You Are Making This Too Hard

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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. Angelo, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm I'm very happy to be here sided for this discussion. I think it's going to be really interesting. So let the audience know who you are, your background, and how did you get to the point that you're not only working with businesses but now individuals. Sure, I got my undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio originally, so that's where I went to college in psychology, and I went to the University of Georgia earned my master's and my PhD in psychology in the early to mid seventies. I taught college for four years at Oklahoma City University on psychology and then kind of made a career shift and joined a consulting firm.

1:44 In nineteen eighty Rohr International, which is a big international psychological consulting firm. Moved into their Memphis office and worked with them for a couple of years, and in nineteen eighty two, I had a great opportunity to start my own practice in Nashville, Tennessee. So I jumped on it and I've been working with businesses and individuals ever since. The name of my consulting business is the Company's Psychologist, and I came up with that name. When I started, I was just using my name. And then in the late nineties, everybody started to have to have a website. You had to have a website, and so I said, well, I can't just call the website myself. So what am I going to name my business? And I realized that my clients were always saying, you know, the next step in the hiring process is for you to visit with our company psychologists. So I said, well, they named my client's names, they named my business. So I've been the company psychologist since nineteen eighty two.

2:49 Oh my goodness. Oh that's great, that's great. Well, and you know, you know the interesting thing that I find, and you know, we talked about business versus individuals. What I have found is that there's so many times, as I worked with very small businesses for a while, it's interesting that whatever you're teaching them principle wise, in many cases in business flows right into their individual life. Well sure, and. Also I don't know how you know what your specific responsibilities were, but it would be interesting for me as you are helping these companies to hire people, right right. Do you find that you use any type of behavioral analysis to kind of get a sense of their personality and who they are and where they're going to fit in the job.

3:37 Yes, I've used standardized assessments for the whole time, the entire time I've been in business. You're probably familiar with some of them. I use the sixteen PF, which is a personality test. I use the DISC which is a behavior test. I've got a test that measures motivation. I've got one that measures soft skills. And one of the great things about using those standardized assessments is you can compare people apples to apples because they're both taking the same assessment. It's not quite as subjective, and you can come up with some objective data that you can use to benchmark various positions and come up with kind of a standard or a template that people who fit this template have a tendency to do better in that particular organization then people who don't fit the.

4:25 Template, right, And you know, it's so interesting. I'm very familiar with the disc but the with the company though that has gone and included some of the things you talked about as far as values and motivators and all those types of things. So what I find interesting and yes, you know, you can use that to really determine an individual as far as are they going to fit into this position. For instance, you know, you get a high achiever with no interest in money and more interested in art, all of a sudden, they're not a great salesperson. Right exactly. So what I find interesting in that is you take that and then you move that into individual situations and you move that into individual relationships and based on your experience, if you use that for that, what have you found that these evaluations, and you know, behavioral evaluations actually can do for let's say a couple that are struggling and you know, really challenged in their relationship, and where can that play a role?

5:34 Well, it's that's a great question because the this in particular is used in relationship counseling because it identifies a person's behavioral style and everybody's got a behavioral style that's a combination of the dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance. And let's let's see, for example, you have a couple where the man is fire on dominance and the woman is higher on compliance. Well, just in communicating those two people communicating with one another, the man's going to be tend to be more bottom line, abrupt, give me the bullet points where the woman more likely to want to give a more complete explanation of her point and take it point by point. And what wants that from him? So she wants a more detail from him, He wants less detail detail from her. And if you're not careful, you can end up with people who just have so much difficulty communicating with one another that they both just feel like it's easier to keep their mouths shut and not communicate at all.

