Getting to G.R.E.A.T. with Madelaine Claire Weiss | S2E08

Welcome.

Hi, everyone. This is Paul Finck "The Maverick Millionaire and you are listening to Mavericks Do It Different Podcast and today I'm so honored to be talking about stress. And yeah, some of you have it. Some of you believe you shouldn't have it and we're going to unpack all of that and more with my special guest here, Madeline Claire Weiss. She's a licensed psychotherapist and board certified executive career life coach, and more importantly, co authored the "Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across Your Whole Lifespan Being Clear", this is the person to talk to about what's going on in our world and how to get control of it, to make everything great. Madelaine, it's so great to have you here. Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast and talk to our audience. And we're talking about stress. Why is this such an important topic?

Because the extent to which we master that defines our life.

So it's great to have you here.

It's wonderful to be here.

Why is this so important to you? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up being the stress master, if you will.

How much time did you say?

Not a little bit of time? Go right ahead.

Okay, Lenny, was diagnosed with hypertensive cardiovascular disease when he was 40. He died at 40 to have a cerebral hemorrhage. The doctors said, my father died of that. But since I was grounded at the time for speaking truth to power, again. I went for years, actually, because people didn't talk to their kids the way we do now.

What a shame.

Yeah, yeah, so for years, I went around thinking my daddy died because of me, until this one very special day in the cemetery with my mom, when I broke down with her about how all my fault it was. And I like to say in her shining moment, as a mom, she said, No, honey, it wasn't you. It was work. So I was pretty worried about her financially. We had a family business, she worked for my father, the business closed when he passed away and she went to work in a steel factory, as a bookkeeper, God love her and I wanted to help. So I didn't, go to college, right out of high school, I went to the University of Pennsylvania graduate Hospital School of medical technology. And I had jobs in clinical chemistry labs, and then USDA biological control lab and Drexels cardiac catheter research lab. But there was always, no doubt related to my story, this poll to be helping the people directly. So I like to call myself the queen of pivot over mine, many long years, have pivoted more and more and became a licensed psychotherapist. And then I found myself as the administrative director and treasurer of a group mental health practice. And I knew absolutely nothing about business. And they said to me, Well, your mother was a bookkeeper put all the money. This is this is when I worked for a mental health practice that had 200 patients. And one day, the owners announced that they had overextended themselves. And the office I was in was the cash cow. And they couldn't manage their whole business any longer. So you guys can have it. And all of a sudden, overnight, I'm seven months pregnant, and I'm treasurer and administrative director, and I didn't know what to do. And people said, just put all the money in a brown bag and take it home and figure it out. Which I did. And I hired an accountant and a bookkeeper and all this kind of

Yeah. But I then went to business school.

Smart idea, smart idea.

And then I was at Harvard Medical School as the Associate Director of the Anatomical Gift program for 13 years. But you know, there's like still this calling, even though I was so nourished by being able to help people at the time of their loved ones passing to donate their bodies to science and all that. There was there was still this thing like if I can help one little boy or girls, mommy or daddy or anybody at all, for that matter, not to have to suffer what my family suffered. I'm there. So here I am.

So amazing how our life journey defines how we how we show up and and what we do for others. Yeah, it's so interesting, so great when we know that your heart in it and not just your mind makes a big difference.

You know, the universe does strange things. One of my very first clients was is actually because I'm still working with him because he started a business and I'm helping him with that. But he, he had a stroke also at around 40 years old. And he also had a 15 year old daughter. So when this guy who came to me so miserable, tells me now, how his daughter and his wife is a lovely wife, tell him they've never seen him so happy, and that he's so present for them now, but I live for this. I live this. That's exactly it.

So tell it tell me and and you started to express with that story? What is it that you do for your clients? What is it that you helped him with specifically to to create the change and the shift?

You know, Paul, I asked myself that question not too long ago, I said to myself self. All of these people are really different from one from the other. All the people that I'm working with in age and ethnicity, and gender and occupation, and not only that, but my education and experience is so diverse. Like, for example, I not not everyone knows this, but I studied at VEDA Vedanta pre Hindu tradition for close to 25 years, in addition to the business and a psychotherapy, gosh, yeah. So I said to myself, What are you doing? What are you pulling out? Like, what is what is going right here? And I literally laid out all my cases, all of my clients. And I said to myself, what do they have in common? And what I came up with was today, this five, this five step process, that they all seem to be going through. And it isn't like I have a program and you have to stick to my program. Because I don't believe in that. I think this is as much an art as it is a science.

