didn't talk about things so i didn't tell anybody but i started stealing a lot of alcohol and alcohol which is the way of dealing with the overwhelm and numbing and honestly if they knew how much i was drinking i probably would have been in rehab back when i was fourteen years old but i was really lucky because sports rolled around and i put down the drinking and picked up a basketball and that was really what saved my life and i got to college that way and i've i myself have not had the tools in use those unhealthy ones and i really could call them life tools you know we have survival tools which are the alcohol which are there all tools for a lot of people that just get some survive the moment and then we can trade him in for life you know you know what you know and so to change that even even when it's not healthy even when i've worked with women in abusive marriages or relationships that change becomes so frightening because it's the unknown so i think of fear so two things i have the biggest things i've found are fear and comfort zones you know the fear of the unknown but also the comfort zones of being there and i didn't come up i have a couple tools that i teach patients that i worked with jack canfield the guy who wrote the chicken soup for the soul books i was very fortunate maybe fifteen years ago to do some work with him in a workshop and  if it's all right i'd love to share the tools please do so please do the first tool he had his do was to put our hands together like this so just lay she fingers and he said whatever thumb is on top i want you to relace them and now put that some on the bottom and pay attention to how that feels so move it and how does it feel now hold it there's a feel weird uncomfortable a little different it holding it because his point with this was when we make change it does feel uncomfortable but the more that we do it the more comfortable we get with it and when i do this in workshops what i'll find is if i don't tell people to hold it people will do this in a guy who feels weird that's too weird but we go back to the way to hear it but by holding it the more that we do it we create a new comfort zone and that to me was one of the best tools that i kind of teach people the other thing you taught us about fear was this a little saying and you kind of have to hold two fingers together hands out in front of you right like this doesn't matter and then you have to repeat after me the exact same words or were to go ask for a donation for her nonprofit she went into a bank after going to the gym he ducked into the bathroom they did go for it anyway went up stairs left for ten thousand dollars and i'll tell you why i think it worked because i think it speaks to our whole brain we're using touch we're using voice so our ears as well as our mouth but that vibration also and so when you  connected to more parts of the brain i've actually seen people take things and put them into action that's as i started to tell you earlier what i call smart theory i don't teach people new things is use what they know and create an don't just stand up and decide ok i want to walk today they stand up they take a step maybe they fall down they build they take two steps they take three steps and i think those small steps that you were talking are so critical because the other thing at least i've seen with my patients in trying to make lifestyle changes in their health they decided the change is going to be like leaping off into the deep in the fore they actually learn how to swim and it that's the power of small change where you don't have to take a big step we just have to take a step and make it be so you don't set yourself up to fail before you even started for a job so even a change of ok i'm going to change jobs so people think that that big step is applying for a new job but truthfully it's actually starting back to me at the very beginning step and i like to have people identify what is the reason what what good can come out of this change because if we can connect it to a motion positive emotions we use those as our anchor and not the outcome just because change where you're going to fail along the way so might and a lot of people afraid of failure like you just said well so i love to take words and play on words and so failure is also a very important word to yes i was stuck in a job twenty years ago that i was afraid to the and somebody handed me that book and i read it and guess what i was out of there within two months but i was using that as an audio with my patients and i thought how can we get people to embrace change how can i get people to not be afraid of it but to welcome it and i went to the board and i thought change and honestly i think this just was god coming through me so why did sharon and i went to the board and i rode out the word c h a n g and a came out creating healthy and new growth experiences creating health thing and new growth experiences and that was the first one i can see in the iranian six two thousand and six so i you know it is it comes from a desire to really give people the power back wow what that is is there what might be stressful for you may not be stressful for me and so i can't nobody can decide for us so i've heard so many people say oh don't like that stress you out or you shouldn't be bothered by that but the truth of the matter is that part of what makes us human you know and i picked the word stress mastery because i don't believe we want to eliminate stress we want to learn to master it rather than it mastering us because it's part of life how can we learn the tools and the skills to master it or to deal with it when it comes up i tell you one of the most important tools i also learned that really also changed my life was how to live one day at a time how for words and actually in this book i give an exercise how to do that because for me i came to new jersey from kansas because my mom was sick and she had quadruple bypass surgery and i got to the east coast and i loved it i mean i love it out here all do it caught it's cold in kansas too though so and and i lived with her and and it got to where i go over to the hospital one morning and only to find out that she had cancer and she never told me you know course didn't surprise me so i think some people will get angry at her but i understood i understood that that's who he was and so that afternoon i went home  and i made bunches of phone calls i have eight after others and sisters and the plan was to get my mom back to california i made all these plans and then my mom gave me the greatest gift because i actually passed away that night but you know what it taught me it taught me that it doesn't matter what you even plan for tomorrow you better live life today and how i started to use that was when i was stressed out standing in the grocery line or angry at somebody who was driving too slow or all those little things that just can annoy you used to annoy me i said