In this episode of 5 min Fridays with Coach Myrna, I want to talk to you about self-confidence and the courage to be you. The kind that says I know who I am and I don’t need you to validate me. I accept and trust myself and my abilities. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I choose to work on my strengths and not my weaknesses because my strengths are what is going to propel me forward.
I heard this story and I want to share with you today to illustrate self confidence and how you see yourself.
Jim worked at a radio station all his life. He was a well-known and famous radio show host. All of his friends and colleges knew him by one feature: if he’s on-air, he is always wearing a suit and a tie. They laughed at him: ‘No one ever sees you, why do you dress like that?’, but he always turned that into a joke.
One day Jim was invited to appear on the TV. There was a show dedicated to the oldest radio employees. For the first time the people, who only knew him by his voice, would see him. Before the recording of the show, the director came to Jim and asked:
– Usually you arrive on time, but today you are 10 minutes late. It’s not horrible, but I’m still interested, why?
– You see, – Jim answered, – at the last moment when I was already dressed up, I noticed that I don’t have new socks. For the first time I was invited to the television, and I thought that simply wearing clean socks is not enough. It needs to be in new socks. So, I needed to go to the store for socks.
– But why do you need new socks? – The director was surprised. – You could have come without the socks, because we will be filming you only in close-up, over the waist.
– You see, to be spotless on-air, I need to feel myself spotless in everything, starting with the shirt and finishing with the pen in my pocket. And if my socks have holes in them, or my shoes are dirty, I’m not spotless anymore.
You call yourself spotless that’s a joke you are no better than the bum on the street with holes in your socks.
Self-confidence comes from trusting your abilities: For example, I know that I will pass this test.
Confidence is also trusting how you look. Tell yourself “When I walk into a room people notice me because I am fine.”
Self-confidence does not come from flattery or meaningless compliments because when you don’t get them, you lose confidence in yourself and the negative voices in your head start running on repeat.
How to be confident, the first step is having the courage to be you. This means that you understand that you are not good at everything and the things you are not good at, you get help with. For example, you are good at seeing the vision but you are not good with the details; so you hire an assistant to help you with the details. You are still the captain of the ship, you are the master of your soul don’t let anyone else take the wheel because you lose confidence. Be confident that you are going in the right direction.
How to build confidence and self esteem: Self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-image all fall in the same bundle—about feeling good about yourself, feeling more like a winner than a loser. What gets in the way? Generally, a cause and a result: The cause is that you learned to be too self-critical, likely by having critical and unsupportive people around you. You never give yourself a break; even the smallest mistake—the burned biscuits—is another demerit and sign of your incompetence. Your expectations are impossibly high, and everything—even the biscuits—is what you’re overall competence is measured by.
Conclusion
How to be confident is always have the courage to be you. Embrace your strengths and accept your weaknesses. There is no one like you, so you better have the confidence to love yourself.
Women who use hair straighteners and chemical hair relaxers may have a higher risk of uterine cancer, according to a new study from researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study findings were published on October 17, 2022, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. They are now able to file toxic exposure claims against the manufacturers of these products.
My guest today is Jennifer Poole is the Director of Marketing at the California Law Firm of Nadrich & Cohen. Nadrich & Cohen was founded in 1990 and has since expanded to 14 offices throughout California. The firm handles all types of injury, defective product, and toxic exposure claims on behalf of individuals and their families.
Ms. Poole has worked at the law firm since 2009 right after she graduated from Hofstra Law. She has quite literally lived from coast-to-coast and calls Los Angeles home.
Myrna: As a black woman I have used, hair straitening products, for over 30 years. I don’t use them a lot now because, I started wearing wigs and weaving my hair, but normally, the black population wants straighter hair. Relaxing black curly hair makes it easier for us to handle. In the 60’s even the men relaxed their hair, we go back to movies like Malcolm X, and see him using hair, straightening products called conk. Can you tell what is the data that says these products cause cancer.
I’m not sure if Caucasian people use, hair straighteners, or it predominantly used in the, black community?
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Hair relaxers called hair straighteners called perms
Jennifer: Yes, I would say so. We’ve used you know, several different terms to describe these products. So, you know, hair relaxers, and, hair straighteners, and we’ve even had a couple of clients that refer to it as a, perm, of sorts. But these products are predominately used in the, black community.
Myrna: Yes the Caucasian population used, perms, to curl up the hair. So, talk to us about that was the link to, uterine cancer. I guess we’re doing a total Erin Brockovich here.
Jennifer: Yes, Erin Brockovich was a fantastic film. And also, before I launch into it, you mentioned, Malcolm X, and when we started this project, I immediately thought of that film, with Denzel Washington, sitting in the chair, and just how awfully painful that was to try to straighten his hair.
Myrna: I thought of this film myself even though I have gone through the same pain straightening my own hair.
Jennifer: And on a side note, do you know what also came up? I thought about a book that I read in college, which was Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and we all love it too. Right? And we always want something that we don’t have! I have straight hair, my mom permed my hair, so it could become curly.
I remember sitting in the beauty shop and I go in with my hair, one length and I come out with it three inches shorter because of the curls. We all want what we don’t have. You know, there’s some truth to that certainly, but back to your question.
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There are studies which have linked a 2.5 times increased risk of developing, uterine cancer, among those that use, hair relaxer products. And so, as you can well imagine, that primarily affects black and brown populations. That’s who use these products. And so, there’s also linkage to, ovarian cancer, and, endometrial cancer, and less severe but still painful, uterine fibroids. We can make a claim if the, uterine fibroids, resulted in surgery like, hysterectomy
Myrna: That is terrible, I’ve heard I had heard rumors of this for a while now. When I say rumors, you know that we’re talking social media. But, now that we’re getting data, it’s not it’s not hearsay anymore. So, what are the products that that are causing these, uterine cancers, that is in these, hair relaxers, products? There are the new, hair relaxers, that are “No LYE”. Are these the safer products?
Jennifer: Well, there’s all kinds of chemicals which have been found in these types of products, even including Brazilian blowouts, including formaldehyde, you can think about that. There are so many chemicals that are toxic, that are used in these products. And, you know, the variety of brands, certainly people that have the market share. I think everyone’s familiar with Dark and Lovely, right. It’s a huge brand. And so, with these products manufacturers continued to add these chemicals.
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A lot of hair relaxers products, are coming to market that are more quote unquote natural. Even still, I’m not saying they have the same toxic chemicals, but they’re still not natural. They carry a lot of toxic chemicals. One of the things that I’d like to mention is you know, the FDA doesn’t test these products before going to market, yet they are in charge of policing, hair products.
The goal is of this litigation is to affect change. That’s always what we try to do. Where a governmental agency fails us, the legal team’s step in a try to right wrongs, but be also affect long lasting change. And we’ve seen it time and again. And so that’s always the goal with this type of litigation.
Myrna: Yeah, that’s great. So, a lot of times things start from one person, like the Erin Brockovich film, she saw something unusual so she investigated it. So, is this lawsuit going on now because someone has won a case and now everybody is filing claims? Was somebody able to connect, hair relaxer products, with, uterine cancer, and win a large settlement?
Jennifer: Let me explain a little bit about how the process works. There’s something called, multi district litigation, and it’s called MDL in legal parlance, and what happens is you’ll have a new case type like, hair relaxers. There are no cases that have been won as of yet. But what happens is lawyers start taking on cases and then there will be what are called Bellwether trials, and I always compare those to you go out to the pool, you want to see if it’s warm, you dip your foot in there.
And then based on how those Bellwether trials go, then that can often bring the defendants of these, hair relaxer manufacturers, to the negotiating table. And that’s really kind of the process and I do want to clarify for your readers, that this is not a class action suit.
A class action suit is you know, we all get those postcards in the mail. You’ve been overcharged for phone service, and guess what you’re gonna get a nickel. Yeah, or even worse, you had a bad experience with the business, they’re gonna offer you a credit or a gift card so you can go back and use their services. But people take a very cynical view of class actions, but this litigation is different. Again, it’s, multi district litigation. And the reason that exists is there are not enough courtrooms in America to allow for a trial for each and every case there’s just not.
So, what happens is both parties come together, and they come up with some ground rules. Some rules for discovery, and how things will proceed. And that just streamlines the process. So that’s actually beneficial for plaintiffs in litigations these because it speeds it along, allows them to see a settlement, sooner rather than later. I just I wanted to clarify that process a little bit. So no, there have not been any trials as of yet. It’s really more what’s prompting this litigation to move forward. Our studies, that have come out, science is improving all the time. And we learned about new things that we thought were safe.
Myrna: That’s it. Yeah, that’s why it’s often somebody identified that those products cause, uterine cancer, and now they’ve just got to put it together. I know that 90% of black women have used, hair relaxers, at one point in their life and if they are reading this and have been diagnosed with, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine fibroids, that they will contact you and get a claim going.
Myrna: So your company are helping you know women and men, I’m assuming only women because it’s, uterine cancer. So your Law Firm is helping women submit claims. So how can someone reading this blog, if they have realistic claim for any of the illnesses we mentioned contact you. What is the first step, what do they do?
