Navigating Life’s Transitions with FROGS: Finding Strength Through Change

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0:44 Denzel Washington, Welcome to inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Brenda welcome. Thank you for having me. Oh I'm excited. You know, it's always so interesting how people can together. And you know, I was doing an interview just the other day talking about synchronicity, and I think it's so amazing that you know that works so well, and you know, you have such an interesting topic and I'm looking forward to talking about it. I'd love for you to share with the audience your story, your journey, because I know that had a lot to do with what you're doing now. It really does, really does. I mean I for my career.

1:26 For the most of my career, I've been in a training and development leader or organization development consultant. But you know, what I was using in my work started to come in handy in two thousand and eight when my. Life took a side turn. It took it went sideway as I found myself unexpectedly divorcing, becoming a single mom with two little boys, no guaranteed income, no healthcare benefits, and every part of my life needed to change. And in that moment, I were thinking, I was. Really grateful that I had the background and training that I did, and wishing that I could share more of those messages with others.

2:08 And so ultimately that's what I did. And in the two books that I've written, there really about helping people through times of change and helping folks be more resilient. And how does that work for you? Oh, I'm being tested right now, you know, doctor Doug. I'm being tested. I think along with the rest of the world. Right we wake up every morning and say that wasn't a dream. Things are really changing. I got to read my own books. Well, yeah, it's so interesting. You know. We talk about and as I say, I just got up an interview talking about synchronicity, and one of the points that I wanted to make for the folks that were listening is that synchronicity doesn't always bring about the good things. Sometimes we experience things that we don't consider good. But over the years, as we look back, we realized it kind of put us on a path. For instance, with your divorce, with what happened in two thousand and eight, you know that certainly wasn't something you would consider great, but look where's put you now?

3:11 One hundred percent. I always say I did a ted X talk and I talk about navigating transition fog, and what I say in that is, you know, we don't see the gift of the fog until it's in the rearview mirror, and then we look back and go, oh, yeah, I traveled through that and I wouldn't want to do it again. But I got to some destination that was pretty cool. But man, that was a foggy, tricky journey. Well, and you've written two books and I know we're going to talk about this last book that you've written, which I appreciate you have sent me, and so I had a chance to skim through it. But what was the first book you wrote and what motivated that and what's it about? That first book was really after years after my divorce, when I thought, gee, I wish leaders had this information when they're leading themselves and others through times of change, the information that I had from my master's degree program in organization development. And then it occurred to me, well, why don't I make that available to them.

4:11 They don't have to go back and get an advanced degree. What if I write a very manageable, easy to read book that takes some of those content topics and breaks it down for them. So it's called TBD to be Determined, Leading with clarity and confidence in uncertain times. And so I wrote this right before my youngest son was going off the year before he was going off to college, because I did want to be that sad, weepy mom that was sending him out the door. I wanted him to be excited about his next chapter. And it really was a time in my life, doctor Doug, where I said to myself what are the dreams I haven't fulfilled yet? What if I start to pursue one of those so that I'm equally excited about the next chapter in my life as he goes off to launch his And so that's what I did. I wrote the book in twenty seventeen and then was invited to do a ted X talk on one of the topics in the book, which is navigating transition fog.

5:06 All right, and you know we met via LinkedIn and that is really a very business side and I know that most of your background has been working with businesses. But what I have found is I've done a little bit of consulting, was that what we talked about in business applied so well to life. And so that's where I like our focus of the discussion today is, you know, as we talk about things, and we can bring up what you talk you know, what you wrote in that book as well as the other one. But the key is is that what we can do in life. And I kind of like to reverse it because I think ultimately our success in business in a large degree, not always, but in a large degree, depends on our success in life. Now, there are obviously those who have been extremely successful in business and not very successful in life. But the reality I think with the majority of the population is if they can become successful in their life, and that has a lot of innuendos to it, that they can then experience a successful and joyful experience in what they're doing in business. But I think the most important thing is life.

6:17 They can enjoy life. Well. I think you make a good good point, which is I think we're conditioned in some weird way and I've never thought about this until this moment to put it this way, But we see life as a subset of work instead of work as a subset of life, and we forget that the bigger context is life. And when I am coaching any executive, we probably spend more of our time talking about their life than we do their work world. Because they have plenty of people. They can talk about their work world with plenty of folks who can give them advice. But when it. Comes to opening up and being real and vulnerable and authentic about the impact work has on the rest of their life or the price they may be paying in the rest of their life, they really need a trusted companion to talk about those things with. Because the leadership space can be pretty lonely and you have to watch what you say to whomever well.

