Shock Your Potential

When we go into business, we're often very focused on what we want, or if we're a little more sophisticated, what we provide, but what we should also be thinking about is with whom we are dealing. [3:04]

Relationships are the foundation of all success in our personal lives, professional lives, and [3:17]

When we consider ethics, one of the problems we have is that we don't have a good definition of ethics, which means we don't know how we can be ethical people. [3:30]

What I've come up with is that ethics is the discipline of recognizing and taking responsibility for the impact our actions have on other people. [3:42]

In order to have that recognition and take that responsibility, we have to have a sense of who other people are, show them that we are trustworthy, and show that we are willing to trust them. [3:53]

Instead of seeing differences as a source of contention, we should see an opportunity for great partnerships between people who are very different from one another. [4:32]

If we're both good at the same thing, that means at least one of us is wasting our effort. [4:48]

Ethics is not nearly as much about what is the right thing to do but about contemplating what the right thing to do is. It is priorities, competing values, sensitivity to the spirit of the law, and not just the letter of the law. [5:18]

When we develop our ethical mindset, that's what enables us to approach all our relationships and decisions in an ethical way, which ultimately drives the greatest possible success in everything we do. [5:46]

We emphasize compliance, but it can become the enemy of ethics because if I relegate my decision-making to a code of rules, I don't have to think about whether it's really the right thing to do. [6:40]

When I finished college, I went backpacking across Europe and ended up in Israel. I had been raised with really no knowledge of what it meant to be Jewish. [7:10]

I was astonished to discover this vibrant culture of deep meaning, purpose, thought, and values, which changed the trajectory of my life. [7:20]

I bring that ancient wisdom into the modern secular world and show how the answers are all there; we have to update the language a little bit so that we can recognize how it applies to us and how it guides us regardless of our religious identity or affiliation. [7:33]

Jim Rohn famously says you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and it's not just the friends. It is also what we consume in media. [9:00]

When traveling through Europe, I was on a train from Luxembourg to Cologne, Germany, and I shared a car with a German journalist and invited me into his home. [11:20]

To meet someone from that culture and learn about him as an individual, not as a label, is a memory that I've kept with me for 40 years. [11:55]

In my book, I used a formula that I use in much of my training, presenting ethical dilemmas of not trying to say it is right or wrong but trying to understand an issue from both sides and finding a middle way. [12:55]

It is broken up into social, business headlines, education, and the different areas of life where we have to grapple with the gray areas to make ethical decisions. [11:33]

Commercial break. [14:03]

It is all about taking responsibility for ourselves, recognizing the mistakes we've made, the areas where we could and should improve, and making a plan for moving forward. [15:30]

We know what we should do and what we want to do, but we don't plan how to put it into practice. [16:00]

My approach is, if we focus on our mindset and the behaviors will start to follow. [16:22]

I use ethics as an acronym to give characteristics that describe ethical leaders and ethical people. [16:32]

E is for empathy which entails knowing other people and being sensitive to them by understanding how our actions affect them. [16:45]

The T is Trust, where I demonstrate that I'm trustworthy and know that if I'm not willing to trust you, it will be difficult for you to trust me. [16:53]

The H is humility which Pastor Rick Warren defines as not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. [17:08]

The I is inquisitiveness or inquiry because leaders need to ask questions and not wait to be told or asked and not be given permission to serve. [18:24]

C is for courage because it is often difficult to do the right thing. [18:52]

S is self-discipline because building is a process, and when you get to the end, you start over again and keep building. [19:20]

This needs continued reinforced where I need to surround myself with people who are committed to ethical values. [20:40]

I am not going to get it right all the time, but it is a commitment to do and another opportunity to learn [20:52]

I recommend tapping into this eternal, timeless wisdom that we have access to in ancient teachings to fix our culture, fix our company's business, fix our summers, and fix our families and our communities. [24:45]

A few basic principles include showing trust to earn trust, telling stories of grappling with ethical challenges to inspire ethical behavior, and showing appreciation by celebrating the successes of others. [24:59]

Suppose we employ these simple principles, and learn how to turn these ideas into action. In that case, we can see our relationships improving, our businesses will be more profitable, our families will be more at peace, and our communities will be much more functional. [25:30]

My grandmother told me a story about her mother's childhood, who is my great grandmother, and it was about how they were poor and came from Missouri to Kentucky searching for a better life. [4:00] 

They were so poor when they got into town that they ended up parceling their daughters out between other people's homes. [4:29] 

They wanted to go get a job, get a house and be able to provide for them and come back and get them and gather the family back together. [4:36] 

Unbeknownst to the children, they never came back and never really understood what happened, and so my great grandmother grew up from the time she was five years old in foster care. [4:43] 