Jennifer: We do represent some men who they’re unfortunately widowers, they lost their wife to, uterine cancer. And also, of course, male children. We do represent them as well. But yes, we primarily work with women, the client base is female, and we are accepting cases with, uterine cancer, diagnosis. Ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, and then lastly, certain, uterine fibroid, cases where there’s actually surgical intervention. If it requires a surgery, it’s a little more invasive than some of the other, uterine fibroid, treatments but that’s for us to make a decision on on a case by case basis.
So if one of your readers was thinking that they may qualify, the first step would be to reach out to us or another law firm and request that free consultation because in this industry, I always say we give every man and every woman keys to the courthouse and how do we do that? Contingency fees? We don’t collect a fee unless a recovery is made. Because let me tell you, if we had to charge up front, we wouldn’t have any clients.
So many people in this country live paycheck to paycheck. So this model of representation, gives everybody an equal playing field and keys to the courthouse; so that would really be the first step. Is to reach out to us or another law firm and and get the free consultation and find out if you qualify,
Filing a claim for toxic exposure from Hair Relaxers and Hair Straightening Products
We would ask a really a series of questions. We have to get medical records, documents confirming the, uterine cancer, diagnosis sometimes, or, ovarian cancer, or, uterine fibroid, diagnosis. Sometimes, clients have those documents readily available, most don’t. And so that’s the process. If they hire us then we would request the medical records that document all of the treatment that they had to have, that obviously adds value to the claimants, chemo is not fun.
Myrna: How do you make the connection between the, uterine cancer, and the chemical hair relaxers product?
Jennifer: Oh, yes. We would ask them to give us the history of hair relaxers product use. If they can remember the products, because there are so many out there. We asked about about 20 different products, that have the lion’s share of the market. Assuredly, they used at least one of them.
And then typically, women will use these hair relaxers about four plus times a year, that increases the exposure and therefore, our ability to link the hair relaxer product to cancer. But it’s true, possibly signing an affidavit stating that yes, I use this product. I used it this many times a year. Kind of documenting that way. Haven’t had it yet, but in other litigations, people will still had product packaging around the house. We have an evidence locker here that stores those products. I have not had that happen yet in this litigation. I think by nature of the product, you use it and throw it out.
Myrna: Well, you can be still using it to be quite honest. But yeah, one of the things about, hair relaxers, is that once you open it, it loses its potency so you have to throw it out. But black women can be listening to this interview right now who are still using chemical hair relaxers because they weren’t aware that there was anything wrong with them. Very few women go around with their natural hair. It’s a very small percentage, so they’re still using it.
How to connect with Nadrich & Cohen Personal Injury Lawyers
So, probably the best way would be to call me and that is 1-800-718-4658. You could also email me JPoole@ personalinjurylawcal.com. You can also head over to www.personalinjurylawcal.com. We have multiple blog posts, pages, lots of information there.
The voices in your head are also called your inner dialogue or self-talk. These voices are always talking; they are always commenting on everything you see. It is a running commentary. The more we try to shut them off, the louder they become. Today I want to bring awareness to these voices because whatever you say to your self is what you are creating.
Psychiatrists say we have 5 voices in our head and only one of them is the voice of God. We have to learn to distinguish between the ego voice and the voice of the holy spirit because listening to the wrong voice can steer you very wrong.
For example. I used to have a voice in my head that encouraged me to write notes to my boyfriends and husbands telling them what I think of them. I thought I was being real and factual, but those notes damaged my relationships. Now whenever the voice in my head tells me to write a note, I write it, but don’t send it!
I remember having foster children who stole and I would tell them whenever the voice in their head tell you to take something that does not belong to you then you talk back to this voice NO.
There are 5 voices that we can talk about and here are some thoughts about what they are and how to manage them. I call them the 5 C’s.
The first three voices are the broadly helpful voices – your Core voice from your higher self, your Confident voice and your Cautious voice.
The other two voices are the ones that can cause real issues. They are your Critical voice and your Conceited voice.
This is the first way to silence the voices in your head by talking back to them. If the voice in your head is saying things like:
You can’t do it,
Your success is not going to last and you will be homeless again
You are never going to find someone to love you because you are not educated and can’t hold a conversation.
You have to talk back to this voice and tell it
“I am going to do it just watch me.”
My success may not last, but I am never going back to where I came from.
I will find someone to love me because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Another voice is the one that lists the issues on your mind or perhaps makes internal lists of things you need to accomplish. You may also talk to yourself when you’re preparing a speech or a presentation, where you “play” what you’re going to say in your mind ahead of time.
The self talk voice is the voice that plays in my head the most. I am always having conversations with other people in my head. I remember once this girl said something to me that I couldn’t get out of my head for months. It was a negative comment and the voice in my head would replay it and replay it over and over again. It took up residence in my head. The more I tried to stop the replay the more it came back. I would even shake my head to get rid of this ANT which is automatic negative thoughts.
The volume of this particular ANT diminished over time but your ANT can be self-criticism and this is one way to silence this voice.
Write down your ANT in a notebook and them write responses to them. For example:
It could go something like this:
ANT: “I messed up at work. I’m probably going to get fired.”
Answer: “Mistakes happen. I do a good job one mistake is not going to get me fired.
OR
ANT: “My son really acted up today. I’m not a good mom.”
Answer: “We all have bad days. I am doing the best that I can”
This is one way to rewind the negative tape playing in your head and record over it.
Some of the other ways to silence the voices in your head are:
You have to put word on word – decree and declare
My body is blessed
My mind is blessed
My marriage is blessed
Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
My children are blessed
My grandchildren are blessed
You have to silence the voice in your head by speaking back to them. Because you shall have whatever you say.
It you say that you will live all your life without love, then you will.
If you say to yourself that you will always be poor, that will be your experience.
You have to decree and declare like the apostle Paul said “When I get to the end of my life I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
You need courage to continue when there is a threat. Don’t let the negative self-talk stop you from finishing the race.
What do you remember when things get tough?
Do you remember when God brought you out?
Do you remember when God made a way out of no way
Talk back to the voice in your head and say God chose me to go through this. If God thought I couldn’t handle it, he won’t let you go through it.
We can’t see the enemy but he is everywhere. We have to know the difference of being crushed by the Lord and being crushed by the world.
You cannot have change without disruption. Don’t be sidetracked by the disruption. Don’t let a disruption distract you from your purpose.
Tell yourself that in every disruption there is opportunity. Don’t fail to prepare for what’s next because you are focusing on what’s gone or the disruption.
Leaders are determined by how much you move things from one place to another moving the disruption to victory.
Andre Paradis, relationship coach shares dating advice on what makes masculine men commit to one woman. Sometimes these masculine men are scary, but these are the guys who want a woman and a family to take care of. They want a kingdom, which is you and the kids and a family. These, masculine men, want to provide for and cherish you.
Andre Paradis, Relationship Coach, NLP Coach, Educator of Effective Communications,Published Writer, Public Speaker, and Ordained Minister. Grew up in Canada, then became a professional dancer, dancing withlegends including Michael Jackson, Prince, Paula Abdul, Julio Eglesias to name a few. Later he attended a workshop called “Understanding Women.” And studied and learned from some of the biggest relationship masters (Dr. Pat Allen, Dr.Esther Perel, Dr. John Gray, Shantie Feldhan, and Alison Armstrong). He started sharing hisknowledge with friends and family.
He saw that this knowledge actually helped peoplelead happier lives with the people they love. He found a new purpose in life… The BigCalling deep inside him. He then sold his successful auto shop and launched Project Equinox Coaching to help men and women learn to build stronger, long-lasting, andhealthy love relationships. For some clients, he even officiates their wedding.”
Myrna: I think love is in trouble. Why do you think relationships are so difficult now?
Andre: It’s a no brainer, I have seen it coming for about a decade now. It is the difference between men and women. You know Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Men say, why did you talk so much? And women saying stuff like, he doesn’t talk. But 10 years ago, it started shifting in the past five years incredibly quick. Is the concept of equality in the world, equal rights, equal pay, equal opportunities, fantastic for the feminist movement, I get it.
The core being that men should be like women, and women should be like men to be a good woman. So, we raise women up to be strong, independent, powerful. This is fantastic. But it’s sort of over calibrated into women living like men. And then we teach young men, to be sweet, sensitive, vulnerable, talkative, showing vulnerability makes them boys.
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Why equality is the killer of romance
Myrna: Are we saying that men should be not vulnerable?
Andre: There’s a lot of data on this and we’ll talk about that a little bit. The opposite of what people think, people think less offers more protection towards women and children. Everything I teach is different. While the possibilities for money can bring opportunity or, equality, in the realm of relationships you depolarize everything with, equality.
Men and women need, polarity, to be attracted to each other. So, it’s masculine and feminine. It’s a positive magnet vs a negative magnet, it’s black and white. In all the shades in between. The more polarity in a relationship, the more effective it is. So, we are neutralizing relationships when we insist on, equality. It’s the kiss of death in relationships. Don’t do it.