6:50 And so where you have that situation, how do you help them to bring together that so you know, you've got your high D, you know strong, you've got whether it's a you know an I, R N S that you know really wants that emotional part coming in, how do you deal with that and help the couple to understand how to communicate in a way that actually improves their relationship versus the challenges that they're having. Well, there's a natural tendency for people to dig in when there's when there's conflict, they're going to have a tendency to dig into their position, or their point of view or their approach. And when you do that, there's no movement either way and nothing gets resolved. So what I try to teach people, especially using the disc for example, is it's up to each person to adapt their behavior to an extent to the other person's style. In other words, if the man, as I mentioned, wants quick bullet points get to the bottom line, if the woman is more willing to maybe not give his completed explanation and recognize that she's she's more likely to get her point across, she's a little quicker getting to it, and he needs to realize that she wants more complete information, She wants

8:21 you to talk more and wants to go into more detail. So if you're willing to do that a little bit, you're never going to be the flip on the other side of the disc wheel, if you will. But if you can be a little more sensitive to what the other person's needs are and adapt to them, and if they're doing the same thing, you kind of meet in the middle and you have a much better chance of at least communicating in a way that both people are going to be more comfortable with. Yes, And that is, in my mind, the key to communication is really sicking to understand and really absolutely understanding that person. So you've written a book. Talk about your book. Well, I've written the latest one.

9:03 Yeah, the last one was twenty something years ago. The title of this book is you're making this way too hard. Find your easy way to enjoy life. And if you've looked at the book, you'll notice in the title that I spelled enjoy life in an unusual way. Yes, I noticed that. And it's spelled njoy lf feed. And the reason I did that is because that has been my license plate since nineteen ninety one, njoy lf F. So I'm driving around Nashville and other parts of the country within dooy life as my philosophy of life really on the back of my car. And it's surprising how many comments I get about my license plate. And most people say, oh, that, what a great idea, what a great license plate. And when they say it's what's a great license plate? I say, it's not a license plate, it's a philosophy, philosophy of life.

10:10 And one out of a thousand people will say, why do you have no joy in life written on your license plate? And those people probably need to reevaluate their attitude for the world. And I say, to all now one on earth, what I have no joy in life on my license plate? I have a very positive, optimistic attitude about life. I'm seventy five years old and I still have a positive optimistic attitude in spite of everything I've seen and been through. And my book is aimed at people who have allowed themselves to forget the joy that they used to feel when they were little kids or the joy that they felt at earlier points in their life.

11:03 Well, and I know that you make a distinguishment between the joy and happiness. Can you can you kind of share with the audience what that is in your experience. Happiness, to me is transitory. You can be happy, unhappy, sad, thirty forty fifty times day. And I'll give the example that I use in my book, and because it's an easy example for people to relate to. Let's say you're watching a football game and your favorite team's playing your bitter rivals. So you score a touchdown in the first five minutes of the game. Your team does, and you're happy.

11:46 Then the other team roars back and takes a file sit a three point lead in the second quarter. You're unhappy. You go back, you tie the score at halftime, you're happy. They run back the second half kickoff, You're unhappy. You come back and you score ten points, you take the lead. You're happy. They come back and they score a touchdown. You're unhappy. You tie the game up with two minutes left. You're happy, a little bit happier. Then they kick the field goal with three seconds left and you use lose the game, and you're unhappy. So you run the whole gamut of emotions in a three three and a half hour period all about a football game. That really doesn't mean anything. It's true, right, It has no impact on your real life unless you have a financial interest in the game, which a lot of people do now, which makes the highs and the lows even more extreme.

12:39 Yeah, and joy is something that's more long lasting. You can feel joy all the time. Okay, there are going to be some aspects of your life where you're not going to feel quite as joyful. But if you can learn to find joy in the simple things in life, and for example, you know, heading a puppy, watching a sunrise, sitting by a lake, and just thinking things that give you real pleasure in not in the hedonistic sense of the word, but in the I'm glad to be a lie sense of the word. Those can be very simple things. You don't have to go out of your way really experience joy. It's all around you if you just look for it and let it in when you find it.

13:30 Well, and I love that because it really, in my mind is such a deep, as you say, all inclusive feeling of you know, you take happiness and then you just move it into that higher level of true joy, which I love. So, how do people really move their lives from the chaos that they experience emotionally to that level of joy in their lives? What has been your experience as you've had your practice and as you've done these other things right? Well, in my experience, people have allowed outside influences, outside forces, dictate their feelings, dictate how they feel about themselves, how they feel about the world. They listen to the noise, and there's noise all around us. It comes from media.

