Live Authentically Podcast with Pamela Savino

Episode 125 of the Live Authentically podcast presents Keith Anderson, a lawyer, consultant, keynote speaker and founder of Worth Living Mental Health Consulting. He’s also an author of “Life Worth Living: A Mental Health Anthology.”

Keith knows mental health struggles all too well. He founded his business because he had depression for 16 years himself.

He says he lives authentically by being very real to himself. Keith talks about a very vivid mental breakdown he went through almost 20 years ago. He remembers the day. He remembers where he was. He can still picture what happened.

“After my breakdown and recovery, I went to therapy for a couple of years and had great family support, I worked hard on myself at it as well,” Keith said. “I’m grateful every day. That’s how I come in as real. That’s how I start the day– I’m grateful I’m still here.”

Keith sticks to the present by telling Pam that he’s grateful he gets to chat with her. He says having someone new to connect with is special and keeps him grounded and real. He also expresses how he remembers the darkness, but how he also celebrates his life now through connecting with others. 

And Keith isn’t afraid to admit that he will never be completely healthy as far as his mental health goes. He uses an analogy of the ankle he broke to explain why this is the case and how he copes with it.

“Am I 100 percent healthy in terms of my mental health? No. Never will be,” Keith said. “I broke my ankle one day. I went through the crutches, the cast, physiotherapy, all those things, of course. Is it 100 percent? No, it’s not. Never will be. But it functions. I can walk, I can run, I can get around.”

Keith delves deeper into the time he had depression. He says he did not realize he had it. He talks about the tragedies he endured in his young life that likely contributed.

“My father had died young, and with his passing, my everyday life changed,” Keith said. “I kind of just compounded at the time. I didn’t get it, didn’t understand what it was until I had hit a wall.”

Keith went to see his family doctor the morning five days before his mental breakdown. He spent half an hour with him, which was rare– normally he’d only spend five minutes or so. They talked about depression. Keith had no idea what it was at the time.

He believes the mental breakdown literally saved his life. You can learn more about Keith and his business by watching the podcast here. Or you can visit his website or follow him on Facebook or Instagram.

The Live Authentically podcast is back with Sharon Lebell, a bestselling author, composer, speaker and performing musician. Sharon joins Pam to talk about Stoicism, how to live your best possible life and her internationally bestselling book, “The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness.”

As per usual, Pam asks Sharon a pertinent question: “How do you live authentically?” To which Sharon responds, “I seek to live authentically every day by asking myself one question, and it’s simply this: What can you do with the moment? What can I do with this moment? Because when you think about it, well, it’s all we have.”

It’s true that the present moment is all that we have. And in this present moment, Sharon says we can make a choice that can resonate with us for years to come. It’s hard for any of us to know exactly how, but we have the control to change the course of our lives by the decisions we make at any given moment.

Getting out of the process of constantly unconsciously doing and shifting toward creating conscious choices isn’t easy. It’s not a problem that Sharon can conclusively solve. “But what I do believe we can do is set deliberate reminders to take a pause, to draw yourself back into yourself again, or to remember to remember,” Sharon shares.

One of the ways Sharon says she does that for herself is by remembering that she’s a musician. Sharon put a sticky note on one of her instruments so that when she passes by, she has to read it. The note reads, “Pay the toll,” prompting Sharon to play a tune on her instrument any time she reads the note.

“I would urge other people to just find ways of reminding themselves… For lack of a better way of saying it, remind yourself to be who you decided you were going to be. I mean, you know, one of those aspects of that question for me is I’m a musician. Well, if you’re a musician, pay the toll,” Sharon chuckled.

Learn more about Sharon and what she has to offer by watching the full podcast episode here. Or you can visit her website, or follow her on Facebook.

Episode 123 of the podcast is back with David Wood, a previous guest on episode 84 of the show. With over 20 years of experience as a life coach, David is also the founder of Focus.ceo. 

David starts off part two of his podcast with his latest book, “Mouse in the Room: Because the Elephant isn’t Alone”. The book talks about how the elephant isn’t the only animal in the room. David says there are many other more subtle animals to see that not everyone in the room may be aware of. He provides a recent example.