7:16 And you know, it's interesting also, and I've seen this happen a lot, where you get people that are in management positions and they are the most uncomfortable people to work with. And when you look at that and really analyze that, you can recognize that that has everything to do with who they are and whatever is managing those emotions rather than their management style per se. To me, being a good leader is mastering your use of self. I call it use of self. How do you show up in that space and use yourself? And to do that, you know you need good self knowledge. Better self knowledge means better self management means better leadership.

8:02 And so it's you know, leadership's and inside job. We start there. That's my philosophy. Anyway, and leadership in life I think becomes the whole key. So let's talk about the second book. And it's really a work book, which I love how you've done that. But talk about the second book and what is that about and and what motivated you to write this one? Well, you know, I got even further away from my life circumstances and I began. I was still working with a lot of people to your earlier point who were not just wrestling with leadership, but they wanted to talk about life, leading their lives. And I started to. Reflect back, well, it's a very interesting talk about synchronous synchronicities.

8:47 When I was being divorced, my divorce attorney said to me, Brenda, whatever you do, do not come in here and start telling me about some guy you've met, some prince charming that's going to save the day for you until you have kissed at least five frogs. Now, doctor Doug, I couldn't imagine going on one date, let alone five, So that stuck with me, and as I began dating, I was counting them. Off like frogs, like one, two, three, four, five. I'm like, oh, maybe I'll write a book on, you know, navigating divorce and dating. And then at the end of the fifth frog, I thought, oh, that's gonna be a really lame book. Forget that, so I just dropped the whole thing. But those frogs stayed in my brain. And then fast forward. I was walking by my television one day and somebody said, frogs is an acronym for fully reliant on God.

9:35 Now in the space that I was in. I probably waved my middle finger at the television that day, thinking I'm not feeling like God is in my life at this moment, but it still. Was with me. And then I had a dream one night, and I had a dream about this frog. And the next day I went shopping with a girlfriend in the store just chalk full of little knickknacks and chatchkes, and the first thing my eyes went to was this ceramic frog that was the exact frog. I dreamed about the night before. And then two weeks later, I. Was going through my office cleaning it out, and I had saved an old Christmas card from a client, absolutely nothing remarkable about it except that on the front of that card was this frog. And it's like I started seeing five frogs, you know, and I thought, what is with the frogs?

10:29 And I looked to them up. I started doing some research to find out just how resilient frogs are and that they are symbols of change and transformation. And as I reflected on my journey. I thought, oh, wait a minute, these are kind of the stages we go through when any disorienting life or work event hits us. And so each of the frogs stands for a different stage that we go through on the road to getting more and more resilient. Well, I love that. As I looked at that, I've been really contemplating a lot of things for a while, and you know, I haven't written a book yet, but I'm trying to. But what fascinated me is as I was looking at the frogs and what you wrote for each one of them, it just parallels so much. And I think what's interesting is everyone comes from a different perspective, and yet when you look at the reality of what the message is is very similar. I find that fascinating.

11:31 I mean, being here in Thailand, you know, I've loved to study Buddhism and then and I happen to be Christian, so I'll start with that. But then also as I've interviewed a number of people, they've talked about Vetic yoga, which is really Hinduism. So I started looking at that, and what I found is that the message from each of those which are thousands, at least hundreds of not thousands of years apart, are very similar. It's scient wisdom that comes through all across the world, you know, and we just have different messengers who package it differently, and someone who needs to hear it presented this way, and somebody who needs to hear it presented in frog form, and you know, somebody who comes from it academically, and someone who comes from it, you know, through religious religion. And so I think, yeah, we're all downloaded with some of these messages were supposed to be sharing simultaneously.

12:28 Well, let's talk about your philosophy, let's talk about let's talk about what you personally went through or what you've worked with clients, and you've seen what they've gone through. But let's talk about frogs. Oh, frogs. I've really never thought so much about frogs until I started writing this, And really, to be honest with you, there's an entire book I will write, and I've started years ago. I started writing a full blown book on this topic, and it's not quite ready yet. I'm still not sure exactly where it goes. So in the meantime, I thought, let me put out a guided journal on the topic to see if it sticks, to see if the acronym makes sense to people.