She still overcame all of these challenges, ended up having a good life, had good people around her, got married, and had six children between two marriages. [5:10] 

My grandmother always wanted to write this story herself, but she didn't feel gifted, and so when I started showing some promise with writing from a young age, she started telling me from a young age that she wanted me to write this story. [5:32] 

When I was 16, I sat down with her, and we wrote down every scrap of information she could remember and shortly after, I got married and had my children, she had a stroke, and she was not able to speak anymore. [5:47] 

So that's where book one, "When Dignity Came to Harlan," and it changes a little bit from the original storyline, but it's the story of human experience and all facets and how she handled all of that and how she came through it.  [6:20] 

I don't think that I realized fully at the time what this whole experience would mean, but even at a young age, I knew it was important and big. [9:10] 

Now that I've grown up, I feel very blessed to have been the family's storekeeper and have this to retail, and I love the whole experience. [9:57] 

I have lived with these characters for over 20 years, so I know them well, which made the story take on a life of its own. [11:18] 

Originally, I was only going to write a book, one from my great grandmother's childhood point of view and Book Two from her first husband's point of view, but when I finished book one, I started getting all this feedback from readers that they wanted more time with this new family. [11:38] 

It suddenly became like there has to be a book sandwiched between what I had originally planned, which is coming out tomorrow. [12:24] 

Growing up the way she did and suffering the hardships that she had to endure without getting any justice in her life, my great grandmother still managed to be happy and find goodness in people and be good herself. [14:10] 

And I like to think that she would be proud of what I've done just in the aspect that her story finally gets to be told and people get to understand the truth and understand more of maybe why she was the way she was. [14:28] 

Commercial break. [14:54] 

I firmly believe that I was born an author and this book and series is what I was meant to write. [17:28] 

I started the first 70 pages of book one when I was a senior in college to my creative writing professor, and on graduation day, he shook my hand and said that he wanted to see my book get published. [17:56] 

I got to a place in myself where I couldn't write and thought if I never get to go back to it, being a wife and a mother is enough. [18:16] 

My experience with my child helped me learn so much from the publishing side that when I came back to my first love, Christian historical fiction, I did it well. [18:30] 

There was a time where I was seeing a doctor because I was suffering from some autoimmune disorder things, and he said I had to find a way to manage my stress by getting back to doing what I love. [18:50] 

When I finally was able to carve out the time to get back to writing, it was like rediscovering part of my purpose, a huge part of who I am. [19:17 

I got lost in all of the research for the sensory processing challenges. My book is an account of our experience; what worked for us trying to put all of this into one place for other families that are still struggling that have no idea where to even begin. [20:45] 

I lost myself within that process, and it was through God bringing me back to writing that I ended up rediscovering that purpose. [21:18] 

I just think, especially with it being artistic August, find your passion and follow it whether it's at home or in the community. [23:10] 

I'm a firm believer in writing and all art forms that connect people in this period where we feel so disconnected. [23:38] 

Find the artwork that resonates within you so that you can feel connected to people again. [23:48] 

This artistic piece brought me back to myself, got me out of my head and back into my heart and body, and allowed me to create and shock my own potential. [3:54] 

I help my customers and clients realize people can be victimized, but you don't have to be the victim. [4:18] 

I was a dancer growing up, and I loved dancing, and one time I found a coupon online for a pole dancing class which was terrifying, but I went by myself and fell in love with it. [7:01] 

I got busy, and the only available class was a burlesque class which I didn't even know what it meant but decided that if it worked with my schedule, I would take it. [7:28] 

I have all of these perfectionist hang-ups, but what is beautiful about burlesque is that it's all ages, all sizes, and everything. [9:23]

After my first show, a woman came to the backstage area, and she was in tears, and she said, if you can do it, I can do it. [10:37] 

The first thing to realize is that things are hard, and it's normal to feel confident one day, and it is also normal to lose your confidence the next day. [14:48] 

The second thing that I like to tell people is, it's always darkest right before dawn, and that moment when you were the most terrified that means you're right on the breakthrough. [15:07] 

What I like about burlesque is that there are limiting factors in our lives, but it shows you how to work around them and not just quit. [16:32] 

Commercial break. [18:48] 

Art connects us to our hearts into our bodies, and we live in a world that is very headspace where we think things through, plan it, and then when things don't turn out right, we try to headspace it. [20:35] 

There's so much fear, disconnection and shame in the world due to so much headspace stuff. [20:47]  

If we just lived from that artistic space of creation, flow and beauty and play in curiosity, we would connect and find collaborative solutions. [21:00] 

It's about this new creative combination and living and creating artistically, and we will solve problems and change the world. [21:19] 

With my own betrayal journey, It seemed like the world was telling me the choices are either I stay or go, yet none of these were options for me. [23:10] 