“Like, a couple of nights ago, I was at an acting class, and I suggested to someone something she could’ve done a little differently,” David said. “My story in my head is that ‘That didn’t land well,’ that she kind of felt a little bit insulted, and she did not want that feedback. And so, that’s a mouse.”

“Now, I could just let that mouse hide, or I could identify it and say, ‘Oh, okay,’ and reach out (and I probably will today) and leave a message and say, ‘Hey, I just got the feeling that didn’t land well and that wasn’t what you wanted to hear, and I wanted to apologize.’”

David stresses the importance of identifying the mouse in the room in the first place. That’s part of why he named the book what he did, to center the problem in the room that many people are too scared to confront or name otherwise.

“It’s about authenticity,” David said. “It’s about stopping the act that we’re always presenting to the world, because we don’t want to get in trouble or feel uncomfortable, and finding artful ways to name your mice so that you can be seen for who you are and generate more connection, confidence and be a better leader.”

Naming the mouse in the room also generates more trust, according to David. Being real (or honest) in a situation can get you farther than pretending that the problem doesn’t exist in the room in the first place. It’s also the point of good leadership.

“It works for leadership as well. If you’re not willing to be revealed and give people a sense of who you are and what’s driving you, and why you care about this and actually name what’s happening, who’s going to trust that?” David said. “They’re not going to want to follow you. So, there’s business application. If money’s a driver for you, I think you’ll make more money.”

Watch the entire podcast episode here to learn more about David, his work and book. You can also follow David on social media: Youtube or Instagram.

Live Authentically podcast episode 122 features Monique Rhodes, a self-proclaimed happiness strategist. On her website, Monique offers eight different kinds of courses focused on sleep and stress meditations to self-improvement and self-love exercises.

When asked how she lives authentically each day, Monique says she practices by choosing to pay attention to the places her mind wanders.

“I think that what most of us don’t understand or realize is that we think we go through our day and make a whole bunch of decisions about what we like and what we don’t like, the things that we’re doing and not doing, and yet, most of those things are actually habits,” Monique said.

Habits are important to get you from destination A to destination B. We need habits to know how to drive a car, brush our teeth every day or remember other important and healthy daily tasks. But what about our emotional space? Do habits form there, too? According to Monique, they most definitely do.

“There’s a whole bunch of other things that we’re doing habitually that we’re not even aware we are. Our emotional reactions, the way that we’re showing up in the world, we think it’s based on the present moment. But it’s not actually,” Monique said. “It’s based on past habits. And that really holds us back because when we start practicing a thought over and over again, that becomes a belief. And beliefs really drive our life.”

Monique believes that it’s okay to have beliefs about things, as long as they are conscious. However, Monique notes that most of the time, that is not the case. Most of the time, people are run by their longheld unconscious belief systems. 

Monique uses a flower as an example to explain the eight levels of consciousness people go through when forming beliefs. She says the first five levels of consciousness are based on your senses. You’ll use sight as one of your first senses or levels of consciousness. Then you’ll move to level six of consciousness, which recognizes the flower. Then you move into the problematic one, consciousness level seven.

“The seventh consciousness says, ‘I like it, I don’t like it or I feel negative about it,’ Monique said. “And then the eighth consciousness stores it, a little bit like a piggy bank or an external hard drive on our computer, right? What then happens is, I show you this flower, you look at this flower, and you say to me, ‘Oh, I love that flower,” and you think in that moment that you’re loving that flower, but if we were to look closely, we might find a past story sitting behind this love for a flower.”

And it’s those past stories sitting behind the flower that Monique says shape the way in which each of us chooses to live authentically.

“When we start to break this down and look at it and work with it, I believe then we can begin on the journey of living authentically in a deep way,” Monique said.

To learn more about Monique and her work, watch the Live Authentically podcast episode 122 here. You can also visit her website or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Live Authentically podcast episode 121 features Dr. Varun Gandhi, a life and business coach who, if you read his website, went through a slew of career choices after leaving behind his career in environmental engineering consulting.