Myrna: You said a couple of things there. Yep. us the first thing you said was that problem is that men don’t talk, men don’t listen. These are masculine traits, and the feminine traits are woman wanting to talk is no longer the problem. So, the problem with relationships today is that men are feminine and women are more masculine.
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Traits of masculine men
Andre: Correct, we have 3 types of men. The boys are the ones who lie, cheat and scam women. They don’t want to work. They want women to work. They are the feminists. They say “You go girl, get that double promotion” and they lay on the couch and spoon the dog while the women work.
Then we have the guys who are somewhere in the middle. They’re masculine enough to have jobs and cars and have their own place. They don’t live in a basement of their mother’s house any longer. But when it comes to women, they don’t take you out, or they’ll say stuff like “what do you want to do? They are overly polite and bland, women hate that. So, these guys get to be easily reversed, rehabilitated into masculine stuff.
Now the real man, masculine men, is a whole different beast, they know who they are because they actually were raised in a system, they had male role models and they understand the value of a man is to go conquer something in the world, build their character and push through their fears. Build a business, leave a legacy etc. So, the problem with this, we’re going to call it a problem, it’s really not a problem, but the disconnect for you is that those guys are big. They’re big, they’re loud, they’ll run you over sometimes to get where they are going. The more masculine a man is, the more he does what he does when he feels like it. Not only that, he’s not asking your permission, you’re not telling him what to do. He’s handling it.
Sometimes they are scary but these are the guys who want women and a family to take care of. They want a kingdom, which is you and the kids and a family. These, masculine men, want to provide for and cherish you. The part you don’t like is they control everything and are difficult to deal with. I teach women how to deal with masculine men. Do you know how masculine men connect with women?
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Andre: Masculine men, connect to, feminine women, by being in their presence. He wants to have you in his space. Most women don’t understand this, they’ll say to you, Lets go to Home Depot and the woman would respond “I don’t want to go there.” You just mess it up. He is inviting you in his space, no talking necessary. By the way. This is when you screw it up. If you’re going to invade his space and then don’t fill it up with talking. You may not get invited back into his space.
Myrna: Why do you say, equality, is the kiss of death in relationships?
Andre: If you equalize our energies together, you neutralize the demand for, polarity, and its diversity so equal relationships are not sustainable. Whether, equality, is in the form of 50/50 on everything, or, equality, in the chores, equality, will essentially kill the sexual dynamics. You become roommates after a while.
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Why do masculine men commit to a woman
Myrna: What makes a masculine man committed to one woman?
Andre: Masculine men have a hard time finding women nowadays because they’re all masculine. Ladies if you want to be the one a masculine man commits to, you have to be a unicorn in the crowd, which means not a masculine woman but a woman with feminine essence.
Masculine Men commit to one woman for these reasons:
Polarity- masculine men want feminine women.
Masculine men are looking for a co- pilot, they don’t want you to fly the plane alone. They need a feminine woman to be by his side. He needs you to be a support system for the life that he has created for his family. Why masculine men commit to one woman? He wants a partner, a co-pilot.
Be his confidant when he needs one. Masculine men will control, manage and lead everything, but often they’ll go babe. “I don’t know what to do with this. What should we do?” This is a partnership, a team that’s working together, flying the plane together. Two pilots, the pilot and the copilot, the president and vice president. In every corporation somebody has to lead and somebody else has to manage.
Myrna: When a man chooses a woman, she is the one he loves and he is definitely looking for his co-pilot, but a lot of men are playing the field and not choosing a woman. He will go out with a whole bunch of women and not commit and then one would come into his life and he’ll commit immediately. So, what are the dynamics here? What you’re saying is that masculine men want to settle down and start a family; only the boys want to play.
Andre: There you go. You are now getting it right, only the boys want to play the field. Masculine men want a kingdom. They want to build a kingdom with you. That’s what makes them get out of bed in the morning. They live for that stuff. Women think that sex is what makes a man settle down. That’s actually the opposite it makes them go. You’re not worthy, you have zero or too low value. Who else has been in here? Not doing it. I’m not doing anything with you.
Myrna: Tell us about your coaching programs and how readers can connect with you.
Andre: My mission is to change the culture of relationships, because what is happening out there is destroying families; destroying the possibility of healthy children. When a family is not healthy or broken, it keeps children from building their own healthy families and having healthy children. So, when you destroy families, you destroy our culture. Now it’s my mission to recalibrate the culture. So, thank you for helping me spread this word.
I have two coaching gifts actually for your listeners. the first one is for the brave and the other one is for the less brave. Coaches are the key to success whether it’s a business coach or life coach, relationship coach or a nutrition coach. Whatever success you are looking for in life a coach can help. This is why the coaching industry is the growing by leaps and bounds. So, if your listeners, resonated with anything I’m saying and they want to talk to me personally then sign up for a free coaching session at www.Andregroupcoaching.com that takes you to my calendar.
Schedule a FREE one-hour session whether it is for men or women. There is a questionnaire to help me sort of understand where you are before you’re on the call and we have a zoom call like this, one on one. On that call we will figure out what’s not working for you and what the dream is. I’m really good. In 15 minutes, we’ll figure out exactly what things came up. It’s typically In childhood trauma or the baggage that we carry.
I can’t get anybody in a healthy relationship until we understand your baggage. So, in that call, we actually unpack the baggage. So that alone is life changing. For some people to understand there’s nothing wrong with them. They just right. And from there, we’re talking about the future. What is it that you want? And then I’ll tell you different options if you want to work with me. You know ABCDE depending on your willingness or your finances, so that’s one way to do it.
The next way is somebody’s who’s not as brave you can email me directly at Andrecoaching1@Gmail.com. Write to me, tell me what’s going on. I will answer personally.
This Black History month, I would like to feature Toni Morrison, for her literary excellence. Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize Winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Morrison is an American writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. Let’s take a moment to honor this literary genius this, black history month.
Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S.—died August 5, 2019, Bronx, New York), American writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for, Black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). In 1965 Morrison became a fiction editor at Random House, where she worked for a number of years.
Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. This book was my introduction to Toni Morrison. I loved this book. I loved the character, how Morrison showed a poor black girl struggling not only with her looks but with becoming a young lady, and wanting to be beautiful like her white blue eye dolls. At the time when I read this book a lot of black women were putting in blue contact lenses including my daughter. This book really brought it home and allowed black women to start loving our skin, eyes, hair and black features.
In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the Black community.
Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex.
Toni Morrison became mainstream with her critically acclaimed book called Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey. The again was powerful for me. The character of Beloved was played to perfection by Thandiwe Newton and showcases how Sethe’s guilt, played by Oprah Winfrey can reincarnate and haunt us in this life.
In 1992 Morrison released Jazz, a story of violence and passion set in New York City’s Harlem during the 1920s. Subsequent novels were Paradise (1998), a richly detailed portrait of a Black utopian community in Oklahoma, and Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in 17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized Korean War veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apathy to rescue his sister. In God Help the Child(2015), Morrison chronicled the ramifications of child abuse and neglect through the tale of Bride, a Black girl with dark skin who is born to light-skinned parents.
It is great to showcase Toni Morrison’s work for, Black History month, because The central theme of Morrison’s novels is the, Black American experience; in an unjust society, her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture. In 2010 Morrison was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Two years later she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019) is a documentary about her life and career.
For peak performance, I teach all of my clients a bunch of tools. I always teach them, meditation, I always teach them, breath work, I teach them that they should stretch and strengthen. So that means doing something like, yoga, Qi Gong, and then weight training or something that’s actually going to improve their muscles. In addition to these tools, I teach them a morning routine and the evening routine.
Kerry is peak performance coach. Kerry was raising a family and working as an attorney when she began a daily yoga practice. She immediately noticed that yoga was the perfect antidote to her hectic lifestyle. Initially interested in yoga as a physical practice that made her feel good in her body, Kerry soon realized yoga was a lot more than that. She decided to take a teacher training and immediately began teaching. Kerry eventually left her law career and began to focus on teaching and coaching full time.
Kerry’s mission is to help others find a more balanced and fulfilled life. She believes in action and has created a system that is easy to implement so that people can create change quickly. She coaches corporate clients and elite athletes in mindset and peak performance techniques and creates tailored programs for private clients who are seeking mastery in all areas of their lives.
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Kerry: Absolutely. And by the way, that’s one of my favorite books, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari. I read that book so many years ago and that was one of the books that changed my life. Even before I went into this wellness space, that’s such a great book. And it really shows you that at any point in your life, you really can change and move into a different space if you want.
So, for me, I felt like my life was going great. I had a good career. I had my children; I had a nice house. Everything was great, but didn’t feel great to be honest with you. And I had this experience where we were on a vacation hiking in the woods, and we came to this clearing in the woods. It’s like trees in a circle, pine needles on the ground and the sun was just coming in to the center of the circle. So, I walked into the center of the circle in the sun and when the hit me, I had this crazy moment.