I like to talk about living in the glitter because glitter makes things fun. [23:37] 

FLAUNT is actually an acronym, and I want everybody to flaunt every single day. [26:17]

F find your fetish, which means that you do what's fun for you every day, not just on the weekend. L is for laugh out loud. [26:24]

AU is the golden centre of flaunt, and that stands for accepting unconditionally. You can't change other people. You've got to accept life and everyone unconditionally as they are. [26:35]

So my background is as a traditional local news journalist, and most of my career was spent in sports, which I did for about 12 years. [4:01]

I then co-hosted a lifestyle and entertainment show locally, and that is where I really kind of found what I like to do. [4:13]

Everything in my background is like a full circle to making sense to right now, starting from where I was born and raised. [4:24]

I grew up in south of the suburbs of Los Angeles, where I was exposed to all kinds of cultures just being in a diverse friend group, and I was always so curious. [4:30]

Come to curving a whole journey of 15 years in news media, making a career pivot about six years ago to start my production company and go full-on in and tell travel stories. [5:28]

My background and even my college education help me take a deeper dive because what I learned as having a degree in world religions are empathy and perspective. [5:48]

One of my kind of taglines is that my job is to inspire you to go, and the audience consists of people who want to be inspired to try and go, but most of the audience are just interested in learning. [7:54]

Another underlying mission in my work is to dismantle colonialism in travel, and I know that can be triggering, but the whole industry is based on that. [8:20]

That means everything is set up to accommodate your comfort and your standards instead of allowing you to immerse yourself into how they do things. [8:50]

In my stories, whether they are the short, fun ones or on video, or if they're a longer, deeper dive one, I kind of try to unpack the impact and how to do it better. [9:11]

Being humble is a better approach than demanding that somebody tend your way just because you are who you are. [12:45]

You stand out and probably will get treated more favorably if you are humble in your approach because they aren't used to it. [13:18]

Basic manners and kindness does go a long way. [14:20]

Commercial Break. [17:15]

Travel is the best education, I think, and so whenever I touched the ground into a new place, I have my ears and eyes wide open, and I try to just soak it all up. [19:34]

I recently unearthed and digitized these VHS tapes of when my dad took us to different places, and it was a bit surreal seeing little me and doing what I do now. [20:04]

Talk about a full circle is just learning about this child me, and what I do now has just been amazing. [21:30]

I love the world and learning about how people live, and it is those human bits anywhere around the world that inspire me to encourage people to travel. [21:45]

Whatever little box we have grown up in, when we start to see that people are all the same, it breaks down all stigma, stereotypes, and bigotry that they might have grown up with. [22:38]

I was working in a traditional newsroom when I became inspired by another journalist who is a celebrity journalist, Soledad O'Brien. [23:50]

I started to investigate the idea of entrepreneurial journalists, which is different than a freelance journalist. [ 54:51]

In my company, we create ideas like programs segments, and we produce particular content for different networks and outlets, and my approach is a little deeper. [25:12]

One of the things that I do pretty regularly is I am on-air contributor to several national programs. People are curious about how to do that, so I'm coming up with an e-course to show people that any expertise is fit for TV. [25:38]

Your dream is your dream, and there are lots of obstacles along the way, but if it were easy, everyone would do it. So keep going. [29:40]

My youngest memories include bumping down the streets in Belgium traveling with my dad, a diamond buyer, and his job was to sell stones to franchises across the country. [3:35]

Growing up and knowing some of those diamond cutters to this day who are oddly now retiring, what's great about that is I'm doing business now with some of their children. [3:59]

Hanging out in the back of my dad's or family's jewelry store and playing with the rings growing up and carving wax, I have been able to sort of grow up alongside or within the jewelry industry and seeing how it works in the typical brick and mortar store. [4:25]

As I got older, what was important to me was dealing with the customer one-on-one and working with their emotional side. [4:43]

Dealing with them and seeing their eyes light up as what we've been discussing come to life is what hooked me on this private jewelry custom. [5:30]

Over the last 12 to 15 years, it has grown alongside technology, which has been exciting and fun seeing my customers' responses when I present the final piece to them. [5:45]

There is one job that sticks out to me recently. I had a woman approach me, and her mom had recently passed away and left her some of her jewelry that she wanted to wear in remembrance of her mom. [6:29]

One thing that made this job special was that I took her mom's handwriting and engraved that on the underside of the diamond on the metal, and she was teary-eyed and so special and so important to her. [[7:10]

She will never be able to replace her mom but having that symbol means a lot to me, and being able to do that rather than just sell a piece of jewelry but to make something more critical is so fulfilling. [7:41]

One issue in the jewelry industry is people thinking perhaps something is not within a budget or not within their comfortable budget range. [8:48]