Gandhi says he lives authentically by ensuring that he’s expressing himself authentically. “Anything that comes out of my mouth, I want to make sure it’s authentic,” Gandhi said. “So I always have that screen to make sure, ‘okay, am I saying this authentically, or am I saying this to please someone else?’”

Having this filter is important to Gandhi now, but, as mentioned earlier, it wasn’t always the case. Gandhi used to be an environmental engineer consultant until he felt a pain in his stomach that just wouldn’t go away. He started questioning the pain, literally.

“I started kind of unconsciously, I didn’t really know about this technique of asking questions to the pain, like what is the message that the pain was giving me?” Gandhi said. 

“I don’t really know about it, but I was asking these questions to the pain, and one answer that I got was, ‘Why are you waking up every morning, 8 a.m., going to this job from 8-5, and it’s something that you don’t even care about that much? Like, it doesn’t feel like you make much of a difference.’”

Gandhi felt like there was something greater out there for him. Around the same time, he also went through a profound breakup. The breakup tore him down to the point of pushing him into opening his eyes with a spiritual awakening. He began reading “The Book of Secrets” by Deepak Chopra.

“The little bit that I did pick up was this word called ‘meditation,’” Gandhi said. “Then I started researching meditation, what is meditation? Googling it, learning more about it, and finally, about a couple months later, I picked up a practice of meditating every day.”

It was that meditation that enabled Gandhi to see that he is capable of changing his course.

“I create everything in my life, all of the miseries in my life are my doing, and I’m creating these stories in my head, and I have a way to change it if I want to, if I choose to,” Gandhi said.

Find out where Gandhi’s story took him next by watching episode 121 of the Live Authentically podcast. You can also find more information about Dr. Varun Gandhi by visiting his website or following him on Instagram or Facebook.

Episode 120 of Live Authentically features Martin Rutte, president of Livelihood, a management consulting firm. He is also the co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work,” a New York Times Business Bestseller. 

In addition, for over 15 years with his Project Heaven on Earth, Martin has been learning what makes people human, and what they envision their dream world to be.

Martin tells Pam that he lives authentically by seeing what’s true for him. He says that he sees where he can leverage the difference he makes in the world.

“I have to have time for laughter, puns and playing with people, and some intellectual stimulation. I like innovative, unique thinkers,” Martin said.

In addition to that, Martin explains how he tries to be the person who will tell people the things they don’t always want to hear– the negative stuff– but in a nice way. Constructive criticism overall, and we all know this can only help us grow. 

Martin says his goal with telling people the negative stuff is “to say that with some heart and soul and yet still get the message across.”

Martin believes that the negative stuff should be told, but in a way that invites the person to continue the conversation.

“You start with the positive, then you go to the negative and then you give another option,” Martin said. “... I like that a lot because it puts the no inside of a yes. It puts the no inside of forwarding the relationship.”

For Martin, forwarding the relationship is one of his life purposes with his Project Heaven on Earth, which focuses on bringing people into the sphere of seeing their own personal heaven on Earth.

“I’m fascinated, Pam, by the idea of the soul’s dream we have for the kind of life and work and relationship and nation and world that we want,” Martin said, “And the idea popped into my head, ‘Oh, you mean Heaven on Earth.’”

For Martin, the last 30 years have been about trying to evoke the “Heaven-on-Earth-knowing” within others. He mentions how it’s so much easier to focus on hell that he instead wanted to know what heaven looked like to everyone else.

To learn more about Martin Rutte and Project Heaven on Earth, listen to Episode 120 of the Live Authentically podcast or visit his website here. You can also follow him on Instagram or Facebook, too.

Episode 119 of the Live Authentically podcast features Mike Kasdan, an intellectual property lawyer, professor of NYU Law and the founder of Lawyering While Human, an organization dedicated to serving law firms and schools by providing mental health and wellness services. 

He is also on the leadership team for The Good Men Project, a media platform created to tell stories about men in those moments of truth that all of us can find ourselves in when we have to make tough decisions in life.