13:12 And that's how the journal really came to be. And it's been fascinating since I put it out to. Hear the really unique ways people are using it, in ways that I could never have even imagined. And so the frogs is, you know, the F stage is when something happens whether we whether we choose it, or it's imposed on us. You know, my life situation was imposed on me. But again you have to surrender to that. Here it is, here we go, I'm about to go on a journey. And in the F stage, it feels like everything's falling apart. At a minimum, you're in a fork in the road and you're trying to make a lot of decisions, and there are a lot of other F words that show up. We freak out, we may get frustrated. We're in our raw feelings. It's a highly emotional state and we want to honor that because the emotions are real, and if we don't, they get stuffed down.

14:11 And even when I relate this model to what happens in organizational life when leaders navigate change, when they announce a big change, they often don't really want to hear everybody's feelings. They just want to pretend they don't exist and get on with the change. But research shows if you don't let people find a healthy way to process those emotions. As human beings, they get stuck deep in, they get stuffed into the culture, and they will kind of raise their rear their heads in very strange ways and inopportune times because there's a distrust that get baked gets baked into the culture. Well, I know, it's interesting as to talk about freaking out.

14:54 You know. One of the things I've looked at is I've interviewed different people that have gone through different processes of transformation. What I find is there's always some situation that has occurred in their life that causes that freaking out. And I think that you know, you look at that, you look what you went through. I've certainly gone through similar things, and you realize that it's only that situation that finally causes us to be motivated to start to do something about our lives. It suddenly gives us realization that, you know what, this is not the life that I want. It isn't It had me do a lot of things, It had me say, you know, to be honest, I was living in my dream home, a home I never could have imagined living in, and in that moment, that home meant nothing to me, and I said to myself in this next chapter of life, it's really like I will never get attached to material items again, and it's really more about I want to lead a simple life, a very simple life. And so that put me, you know, on that trajectory. It put my focus squarely on on my only prayer and goal was let me raise two amazing human beings. That matters to me more than what someone's going to pay me every year to do the work that I do. It put me in a place of saying what's really important to me now? And ultimately it led me down a path where I could say, well, what are the dreams I haven't fulfilled?

16:22 And I guarantee you I don't think I would have written a book. I don't think I. Would have hit the speaking circuit or done a ten X talk if it hadn't been for that f moment in my life. Well, and that moves you into what you were just talking about, which is the R which is reflecting and responsible. And you know, I love that because you know, if as we freak out, if we can really take the time and have the ability to start to reflect as you did, and honestly, you know, step outside of yourself, look at your life and go, okay, what would I want you to think about that? That becomes that's the thing. But I love the word responsibility too, because I think so many times people find themselves in evictim olty and they don't even know that they're there, but all of a sudden, they do not take responsibility for what's going on in their lives. And obviously there are things such as you talked about, you know, the divorce. It was something that just happened and probably not you know whatever.

17:24 But things happen in our lives that we can say, you know what, I'm not responsible for that. But what we are responsible for is how we respond. Absolutely, and you know that responsibility. And that reflection goes two directions. So we look to the past and say, what was my part in being here? What did I contribute to this showing up? Because I think we have to start with ourselves, and then we say, okay, now what's my part? What is my You know, I break the word responsibility out into the two words I always have the ability to choose my response. It's my response. Ability, and that's where your power comes from. Remembering that no matter what happens, you get to choose your response, and you can I had a mentor who once said to me, you can choose to change or influence a situation.

18:21 So that's option one. Option two is you can accept it even temporarily, or the third is you have to get out of it. And if you can just remember that no matter what happens to you in life, you always have those three choices. You feel less like a victim because you get to pick what you're. Going to do well. And as you've worked with and again I assume you don't do a lot of personal coaching. It sounds like you do more corporate and business type of stuff. But even as you're working with those leaders that you're working with, you find oftentimes they fall into that victimhood. It's easy to It's either that or you know, no leader feels like they're really in charge because even if you're at the tippity top of the organization as a CEO, you're still responding to the stakeholders, the shareholders, Wall Street, the board, so no one really sees the things that are happening is fully theirs, and so in that way, it can feel like, yeah, they're not taking the full responsibility or you can blame your employees because they're just not getting on board with the change, or they're just being so ungrateful.