I implore people to do some research and see what the budget is, instead of having these pieces, whether they're heirloom, or just frankly broken pieces from years ago, just sitting in a jewelry box collecting dust. [8:57]

This woman brought me these three rings that had a bunch of different size diamonds and shapes, and it would have been tough to put together and melt into a flowing ring. [9:10]

We took all the diamonds out and created one ring that flowed super nice, it was more of a cocktail ring, and the feeling of warmth that she got when she put it on was fantastic. [9:25]

A side note to this whole jewelry industry is, please insure your jewelry. It is the first thing I tell people when they purchase something of substance. [10:26]

Commercial Break. [11:20]

Manufactured or man-made diamonds have been around since the 70s used in industrial manufacturing mainly, but the diamond's quality was not gem quality. [13:49]

But over the last five to seven years, technology has come a long way and a lab diamond, according to the FTC, now has to be called a diamond because chemically, it is identical. [14:01]

Some of the most Senor gemologists in the world, if you gave them two diamonds side by side and a microscope, couldn't tell you which one was a lab one and which one was a natural. [14:15]

The affordability is amazing as they are about 40% less than the natural diamonds, and because of the price difference, usually, you can bump up the quality a little bit. [15:07]

I had one customer they were in Iceland on their honeymoon, and they came across some volcanic stone that was about the size of a golf ball on their 15th anniversary decided that they wanted to do something with it. [16:23]

She had approached a couple of local jewelers, but they told her that they couldn't help make it into something wearable. [16:40]

I reached out to some of my cutters, and one guy was willing to take a shot on it. [16:55]

It was a blackish green rock that we could cut down into little shapes that were specifically 1.3 millimeters each diamond shape and ended up being this sort of frosty green color. [17:03]

We put them into an anniversary band, cut one piece into a gem shape, and put it in her engagement ring to fit perfectly with her anniversary band. [17:24]

That was was one that was challenging and certainly paid off though, it was a cool experience. [17:46]

I had one customer whose grandparents passed away and left a very heavy gold bracelet, and he wanted his daughters to have something from their grandfather who they had not been able to meet. [19:38]

We were able to melt it down with the grandfather's actual gold, and I designed and created little necklaces for the granddaughters; and they now have these necklaces with their gold from their grandfather, which was excellent. [19:52]

The bracelet had some diamonds in it, which we took, and we were able to use those in the necklaces as well [20:12]

You need a fair amount of gold to be able to melt down and reuse it, but it was a great experience. [20:18]

Insure your jewelry and whether it's another jeweler or me, find someone you can trust. [22:47]

As a writer, you want to stimulate people’s emotions and if someone can’t sleep or put your book down, that is something that we look for. [3:21]

‘Stonechild’ is a mixed bag because it is what we call a bit of eco-fiction, something to do with our social society, the government, the pulling down of statues, slavery, and racism. [3:38]

It is also ‘ripping yarn’ as it has been described. It has got a bit of humor in it and certainly, it has got a pace. [4:30]

We have all looked, prayed to, talked to, or touched a statue, and have at some point imagined if maybe a statue could live, what would it say? [5:52]

I was working in London one day and I just pictured the royal tank regiment memorial statue in London coming to life and talking to me [6:06]

A thought struck me and I wondered why they would come to life, and I concluded that it is because we are in a crisis that is much more serious than the pandemic we're living through which is climate change. [6:36]

So they could come to life saying that we have to take note and take action rapidly and that was the motivation for my book. [7:07]

I warmed to Molly as a character and any author will tell that you'll know yourself as the character grows on you. [9:24]

I liked Molly a lot in that she wasn't black or white but she did see the gray in between, and she did question those things and was prepared to listen to other people in their points of view. [9:39]

She has some prejudice against statues and why we build them which fuels her to doubt them and question what appears to be their message. [9:55]

I wanted the reader to question whether or not statues are bad, whether they can attack people, and for what reason because part of reading the book is for you to form your own opinions [10:17]

Statues is a huge topic at the current moment and it deserves to be talked about but in fact, what deserves to be talked about is the crisis of climate change because those are the things that are going to make a difference for everyone. [12:23]

Commercial Break [13:17]

The science world is struggling to convince the people that they have the power and that they're the ones that can change things. [16:15]

If I was trying to identify the biggest problem that we have at the moment, and the one that we really should tackle, that is our use of fossil fuels. [16:50]

We can tackle it as individuals, certainly but it needs to be a systemic change where we need to completely change the way we live our lives and the use of fossil fuels. [17:11]

The fossil fuel industry is vast and they are very protective understandably because they employed many people and have vast amounts of money tied up into the industry that they don't want to give up. [17:24]

We need a way to bring the industry on board and not see it as ‘them’ versus ‘us’. [18:21]