14:22 It comes from their friends, it comes from their family, it comes from almost it's social media especially. They're bombarded with information, misinformation, disinformation, artificially presented scenarios of other people's lives, and they start to feel like they don't measure up, They start to feel less than they should. And I encourage my clients to focus on what can you control, Focus on what you can control. You can control how you react the situations. You can control, decisions that you make.

15:03 And I think a person's life where they are today is a combination of all of the decisions that they've made up to now and the quality of their relationships. And we too many people allow themselves to get into unfulfilling I won't say toxic, but I'll say unfulfilling relationships just because they feel like being in that relationship is better than not being in a relationship at all. And I might argue that being in an unfulfilling relationship is worse than not being in. Yeah, Ultimately, I think that has an even deeper difficult you know, situation that goes on and you know it really can affect you in a deletarious way.

15:50 Well sure, sure, So I really want people to focus on self care, self love, get yourself in as good as shape as you possibly can. I mean, without being a fanatic about it. I'm just saying there's little things people can do to improve their lives and improve how they feel about themselves. You know, if you want to get in better shape, you don't have to run a marathon. Take a walk for twenty or thirty minutes a day. Studies have shown that if you walk for thirty minutes a day, it has tremendous health and benefits. And anybody can find someplace to walk for thirty.

16:30 Minutes a day, right, Well, that's true, that's very true. So as we talk about that one thing that comes to my mind. And I don't know how much you've gotten into this aspect, but you know, you talk about the outside influences and all of that noise that can affect us, but a lot of that noise is, at least in my experience, is really subconscious. They don't even realize that the noise is sure. And that has to do with, as you say, the imprints from family growing up and so on and so forth, and even and I don't know if you've had any experience with this, but even when we start talking about generational or DNA memory, that literally sciences showing can affect subconsciously our experiences in life.

17:19 How do you help people to really delve into that, to get to the point where they begin to understand that, oh wow, my response to this is based on this emotion, which is based on this situation, which quite frankly, if I really look at it carefully, I can reframe that in a way that is not affecting me negatively. Well, it really is about reframing a person's latitude and how they look at situations. I don't encourage people really to delve into their path. I'm not a therapist. I'm a consultant and a coat. Yes, so my focus really isn't on the past. And one of the things that I tell my clients early on is that your past can either be your teacher or your jailer, and you have to make the decision which one it's going to be.

18:12 It's really you can learn from the good things you've done in the past, the mistakes you've made, the influences that have been important to you in your past. But if you stay there, if you're stuck there, then you're never going to be able to grow as a person, as a professional because you're caught in the jail of your past. And the end, the only way to break out of that is start thinking about just because a situation was a certain way at one point doesn't mean it has to be that way in drown. Well, And you know, I think, as you say that the mental focus, people can get into so much trouble by just focusing on the past. But at least in my experience, focusing on the past from the perspective of learning lessons, being grateful for those lessons, and the expressing that gratitude, whether it's in meditation or prayer or how whatever.

19:10 You want to call it. The reality is is that when they do that, it changes the effect of that situation. You absolutely hit the nail on the head. The idea of learning from me. You know people are where people say all the time, well, I don't look at it as a mistake. I look at it as a learning experience. Well it's become a cliche. But if you take the attitude of what's the lesson here? What can I take away from this that can help me in the future. If you have a learning mindset and you have a growth mindset, then you can really you can find something that you can use to your benefit later on if you're just looking for it. And so many people just focus on all the bad bad that's happened or how it negatively affected them, and they don't look at it as well, maybe maybe there is a lesson, but the painful lesson. You know, the problem with experience as a teacher is that gives the test first and the lesson afterwards. Well, you can learn from your experiences if you just have that mind and it is a mindset. So much of so much of your life is how you approach it.

20:32 It's not really what happens to you. It's how you react to what happens to you. Oh, and that that is so true, and you know you talk about and this is something that a lot of people talk about that I found is how important it is to love yourself. Right. But I did an interview and I said, I put the bet in there. I did an interview the other day and they were talking about relationships and talking about you know, too much focus on loving yourself without being in a relationship and learning and that actually helps you to love yourself greater as you are in a positive relationship. What are your thoughts about that? And how does one positively learn to love themselves and avoid going into a direction that it becomes negative?