19:31 But I have a. Background in organization dynamics, so I understand all of those invisible. Forces that are happening in the organization. To set it up that way and try to shine some light on that for people so they can see from where they sit in the organization, what they're part in the situation is, and what choices they have for how they're going to show up. But I do want to say this too, doctor Doug. It is fascinating to me. And again this is where I just surrender to the universe. I've always worked worked with businesses and leaders and corporations, but I am noticing in the past year more and more folks are coming to me who want to work with. Me personally in personal life.

20:14 And I think some of that is because the journal the journal, it's not real corporate y. I mean, you can use it that way if you're doing a corporate situation, but it really just I think it really just speaks to anybody, and so I'm just paying attention they're coming and I actually have three different women who are asking me for personal coaching that I'm working on proposals for this week. That's great. And as you look at that from a standpoint of this concept of victimhood, how would you help people, let's get to the personal level rather than the business. How would you help people to begin to understand that? And I love how you use the word, you know, responsibility and responsible. How can you help them to understand and that whatever is happening, they have that responsibility. They cannot blame someone else or what they're experiencing in life.

21:09 They may say, all right, this event happened, but they can only blame themselves and take responsibility for their response, for their emotions, and for their behavior based on their emotions. Yeah, I think the power is in you know. I think the muscle we need to build and we're in that R stages is learning how to reframe things. So if we see this as this thing that happened to me that I didn't deserve. And I have a quote in here that I'm going to probably misquote, but I love it. It's like saying I'm because you know you're wearing red, but you're saying because I'm a good person, bad things shouldn't happen to me. The bull doesn't care. You know, if you're out here expecting the world to treat you fairly because you're good, it's like expecting the bull not to charge because you're a vegetarian. Right, it's going to happen to us. We cannot get away from things happening to.

22:06 Us that don't feel fair. So I think the first step is accepting that life is not fair. No one said it was going to be. No one said it was going to be. So what do you do with your unfair situation? Is the question? Yeah, And you know, it's interesting the Buddha talks about that a lot, which I'm fascinated by. That philosophy that he has is this concept of everyone experiences suffering. His whole model was to help people to get to the point where, yeah, life happens, but they don't have to suffer. And bring the choices that Buddha says, yes, suffering is a choice. That's not the choice you want to make.

22:47 That's right. So as you talk about that, the reality is that we can ultimately get to the point where life happens, but we don't let it affect us negatively. We don't allow it to cause us to suffer extremely but rather just understand what's going on, maybe understand that it's part of synchronicity that we don't understand yet, but ultimately as we work through it, and that goes through your next phase. And so i'll have you talk about that as far as once we do the reflecting, once we take that responsibility, then we go into the old what does that stand for? And it's funny because I think you're leading into it with that comment about Buddhism right. Part of the overcoming the obstacles, which is what O stands for, is one of the first things is surrendering to the situation.

23:38 Two. Buddhism talks about this concept also in permanence, which I love. It reminds us that, oh. You're having a great day, well just wait, that's going to change, right, the next day may not be so great. Oh you're having a bad day, Well don't worry. It's going to change and you'll have a good day. So good and bad is going to we're going to flip flop between them because we're always in a state of impermanence. So I think when we're having a tough time, if we remind ourselves. This isn't going to be here like this forever. But we also appreciate then the really good times because we know they're not going to last forever either. There's going to be a bump ahead somewhere, and then we get to live in gratitude with what's right in front of us. And I think the overcoming obstacles is, you know, some of those obstacles are mindset obstacles.

24:32 Some of them are just keeping ourselves from being paralyzed and making even the smallest inroad, the smallest step towards something. You know, I remember back in my divorce days, just getting out of bed felt like a huge win. Just getting showered, or just getting two kids off to the school bus. Those are all winds, And to this day, it just happened two weeks ago. I thought, Man, I feel really busy right now, But I don't know how productive I'm being. You know, a lot of the work I'm doing isn't really even paying paid work, you know what am I doing? But I know I'm doing important stuff on some level. So I actually took a piece of paper and I started writing down, I'm looking over here because it's here somewhere and I started writing down the things I had been working on that week, and many of them were foundational things like updating my website and updating my bio and making a few phone calls, and they were really important things, but they didn't feel like they were instantly creating an outcome. But I had to in that moment remind myself that this is headway, This is important stuff.

