Happy Thanksgiving 2024 | DFS 323

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and today, the actual day I'm

recording this podcast episode, is November 28 2024 and 16 years

ago today, my lovely mother passed away at 73 years old. My

father had passed away just 12 days before, on the 16th and we

mom had had a stroke alone years before. We knew she wasn't well.

We knew it'd be hard after my dad passed away. They got

married at 16 and 18, and were a month shy of their 57th wedding

anniversary. So we knew that it would be hard on her, but what

we didn't know was that on Monday, she had had a spot under

her tongue, and it looked bad. We took her to the dentist, and

it was cancer. And this is on Monday, Wednesday, she starts

going downhill quickly. We move her to a hospice Center, which

was the best possible thing. If you don't know about hospice

centers, when your loved one is terminal and the end is getting

close. You can take them there, and they have way better drugs

than you can get at home, and then you can go home and get

some sleep and know that your loved one is cared for 24 hours

a day. So we weren't we didn't know how long we would be there.

We went there with my dad, and he passed within like four

hours, so we didn't know how long we were going to be there.

So they we were there all Wednesday afternoon, all

Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon. And she passed away

on Friday the 28th the day after Thanksgiving. But this year, the

anniversary for death is on Thanksgiving. And when I was

trying to decide what podcast episode to record that's coming

out on December 2, which, oddly enough, is the day that her

funeral service was it was like, I want to talk about gratitude.

I want to talk about how thankful I am. Because if you do

the strengths, finders, Gallup testing, gratitude is like my

number one strength, I can be grateful for lots of things, and

I can find lots of things to be grateful for. And I came in here

to record this before I go to Thanksgiving at my niece's

house. I looked at the computer and it said, November 28 and it

was like, Oh my gosh. Number one, I need to honor my mom and

be thankful and grateful for the journey that she had in her

passing. She adored my father. Up until the day he died, he

referred to her as his child bride, and he always saw her as

the 16 year old girl that he fell in love with, and that was

just always so special to me growing up, that my parents

loved and adored each other that just meant a lot. And my mom was

surrounded by me and my two sisters, she was well cared for

to the very end, we did donate her body to a non profit

scientific research place where they only take the tissue they

need for whatever they're studying, and then they cremate

her and return the remains to Your local funeral home. It was

called Life legacy. If you Google life legacy, it comes up

with a new name. I don't know what the new name is, but it's

not as cool as life legacy. I'm just saying, if they ever see

this or hear this, but they took very good care of her, and so

did the funeral home, and she just happened to have on this

cute little pair of white pajamas with pink and purple

flowers, and the funeral home or the hospice Center said, we will

bathe your mother and you can see her one last time. And they

had taken her clothes off and put a hospital gown type thing

on her when she got there and they washed her clothes, her

nightgown that or pajama set that she had been wearing when

she got there, and after they had prepared her for us to say

our final goodbye, they put her back in her pajama set that she

loved, and they said, Do you want her scent and cremated in

her pajama set. And we were like, yes, so it was very

comforting to know she's in one of her favorite little pajama

sets. It looks really cute. So when we went to the funeral home

to make the arrangements, it was like, I want everything pink and

purple. I don't even know that my mom really cared much about

pink and purple, but that's what we. Did. I am grateful that she

passed so quickly after my father, he had battled kidney

cancer for four years, and I'm glad they got to reunite so

quickly. I don't know what your beliefs are, and I don't really

care. I only can care about my beliefs and share mine. And I

believe they are in heaven. I believe they're together, and I

believe that that's where they want to be. They did not want to

be a part. People often say, Oh, your mom died of a broken heart.

No, she didn't. She was eating up with cancer. But the blessing

in that is she had had a massive stroke, she was paralyzed on her

left side, and she didn't have any pain till the very end, they

immediately got her pain medicine, and so it could have

been so much worse if she had not had the stroke. Dying of

oral cancer would have been just horrendous. So as we celebrate

the 16th anniversary of my mother's death, I'm grateful for

her. I'm grateful for the lessons I learned. I recently

was spouting out some of hers. I wrote a little book on the

sayings of my mom and on Amazon. It's not formatted, right? It

doesn't look great because I just did it for me and my

family. I need to go back in and edit it. But like, one of the

things she would say is, winners are on time, losers are late.