Right.

But there, there are steps to this.

So can you expand on that? What are the steps? What are what do we go through? And at what point are we when do we begin this process?

And of course, I loved love, love, love that it fit into the acronym; "Great." Yes, with that's like my favorite word.

Now. It finds its way into everything. So anyway, the G, G.R.E.A.T. That when when people come to work with me, they're not really saying, I want to have a great life, because they don't even know. I think it says on my website, something like most folks don't believe that they can make a great living and live a great life all at the same time. Right? You know, they're feeling like they make sacrifices and trade offs, and all this kind of stuff. But the G is for grounding them in the belief that they can have a great life and that they have everything they need to get them there. Now, they, they don't believe that. But I hold that space, because I believe that because I see it. So I hold that space until they can walk into it, and own it and run with it on their own.

Yeah, it's one of the things that we connected on is the understanding that people have the greatness within them and that everything that they need is within them. Yes. And our job as as coaches and trainers and or therapists of one sort or another which we anyone who's in any sort of consulting or is in a therapeutic point of view. Yeah, position that we're there to pull out the resources that are within them pull out the awareness and the understanding and the abilities that are within them. That's our task. That's our role. And it's such and such a different perspective. And then so many people they're always so interested in making sure oh, here's this tool or that tool. Oh, yes, people have it within them already. You And how do we pull it out of them? How do we help them see it?

In psychiatric terms, it's called mirroring. That you hold up a mirror, so that they can see what we see. Right? Which, when they, when you start with them, they don't, right. But believe you kind of shine upon them till they can shine upon themselves. So the first line of the book is a great life depends on a great fit between who we are and the environments in which we work and live, when people are out of that. I didn't make that up. I was gonna say Darwin did. But apparently there was a Wallace, who co authored the paper. So it's not clear who made that up. But this environmental fitness, the adaptation to your environment, which we use to not be able to create the way we can now. So they are a great fit depends on who you are. And knowing that they are is for recognizing who you are. And once people, you know, not who someone said, You should be not who you may have even thought you should be like my lawyer who, why am I a lawyer, I don't even want to practice law. It's too, adversarial, who's exploring other environments now, that really enliven her. So that's the E, the exploring. So it's grounding, recognizing, exploring, but you can't sit in la la land dreaming away about all the wonderful environments, you can be enjoying. At some point, you have to act gr E. A, is the action. So my clients will have action steps that see and this is why it's sort of morphed from psychotherapy to coaching, because it's more action oriented. When I was a psychotherapist, I would have had my hand slapped by my supervisor, if I did action steps with anybody. And I can't tell you how many people come to me and say, I love my therapist, he or she is so nice. But all I do is cry and complain and nothing changes. And they're really nice. And they understand, but nothing changes. So the A William James said, action doesn't guarantee happiness, but there's no happiness without it. And then there's finally t, which is the normal, natural, predictable, inherent resistance to change. So we have to T for a tackle, or tame, tend whichever. And it's different for different people what approach they want to take to their resistance, which is a part of them that has been there all along, just trying to keep them safe. So I sort of like thanking the resistance for all it's done for me, and then asking if it could just trust me, because we're going to move forward together now.

So I love that. Yeah, yeah. Trust me resistance. That's it. It's so interesting, and what you were talking about as far as the action, and I'm going to delve into that in just a moment. I absolutely an agreement. And it's one of the biggest challenges I've had with psychotherapy, and I was trained to be a clinical psychologist. And one of the biggest challenges I had was that, like, it's all well and good only there's enough analysis as to why I was diaper changed in a certain way can we get on with today? Let's get on with what we're doing. And understanding that the action and being active and present in your current life is so important.

I always say to the clients when they asked me like, how is it different from therapy? And are we going to talk about my past, I say this only as much as is necessary to get the job done. The job is not your past, the job is your present and your future. What we need to go back there and get and I usually get a really good formulation that I can see playing out all over their present life. And if they don't tweak it, it's gonna wreak havoc on the rest of their life. So the past is informative in that way. But I think yeah, I think too much psychotherapy gets stuck there and you notice that too.