25:42 I think we lose track of it. We only count the big things. Yes, And I love how you talk about mindset and how you know, we've grown up, particularly in the US culture of wanting things now, and you know, we we have lost that to understand the value of patients and understanding that, you know what, we have to do those foundational things first before we can expect the results. But let's talk about mindset a little bit, because I think that's really important. As you talk about mindset, what are you really talking about and what is what is? What are those subconscious things that can affect our mindset? And how do we get to the point where we are really in control of our mindset as you know, totally talks about in control of managing our ego and those type of things which I think becomes extremely important if we want to move into the next step of moving forward.

26:40 Yeah, I think it's really taking You know, I have a mentor who used to call that voice in our heads his yama yama, and he said, you know, your yama yama, which is your ego voice, is always there for most of us. And so it isn't about getting rid of it, but it is about learning to turn the volume down on it, because that creates a negative mindset, and that voice is usually talking to us worse than we would ever talk to a friend of ours. It says really terrible things to us, and so we've got to turn it down because it's going to tell you this is terrible and this thing that's happening to you is devastating. Well what if it isn't you know, what if that thing is here to serve us in some strange way, but we just can't see what it.

27:27 Is just yet. And so part of the obstacles we need to overcome is how we're even looking at the situation. And if we reframe. What looks like a challenge as something more favorable. Not to say we get real Pollyanna, but we do say, what if we get curious, what if this is here to serve me somehow. What if this is here to teach me something? What if this is an opportunity disguised as a problem, And when we can reframe a rainy day as an opportunity to get some home projects done. Or when I was going through my divorce and we moved and my children were in a new neighborhoodhere I didn't really know anyone.

28:12 I ended up taking a job back inside Corporate America for four years just to pay the bills, and I had this long, hour long commute, and I for the first three months I cried every day there and. Back because I didn't want to do this commute. And one day a friend said to me on the telephone, Hey, Brenda, this isn't forever. This is just a temporary bridge to what's next. And I was like, Oh, something about it that day was what I needed to hear, And all of a sudden, I was able to reframe my commute as what a gift I have been a whole hour two hours a day where I can stay in touch with family, make phone calls to friends, listen to a radio program, a book on tape. And I went so far as to say, I want to make the most of this commute. I sold my car and I bought a pre owned sports car, and I'm like, I'm going to love this commute in every way. I'm going to take advantage of the time.

29:15 I'm going to love my vehicle. I'm going to feel like I'm so lucky I get to drive this thing for two hours every day. And that was how I chose. To say, what are the things I can control to make this more palatable? Well, and as you start to work with individuals, I know you're going to come up with this if you haven't already, is you watch this behavior and it doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. It's not even something they want to do, but it seems like it's habitual mindset that they continue to do. And how often have you thought and going into what are those subconscious imprints that are causing the response? You know, talk about divorce, we talk about relationships. As I was doing some certifications in coaching, one of the things that came up and I always laugh about it because the fellows said, you know, this is something if you're in a relationship and things are struggling. He says, never do this, but this is what you should do. When your partner starts to get upset.

30:24 What you need to do is sit back and say, honey, what emotion just came up that you responded to and helping them to understand that an event has no emotions tied to it. We apply an emotion, and oftentimes that emotion we apply is based on those subconscious beliefs, of subconscious imprints that oftentimes we had no control over that caused us to respond in an interesting way. I mean, we look at what's going on right now in the United States, the anger that exists, all of that is on both sides, and it's interesting to me to see how people react and I think to myself, you know what, here's the surface reaction going on, but what's internally going on to cause someone to respond that way? And I think that that really gets into that whole concept of reflecting and responsibility that you talk about, is being able to recognize what's happening there and then you get into the oh where you're starting to overcome some of those obstacles.

31:31 And I really think you know, as we know, ninety percent of our brain is subconscious. Right what drives our behaviors is really ninety percent subconscious, and so it's about you know, I always know when I'm coaching someone and I just get this this intuitive feeling that it's time to ask a deep question like that, and you know when you've stumbled on some subconscious hardwiring that's in there. I remember coaching a key was in a world renowned cardiac surgeon and he was just known to. Be a bear to work with. I mean, it got to the point where people were quitting. He couldn't keep nurses, the operating room could not get staffed.