And it's like, yeah, how rude to make everybody wait for you

because you're late. Like, that's a big deal. Um, winners

have a full tank of gas. Losers are sitting on the side of the

road hoping somebody will bring them gas. I have never run out

of gas in my life. Knock on wood. I've never run out of gas.

I had a car for 17 years, a Toyota Avalon, and the gas light

never came on because it never got that low. And at some point

I decided maybe it didn't work. So I just kept making sure

there's plenty of gas in there. So yeah, lots of saves. They run

through my head. And I do live my life a lot of ways, you know,

based on on the things I learned from my mom, probably like you.

You're probably doing things like your mom, kind of like that

old adage of the the daughter gets married and calls her mom

and says, Hey, I'm going to make a ham. Um, why do I have to cut

the end off the ham? And the mom says, I don't know, your

grandmother always did. Why don't you call her? So the the

daughter calls her grandma, and says, Grandma, I'm making a ham,

but why do we cut the end off? Like, is there a significance of

that? And Grandma says, because it wouldn't fit in my pan. Like,

all the hams are bigger than my pan. So we pass down these

things, whether you know they beat anything or not or or if

they still have meaning. I mean, that's the big question. Does it

still have meaning? So I have to point out that when I do that,

Strength Finders test every time, gratitude comes up at the

top of my list, and I think that's important. The more

grateful you are, the more things that you recognize and

notice for gratitude, the more you have to be grateful for and

the more things show up. I met Jack Canfield, the creator of

Chicken Soup for the Soul books and also the success principles.

And I had to get certified in success principles. If you've

been listening to me for very long, you know that I love

certifications, not the certifications so much, but the

classes. Like I love learning the things and in success

principles. One of the things he talks about is gratitude. And

the more grateful we are again, the more we have to be grateful

for. And he talks about when somebody is in a slump and they

say, Everything's really hard and bad, I have nothing to be

thankful for. And he's like, Well, if you woke up in the

morning and you're breathing, number one, that's a big thing

to be thankful for, because not everybody did not put I had

surgery on my tongue. That's another thing I'm thankful for.

It was not cancer, but I'm still, you know, have a little

speech impediment going, but if you wake up in the morning,

number one, be grateful for that number two, that you can take a

deep breath, not everybody can breathe easily. Then when you

get out of bed, oh my gosh, you got out of bed. I had my knee

replaced in March, and when I get out of bed, it's a very

different feeling. I It feels really good. Now it used to be a

lot of pain getting out of bed. Now I can just like, pop right

out. It's pretty exciting. Then we move on to, oh, my feet hit

carpet when I stand up, and I like carpet, and I like the feel

of it on my bare feet. So then you can go down a whole rabbit

hole of why you're grateful. For that carpet.

I picked the carpet so I like the color. I'm grateful for the

person who decided to put those colors together to come up with

this color carpet. How much Brown did they put in? How much

white did to make it a tan color? Like I don't know, I

don't know how that works. I'm grateful for the person who

decided the threads like how dense and thick to make them so

that they're plush and stand up and do whatever carpet does. I'm

grateful for the manufacturing company and all the people that

work there and make it happen. I'm grateful for the company

who, if it's not the same one who created the padding under

the carpet, and then two men came to my house and installed

the carpet. Do you get my point? Like, do you get it? Like, you

can go down a rabbit hole of goodness, of all the things

you're grateful for, and you can get a really long list. Oprah

has a fairly new book out in the last, I don't know, three to

five years, and she talks about for 10 years she wrote down

every night before she went to bed, three things she was

grateful for, and they had to be different. Like, it wasn't like,

I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful, you know, it had to be

different every night. And she said, reflecting back, that was

her best 10 years. She felt the best. She engaged the most like

she was the happiest. It was a great period of time. She was

like, I don't know why I got away from that. So being

grateful can be as simple, and as you're being more grateful,

as you're being aware of what you're grateful for, it

literally can start changing your brain, and you start

looking for the good instead of looking for the bad. I had a

conversation recently, and it was about somebody who had

passed away, and the person I was talking to was not fond of

the person who passed away. And I said, Well, you know, a lot of

times when somebody passes away, all the good things they did

rise to the top, and all the bad kind of is set aside like you

let that go? And the response was, I don't I remember it all.