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This podcast is sponsored by Journy: Plan Life & Self care App. Journy is a personal growth organizer/planner that lets you save goals, personalized notes on categories of learning and improvement, easily watch educational content across a spectrum of categories to bolster your knowledge on a deeper level.
There are also routines in the app to help with planning and organizing.
Journy was developed by a US military veteran who wanted to help people struggling with PTSD regain a sense of control over their lives, but it can be used by anyone for personal growth, self-care and mental health. The App helps everyone maintain a sense of control, through organization, personal development, and self-care.
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A portion of your monthly or annual subscription will be donated to refugees in need as well as providing scholarships to send kids and teens to Space Camp.
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All my dreams came through but I wasn’t fulfilled
I flashbacked to the Kerry I was when I was 20 and back then I used to spend a lot of time in nature. The flashback I had was it me sitting with my journal it in all my hopes and dreams. When I was a 20 year old young woman, I wanted to have a career, I wanted to have a beautiful family, I wanted to have a husband that loved me and supported what I wanted to do and I could support him. I wanted a beautiful house; I wanted to travel and adventure. I realized that I had achieved all my dreams. But what happened in the next instant was I realized that even though I had everything I wanted, I really wasn’t happy and I didn’t feel fulfilled.
Myrna: And why was that?
Kerry: Because I think it was on autopilot, right? And I started to think like where did those dreams come from? And I started to understand that a lot of those dreams came from outside of me. My society, my parents, my teachers. I’m a people pleaser. I want to please people; I want to be impressive. So, I went back to my hotel room and I wrote another whole list of all my hopes and dreams and they were things like, start teaching. I had always studied, personal growth.
So, the book you mentioned, I had read that probably when I was 20 or 25 right around that same time. And I had been studying, personal transformation, philosophy for many, many years. So, I was like, you know I’d really like to teach people some of the things I learned. I’d like to be an author, and I’d like to be a speaker and I was writing all these things down. So that’s all well and good. I get home from the vacation, lose the piece of paper or maybe it was my journal that I wrote it in, and I forgot all about it.
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This episode is sponsored by Living the Tao: Spiritual Podcast
Do you want to embrace the wonder of the Tao? Journey inward to journey outward? As he has done for decades, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod talks about the path of spiritual freedom and down-to-Earth, everyday living well in this podcast series.
Most podcasts are from people that are fans of Taoism, and appreciate the Taoist classic, Tao Te Ching, which is one small part of Taoism. This podcast is from a Taoist Master that has been talking about the daily practice and exciting ideas of Taoism for over twenty years, and is just now taking advantage of podcast technology.
Hear ideas about nature of the world, and of the human condition that can radically transform your daily life into a rewarding experience.
Living the Tao: Spiritual Podcast is available for free on Audible, Spotify or Apple or by visiting thetaoismforthemodernworld.com and clicking podcast. Listen now!
Then one day my alarm rang. I hit the snooze button, but instead of going back to sleep, which I usually did, and Myrna I would usually do that like a few times back-to-back, so I usually started my day racing around being a lunatic trying to get everything done on time. Get the kids out the door, get myself out the door. But on this day, instead of going back to sleep, I just sat up in my bed and I meditated for 5 mins. I was just observing the thoughts.
That night I was in my bed with my husband and I said, you know, I had such a great day. And he’s like, did you do anything different today? I told him what I had done and had gotten up and meditated for five minutes. And he said, Oh, that’s so cool. I’m gonna try it tomorrow. So, we tried it the next day. And sure enough, at the end of the day, he was like, that was amazing. I had such a great day. So, we both started doing a, morning routine and, eventually I started teaching this, morning routine meditation, to my students.
The first thing I noticed when I started teaching, yoga, was that yoga, is a lifestyle and it really encompasses everything.
The way you live in this world,
The way you’re thinking,
The way you’re eating
The way you function in general,
The way you treat other people,
The way you treat yourself.
The timeless principles of morning routine meditation.
So, I said I would love to teach, yoga, and, meditation, to lawyers, business people and doctors.’ People who wouldn’t normally do it because honestly professional people, they are like, I don’t know about, meditation, they get a little nervous when you start using any of the lingo. So, I started to study the mind. And what I realized was you take those Eastern practices like ,yoga, meditation, and, breath work, and then you marry them to the science, which is all about how the brain works. so, I didn’t call it, meditation, but I just said this is a stress relief exercise.
I created this whole one hour, morning routine, and for me, I started to understand how important it was not only to create this, morning routine, but to tailor it to my lifestyle. So, for my husband, he started with half an hour, morning routine. I have an hour, but I always have as my base as my minimum five-minute, morning routine.
So, basically this whole, snooze button routine, that I came up with is for you to use as you need. In my book, the snooze button sessions, I show you 12 different things you can do for, morning meditation, breathwork, exercises yoga or stretching, and journaling. There are so many different things, but then you choose which one of those things or what combination of those things you use. So sometimes I’ll break it up. Robin Sharma actually suggests not to do it the way I do it, which is you know, hitting the snooze every time and then moving to a new routine.
Achieve peak performance with a 20/20/20 morning routine
For peak performance during the day, start your day with a 20/20/20 morning routine. 20 minutes of spiritual growth meditation, 20 minutes of learning like reading a book, and 20 mins of exercise. You can do whatever works for you, and that’s what I advocate. I advocate for you learning the tools, figuring out what works for you, and even adding something you might like that I never even thought about. The reason this system works is because it’s a thing called, habit stacking.
When people make their New Year’s resolutions then do them for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months then stop? It’s because the goal is not linked to anything. That is why I love doing, habit stacking, and starting with this, morning routine. I believe that not only learning tools that will relax you and keep you in, ease and flow, but improve your health as well. These little changes can have massive effects and that’s really what I advocate.
Myrna: You’re seeing that a, morning routine, helps your clients achieve, peak performance, as well as, ease and flow. What else is the science behind it?
Kerry: Well, basically, the way your brain works is that your brain is designed to keep you alive. We are using all of our senses, our sight, our hearing our smell, or touch or taste. All of our senses are really designed just to take in information from the outside world. It goes to your brain, your brain processes it, the only thing your brain is really looking for is what is a danger?
Our brain actually filters out a ton of information that is actually right before our eyes, we don’t even see it. So, our brain is just looking for those negative things. So, when we’re talking about any of these practices, when we’re talking about creating a, morning routine, when we’re talking about meditating or doing anything that’s outside of what we would normally do, we’re actually rewiring our brain and we’re teaching our brain to behave differently.
Let’s say someone is driving really slow in front of me. I’m late for work. I start to get angry and stressed. My brain immediately goes into flight or fight mode. It registers it the same as it would if there was a lion in front of you. Your brain will react to a minor inconvenience like that the same as it would react to a terrible danger. Our brain either is like danger or no danger. It’s not like really degrees of it.
So, we really want to learn first of all that awareness piece. First you need to notice that you are getting angrier and angrier, I could start cursing out the person in front of me, or I could have some awareness and say, Oh, my body’s reacting. All these chemicals are starting to flood my body, cortisol, a stress hormone and a lot of other things to get you ready to run. Adrenaline is flowing. But then you have your tools. You can turn the radio on and listen to a song. You could say to yourself. I’m running late, that’s fine.
You could even just do some, breath work, sitting in your car. You can call somebody and chat with someone and you know, say to them look, I’m feeling stressed. You can listen to music or a book on tape or a podcast anything to signal to your brain, I’m not in danger. Now I’m going to take that time when I would have normally been angry or fuming even getting myself more and more worked up so that I arrive at work, not in a good place. And what happens then you get to work and now you’re complaining to everyone and you’re not the person you want to be.
Myrna: How do you help your clients solve this problem? Are your classes about, peak performance, or about a, morning routine?
Kerry: So, when I first start working with someone, I like to look at every area of their life so we go through everything, their social life, their love relationship, their parenting if they’re a parent, their career and finances and really survey all of the areas of their life. And what I find is people are really excelling in one area and then in a lot of the other areas, they haven’t even looked at it. So then once we know that, what area could improve, we start with that.
I personally believe that health should be a priority for you, focusing in on your health could really be a game changer for everybody. And again, I start small, five minutes, go take a walk after lunch, just do some jumping jacks, get up in the morning and do a very quick five-minute, morning routine stretch. Just start to bring more activity into your life and start to really care about your health, care about what you’re eating.
Our health is the stop on the peak performance chart
We can’t have, peak performance, without our health. It doesn’t always have to be health, though every person kind of knows once we go through all the categories which area they really need to work on. Some people need to work on finances. So, when you survey your whole entire life, all the categories of your life, your intellectual life, your emotional life, we all have certain areas that we’re like, that’s the one I need to work on.
So, I basically teach all of my clients a bunch of tools I always teach them, meditation, I always teach them, breath work, I teach them that they should stretch and strengthen. So that means doing something like, yoga, Qi Gong, and then something like weight training or something that’s actually going to improve your muscles. And you know, I have all these little things that I teach them the morning routine and the evening routine.