A very common thought process is that of ‘they're not doing it so why should we?’ But in fact, it should be the reverse and say ‘we should do it because they won't have any choice but to follow [20:38]

There is a momentum whereby some scientists now are beginning to learn to talk not only to scientists or to governments but also to the people in social media which is very good. [21:27]

Fossil fuels, climate change, and global warming are all intrinsically linked and we have to find ways to stop it rapidly and we can. [21:55]

The plastic industry was the one that created recycling and it was never going to be viable so there is some deceit there. [24:36]

We can't go from not being aware of what's going on to we are doing it perfectly, there has to be a transition between the two. [25:28]

We need to make those individual choices but at the same time, we need to be pressurizing governments, countries, and organizations to be greener. [26:47]

What people don't seem to be talking about is that we have a crisis here and in any crisis, a huge amount of money is made just simply from innovation and the new inventions that come out of it. [27:04]

Here is a golden opportunity for economies to capitalize on the innovation of being green. [27:21]

There is a huge number of projects going ahead and they are not perhaps widely publicized, but there are a lot of people doing a lot of good. [29:29]

We are the most intelligent species in the entire universe and have done a lot of creative things and so we can solve this issue, we just have to have a mind to unite and work together. [29:40]

The greatest thing that we could all do is just be informed be and there are some very good books and sites. [32:26]

We tend to look for greater power than ourselves and that's only natural. [35:42]

This is where we stand at the moment and we are still evolving and that should give us the enthusiasm to choose to evolve in the right direction. [36:07]

We do have time and we do have the capacity and the capability of changing things. [36:39]

We are a very interesting species and we live on the most beautiful planet and having been privileged to see an awful lot of it, let's preserve it and win it back. [38:11]

We know that when we do those things, when we're part of nature and looking after the environment and after each other, we feel good about ourselves. [38:31]

I am a program coordinator at a spirituality center where I coordinate and facilitate programs on spirituality and its relation to ourselves and our creativity. [3:28]

I've been a writer for over 30 years, and that has been a constant in my life. [3:48]

I was a stay-at-home mom until 2012 when my husband passed away and I did a lot of freelance writing and running various home businesses. [3:55]

It was quite a change and I still can't believe that in the nine years since I have become what I would never have imagined becoming which is a public speaker. [4:09]

I could barely string two sentences together to talk to the butcher or the mailman as a stay-at-home mom. [4:21]

Part of my creativity as a result of this loss that I experienced is writing about loss and expressive writing for healing. [4:29]

The workshops I do are also related to grief, creativity, and the connection between how creativity can be healing for us. [4:39]

I do have to mention that I have eight children because that always boggles everybody's mind. [4:51]

I think if anything to pandemic has shown us the importance of creativity and all its forms. [6:35]

People were turning to gardening, baking, sitting on the sidewalk, and coloring messages to encourage people that were walking past their houses. [6:45]

We all instinctively turn to something that happens to have a science behind it, that proves we are healthier happier when we are working creativity in some way into our life, work, and home. [6:57]

There are healing benefits for anxiety and worry and whatever we're going through in creating and not only that, science proves we were designed to create. [7:17]

It boggles my mind when I think that all this science has shown us that what we instinctively turned to during the pandemic is something that we've needed in our life anyway. [7:30]

I instinctively turned to journaling after my husband passed away and I found healing benefits in that. [8:01]

In three months I wondered how people grieve without journaling and I researched for my book on creativity and expressive writing for healing. [8:09]

I discovered there was research and science behind this and it was not just something that I think [8:25]

It is my hope that we have learned something from it because what a waste it would be if we didn't learn something from this time. [10:06]

I know some people were busier than ever such as the frontline workers and they had to find creative ways to deal with patients.[10:12]

I had to figure out what working from home entailed which was a learning curve for a lot of us. [10:40]

I am bound and determined to have learned something from this and to apply and to keep it as part of my life. [10:58]

My daughter was 16 when I was sent to work from home and she didn't want to talk about it and I felt the loneliest I've ever felt in my life because I was in a house with the only one of my eight children who would never hug. [12:12]

Once I started asking her if she would take hikes with me, that is where she started talking in nature and that is something we all need to learn that there's a lot of healing in nature. [12:41]

Now she's 17 and we sit down and talk every day after work, and she sometimes will make me a cup of tea before I get home from work. [13:00]

Another thing that came out of the pandemic at this time is Zoom. There were a lot of us who didn't use zoom before but now my workplace can reach people who could never have set foot in our building. [14:20]

So we needed that human connection, and we got it through a screen and so we are going to continue to do Zoom programs. [14:38]

I think we also learned we do need human interaction. [16:18]