to myself carol of this is your last day on earth  want to spend it angry at somebody you don't even know and it started to kind of reshape my brain you have yet to really reshape how i started to live every day and live every day is today today's the day you know until the exercise i came up with was so people didn't have to in fact let me tell you what it is because i don't want people to have to buy a book to learn it you take a piece of paper and you write yesterday tomorrow and today so just three spots on a blank piece of paper like a paper and they are you ok so that's right there's so you yesterday we write some more and then it very bottom here we are right today so want to hold that up so people can see that so that's what we do and here's what you do you write down and you think of everything from yesterday the past yesterday ten years ago twenty years ago it still beats you that still rent space in your brain so i think of it is the still living with you today and then you do the same for the future but here's the trick the only thing you do under today is you write down you go back to each one of those and you ask yourself this question and i do anything about that today and then you write down under today what you can do so for an example would be i work with a lot of people had to drop out of school in order to support a family so school was the yesterday school was even the tomorrow because it like to go back so the question becomes what could you do about school today and it would be a call about a ged call the local community college go online and only thing that goes under today are the actions that a person can take today our actions now there's one tricky one i could have a fight with my sister who passed away that still stresses me out because i never got to apologize and a lot people would say could you do something about that they say no because your sister's gone but i disagree because i could still write a letter today with my feelings and let them out and just let them out so that another way i could take action today but if there's something that you can't do for example i'm divorced from my ex husband i wished i'd never married him so the yesterday was i wish i'd never remarried i would could you do anything about it today series called work tools and there's work tools for business there's work tools for self esteem and there's work tools for wellness this is cool so the idea is you have the tool you have the word but then i want you on the backside of  to write down how you could implement it correct so because i believe i don't know about you but i believe words can be powerful but put into action they become life change i believe i agree with you here are the power isn't doing something yes yes well you know i think is what i've tried to do is give people little bits to read because i don't think we're going to get people to read a lot of it i mean i think that we have to always have this rule meet people where they are not where you want to be and so we start where they are and if you could get somebody to read for just five minutes i believe i believe there's power just doing something for one minute because you know what happens that one minute when we do it over and over and over we create a new neural pathway in the brain and so that's how we cultivate a new habit and so i agree with you i think that people you know get so busy in life you know that they forget to stop and really you know is yeah to kind of feed themselves it's interesting too because you know the other thing is that we're in  a we're in a world of texting nobody schools don't teach cursive in or what i have come to understand you've got to write like i'm a big believer that if you don't write something and you lose it you lose it and in fact i did some workshops at the college of new jersey and in meeting with the vice president of student affairs there she said they actually encourage students to write notes not to take them with a commuter's because using a picture i'm a very visual person if you look at my books you will see that they're very simple to read i call it a visual approach so you're not it helps your brain and i read and so what i'd actually do is i put a circle on a piece of paper and i write down let's say stress and then i draw out the main points that i want to talk about that i think report and then from there that main point i might say this point in that point in that point so what i love to do is create a picture on one page when i'm writing a book and i've actually encourage others to do that because it makes it visible and you can just rather than getting overwhelming i think the other thing too is i once had a girlfriend who was working on a great book and she says yeah but it has to be x number of words and i said no it doesn't it has to be whatever is another you have got the leeway got you to you what i believe everybody has a book and i'm to write i believe i believe their story correct is so important and it is so informing and so in power and that i kind of believe everybody should write a book on the me is understanding that failure is part of the learning process and to not give up and i think that's where support is also very critical that you have people around you encouraging you not to give up it's like her show around you is very important it's like your show you know you might not be in people's lives but you are in their lives encouraging them to not give up because i think sometimes have found that when when you work in mental health and you deal with depression it sucks your hope away it just one of the symptoms of it is it just takes the hope away and so what i found is i sometimes had to be the hope keeper for people until i could give it back to the people you know like that and that to me is where support if it's just even one person who says i believe in you where you can do this just keep taken that next step and that next step i think that is the real secret i think people on their own it's just the old voices the old tapes in their head start back and they probably have people in their life who can say to them tapes or worse is that you hear in your head and it literally was writing out what those messages what were those old messages you were given growing up you're not about to anything you know what you're useless i mean i've i've heard some of the most horrific things that people have said they were told and it just breaks my heart to hear that and it's writing things out and then i actually had people buy an old cassette tape we took out all cassette tape and we would tape it around there put it in bag and we would take a hammer and smash it up again we can do it try and do it online but the more you can engage your muscles the more likely it's going to be to decide and choose in control where it happens or we're actually just left to go where it takes us from a big believer in doing what you can to take control