Kasdan says he lives authentically by being intentional about being himself, no matter the situation he’s in. Although, living intentionally is not always easy for him.

“You’d think it’d come naturally, because, you know, being authentic is just being yourself. But I think you have to be pretty intentional about it. And I don’t think I always lived authentically every day and I probably don’t every day still. It’s a work in progress,” Kasdan said.

Kasdan reflects back on the time when he used to compartmentalize everything, instead of trying to share all parts of him always. He says he finally stopped compartmentalizing everything once he began paying attention to the Black Lives Matter movement a couple summers ago.

“That movement of the world helped me merge my Good Men Project brain-side and my lawyer brain into one whole. And when I did that, I was like, ‘Wow, this is much better. I have much better energy.’ It makes an incredibly huge difference,” Kasdan said.

Kasdan particularly likes to talk about mental health and wellness, too, which he says he does a lot with Lawyering While Human. He’s impassioned about that also because he deals with periods of acute depression himself. 

In fact, it was right after he took a medical leave for work for a few months last year that he decided to be fully transparent and open about why he had to take the leave. That’s something that was not easy for him due to the stigma society puts on mental health. However, after sharing that with his coworkers, Kasdan says that gave him the energy to want to start Lawyering While Human on the side.

“I think by being authentic, the fear that so many people have is, ‘Someone’s going to criticize that part of me, or they’re going to see me as less capable business-wise,” Kasdan said. 

“But I think there’s a baseline level of capability you want to have in your business partners, but you also want to connect with people on a human level. And I think if we’re connecting on a human level about these types of issues, those are really deep, real connections.”

You can watch the full episode with Mike Kasdan on the Live Authentically podcast episode 119. To learn more about Kasdan, his projects and his passions, you can also follow him on Twitter, Instagram or visit his website.

On episode 118 of the Live Authentically Podcast, we are joined by John Cerasani, a personal friend of Pam’s and founder of Glencrest Global, a venture capital firm based in Chicago, Illinois. 

John’s firm invests in companies operating in the sports, gaming, leisure, hospitality, food technology, government technology, SaaS and technology sectors.

But John is more than just business. He has a great story to tell about his journey through a transition period that challenged who he wanted to be, and what his priorities were that got him coming out of the experience living more authentically than ever before.

Before we dive into the juicy details, Pam starts off with the question she asks all of her guests: “How do you live authentically every day?”

For John, it’s all about zeroing in on his priorities and reminding himself of them on a daily basis. Since John has made such a big splash in the VC space, many may assume his priorities are business-related, but for him, his number one priority is his family. Whether it’s spending more time with them or putting them in a better position to succeed in life, that is how he lives as his authentic self.

So what was this big transition that transformed John’s views on life? Well, he sold his company and ended up having to work for a private equity firm — the very firm that bought him out. He talks about having to let go of his business (his baby) and how he dealt with feeling like a “dead man walking” during that time.

After that period ended, he didn’t work for about a year, he shares with us how his ego took a hit and how he lost focus of where he wanted to be in life. But through that adversity came awareness.

John came to a realization that he was so laser-focused on his work life and making money, that he wasn’t focusing on the other things that made him happy like spending time with his family and friends. So he spent a lot of time prioritizing those things and discovered what truly mattered to him.

When talking about adversity, here’s what John, also a former football player, had to say:

“If you don’t keep your head on a swivel in football and you're not looking around, someone is going to blindside you and you’re going to be knocked down on your rear end. Same goes for life. If your not paying attention with an offensive and defensive mindset, looking for opportunities, looking for threats — that’s the outcome your going to get in life too.”

Pam and John close up the podcast by discussing his next moves and how he is using Instagram to give out business advice to people with an entrepreneurial spirit like his. He’s also writing a book that comes out later this year. 

You can learn more about John, Glencrest Global and more about his book by listening to the full episode, visiting his company website as well as his Instagram account. Thanks for tuning in!