All of my clients have at least a five-minute, morning routine, and a five minute, evening routine, without your cell phone. Just something you’re doing for yourself. And I always say to people if you can make it longer than five minutes, try 15 minutes morning and 15 minutes at night or even longer, depending on your life circumstances. Setting yourself up for success and having the tools to fall back on when you fall down. It’s something I think in the wellness world people don’t talk about as much.
Myrna: Are you still teaching yoga just for the stretches? Tell us about that.
Kerry: I had stopped teaching yoga during the pandemic because I did not like teaching it online. So, then I started teaching, breathwork workshops, and all these different workshops on, peak performance, in the yoga studios. I would do that as a weekend workshop. I’m not teaching, yoga, although I started going to, yoga, again as a student, which is so nice to be back in a yoga studio. I really am not going to tell anyone I’m a, yoga teacher.
If you have back pain, how to relieve back pain? Yoga. I’ll tell you I have this little routine I taught my husband on his hands and knees for his spine. He was having terrible back problems. So, every day for five minutes, he would just do this simple routine, and it completely healed his problem. I always advocate to everybody move your spine in every direction every day. So forward and back, side to side, and then in a circle either direction because that’s what’s going to keep your spine limber and that’s what helps you stay youthful.
Myrna: That is great. I do the same thing with the Sun Salutation movements. I learned about the sun salutation a long time ago. It’s in my memory and I can actually go through those poses without even thinking about it.
Kerry: The absolutely works. And the reason it works, by the way is because it’s exactly what I said. It goes through all the motions. So, you’re moving all of your joints, you know, in every direction. And I don’t even think it would take five minutes to do three of them.
Book: Snooze Button Sessions
Conclusion
Myrna: How they connect with you?
Kerry: Thank you. You can find me at KerryFishercoaching.com. I am on Instagram@ IamKerryFisher. I handle my own Instagram and I love getting messages from people. You could find my books on Amazon. One is on that
My second one is called Routines for Extraordinary Living in these two books you will find so many tools and tests that will help you. I have them right now both on Amazon for 99 cents for the eBook version. So I would love for you to check it out.
Loneliness has been linked to higher blood pressure and depression, and an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. We are meant to share our lives with people. It is nature so when we are alone and lonely, Nature has a way of trying to fill the void.
God also promises to give you back a double portion of what you have lost so the first thing you need to do to escape the snares of loneliness is to speak to the atmosphere. Decree and declare that God will fill the void in your life with a double portion of what is missing.
Because we are not designed to be lonely and alone, sometimes we prefer to live in conflict than live alone in an empty house. I have heard so many men including my own father say that when their wife’s left them they couldn’t stand the empty house and they begged her to come back. An empty house, a house void of kids or just the presence of another could lead to depression.
The reason that empty nesters find something to do when the kids leave the house is that they are trying to fill the void in their homes and heart.
You can’t use sex to fill the void of not being enough.
Don’t let anyone use you to fill their void. Do not become the substitute to fill anyone’s void. Not only will you be lonely again when they dump you but you will also feel used and abused.
To escape the snares of loneliness you have to be connected to a worshiper or connected to support. If your home is empty, you need someone to talk to on the phone, you need the community of worshippers at your church to escape the snares of Loneliness. Late in the midnight hour when you can’t sleep you need someone you can call who will listen. You need connection to God and man.
You need someone to pull you into something new. You need to find someone or something to hold onto someone to hold you up. Someone you can borrow their strength until God turns it around. Because a fresh anointing is coming your way.
Here are 5 ways to escape the snares of Loneliness
Take up a new hobby
Volunteer at your local church, hospital, food bank etc.
Get into books and live vicariously through the stories
Go to the movies or go out dancing. You can even learn to dance by joining a dance class.
Get or borrow a dog. Dogs are man’s best friend and you can never be lonely with a dog around. If you’re a dog lover, but don’t have the space, time or money to have your own, then ‘dog borrowing’ might be just the thing for you. Maybe a friend or neighbor has a dog they’d like to get a walk and some company during the day while they are at work. That’s what we call a win win situation.
Loneliness is a real. If you find yourself with the void of human company, I hope I gave you some tips to escape the snares of loneliness. The flip side of loneliness is enjoying your own company and being okay with being alone. So, people are introverts and truly enjoy their own company.
Conclusion
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of 5 min Fridays with coach Myrna
What is love? Love doesn’t require us to build a deep connection. We fall in love with babies all the time. We don’t need a deep connection with them. They don’t even have to reciprocate. I think we have to let go of the old idea that I have to be somebody or do something in order to realize this love that’s already here.
The truth is, we all want love. Everything we do is in pursuit of it. But as we count likes on social media and measure our worth by the numbers in our bank accounts, we are programmed to see love as something to earn or win. That programming obscures the simple truth behind what we are: beautiful, infinite, eternal sources of love.
For Humble the Poet, the concept of love has been a decade-long curiosity. What began as reciting spoken-word poetry in coffee shops to impress girls, evolved into a creative adventure that has spanned the last 10 years, crossing genres, mediums, and oceans. In How To Be Love(d), the former elementary school teacher turned rapper, spoken-word artist, poet, and international bestselling author teaches his fans that instead of seeking to be loved by the world, we must be love.
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This podcast is sponsored by Journy: Plan Life & Self care App. Journy is a personal growth organizer/planner that lets you save goals, personalized notes on categories of learning and improvement, easily watch educational content across a spectrum of categories to bolster your knowledge on a deeper level.
There are also routines in the app to help with planning and organizing.
Journy was developed by a US military veteran who wanted to help people struggling with PTSD regain a sense of control over their lives, but it can be used by anyone for personal growth, self-care and mental health. The App helps everyone maintain a sense of control, through organization, personal development, and self-care.
Download Journy: Plan Life & Self-Care App on Apple or Google Play Store or visit www.journyapps.com
A portion of your monthly or annual subscription will be donated to refugees in need as well as providing scholarships to send kids and teens to Space Camp.
Journy: Plan Life & Self care App
What is love? what are we doing wrong
Myrna: Wat are most of us doing wrong when it comes to love?
Humble: I think we believe that we have to, find love. And then we have to qualify for, love. And none of that’s the case. I think we need to stop telling people you’re worthy of love, and you’re enough for love. Love is constant, it’s always there. And what we actually need to do is just clear away the clutter to realize we don’t have to do anything magical or specific to, earn love, and have, love, find us. It’s the breeze, we just have to open up our sails to catch up.
Myrna: I love that. So, we’ve got different kinds of love. So, we’ve got God’s love, which is always everlasting. Then we’ve got, parental love, which is always everlasting. But, romantic love, where you know a man meets girl or Girl Meets Boy kind of thing. We feel that we have to earn, romantic love, love is it’s an energy, right? It’s a spirit. So, is that why you’re saying we don’t need to earn, love?
Humble: Yeah, I wouldn’t even differentiate. I think instead of saying there’s, there’s, God’s love, there’s parental love, there’s, romantic love. I would say there’s, pathways of love. So, the permanence of the pathway between us and the Almighty. And permanence is the, pathway of love, between us and our parents. Now when we create new relationships, we’re building a pathway and that’s why those pathways are less shaky. So, if I meet someone for the first time, we’re beginning to create a path for love the, energy of love, to flow between us, right? It’s not the love that is temporary. It’s the path that’s temporary.
This episode is sponsored by Living the Tao: Spiritual Podcast
Do you want to embrace the wonder of the Tao? Journey inward to journey outward? As he has done for decades, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod talks about the path of spiritual freedom and down-to-Earth, everyday living well in this podcast series.
Most podcasts are from people that are fans of Taoism, and appreciate the Taoist classic, Tao Te Ching, which is one small part of Taoism. This podcast is from a Taoist Master that has been talking about the daily practice and exciting ideas of Taoism for over twenty years, and is just now taking advantage of podcast technology.
Hear ideas about nature of the world, and of the human condition that can radically transform your daily life into a rewarding experience.
Living the Tao: Spiritual Podcast is available for free on Audible, Spotify or Apple or by visiting thetaoismforthemodernworld.com and clicking podcast. Listen now!
So, what is love, it depends on your, pathway to love. The, pathway of love, between us and our parents or us in the Almighty. These pathways have been established, we have to do work to maintain them and clear the clutter from them, obviously, but we don’t have to do as much work than for example that we have a romantic partner. We have somebody we work with, we have an activity, these we have to do a lot more work to established a clear pathway. And there’s a lot more day to day maintenance that’s required for that.
We look at the previous pathways that we have, and we’re like, those are so easy. So, making these new pathways with this person who I want to be my husband or wife should be just as easy. The day to day maintenance is not sexy. It’s like brushing your teeth. But unromantic work is required to keep, Love, maintained.
Brushing your teeth isn’t a trip to Paris and it’s the same thing with creating, pathways of love, between us and other people. It can’t be big gestures; it’s got to be the small things. It’s got to be the uneventful things. It’s got to be the uncomfortable conversations. It’s got to be all of that. So, I don’t differentiate between, love. I differentiate the pathways and how we build them. That’s the, love story.