21:20 Right, Well, you don't want to become narcissistic. But loving yourself just means recognizing your value and your worth as a person. It means taking care of yourself. It means not running yourself down in what you think and say and do. So many people talk negatively about themselves and they start believing it, and often they can get help from people who are willing to talk negatively about them also, so then it just reinforces what they how they feel about themselves. So I just encourage people to say nice things about themselves. Everybody has worth, everybody has values, everybody's good at something, So feel free to complement yourself. Why not.

22:11 It doesn't have to be in public. You can say, oh, that's a pretty good job I did right there. And you know that you can reprogram your mind by changing what you think and what you say about yourself and about others and about life. So I think the point of self love is if you're not the kind of person that can love themselves and appreciate their worth and value, why would you expect somebody else to love you and appreciate your worth and value. And I think when you appreciate your value, it's easier for you to appreciate the value of another person, because that's what you're looking for in a relationship where both people appreciate each other's value.

23:05 What they go ahead? Sorry, well, no, no, no, I was just going to say. With with your coaching individuals, have you have you seen where there may be some real trauma and chaos going on in a relationship where if you help the one one person you're coaching individually to really start to love themselves appreciate their value. Do you find that that has a total effect on the relationship itself. Well, that it hasn't come up that often because I'm I'm mostly working good with individuals. But I will say that when I can work with that person to get them to appreciate themselves their value more, then we can talk about how does that how's that going to affect your relationship with your partner? Can you start to see some of the things that you were critical about? Can you start to see the value then them as a person.

24:07 And in my book, I talk about quirks as being the key to a successful relationship, and I don't really believe it's true. Everybody has quirk you know, the little idiosyncrasies that some people find endearing and other people find irritating. And if you could if two people can find each other's quirks endearing, I think you got a chance to have a great successful relationship. Yeah. I think it makes all the difference in the world. You know, going back to the disktest, one of the interesting things I find the behavioral analysis is that at least the one that I use really talks about our core personality who we are right, talks about that mirror personality or social personality of who we quote need to be, and then obviously it has a combination of all of that to our consciousness. But my question is this, why do so many of us fall into that social or maror personality and literally live an imposter's life because we are doing everything, we are behaving, we are doing, we're saying everything that we think people want us to do.

25:24 In other words, we are at the effect of our environment. Other people literally are controlling. Us, right, and we've kind of been conditioned to do that. If you want other people to like you, you have to do certain things. If you want to be respected by other people, you have to do certain things. Well, what people don't realize is that nobody cares about them as much as they care about themselves. Most people are just interested in their own life. And really, you think that you're doing things to please another person, there you'll fit in with that group of people, and if most of the time they don't care one way or the other, you're putting on a show for an audience that's not even attending the play, and so you end up wondering why why that your relationships aren't good, why you don't you're not achieving the things that you want to achieve is because you're playing the wrong game. If you're just true to yourself and be authentic with yourself, you're going to find that the people who value that are going to be drawn to you, and you're going to have higher quality relationships than the superficial relationships of the people that you're trying to impress or you're trying to be different for.

26:52 Well. And as you say, and you use the word mindset, and I think that that becomes so important when I talk to people about I say, you know what, if you're in that social personality situation, you have two choices. You can either be at the effect of that and say I've got to be this way, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, which means you really are not in control of yourself, versus going in and saying okay, based on the situation, I will behave this way although it's not really me. I will behave this way so that they are comfortable and literally they are now in control of that. And I think that being a victim versus being in control is a huge, huge difference.

27:37 Oh absolutely, it's totally different. The victim mentality is what causes a lot of people to stay miserable. They feel because they feel like they're being put upon. Everybody's out to get them. Nobody understands me, right, And if you're if you're if you feel like a victim by definition, you don't think you can get out of whatever situation that you're in, and often it's a prison of your own making. I mean, you have choices people. You hear people say all the time, I didn't have any choice. Well, that's not true that you had more choices. You just they might have been more painful or more uncomfortable and more difficult than what they were willing to do, but they had more choices. So if you change your from the victim.