Creativity is nothing new, it is something that we did as children but it felt like something new during the pandemic. [[16:46]

It is good news for all of those people out there who are daydreamers because science also proves that daydreamers are some of the most creative people. [17:28]

It is healthy for us to daydream and that's what happens when you take walks too. There is a lot of creativity that goes on in solitude, and mindfulness. [17:48]

Commercial break. [19:28]

It stemmed from having a very creative mother. My family was very poor and yet somehow my mother beautified our home with the things that she was making. [20:58]

At the age of 41 years old, she decided to carve a piece of wood and so she picked up a kitchen knife and a piece of wood and made a very crude carving. [21:25]

She honed that talent and that gift to create a home business out of wood carvings and paintings and beautiful things that she ended up selling our soul besides beautifying her home. [21:36]

When she passed away I found unpublished manuscripts underneath her bed and her words written to her children was that her greatest desire is that they would utilize their talents which hit home for me. [21:51]

So I've been writing from home for 25 years at that point but I thought I would maybe take that talent seriously after her death. [22:05]

I sat down and wrote an outline because I thought we all have something that is in us that is creative. [22:17]

I had started doing some public speaking at that time to young moms and I remember asking them if they would put money into their children's talents and they said of course they would. I then asked them about themselves but they said that they did not have time for themselves. [22:25]

I did the same kind of speech to older women in their 70s and 80s and asked them about their children's talents which they said they would always encourage them but when I asked about them, the answers were heartbreaking and I knew that wasn't true. [22:40]

So, we see it in our own children and in other people but we don't necessarily see it in ourselves and that is where the idea for the book was born. [23:19]

In 2010 I wrote out an outline of what the book would look like that would encourage everybody to discover their purpose and their passions. [23:26]

After my husband passed away I got a job as a librarian for a while and also started working as a newspaper reporter for a while I started to hear and see more and more people who did not fit any time into their passions, it was all work. [23:40]

That is when I started delving a little bit into the science and the research behind creativity. [24:02]

I started interviewing some creative people who were working creativity into their life and between their jobs or in their job. [24:20]

It was a long time coming and it came out during the pandemic, which was 10 years after my mother had died. [24:30]

It has helped so many different people who were reaching out to me saying they looked back into their childhood and remembered making something creative and that they should try again. [24:40]

So it is a book to encourage and inspire people to work creativity back into their lives. [25:05]

Sadly, sometimes all it is, is one person telling us we cannot do something which follows years and years and years of still believing that one person's words so that they don't even try anymore. [26:42]

I have met people who something in them led them to write and they kept writing but they never dared show anybody or they never dared submit anything. [27:20]

When I discover them through a class and I convinced them that what they have done is beautiful they share it and they come alive. [27: 31]

There is a benefit to creating time to create and it is worth the effort. [28:10

There is something to be said for creating just for the fun of creating and for trying new things and allowing ourselves to fail. [29:15]

We carry these lies within us and every once in a while we have to take time to figure out what the truth is. [31:18]

I just want your listeners to believe in themselves and believe there is something in them. [33:24]

I want them to start by looking back to their childhood and remember what it was that they were drawn to naturally because that's where our secret desires lie before life took that out of us. [33:28]

Whatever it is that makes them feel alive, whatever it is that makes them come alive, work that into their everyday life because there are ways to work it into our lives, at home, at work, in whatever we are doing and we will be healthier and happier for doing that. [33:49]

I love that you started by saying that despite the fact that I have this unique experience, so many people connect with and I think that is such a poignant truth. [3:14]

In the nonprofits that I've worked with, a lot of the teenagers that we come into contact with are highly at-risk youth so I tend to lead in the classes with my stories. [4:51]

I share my story and my art with them, again, not in any way to burden them but just to say, this is a safe space I am trusting you with. [5:19]

Many of us can understand the universals in art much better than we can understand the language of a story sometimes. [5:37]

If we don't have the exact same experience, it's very easy to dismiss it as other but when these kids see the work, I can often see a light bulb go off. [5:45]

In the environment that they may be in, it is difficult for the kids to know what is ok to express because generally, we tend to want to show people the good side and find it hard to share the dark side. [5:57]

When I share the work that I've created in my healing process, I'm always amazed at how honest and raw, and vulnerable the art that these kids share. [6:16]

And so I tend to use the same techniques when I mentor and a lot of people come to me because of my work and my story. [6:27]

People are amazed that those themes are so present in their visuals, and then you know, from an artistic perspective, we start to put together bodies of work and things. [7:01]

I learned that art is a language in and of itself. It transcends the spoken word, it transcends the left side of the brain and the logical thinking. It is such a powerful tool for communication for people to feel seen and to feel heard. [7:19]