Myrna: Please explain what you’re talking about a pathway because I’m like here and I’m thinking like a highway.
Proper tax preparation is pivotal in helping you make the most of your future.
For over 15 years, Patty’s Notary and Tax has been offering tax services to small businesses and individuals. Our expertise lies in helping clients prepare for various taxes, such as:
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Humble: How to love, is like a highway or a river because the highway moves quickly. Things can move quickly on the highway so, let’s say that you know the highway of the, pathway to love, would be the cars and you know if you have a beautiful well paved highway with a lot of wide lanes and it’s built super strong, a lot of, love, can flow through it. Now if you have one that’s not been maintained and has a lot of potholes and it’s crumbling, and then random pieces of garbage in the middle of the road, then everything’s gonna move slow or be obstructed.
So, the work that we have to do is not only to build the pathway, but to clear the pathway regularly. So, what would what would those potholes be? What would the damage be? That’s going to be our insecurities, that’s going to be our need to be liked, or people pleasing. That’s going to be our egocentric behavior. That’s going to be our self-esteem or self-respect. That’s going to be us being unwilling to be vulnerable. Think about it. When you’re not vulnerable. You’re putting up a wall. Now imagine putting that wall on a highway hoping to be able to get rid of a wall. You have to clear the wall. Right? And it’s not an overnight thing it’s going to take time to do but we have to measure progress.
You don’t have to do anything to receive love
You don’t have to be perfect and worthy of love to get qualified for love and if you have love for someone, they have to reciprocate it and it’s like no we are a source of love. The work that we’re doing to create and keep the highways clean, so we can love can flow to you. Some of us are creating and maintaining those highways, it’s easier for some people in our lives and others. No, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It just means it’s easier for others, you know, and it doesn’t require the things that we think it doesn’t require history. It doesn’t require being perfect.
Myrna: I love it. I think that is the beautiful analogy. So, we’ve got this highway, right and we want to get somewhere. We want to get married. We want to be loved, so I’ve got this highway, but I want to get to this new love partner. But you’re right, I’ve got all these potholes and I’ve got all these walls and I got all this garbage. You mentioned what some of these things are insecurities like self-esteem. You know, maybe baggage from somebody that’s hurt us. So, I’m on this highway that’s got all this stuff, but I’m not going anywhere because of all this clutter. So, in your book, do you tell people how to clear the, clutter.
Humble: Absolutely, the first thing I do is say you have to be aware of it. I’m gonna go as far as saying needing to get married is, clutter. So, what I’m saying is understanding what the, clutter, is super important and the, clutter, is not stopping you on a journey. The, clutter, is stopping love, from flowing in between you and the other person. So, our needs to have these external things outside of us is always going to be the first issue and then recognize as I said first thing is recognizing, clutter.
The second thing is okay, that it exists. Okay, there’s nothing wrong with any of us for having, clutter. There’s nothing wrong with any of us. We’re having imperfections that nothing wrong with any of us are having insecurities, that nothing wrong with any of us from wanting to be liked and accepted by others. All of these things are, clutter, but there’s nothing wrong with us. Love is to accept that you have, clutter. So, we need to accept ourselves as we are. And now we need to focus on progress over perfection. If somebody was perfect, but not be able to be vulnerable and if they can be vulnerable, then you cannot connect with them.
Let’s abandon this idea that everything needs to be perfect. Let’s make baby steps every single day in the right direction and celebrate those baby steps. And from that standpoint, where is the love, isn’t finding a partner or, true love, it’s about being honest and saying I’ll be good either way. I’ll be good if I have a partner or if I am single. With a partner, I can build a, pathway of love, with them. And then both of us have two independent people pillars, not my better half, not you complete me, but instead, I am a pillar. They are a pillar. And now that we are two pillars, we can hold up more together something bigger than ourselves, whether that’s a family or an empire or generational increase.
Now we work together for a purpose bigger than ourselves, but also saying I am a, source of love, and I don’t require anything other than that. I’m not encouraging isolation. We are social creatures. Our human design is to be around people. But at the end of the day, what we’re creating is, pathways of love, to be created between us and anybody. The thing is the isolation is our ego thing that we’re separate from others. When we really tap deep into that, what we start to realize and I don’t and for me personally based on you know where my family comes from in the world.
We don’t differentiate God from love, this is the same energy. Because when you genuinely love somebody that’s when you begin to melt into them. That is, how to love, the type of relationship that is possible with everyone and everything. I think that the ultimate beauty is when you can actually honestly say I would be okay single.
I don’t require something outside of me to make me feel better or complete. They said we have a 56% divorce rate. We need to focus on nutrition instead of what’s delicious. And I think a lot of the reasons we chase these types of relationships because they’re delicious or not nutritious. How to love yourself, we need to establish healthier relationships with ourselves. That will also allow for healthy relationships with other people.
Myrna: Oh, yeah, self-love. We must have, self-love. We must be vulnerable. I know being a female, I’m not understanding how the male energy works, but female we have to be able to receive, we have to be able to make yourself vulnerable and be able to receive. You said that being aware of our imperfections and the potholes is the first step. You’re saying that we don’t need to get married to be complete, or to have a better but we don’t want to be in isolation and the Bible says Two are better than one. So, if we are, looking for love, how do we find it? This love that we want to attract? Where is the love?
Humble: I’m not here to say it’s better to be married versus single or what have you. The numbers are 56% divorce rate, so you can rush to get married and get in the wrong relationship and then you can end up being alone anyways. If a plane had a 56% chance of crashing, people aren’t going to get on to it. So, I think learning, how to love yourself, will set the tone for all the other relationships that you have. Okay?
That means you have to be, vulnerable, with yourself.
That means you have to accept your imperfections.
That means you have to go easy on yourself.
That means you have to date yourself.
That means you have to journal and get to know your deeper, darker side.
That means you have to pray.
Prayer is Important, prayer helps with self-awareness. Journaling helps with self-awareness. Dancing by yourself in your room, gets you more aware of how your body moves and feels and flows. That’s a level of intimacy with yourself. That’s important. There’s something called self-havening. When you hug yourself that is important.
We can hug ourselves, this level of intimacy with what we do for other people with intimacy with them and vulnerability. We can do that with ourselves. And what that allows us to do is set the tone of what we enjoy, what we don’t enjoy, what our boundaries are. And this is really important especially if you have a female audience, but we have to realize that the woman’s greatest power in a relationship is her, boundaries.
Women lose their value when the reduce their boundaries
Women cannot compete with other women. For a woman to compete with another woman for a man requires her to reduce her, boundaries, thus reducing the power, thus reducing her value. Men can compete with men. Because here’s the thing if I’m competing with another man, all I’m trying to do is look better, and make more money. And if I lose, I still look better and make more money. If a woman has to reduce her, boundaries, to get the man, she also lost her value. And the reason we are hesitant to maintain, boundaries, is we think they make us unlikable. That’s why we all say yes when we really mean No.
Myrna: Truth, when a woman competes with another woman for a man, she’s willing to do more than the other woman to keep the man.
Humble: A lot of us learnt to people please as children. Maybe you tried to win over a parent’s love one day and you weren’t received well. And then you internalized thinking it’s your fault. So, then you work harder. What you may not realize is your mom or dad just had a really bad day at work. You know, our mom and dad were also raised in a world where they may not know how to be emotionally available. And there’s a million reasons why but when you’re a child, you can’t understand that.
Myrna; So what advice do you have for people looking to find a partner? We’ve covered a little bit of it. You said that we don’t need a partner to complete us so we should be okay to be by ourselves. But let’s say I still want a partner. I want the, love pathways, to take me somewhere? What is love?
Humble: So, I’m not saying you don’t need a partner. What I’m saying is don’t sacrifice your, self-respect, for a partner. If you want just straight up, dating advice, one of the best pieces of advice that I got was relive, write out your entire love life. From your, first love, in kindergarten all the way up to today. Write the entire love life out. Talk about your best memories, talk about your worst memories Then go back with a highlighter and revisit the story, anything that makes you feel good highlight it. These are the qualities you want in a partner.
So for me, I had an ex-girlfriend when I was first starting this, you know, dating somebody and this is you know, 10 years ago and she said listen, the world needs to hear your voice. Stop doing everything else the world needs to hear in your voice. The world needs to hear your ideas. So, whenever I felt insecure hearing, her say that lit uplifted me. Later on, if I was dating somebody else and they’re like, look, you know work isn’t everything. Your mission isn’t everything. Money isn’t everything. I would be like; you’re not understanding what my purpose on this planet is. We’re not compatible.
So, I wrote that down somebody that understand the purpose of, Humble the Poet.
Myrna: Tell us about your book. Now normally this is the part where I asked why did you write it? And what do you want people to walk away with? But if you told me, you wrote it because you wanted to challenge the norms and challenge the way that people live their lives superficially. But what do you want to add to that?