28:31 I'll give you an example in the book, I said, in life, you're either the puppet or the puppeteer. Okay, if you believe outside forces control you, or faith controls you, or your past experiences control you, you're the puppet. If you believe you control yourself and you control your outcomes and you take responsibility for your behavior, you're the puppeteer. What would you rather be? The puppet or the puppeteer. So, when you're working with a client, and you notice that they're the puppet. How do you help them to move from puppet? And I love that analogy, by the way, from puppet to puppeteer. Well, it takes time because people have gotten to be comfortable as a puppet, because it's easier to blame the fates, to blame other people, to blame circumstances than it is to take responsibility for yourself and recognize that where I am, I've made decisions along the way that paused me to end up where I am so.

29:40 And you, yeah, you tend to attract Hey, have you noticed that people that are really into that, not really into it, but they really are victims in that respect their puppets, that they end up continuing to attract the same experiences in their lives as puppets unless they mindfully make a decision to change. Oh. Absolutely, because again it's become their comfort zone. They're used to other people pulling the strings and it absolves them of any responsibility and it makes it easy for them to assign blame when things don't go with So, you know that shift to taken responsibility for yourself and for the decisions that you've made up to now, it's difficult, but it's worthwhile, and the people that I work with have recognized at least I want to try to work on this because I realized that I don't want to be in a puppet anymore. And you know, a large number of those people make dramatic changes just by recognizing I can control the decisions that I'm making. I can control my choices, and your choices determine the direction in your life's gonna go.

31:01 Any stories you have that are dramatic about that that you can. Share, well, let me let me let me think I'm having trouble coming up with one off the top of my head, but oh well, I will. I will give you one example. That's that's from my book. I was teaching college and it was a night class and this very large gentleman walks into my classroom. Weighed four hundreds, as he told me later, Wow, And he said, I just got my fourth divorce, I'm going back to school after twenty years, and I'm going to lose two hundred pounds.

31:48 So this was a guy. I wasn't even working with him. I was his teacher, I was his professor, but he had made the mind shift that he wasn't going to live the life that he had been living because he recognized that he'd made a number of bad choices along the way. So I said, God bless you. If you're going to lose two hundred pounds in a year, I want to see it, God bless you. You know what could I do to help? So he ended up joining a gym, and I ended up joining the gym with. Him, and that was kind of getting out of shape my. I. So I watched him and he said, what do you eat me? He said, well, I have the same thing for breakfast, same thing for lunch, same thing for dinner every day, and I work out every day. I mean, he was the former marine, so he inside of him somewhere was that discipline that he needed to do that.

32:49 So he just did it, and I watched the pounds come off. In six months, I noticed a big change. I also noticed that was in better shape than I had then in a while. And after a year he lost two hundred He lost two hundred pounds. He went from four hundred pounds to two hundred pounds. Wow, and that But he wouldn't have done that unless he'd changed. He decided he was going to change the course of his. Life, change the decisions that he was making, And I would assume that change externally represents a major change internally and it has probably affected his life. It did. It affected his life in so many positive ways.

33:29 In fact, he was kind of a serial entrepreneur. He'd started several businesses and when he lost when he lost all this weight, he said, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to start a weight loss clinic. I'm going to help other people lose weight. So he started his own weight loss business and ended up hiring you know, trainers and hiring nutritionists to help other people accomplish what he'd accomplished, which I thought was kind of a cool you know rus in the circle. Yeah, and it's amazing. I think sometimes how people who and you have referred to it as people who look at their past and change that mindset about it. He's a good example. And I've seen a lot of other people who take those chaotic experiences in their lives and once they have managed to overcome that, they choose to use those experiences to help other people. And what an incredible way to deal with those traumas in our lives by allowing ourselves to help other people get out of your traumise.

34:40 Yeah, I think if you have, if you have a sincere story to tell that other people can relate to, it helps you to relate to them, it helps them to relate to you. But if you have I mentioned having a learning mindset, but if you also have a helping mindset, one of the best ways to get everything you want in life is to help other people get what they want in life. And Baiale Carnegie said it in the thirty in the nineteen thirties, and I don't think he was wrong. I think if your attitudes, how can I help people. Do? Be? Think, learn better, better, help them improve their lives. There's going to be some bawback where you're going to it's going to improve your life somehow without you even crying, no.