In my business, I seek out partnerships with nonprofits to teach and nonprofits to license to where I know that my work can be a tool to help further somebody else's business or somebody else's mission. [7:38]

There are so many different ways that I try to plug in now that I've learned that there are so many connections for us and that our stories are so interwoven even if they seem different. [8:15]

Anytime I hear of an organization where they have this mission that resonates, maybe even with just a small part of my story, I find ways to connect with them so that I can help further their mission from a visual standpoint. [8:28]

I've only recently started to learn that one of the reasons art therapy is so powerful is because it helps to connect more fluidly to the right side of the brain. [11:14]

In my classes and my mentorships, I'm usually very forthright in giving permission slips to kids to create whatever they need to. [11:58]

I do think that there are things that we need to process with the support of somebody who is trained. [12:19]

In an art class, I do find that it has been freeing and the work that I've seen the kids create, and the relationships that I've established because of art and I know that it makes a difference. [12:26]

In educational spaces, we have to realize, especially creativity, we are being so vulnerable and I am usually so fiercely protective. [15:38]

When you see people put their heart into something, you want them to be validated for it because it is part of somebody's soul. [16:45]

Commercial Break [17:10]

I believe that when kids create in some of their darkest spaces, it helps them give more words or definitions or give them more power over some of their experiences. [19:08]

When I exited the Unification Church and was processing and healing, I didn't have language for my experience. I didn't know how to talk about it because I didn't know what I experienced was abuse. [19:21]

When I first started going to therapy, one of the best ways for me to communicate was via my art, and even talking to other survivors of you know, domestic abuse and abusive families and things like that. [19:37]

To me what has been so amazing is that when I've shared my art, I hear other people's stories in return and that has been the primary way for me to develop the language around my experience. [19:52]

I've since started to research cults and coercive control and narcissistic abuse and can now have a more academic framework for it. [20:06]

The first time I ever shared my work I was at a very small workshop where I showed my prints to the woman across the table from me, she looked at my pictures, and she said, these reminded her of her abusive background and she told me her story. [20:27]

It made me realize that this was an incredible way for us to develop connections and you find shared experiences and that allow you to feel not so alone. [20:51]

You are more artistic than you give yourself credit for, and art is an incredible healing and communication tool. [24:27]

It is really funny, Michael, how this all started. I bounced around through several different areas, which I enjoy and I was pretty good at them. [5:46]

But along the way, through those 30 years, I never really felt like I was truly doing my full purpose, what I was meant to do. [5:58]

One day, I was drawn to listen to a teleseminar training about how everyone has a book inside them they need to write. [6:05]

I never thought I would write a book because by day, I'm an engineer, and by night, and weekends, I do all this music stuff. [6:12]

Because I'm going back and forth. I'm not really an expert on any, like a jack of all trades, right? Who's gonna buy a book, I'm not an expert. [6:20]

While I'm on this call, it was like a bolt of lightning hit me what about a book of inspirational stories of how music impacted people's lives, I wouldn't have to write anything. [6:27]

I would just gather stories, edit them, and then we would publish them and inspire others to play music and to share the gift of music because I know how important it is to me. [6:36]

And then along the way, as we started doing research, this whole thing kind of morphed eventually into the ‘Keep Music Alive’ nonprofit years later. [6:46]

So as we dug into all the research and peeled the layers back on the onion it became just amazing to me. [6:58]

My primary focus is advocating for music and music education because that's just really where my heart is. [7:36]

When playing music you're building up not only your musical skills, but your social skills as you're connecting with your tribe. [9:35]

When you're playing an instrument you are firing back and forth between the left logical and the right creative sides, much more than almost anything we do as humans. [9:50]

The corpus callosum part of the brain gets bigger for the kids that have had musical education during their developmental years and this is how we get thinkers outside the box. [10:03]

Add on the motor skills that you have to do for your finger position. [10:11]

The brain is an amazing thing and we're only scratching the surface in our lifetime of what the brain is capable of. [11:56]

If people intentionally explore different types of music along the way, they don't just become locked in but they have to learn new things to expand the brain. [13:56]

We ran into a fellow who is 15 years old and from the west coast and he could play 107 unique instruments on a good level. [14:52

They credited his skills to when his mother was pregnant where they used to take the speaker and put it up to his mom's belly. [15:08]

Commercial break. [16:18]

March of 2016, I came up with the idea of having a week every year where musicians offer free lessons to somebody and I put up a couple of social media posts. [18:00]

I started reaching out to schools and so that second year, we had 23 music schools and eight states that said ye. [18:19]

We built our homegrown database and now have like 5000 and we started reaching schools and stores t to encourage them to participate and then we just grew it organically year after year. [18:45]

After the second or third teach music week, we ran into a girl who was doing something called kids yoga day and I wondered if there was a kids music day. [18:58]