32:15 His reputation preceded him. They were having a hard time recruiting people. And I coached him for a while and then one day I finally said to him, tell me about your childhood. And I build enough trust with him that he would. And he shared with me how as a young little boy he had to escape a war torn country for his life, and so for him, his conditioning is that life is a battleground, life is a war and he showed up every day like a warrior, and Wow, we had the most incredible conversation. And sometimes those are the moments and you just see the emotion in people after e'bask a cer in question that you know they're about to have a breakthrough.

33:03 And it had me look at him differently too. It had me appreciate why he shows up the way he does based on his early life conditioning and his subconscious beliefs. So we got to unpack those. He's still there, he has managed to you his I think his head was on the chopping block at the time, but he is still there. And it's very funny. He said to me in our very last session, and this was long before I even thought about writing a book. He looked at me and said, so, Brenda, do you think you're writing a book someday? And I was like, I don't know where that is coming from. I said, I don't know why. He goes, do you think I'll be in it? We need to get your ego under control. Yeah, And I love that. And you know what, for people to understand that, that's what it means to overcome obstacles, they are their greatest obstacle. They's subconsciousness their greatest obstacle.

33:54 And so I love that they freak out, that they start to reflect then and be responsible for that and then start to overcome those and that moves us into the next one, which is the G. And then what occurs as they're doing that process. It's g. I think I'm growing and now. And this is in the smallest of ways, you know. It was. I was talking to my mother yesterday about a friend of hers who just lost her husband back in November, and my mom said, oh, Mary's really showing some signs of growth. She's practicing going out to eat by herself. She's never had to do that before. She's always had her partner. And you know, some people go, what's the big deal? You know, I to do that all the time.

34:42 But to Mary, it's a very big deal and it shouldn't be minimized. And I think we minimize our growth within ourselves sometimes we. Go, oh, well, that's a new big deal. You know. I don't know if this happens to other people. But the minute I wrote I remember, before I wrote a book, I was like, if I would meet an author, I would revere them, Oh my gosh, you wrote a book, because that is something I've always wanted to do. Once I wrote a book, I was like, I wrote a book. Anyone can write a book. It stops being such a big deal. Anymore, and we start to minimize that thing that was actually a very big, complicated deal. And so we have to not minimize our growth in any way, shape or form, big or small, because even without trying, we're going to grow. Now, if we are really intentional, we can have very big leaps.

35:35 Going back to the frog, right, we can take and now what and turn. It into a why not. We can make that big leap. We can find ourselves more resilient, we can find ourselves better at reframing difficult situations. We can find ourselves taking risks we never would have taken if this thing hadn't happened to us. But the reason I have a spot in the back of the journal to record hops is because the hops, big progress doesn't happen in one big quantum leap. You know, even if you think about professional sports athletes, you know, we see them on the screen and they're the star quarterback. For an NFL team. Guess what, there were so many things that.

36:18 Had to happen along the way, and every one of those counted. So if we count our hops and record them, then we actually notice our progress. And I like the idea that a hop is only one letter away from hope because it's in the hops that hope shows up that we're going somewhere good well. And I love that and the fact that you know, the continual hops and the realization that you know, sometimes we're going to hop to the side which may not be where we wanted to be, but you know, we have to because there's this obstacle in front of us. They're recognizing on that growing part that it is a process, is something that we have to have patience for and trusting that we can actually accomplish. And when we do that and focus on that and overcome, and sometimes you will repeat, but that overcome and overcome, and all of a sudden, we start to really see that growth. I love that.

37:16 I saw this diagram on social media, so I'm totally blatantly stealing it, and it showed this diagram of something happening, and this little word caption comes up that says, oh, I can't do that, Oh. Maybe I can. Oh I can't do that, Well maybe I can, and I did, Oh maybe I can do that, Oh I can, and I did. I Mean, we start out going I don't know if I can do that, and then we get to the point where after time of doing something and proving ourselves again and again. When that thing shows up next, we go I got this, I got this. But it's only because we've had that series of small successes and we build our confidence.