I'm not letting it go. And I went, there you go. You have a

choice. You could choose to let it go or not. So my phone's

going off. Um, so the question is, like, how do you want to

show up? How Do You Want to Be it just it changes your whole

physiological setup. The more grateful you are, the better you

feel, the more opportunities you can see. So gratitude is a

really big deal for me. So I made a very quick list of what

I'm grateful for, and I did this literally in like 20 seconds

before I get record. It's not like I put a lot of thought into

it, alright? So of course, my husband and my family, I have

two sisters. They both live in town. I don't see them or talk

to them every week or every day, but I know they're there for me,

and I'm very grateful for that. I've got nieces and nephews, and

they're good to me. I've had multiple surgeries in the last

couple years. Really stupid. My knee surgery was probably the,

the most intense. But they've brought food over. They called

and check on me. Oh, for Thanksgiving of 2024, years ago,

I had COVID and I was very sick. I was not going to the hospital

sick, but I was laying on the couch, which, you know, is dead

because of the fever. I've never had the flu before. I understand

that's what it feels like. I don't really ever want to have

the flu, but my family would bring food over and leave it on

the front porch and text me because they didn't want to get

near me and catch it. So I'm very grateful for that. I'm

grateful for my friend Debbie Robinson. Debbie, I don't know

if you're listening, but I'm just saying I've had multiple

surgeries, and she's literally come from Little Rock Arkansas

to Oklahoma City to take care of me. She gets here, she and Bill

have one evening together of deciding how bad I am, how much

care I need. And then bill goes to work the next day and and

he's happy and confident because he knows Debbie's going to take

care of me. I have spent the last two years traveling almost

every month, almost every month in, oh, I don't know February,

March, ish of 2022, I found out that a friend of mine was going

to go somewhere on her birthday. And I was like, oh, I want to go

somewhere on my birthday too. So I went on her birthday trip. And

I thought about it, I had been somewhere in January and

February and March, and now it was April. I. I ended up going

somewhere every single month. June is the only month I didn't

like go out of state or out of the country, but I went to the

lake so that, like, I got in my car and drove over two hours. So

that was going somewhere, right? And now I've hit just about

every month, other than when I had knee surgery, I had to stay

home for a little while. I even had to cancel a cruise. That was

sad. So I've traveled a lot. I like to travel. I like the

experiences I spent from October 4 until November 3 in Marbella,

Spain, on the southern coast of Spain. Our apartment overlooked

the Mediterranean Sea. It was beautiful. It was spectacular. I

was with my friend Kimberly Crowe. We had a wonderful time.

It was excellent. It was wonderful. So happy I did that.

I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the experience and

the fun people we met and the food that we had. And it was

just absolute. You know, magic, pretty much every day was

magical, in some way. I'm in Brendan Broussard Ultra

mastermind group. I've, I don't know how many times I've flown

to LA at least 1213, times I missed a couple going to his in

person events. They've all been wonderful. I've met some amazing

people. I've learned so much. I've grown so much personally.

His deal is personal development, and people are

like, Why are you into that? And he's like, why aren't you like,

our whole purpose on earth is to get better every day and do more

and do better. And he offered his high performance coaching

program to become certified in that and become a certified

coach. And I signed up for it, and it is amazing. Like every

single session builds on the last I've gone through it two

times, one on one practice sessioning. I'm now in the

second round with a group coaching program with it, and

it's transformative. He's the only coach out there. He's the

only one with a program that is based all on scientific evidence

of how everything goes together. And I am so grateful I was

exposed to that, and I was introduced to it, and voila, now

I'm certified as a CHPC coach. I can't wait to launch my own one

on one program in the upcoming New Year, but the group program

has been amazing. I was concerned people wouldn't share,

and oh my gosh, do they share. It's been an awesome experience.