Yeah, and the whole concept of, you know, reflecting on the past, reflecting on the past is great. And this is in, in microcosm as well as macro that it's either, you know, even in today's and looking at, oh, what happened in my business over the last year, what happened in the last month? Well, it's great to reflect only if I stay there for too long, my next month is going to suck just worse than my last one, right?

Get what you need and get out. Right?

Right, pay attention to, it just enough to grab hold of the nuggets of what you need to change, right, so that you can move forward and create something new in the future.

Right? You know, I always liken the past to gravity.

So, I like to say that the people who brought us airplanes didn't try to get rid of or change gravity, they tried to understand that, so they could work with it. So we could fly. Yes. And the resistance is the gravity that pulls and the past that pull us down, if we let it. So I don't advise spending a lot of attention to try to get rid of it or change it or any of the, I always think like, the brain is like a garden, and you build a new one. And you plant a new one, and then you water that one, and the old stuff will just kind of weaken and whether or there's that wonderful story about the grandfather and the two wolves. And the little boys as to the grandfather, there's the good wolf and the bad wolf. And they're fighting with each other gram grandfather, which one is going to win and the grandfather, I'm sure everybody's heard this. And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So getting stuck in the past is feeding that and there is some science now that it actually strengthens the very neural connections of the trauma you're trying to leave behind. So what are the new with those, as you said, nuggets, from what you've learned?

It's one of those things that is so hard to put your put your head around the fact that there is some methodologies that we lean into for decades now, if not centuries, that absolutely are harmful to us. I know that's one of them. That is as we focus in on our pain. And oh, let's let's analyze it. Let's bring it to the surface. Let's release it. Well, all that sounds all well and good. But whatever you focus on expanse. Yeah. And that is true in a scientific level of focusing on something increasing the pathways to it increasing our retrieval of that information of that emotion of that, of that stress, if you will. And and it's so harmful to us. What are some of the things and and, you know, we all with all this we're talking about an underlying all of it is that it creates stress, the the components of our background are components of our experiences, our life changes, if you will, stress happens in our world.

How do we reduce it? How do we create productivity regardless of it? Or is it in with it clarify some of this?

Well, the thought I mean, there's so much to this, but one thing that just popped into my head is a lot of people they're all very smart, you know, but a lot of them don't realize right away that the reason that they're so miserable, is because they're bored. So the brain, like I said, it's trying to conserve energy. It's trying to keep them safe. It's keeping them in the comfort zone, where no little new learning takes place. There's a Yale study that 70% of new learning takes place outside of the comfort zone, and they're not growing. So you know, I say to them, you know, the bird wants to fly the tree wants to grow, and so do you. And I just noticed this morning on LinkedIn. I'm sure you get all that stuff too. But there was they're talking about internal mobility in Oregon. musicians, and this is so exactly what I'm seeing is that people don't feel like it's okay. First, they don't even know that they want to grow first, they don't even know that they're suffering from that. And then when they know, like, just between you and me, they know, they think it's not okay to tell the people they work with and for your great. This was fun, I gotta grow. Right? Can you help me do that here?

Yeah.

I have I had people presently that I see who are struggling with is it okay in this environment back to the environment to tell people that they want to move up? If they don't, they're miserable. And who do they blame that on? Well, they're not going to blame it on themselves, because they don't know that's what they're doing. So they blame it on their spouses, they blame it on their bosses, they blame it on their co workers. And everything just gets more and more to use the word stressful, because you have to deal with all of that.

So the solution is be open and honest.

With yourself, first.

However, then also to share with with the people around you?

Yeah, so well, yes and no. So in this,

I have exercises at the end of every chapter one, one of them is called RHP. It's your "resource holding potential". And when I first learned about that, I learned about it with dung beetles. So dung beetles amass dung, and the one with the biggest pile of dung, gets the girl and procreates and gets to live and put future generations into the world. So that's that one's resources. Humans have, let's say, we have different kinds of resources. But the reason I said yes and no, is we have to assess our leverage. We have to assess two things, our resource holding potential, and our motivation, a combination of those two things before we stick our neck out and make clear what it is we're after. Because the timing might not be right, you might need to build constituencies first, you might need to show some excellent performance that you haven't gotten around to first. So yes and no.

So the clarity is, one is be truthful and honest with yourself, which is the biggest piece that that so many people don't do is that they

It's okay to want to grow.