We looked it up and there was no such thing and we decided to start doing it where the music schools and stores offer some sort of event or promotion that either benefits or celebrates kids playing music. [19:20]

The idea is to raise a loud enough voice so we can get the media everywhere talking about it and get more kids involved in music in the arts. [19:33]

We work with another national organization called hungry for music where we do local instrument donation and we donate some to a local non-profit school and repurpose others that are completely broken so that it's not going into the landfill. [21:16]

Before we started all this, I didn't pay much attention, I was on my own just doing my own thing. [22:11]

But then as I started to focus on what we're doing and the advocacy I started thinking about it. [22:18]

I have come to believe all the different arts is really what makes us human otherwise, we would just be a computer or machine. [22:25]

What would be the difference if we didn't have our culture and all the different varied beautiful cultures around the world? [22:35]

I think that's really why we need music and art, to express ourselves for therapeutic reasons. [22:43]

We are always looking for new stories for the music book series and we donate 80% of the proceeds. [23:48]

For ‘Keep Music Alive,’ we are continuing to build it up year by year and we will also do our musical instrument petting zoo events around the Philadelphia area, schools and libraries. [24:01]

We also do special ones for children that are on the spectrum where it is just solely dedicated to them, and they come in with their families. [24:19]

I would just encourage people that whatever passion or business case, you just need to be persistent and consistent with it. [27:58]

I believe one of the reasons we have had so much success with what we're doing now is because we've been consistently doing it for seven years now building it out. 28:09]

One of the things that I always like to share with people is that silence never means no. [28:22]

I think I was four years old when mum took me to the local downtown theater and had me audition. [2:46]

I started doing professional vocal lessons, professional dancing, and acting lessons which became my everything. [3:13]

I would go down to the theater several times a week and acted and learned all the songs and made friends. [3:20]

Later on, I got into sports too but pretty much my entire life has been about acting, theater, and the arts. [3:32]

Later on, in high school, I got into rock and roll music and philosophical questioning and spirituality, guitar and poetry too which has played a big part in my career. [3:41]

I feel like art is the extension of my expression. [4:22]

I would go through these experiences and make them part of my memory and that is where the song comes in. [5:10]

2020 was a total surprise. I had some tours booked but had to shift my mindset and postpone all the events. [7:23]

I however decided to go ahead and switch to all online since I was already very active on social media and I had live-streamed a little bit. [8:15]

I live-streamed over 150 shows last year and partnered with venues across the country and did a virtual live stream tour concert with people all over the country. [8:30]

For people that were really creative about doing this, you might you probably reached audiences you wouldn't have. [8:55]

I started to be known as ‘the live stream person’ and so I got a lot of opportunities from people just by word of mouth because I was consistently showing up. [9:02]

I am now doing a little bit of professional live streaming where I've been signed on by an agency to help grow another platform. [9:13]

It gave us a reason to put a pause button on things and think and so a lot of my songs and moments came in particular from being at home experiencing this year. [9:52]

I will talk about the song ‘Self-love Proclamation’ since you talked about it earlier which I was recently nominated for three Josie awards. [11:00]

‘Self-love proclamation’ is co-written with a lot of people in Nashville and is all about just ripping off the band-aid and saying this is who I am and I'm going to love myself for who I am and that journey to finding ourselves is evident in the song. [11:15]

Commercial Break. [11:40]

Song teaser [12:50]

There are so many different things that come to mind, the first thing would be the healing element to art. [15:01]

When we can express ourselves, we can let go of different things that we've been through. [15:08]

I work sometimes with this nonprofit based in Los Angeles, called artists for trauma and is where people who have PTSD, physical, mental, veterans, emotional, spiritual healing, come together to do art and I think that encapsulates what art can do for us. [15:14]

It's done that for me personally, just like dealing with, you know, different racing thoughts, or whatever goes on in my life, I'm able to channel that into the guitar or into a poem or lyrics, and let it go. [15:35]

The next thing would be the cohesion of community thought that can be showcased through an event. [16:09]

It is also a really good way to start conversations in a way that is accommodating to different perspectives. [17:16]

Sometimes I think about how there's there is art written about the previous history, but then I realize that we are creating history every day. [18:31]

I'm really excited to see people start to go back to concert venues and have those shared experiences because we've craved being together in those shared experiences. [18:58]

It still may take a while but I think we're going to appreciate it even more now. [19:10]

I watched a lot of live streams with different artists and put on a lot of different live streams with different artists. [20:02]

The one thing that I've been going back to over and over right now is, only you know. [22:08]

We can take advice and we can listen to other people and we can listen for clues from the universe but at the end of the day, it's about our own perspective and how we filter in. [22:14]

This means this only we know our true north and our true path. [22:40]