35:32 Question about it. And actually, in my opinion, as you seek to make a difference in other people's lives and help them, that brings about the joy that you're talking about. That brings that sense of joy, and that's kind of an opposite effect that you would think. But as you're giving them yourself to help others intelligently, you're going to experience that joy oh. Absolutely. There are a few things more satisfying for me then when somebody says to me or eludes, thank you for making a difference, thank you for helping me with this. That's that's worth everything to me because you know you've made a connection there and that person. It's meaningful to both of us.

36:22 Right, yes, And and oftentimes we don't get that feedback, which which is interesting. You know, you can you can go on and on and on doing what you're doing and you're not necessarily getting feedback. And then every once in a while you will get that piece of feedback that makes all the difference in the world and gives you the realization that, hey, this is worthwhile. Well absolutely, but I think more, if more people would shoe gratitude and show appreciation to those people that have influenced their life positively, I think we'd have better society and better relationships in general. I think it's so easy to say thank you very much, that was really helpful, and if you mean it, it's going to mean a lot to that person. I mean, you've dealt with I'm sure customers support people on the telephone or over the computer for various things, and I always try to be especially nice to those people. First of all, they have a job that.

37:26 I wouldn't want to have, and if they're doing a good job at it, but I want to let them know that somebody out there is grateful that they helped with this problem. You know, when I got this computer that we're on right now, it's I spent five six hours with various customer support people helping me download all the software that I needed to get on here to do what I do. And one gentleman was so particularly helpful that he spent two hours with me working on something and never lost his patience and never never hung up on me or never and I was just so grateful. I said, what's your name? Who can I write? Who can I write to to let them know what a great job you did?

38:13 He said, well, here's my phone number if you ever have it, there's my direct line. If you ever have any more problems, please, you know, call me. I mean, it was it was amazing to me, and I wanted to let them know that I thought it was amazing, and I think more people need to do recognize when somebody goes out of their way or does something that makes your life easier, makes your life better when it's I know it's their job, but you can approach your job with it. I'm just going to do the bare minimum to get by, or I'm really going to help this person solve his his or her problem. And when you get people like that, you really need to. Show some appreciation to them and it will make them even do it more, which I think is so important.

38:58 You've made so many really important points. But I'd love for you to kind of as you think about what message would you like to share with the audience, So as they finished listening, this is the message that they're going to take to heart, what would that be. The lesson I'd like them to take The part is you can control your life. If you choose to control your life, you can find self love, you can find self care, you can find joy and contentment. You just got to start looking for it and start working toward it. It's the best energy you could spend is finding that energy to find joy and enter peace and contentment.

39:47 Thank you, Angela, I appreciate that. How do people find you? Well, the easiest way to find me is My website is Angelo Valenti dot com. My email address is Angelo at. The Valentia dot com and uh, if you'd like to book a discovery call to find out if you'd like to work with me, you can go to Reachanngelo dot com. And I'm on LinkedIn, Angelo valent PhD. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook. Getting thinking about launching a YouTube channel, haven't. I haven't done it yet. I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of. There a a number of things I'm thinking about that I haven't done yet that I really need to start doing some of them, and I will.

40:32 But when you got me, you got that guy's phone number? Yes, I do. Yeah, boy, I wish you could help me with that one. Well, and hey, I really appreciate you being on the show. Is how do people find your book or books? Because you think you've read more than just one? Well, yeah, but the one I wrote twenty years ago, that's ancient history. I'd like to focus on the book that I've got right now, and you can buy it on am on. We're making this way too Hard finds your easy way to enjoy life. It's also on audible if you like audio books. I narrated it myself, or you can go to my website and buy a copy.

41:14 From Angela Valenti dot com. I'll even send you an autograph copy and that's how to find my book all right here for you. Well, thank you so much for beating on the show, Angelo, I really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you, and folks, thanks for listening. Hope you really enjoyed it, and please reach out to Angela if you find that that could be a good fit for you. Visit a doctor Doug saying No'm stay