Episode 117 of the Live Authentically podcast features Susan Larkin, an alcohol awareness and addiction coach who found her calling after quitting drinking herself. Larkin says at a certain point in her life, she realized that alcohol was the thing that was keeping her from living authentically. 

“And one of the first things I do every morning is get up, I drink a big glass of water, and I look at myself in the mirror and I say, ‘I’ve got your back’ to myself, because I feel like for so many years I didn’t have my back,” Larkin said.

Larkin reflects back to how she was drinking more than what was recommended and how that kept her in a spiral of shame and self-blame for a period of time. That’s until she found a program and read the book of the same name: “This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life.”

The program helped her break free from her addiction. “Really, it revealed all these truths to me, and that really set me free,” Larkin said.

Larkin learned the science behind her addiction, and that helped her to realize she didn’t have to blame herself as a person but blame the substance. Larkin was also taught how alcohol is addictive, especially when you use it as a coping mechanism.

“If you’re using alcohol to manage your anxiety or stress, your brain starts to think, ‘oh, this is a good thing.’ And it actually starts to think you need this for survival, so it creates sort of a habit loop, or neural pathway, in your brain of, ‘This behavior is helpful to me.’ So that’s what really creates cravings.”

The one truth from “This Naked Mind Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life” that resonated with Larkin is that it’s not your fault and there is nothing wrong with you. Larkin believes this methodology helped to set her free. 

It also helped her to understand that alcohol affects every kind of person, regardless of class, race, status, etc. You can be a high-achieving woman who can set out and breeze through your goals in every other avenue of your life, but until you can change your mindset surrounding your addiction, you won’t be able to get a handle on it. 

Learn more about Larkin and her mission as an alcohol awareness and addiction coach by watching episode 117 of the Live Authentically podcast here. You can also visit her website or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Episode 116 of Live Authentically puts the spotlight on Kathy Motlagh, founder of Think Virtues – a unique holistic education coaching and consulting firm. Its mission is to guide individuals and families in identifying their top virtues and use them as a tool to dig deep into who they truly are, what they desire, and move them towards living as their complete authentic selves.

Now, Kathy and Pamela aren’t strangers — they are actually close friends who share the same overarching purpose in life: adding the value of authenticity to as many people as they can from a place of love and open-heartedness. 

As the discussion begins, Kathy emphasizes the importance of investing in yourself and how the influence of our upbringing, society and education can program us to have certain biases and beliefs that make us value material things over ourselves.

“We are conditioned to buy $80,000 on a car that is $20,000 less as soon as we drive it off the lot, buy $400,000 homes and fill it with furniture. These things are important, but when it comes to investing in ourselves, we don’t seem to have the budget.”

Kathy then encourages people to consider that “you are the most important and valuable asset that you have. Without you, your health, mental health and physical health, you have nothing.“

The ladies then discuss the powerful journey from the ego into the soul and the incredible moment of cognitive dissonance that led Kathy to find Think Virtues. 

Right out of college, Kathy got recruited into the finance industry and became successful very quickly (which she credits to years of coaching). This steered her to become the sixth highest producing female in the country, with a seven-figure income.

And with all this success, she came to find that she was unhappy and empty inside, but she didn’t know why. So naturally, she started doing a lot of research on what awakens the soul and how to connect with the innermost precious self.

After having kids, one of her sons started coming home from school after learning about virtues; she noticed that after a month of practicing four virtues with him every day, it made a huge positive impact on their relationship. It gave them both a raised awareness of who they were and how they were affecting others around them.

This transformation inspired Kathy and she realized that “Virtues are who we are. Our hearts and souls. We need to work on them, contemplate them and practice them.” She wanted to get this concept outside the walls of the classroom and share it with the world, which is how it all started.

Now, Kathy works with over 300 virtues and helps individuals and families identify their top virtues and bring them to the forefront of their existence — all so they can live their most powerful, authentic lives.

If you are curious to know more, listen to the full episode to dive deeper into the power of virtues and the positive ripple effect it has on the world!

You can learn more about Kathy, Think Virtues and the selection of programs available by visiting her website or checking out her LinkedIn page.