They have this angst only, they never quite look at and figure out why they have it. They just start slapping the world because of it, if you will.

Yes, well done.

Once you're have it, and you know, and you know that "Oh, time for me to change", then it's about and working with somebody like you creating a strategic plan on how to position that change. So Is that what we are saying?

Yeah, yeah. I love doing the visioning exercises with them, where they create. Neuro Linguistic Programming teaches you do the visual, the auditory and the kinesthetic to really bring in sync into the brain. And all the mindset people are talking about this to, right? The actual experience because the brain doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not real. So you sink into the brain, this vision of what life can be like, and then you figure out what it takes to get there. And importantly, like we said before, what's in

the way?

What's the secret with all of this? What's the secret with reducing stress?

Is there one?

Alignment?

Alignment with internal as well as external?

A great life depends on a great fit between who we are and the environments in which we work and live. And yes, Paul. The environments include your internal and your egg sternal environment, the talk in your head matters just as much as the talk coming out of anybody else's mouth and maybe more.

So here's the rest. And you and I just got to chatting in the air and going with this conversation. There are so many people that with this conversation, they may have a Aha, an awareness that you know what? Yeah, that they hate what they're doing. They don't like how their life is going. This isn't the you know, what's the old song? This? Isn't this isn't the car, this isn't my this is my house, this isn't my, my suit.

What are they to do? Are we saying, you know, if they wake up one day and say, I don't like this job, what now? Is there something you recommend?

I want to make a qualification and clarification here that I think is really important. I've had clients pick up their families and move to the other side of the world because he was a doctor and he didn't like the way medicine was practiced here. I've had clients who were in space and defense and moved into finance startup on the other side of the country. But here's what I want to underscore. I've had clients who have fallen in love with exactly where they are, because they rearrange the furniture in their heads.

That's powerful.

Yeah!

That's really key. And it's understanding that you have control and you can decide what you love, what you don't love, what's going to really fulfill your passions.

I had, I have a bank vice president, who was miserable, because there was this one aspect of her life, that because she was trying not to be like her mother. Now she feels a little sorry, that's getting kind of late in the game to have a white picket fence kind of thing. But everything in her life was otherwise perfect. And when she said to me, so enriched and fulfilling. And when she said to me, you know, my life is 85% Great. And the other 15% is nothing I can handle now.

Wow! That's good.

And she she decided to say exactly where she is. And she's just having one hell of a good time. Yeah.

It's, fascinating to me, when I talk working with new entrepreneurs and new business owners, and they, they hear the story about oh, man, grab hold of your passion and follow your passion and only do what you really love. And that's how you build a great life. And then they're like, good, I hate computer work. So I'm just going to avoid all I was like, you still have to answer your emails, this thing you cannot like just eliminate all that stuff. There's still certain things that you've got to learn to love to be able to progress and create more and create that great life that you really want.

Yeah, that I have a question for you...

That 80/20. That 90/10. Yeah, equation that there are certain things that you simply have to learn to love. Good. What's your question?

My question for you is because I react when people say about their passion, like so my question for you is, what if, what if people aren't good at what they are passionate about?

I don't believe that, that's a possibility.

Oh, interesting, say more.

Everything is fascinating the more you research it, and the more you research it, the more you become an expert at it.

So when you're passionate about something, it doesn't mean for instance, if you're passionate about music, it doesn't mean you've got to be the best singer. But there is a way to monetize your passion and create and live within it all every day,

In that industry.

Right in that industry and that mantra of working people that have beautiful voices, there's places to to there's ways to spend your whole day in life within that passion. Without being you know, the talent of being able to sing or play or do something and we're talking something along the lines of music is a really easy way to talk about this. But the fascination with it will cause you to research and study it more, we will create you as the expert.

passion moves you to be that the top of your game with it no matter what, somehow and somehow and be connected within that space all the time. Yeah. So that's how almost every passion. Matter of fact, I've I've actually been tested on this.

Well, here's another one. I have heard from lots of people. Okay. So, case example, a female attorney in healthcare regulation, which she finds so incredibly tedious. And we explored together what really matters to her. And she says, my family matters to me more than anything in the world. And I say to her, and how is this very tedious job, you're doing any benefit at all to your family. And of course, she's supporting the whole family, right? Everything, all the food, everything fun and wonderful, is because of this job she's not passionate about.