Having my knee replaced in March was huge, huge. I did not

realize how much pain I was in all day, every day, and how much

it was impacting me and what I could and couldn't do. And I'm

grateful for my doctor, Dr Rob German here in Oklahoma City, at

McBride hospital. Shout out to all of them. He highly

recommended I have a blood test done to see if I had an allergy

to any metals. And it was $400 they have to send your blood

off. He goes, we don't make any money on this, just so you know,

this is not tied to us. We have to ship your blood off to be

tested. But if you're allergic to nickel, and we put a

replacement in that has nickel in it, and you're allergic,

you're going to react. It's going to be bad. We're going to

have to take it out. We're going to have to put a spacer in, and

then you're going to have to have another replacement later.

It's going to be like, a big deal. I've since learned that it

can take months to find out why you're needed in heal. And it

comes down to this metal allergy. A lot of surgeons don't

believe in it. The surgeon that it was recommended I go to and

did not doesn't believe in the test or that people are allergic

to nickel so thank God I went to doctor. German Doctor Jeffrey

Pierce recommended him, and they did the blood test. And two or

three weeks passed, and the nurse called and she said, I'm

calling about your blood test. Well, I had called my husband,

and I was like, Hey, I just blew $400 on a test I didn't need,

but the doctor thought I might. And he goes, Well, I'm glad you

did it like if he recommended it, that's probably a good

thing.

The nurses are called with your test results. And I thought,

yeah, like, you know, that was a wasted $400 and I was like, Oh,

okay. And she goes, you're highly reactive to nickel. And I

went, wow. What is like now? What do we do? And she said,

we'll use a non nickel.

Is it called a prosthetic? I don't know. Device, whatever

it's called replacement. And I said, Well, so what does highly

reactive mean? And she said, Well, if anybody scores eight,

we consider them. Active, and we use non nickel metal, like

titanium. The highest we've ever seen is 15. You were 20.2 so if

they had put that in, I'm just coming up with all kinds of

stories in my head that I probably wouldn't have left the

hospital without having problems like it would have been

catastrophic. That's the story I'm telling. Anyway, I do energy

healing, and I've cleared people of allergies. Cat allergies seem

to be like a specialty of mine, and in 1520 minutes, the person

is no longer reacting, even though the cat's still there.

And I know I could clear this metal allergy for myself, and

one day I will, like I just haven't yet, I'm busy, but I

wasn't even going to attempt to clear it and risk them putting

that in now I might clear it and do the test again. When it

becomes more widely available, my insurance will cover it. You

know, might do it again, but I'm very grateful that I had my knee

replaced, that I went to, the doctor I went to, and that I

recovered so well. And as I'm doing all these shout outs, um

Shannon, villaloba, I think I said that right, she does

crystal clearings and opening chakras, and I did a session

with her before my surgery. I did one after my surgery, and

then I did two or three more, just to break up that scar

tissue and get it good. So that really helped. I am thankful

that I have these spots removed from my tongue and that they

were benign, and we can let that go. I'm also thankful that I

quit smoking, because the reason they were so insistent of taking

them out was because I used to smoke, and they were very

concerned about that. Oh my gosh. I went to check my podcast

to make sure the show notes were changed in listen notes, because

I made a shift in my podcast from straight leadership to more

success, you know, topics and it's in the top 5% globally out

of over 3 million podcasts. And that, that's thanks to you.

Thank you for watching my podcast, or listening to my

podcast and liking and sharing and subscribing and doing all

those things that you can do. Like, thank you so much, because

I I never dreamed this is podcast number 323, and last

week, I was in the top 5% globally. Like, that's huge,

huge, at least it is for me, and I'm super thrilled about that.

Um, on this last one, I'm thankful, thankful that I have

chosen to say yes. I have chosen to say yes to all kinds of

opportunities, adventures, personal development, personal

growth, and I'm so grateful that you're along for the ride with

me and making small, consistent changes in your life so that you

can show up as the person you were truly meant to be. I'm

Jennifer Takagi with destin for success. I look forward to

connecting with you soon, and happy Thanksgiving. You.