Humble: I want people to understand that even after you read the book, even after you hear this interview, I’m not a love guru. I’m not a love expert. What I am is I am somebody who had a failed relationship. And I was desperate to figure out why it failed. I was with a beautiful person who was beautiful inside and out. But there was a lot of anxiety and a lot of toxic energy within me that wouldn’t allow me to go deeper and connect with them.
For us to spend our lives together and I was desperate to figure out why I was failing at love. So, I took a super deep dive to explore love and figure out what I was doing wrong. And this book is what I learned. So, I’m not a, love guru. What I am is I’m a student at the front of the class, taking the most precise, simple notes and I’m sharing them with everybody else. And I’m still figuring myself out. I’m still learning, what is love.
At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees it boils and turns to steam. That steam can power a train. The extra, one degree of effort is all it takes to go from water to steam. Are you living your life on cruise control? If so, you will always be mediocre and always missing the podium. So, I want to share with you what happens between, 211 degrees, and just one extra degree at, 212 degrees.
At, 212 degrees, water boils, it turns to steam, and steam can power a train. One extra, degree, can change the state of water. One extra, degree of effort, can be the thing that takes you to the next level. One extra, degree of effort, in sports and life, can separate the good from the great. One extra, degree of effort, can change your life.
Here are some examples of that one degree of effort.
Olympic – Men’s Giant Slalom 0.17 seconds was the margin of victory that means that the winner gave that extra, degree of effort, to win by 0.17 seconds.
Olympic men’s 800-meter 0.05 seconds margin of victory. That means a push at the finish line. 0.05 seconds is a neck!
By giving that one extra, degree of effort, moved them from hot to steaming, these champions achieved results beyond their wildest expectations.
You can get to, 212 degrees, daily. The extra, degree of effort, is something we can all apply ..every day.
This is your life you are responsible for the results.
Those results that can take you beyond your wildest dreams.
So, if you want to win, then it is time to turn up the heat.
Nobody wants a Luke warm person.
Are you Lukewarm in your affections?
Lukewarm in your efforts?
If you are not feeling the heat, you are not pushing hard enough.
Have you ever tried to build muscle? How do you build muscle? You build muscle by giving that extra degree of effort to feel the burn. When you feel the burn, we always want to stop, but you have to do one more repetition, you have to feel the pain that extra degree of effort to get to 212 degrees!!
Arnold Schwarzenegger said he used to work his arms until they hung limp at his sides shaking.
Do you think he was lukewarm in his training? No, the 6-time Mr. Olympia had steam coming from his nostrils!
Here are 3 ways to turn up the heat to get you to 212 degrees:
Consider the ABC’s of change:
Attitude: Everything starts with your attitude. When you turn up the heat, water starts the process of turning into steam. A small change in your, attitude, can have a positive impact on your behavior. When you have a positive, growth mindset, gritty attitude, your behavior improves. When you believe you can do something, you attack it with more force. Approach everything with the right attitude. You have to believe you can win. Water knows it can turn to steam.
Behavior: Growth and improvement happen in small, consistent acts over time. Show me your habits and show me how you are acting and behaving and I will show you how you will perform. Water changes when its temperature changes. We perform better when we make positive changes in our behavior and have better habits.
Consistency: You can’t do something just once and expect to see change. When water gets to, 212 degrees, it starts to steam, but if you remove it from the heat then drops back down to, 211 degrees, it will return back to just water at 32 degrees. If you can’t stay consistent, you will fall back to who you were, lukewarm.
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of 5 min Fridays with coach Myrna
Krista St-Germain watched her husband killed by a drunk driver as he was changing her flat tire at the side of the road. After she was able to uncurl herself from the fetal position, she started working on the journey of post traumatic growth and became a Master certified coach to help other widows how to deal with, grief, and debunk the myth of the, 5 stages of grief.
Krista St-Germain is a Master Certified Life Coach, Post-Traumatic Growth and grief expert, widow, mom and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista’s life was completely and unexpectedly flipped upside down. After therapy helped her uncurl from the fetal position, Krista discovered Life Coaching, Post Traumatic Growth, and learned the tools she needed to move forward and create a future she could get excited about. Now she coaches and teaches other, widows, so they can love life again, too.
Myrna: Can you share your story of your, grief, following your husband’s death.
Krista: I was 40 When my husband died, it was my second marriage. My first one did not end all that well. And my second marriage was to me proof that amazing relationships are possible that you can be treated with respect and cherished. He was a lovely man who’s French Canadian. English was his second language, and we worked together.
The day the accident happened we had been on a trip, but we had driven separately. I had a flat tire on the way back we were almost back to my home city, so I pulled over on the side of the road, and he pulled up behind me in his car. And even though we had AAA service, he just didn’t want to wait on AAA to come, he just wanted to get home.
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My grief was caused by a drunk driver
So, I’m standing on the side of the road texting my daughter who was 12 at the time to tell her that we would be a little bit late. And he’s digging in my trunk, essentially his car’s parked behind my car. He’s trying to get access to the spare tire, and its daylight 5.30 pm on a Sunday and a driver who we later found out had meth and alcohol in his system, did not see our hazard lights and just crashed into the back of Hugo’s car and trapped him in between his car and my car. And you know within 24 hours he was gone.
So, I went from having this amazing marriage and life to thinking that I would probably never be that happy again. And that I should just be grateful for what I had, because if it wasn’t going to be what it once was. First, I made a call to my therapist and I still had a therapist who had been very supportive and helpful to me when I had gotten my divorce. So I went back to her and I spent those early weeks of, grief, just letting myself feel the pain. And it really helped to be able to talk about my, grief, with her.
There are, 5 stages of grief, and in the first stage, the brain goes through which I didn’t know at the time, but I understand now. The brain literally encodes “WE” so when you’re in a significant relationship, the brain makes a move from I to “WE” and so it has to then make that rewire itself essentially over time and move back from “We” to I. But while you’re in this weird place in your brain, you don’t feel exactly the same. Sometimes you kind of question yourself because you know intellectually that they died.
You still expect that they didn’t. One of the, five stages of grief, is denial. So, the garage door goes up and you still expect they will come in the door. You reach over in the middle of the night and you still expect that they will be there. Something happens and you pick up your phone and you attempt to text them. And so therapy was just really helpful to be able to talk that through with someone and say it as many times as I needed to say it and just let my brain adjust to the actual fact that he really had died and this really wasn’t a bad dream that I was going to wake up from.
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After I went back to work, I kind of reached the place where a few months in I felt stagnant. Therapists was telling me I was doing a great job. This is what I now call it, grief plateau. I didn’t have a word for it then. But that’s where all of my clients get stuck. In this place where everyone else has gone back to normal living. You look like you’re fine because you’re handling the day-to-day tasks of life. You look like you’re doing okay. And so, everyone’s telling you that you’re strong because they think you are and that you’re doing so great because it looks like you are but then on the inside you don’t feel great on the inside.
Life is this kind of empty and maybe hollow and maybe robotic and it’s just you go through the motions but there’s not a lot of joy inside. And that’s kind of where I found myself. And thankfully at that moment in time. We could call it a few things right, but it was divine timing in my opinion. That right when I really needed it and was ready for it. A coaching program came to me and it was a brand-new coaching program from a coach I had followed for a long time. It was not, grief, related, but I had listened to her podcast and I trusted her. And what she taught really resonated with me. And so I decided to go ahead and take the leap of faith and do her program.
Even though it wasn’t, grief, related, it was the tools and the things that she taught me about how to how to deal with my, emotions. And how to think about about my future. It took me from a place where I really did believe that my best days were behind me to the possibility that I could believe my best days were in front of me if I wanted and it was just really powerful.
And so, I decided, as do many people when you lose something or someone important to you, you kind of start doing an inventory on how you’re living your life. One of the, 5 stages of grief, is bargaining so, you start asking yourself, am I am I living the way that I want to live? And the answer for me was no. I didn’t I love the people that I worked with, I didn’t love my job, we built planes. I was never inspired.
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The grief journey is long that is why the 5 stages of grief is a myth
Myrna: I understand the, grief, journey is long. My daughter will call me up and say, Mom, and it’s not getting any better and the days are still long and I can’t wait to get through them.
Krista: Yeah, I remember that so well, too. And I see it so often in the women that I coach. It’s almost that when the world is the quietest, like evenings or weekends, it’s when you sit down and you stop working. That tends to be the moments that we dread the most because that’s when our brain starts to offer us some really challenging thoughts.
That’s when my brain would offer me you know, you should probably just be grateful because it’s really never it’s never going to be that good again. Or, no one’s really ever gonna love you like he did. No one’s going to accept your shadows and all of your humaneness like he did.
I think there is opportunity there, to open ourselves up to what’s really happening in that moment. The, stages of grief, are all emotions and we were never taught how to deal with feelings and emotions. Nobody ever said, emotions, aren’t problems for you to solve. They’re just experiences for you to allow. What I was taught was you know, if you’re gonna cry, should probably go to your bedroom, you should probably do that alone. So in the, 5 stages of grief, you are supposed to get to, acceptance, but that is a myth.