37:58 Yes, and once we've been able to do that over time, then comes in the S. And what is the S? Oh, my divorce attorney would be so proud of the S stage because the S is not waiting for someone else to make it better for you. It's not the prince or the princess who saved the day and brought you the crown. It's you crowning a more sovereign, expanded, stronger royal version of yourself. It's where you say I did that. I don't know how I did that. I wouldn't want to do it again, but I did it. And the beauty when we get to that space is it's from that space that we can share our stories with people going through similar situations and we serve from that space.

38:51 I very much think the way I work with people today has so much to do with what I went through. I've even had people will hire me because of some of my life experiences because they go, you're going to understand me. You're going to get it. You won't judge me. You've been through something similar, and so this thing that felt so awful has actually become, in some cases, the very thing that creates trust and authenticity between me and the person I'm working with. And ultimately we crown our our more resilient version of. Ourselves well, and then we pay it forward. And it's so interesting, isn't it. I mean, is as I have interviewed so many people, it's fascinating to me how they've gone through these difficult times such as you did, and yet ultimately when they come out, then there's that sense of I want to serve others. I want to be able to help others and help lift their lives up and not ultimately be trodden down by the experiences, but being able to understand that they can transform for those experiences and become as you say, a stronger and as you put it, and you didn't say the words, but sovereign self, someone who literally now is in control of their lives. Yeah.

40:11 And I mean I've had to talk to my self talk on occasion too, because I started speaking on the topic, and there have been times when I've said to myself, you know who wants to hire me. I mean, my story it's pretty vanilla. It's a divorce. In today's world. Sadly people say, yeah, I have no big deal. It's a divorce. Most of us you know what that's about. It's not like I've scaled a mountain. I haven't lost a limb, I haven't survived a shipwreck. I'm not a celebrity. Who would want to hear my story? That's really simple story of resilience.

40:53 And then I really had to have a talk and to with myself to say, well, Brenda, let's get real. If you're staring out at an audience of listeners, how many of them can relate to scaling a mountain, being a celebrity, losing a limb? Very few? But I've at at least fifty percent of those folks have known what it's like to go through a big life transition. Or a divorce. And so I had to reframe for myself. This isn't a boring, vanilla story. This is a story that more people can even relate to. So we have to watch what our self talk says to us, because it is so quick to minimize us and say, well, that thing I went through wasn't a big deal compared to what other people go through, And so you know, we have to be mindful of this thing called comparative grief where we say, well, what I'm going through is nothing compared to what the people in the Ukraine are going for going through, which is true, and I can have grief and pray for them and not minimize whatever is going on in my life that is relative to my life.

41:58 Well, and as you say, I think so well, is that you never know that one person. And you know, I've really focused on the one in my life now because originally it's like, all right, how am I going to help all of these people? And all of a sudden it's like, you know what. It goes back to the story of the little boy during the shellfish, you know, out the surfish out in the ocean, and you know, the man saying what are you doing? He says, You're not going to make a difference. He goes, I just did for that one. And I think that's so important for people to understand that as they go through this process of frogs, and I love that as they go through that process, they will find themselves sertain typically reaching the one there will be one person out there that they will be able to touch, and as that happens, it will make the difference of that individual's life. And so you know, as I hear what you've been doing and so forth, I just honor you for what you've done and what you are doing because it makes a difference.

42:58 And I think that's so important. He guess what our. Time is up? So so what I'd love for you to do, though, is share with the audience just kind of a final message. What would be that message that you'd like to share with them? My message is that behind every now what is a why not? Like why not? Ready to be unleashed. So when the now what shows up? Say to yourself, what could this make possible? Oh? I love it? I love it? And how do people find you? Share with you their website and how can they find your book? They can find both books on Amazon, that's easy, or through my website which is Brenda at Brenda the letter k Reynolds R E Y N O L d s dot com.

43:47 Easiest way to find me. And like you, you know, whether you're a group, an organization or that one little individual starfish. I like working with the starfish too. And get Ben. Wonderful, wonderful Brenda, thank you so much. This has been just a wonderful conversation. It was, it really was. We could do around two and three, you know, so I absolutely. Hate you go ahead and book yourself again. I would love it jeezing, But thank you so much. I enjoyed every minute. All right, and folks, thanks for listening. I hope you've really enjoyed this and you'll take some things to heart. And definitely I've got that book and I tell you it's just fascinating. It's worth looking at. So anyway, thanks for listening. I hope you join us again soon. This is doctor Doug saying no mistay