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One of the, 5 stages of grief, is anger. But we were taught that if you’re angry, that means that something bad, you’re an angry person and we and maybe that means you shouldn’t be angry. And so I very much thought of, emotions, as problems to solve. I have learned that it is that philosophy that that makes those moments so awful. Feeling the, emotions, of, grief, makes us want to get out of our current experience and turn to something for comfort. It makes us want to turn to food or it makes us want to turn to alcohol or to shopping or to any distraction such as social media scrolling, it just really makes us want to get away.
Because we don’t have any other, coping mechanism, it really starts to kind of shrink what’s possible for us emotionally. So, we might be able to escape that intense loneliness with whatever the behavior is that we’re choosing, but then conversely, limit what’s possible for us in terms of taking advantage of new opportunities and figuring out what we want to think about ourselves or where we want to go next. So, we end up in this very kind of stagnant place. I call it the, emotional stagnation, zone where we’ve we’re numbing out a little bit.
Myrna: Do you teach your clients to just sit and feel there, grief? Because a lot of coaches and luminaries such as Sadhguru and all these luminaries, teach that you’ve got to feel the uncomfortable emotions. Don’t try to do to try to get rid of them. Just sit with them and let them move through you. So sitting with the, anger, is good.
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Krista: I do teach them to sit with their, emotions. I use an acronym called NOW, which I find is very easy to remember.
N – and it simply stands for name. So, you’ve just named the, emotions, in the, 5 stages of grief. So this is, anger, this is loneliness, this is denial etc.
O – stands for Open which means open up to it, which is completely the opposite of what you will want to do. Right? But breathe it in, open your shoulders, open your chest, give it permission to be with you, and then witness your feelings of, grief.
W – Is to witness. Become aware, witness just means watch what’s happening in your body. How are the emotions of, grief, showing up in your body. Where in your body do you notice it? Is it in your throat? Is it in your chest? Is it in your abdomen? Where is it and what is it like? Is it fast? Is it slow? Does it have a texture? Does it have a color, does it have a shape? Does it take up a little amount of space? Or is it a large amount of space? You know what actually is it and then by observing it, we get our mind off of the thoughts that created it in the first place.
Then it just flows through and once you get good at it, what I found is that it really only takes a couple of minutes for an, emotion, to flow through and so I teach it that way. And then also I don’t know about you, I love, Emotional Freedom Technique tapping. So, I teach my clients about that too. I have found great value in that over my lifetime and it helps move, widows, through the, 5 stages of grief.
Tapping gives us relief from the painful emotions of grief
Myrna: I just got introduced to, EFT tapping. Do you tap on the head?
Krista: Tapping, it’s a very flexible tool. So sometimes you can get great relief simply by, tapping, on the side of your hand, which some people will call the, karate chop point, and then also on the collarbone those are the points that if I am just looking for immediate relief, from my, grief, emotions, that I tap.
If I’m in a public situation where I don’t really want it to be all that noticeable, I’ll tap on those spots, but if you’re going through the full, tapping, regime, they’re the, karate chop point, and then eight other points make up what they call the basic recipe. And so, but it’s just it’s kind of like an off switch to you’re your, stress response, so your cortisol drops. You can breathe a little bit deeper, but I do see it as a huge opportunity.
Myrna; I haven’t had anyone in the show talking about, tapping, but I’ve read a lot of books and a lot of therapist’s touch on it. And recently, I was going through a meditative process. And one of the things that I was told is tap on your collarbone and also tap on the top of your head to certain parts of your head.
All right now you one of the things that you teach is that you said that the, Stages of Grief, are a myth. And I think one of the stages we were probably talking about what are the stages there when you said you’re in a kind of dead zone. Can you talk about the traditional, 5 stages of grief. Then we can talk about the myths. I know one of the, 5 stages of grief, is anger; one of them is denial.
Krista: Yeah, first of all, I think it’s interesting when I asked this question, if I asked people how, you know how many of you knew about the, five stages of grief, or had heard of the, five stages of grief? Most people raise their hands. And then if I ask what other, grief theories, have you heard of? I usually don’t get much people don’t they’ve never heard of anything besides the, five stages of grief. And so, I think it’s just important for us to know that as with any field of study, there are multiple theories.
The, five stages of grief, is just one of the older ones and one that seems to have caught on in terms of our popular culture. So, there are many other ways of looking at, grief, besides the five stages. And I also have a lot of respect for Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross, who, pioneered that work in her time. She made conversations about, grief, happen at a time when they really weren’t happening. But her approach was never really intended to be it. She never really intended anyone to take her work and make it as literal as people made it right.
So, what she was doing was studying initially hospice patients. She was studying people who were coming to terms with their own mortality. She was not studying people who had lost someone.
The Five stages of grief:
denial,
anger
bargaining,
depression,
acceptance,
Those were the, five stages of grief, that she saw happening with death and dying and then on, grief, and grieving along with David Kessler, and that work was taken and misinterpreted. So really, I think, if she were here today what she would be more likely to say is something along the lines of these are things you might experience, but you don’t need to experience them in any particular order. You are not trying to get to an end point; grief, doesn’t end.
She was not trying to say that we should all be shooting for, acceptance of grief, and then whenever we reach the point of, acceptance, that somehow that’s a fixed and finite place. She wasn’t saying that, that’s what people have heard. And that’s the boxes that they tried to put themselves in as well that they will come to me and they will say things like well, am I angry enough? Or I’m not sure that I ever felt angry. It’s not a problem. Did I do something wrong? Am I doing, grief, wrong? Because I never really felt angry. And instead of taking it as, as a starting point, a way of normalizing what could happen we’ve turned it into something prescriptive, which was never how I think that work was intended.
Myrna: You mentioned that you would be in bed and you’re be looking over for your husband and when you heard the garage door open you would hope it was him. Isn’t that, denial? Some people do get angry thinking what why did this happen? A lot of people get angry at God because they’re thinking why would God do this to me? So, I’m thinking that, even though the, stages of grief, is not prescriptive, it’s understanding that if you feel these, emotions, then there’s nothing wrong with you because it’s natural.
I would think that we always have to get to a place of, acceptance. I talked to you about my daughter when she went through, grief, because her fiancé, the man that she loved, committed suicide and she had some guilt there. Because they had a fight before he committed suicide so, she felt that she was responsible. But now she’s happily married. So, at some point in time, she had to get through the, five stages of grief. I don’t know if she was ever angry, but guessing she got to, acceptance.
Krista: I think anytime we can tell people that what they’re experiencing is an abnormal that is not in service. And so, I’m imagining that it was rather freeing for people to hear that it was okay to be angry, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with them if they were angry, right. So, I do think that is helpful.
And I do think it’s also helpful to offer someone what might be available to them when they feel or think in ways that create, acceptance. But I think we want to be careful of saying that when we get to, acceptance, grief ends. And that’s, that’s my issue with, acceptance. We might accept something. But that doesn’t mean that because we have accepted it, we are now somehow freed of it.
The goal of, grief, is not to get through it. The goal of, grief, is to integrate. Right? Because we can’t undo the loss. We’re not capable of time travel. So, we’re always going to have thoughts and feelings about the loss. And so, we never get to the end of, grief, or we don’t move on from, grief. We move forward with, grief, and we integrate that part of our life experience into the rest of our life, right? It becomes something that we now see the world through. So, what I want to help people do is just to do that with intention.
I try to help people with is to, to open them up to the idea that everything they have, everything they need is already has been given to them and is within them. Right? And that they really their happiness comes from within. And so, if they can find that truth in themselves and realize that they really are, you know, fully intact and valuable and worthy and wonderful and they don’t need anything outside of them, then if they do choose to be in a partner relationship that experience can become about giving. Right about being filled with love, and then finding someone who you want to give that love to, as opposed to what they often feel, which is the opposite is that they have a hole and they’re trying to find someone to fill it
Myrna; So that’s amazing. So yeah, so the cure is the same cure for everything. I love it. All right, so now, tell us about the Widowed Mom’s podcast and talk to us about your coaching program for helping widows.
Conclusion
Krista: If you have you have people listening who are podcast listeners. If they want to learn about, grief, I very much invite them to listen to the Widowed Mom podcast. It’s pretty specific, but I get a lot of feedback that it’s very helpful for people who are just curious about, grief, and curious about post traumatic growth and maybe want to support someone that they love who’s experiencing, grief.
And then the program that I run is highly niche right. I specifically work with, widowed moms, moms of all ages. Some of my moms have grandchildren, right? It’s not just widows with very young children, but women who identify as moms, and I help them figure out how to get through that, grief plateau, and get to a place where they really do love life again. I do that and in a six-month program.
They can find it at www.coachingwithkrista.com. Also, if anybody needs help, figuring out what episodes of the podcast would be helpful. I have a podcast quiz that I think is really good to take. and it’s at coachingwithKrista.com/grief support, and it’s a free quiz. and if you take the quiz, it will point you towards the most useful episodes for you based on what you might be struggling with.