Little by little lo and behold, one day, I don't even know this is happening until she's already filed the papers. She starts this woman who had no energy whatsoever. She was dragging around, she was miserable.

All of a sudden...

Very common.

She's got a side gig. She's all full of energy. She's all happy. She put together this little side gig business. Her husband, and her son, her teenage son are in this little business with her. And it was all because, and she's her day job is not something she's passionate about. But it feeds something she's passionate about. And she was good to go. She was happy. Yeah, so what do you think?

Here's what here's what I've learned is that there are certain things that are very, that are vehicles for you. So her day job is the vehicle to help her launched the this other project, if you will, this other passion. However, what I would say is at this stage, the job is her anchor. Yeah, I would guarantee that if she devoted the time and energies she devoting I see in his or her passion, she'd be able to monetize her passion and gravity, something great. Yeah, because here's the thing, and I was talking to some a another great, great thought leader recently. And we were talking about this subject about, about sleep deprivation, and whether that's a real thing. Because people that are that are passionate about what they're doing. They find they don't need a lot of sleep and you look at all top leaders, it's like, oh, well, I sleep. I wrote on that four or five hours a night. And that's, you know,

I saw that. Right?

I don't need that. If that's the case, yeah. What makes that so is that they're so passionate about it. We're not talking about living a nine to five, we're not talking about the need for that. Yep. That sleep. And that oh, we need time off is that we're we're so passionate about what we're doing times irrelevant. That leads to automatic success that leads to the explosion, in so many ways.

You're raising another great question, which is there are lots of people who have day jobs, who are building side gigs, that they hope will become their be all and end all for, you know, to leave the day job. And there's a question of the timing of that. Because there's so much anxiety for the people. You know, I've worked with the people who didn't have a day job, and we're trying to build a business. And the anxiety becomes that gravity that pulls them down. So the people so sometimes the people who have the day job, but then don't have that much angst as the others, but then you're saying the day job drags them down because it's utilizing all the passion and the energy. That's so so what do you think? How do you know?

They're utilizing the passion and energy that's sapping them? What do I know? Right? The other thing that's going on is that they There's there's a certain focus and commitment that happens with Ultimate. There, there is no plan B. Yeah, that that will eliminate safety nets. And you're gonna be, you know, just a little bit more focused in grabbing hold of every ring really clearly.

Isn't it true though, that a lot of those people are going back to day jobs, a lot of the people who left the day jobs, in their pants, in the pandemic, to start their own businesses, some of those are finding that was overrated. And going back, just because

people think our challenge is not a proof that it wouldn't work. The challenge is, is that they that they still knew

that they could. Yeah.

And as long as you have the mantra that, oh, well, I can always get another job.

What's the motivation to walk through fire?

So another point that I like to say a lot to my clients that life is not a snapshot. It's a moving picture. Yes. And each intervention you make in your life, is based on what you've noticed from the one that came before it. So people are free to explore gr E, explore, and experiment, and none of it is carved in stone anymore, the way it used to be back in the day in my parents generation, where people did the same thing for the whole life.

Right. And part of the biggest shift from that old American myth and today is that now we know we have choices. Yes, now we're much more aware of the options in front of us.

And so now it's a matter of choosing your lane, choosing your path and grabbing hold of the techniques and strategies like you're talking about, and how to navigate all that. It because there's no one absolute, you know, not everyone's meant to be an entrepreneur, not everyone's meant to be working in corporate America, not everyone's meant to be the leader or or the worker, there's a mix of all of us. Now the question is, you've got to choose your lane, you've got to decide what you want. Only now you have all the options, given the right tools. And that's where you come in.

I have a three part program. It's online courses, and it's on my website, on optimizing decision making, and you use the word navigate, which is in the third part. But it's not just you have to, you have to so it's not enough to make a great decision which the first module is, right, because if you're not committed to it, it wasn't so great. So learning how to optimize the decision in the first place, then how to commit to it. But even if you're committed to your great idea, there are other people usually involved in the mix. And we have to navigate those to either get the ones you need on board, or to move the other ones out of the way. So it isn't, isn't just carving our own path by ourselves for ourselves. There are all these stakeholders it right.

Yes, we're in the world with other people there without a question. Madeline, we've talked about so many different aspects with stress with all the different tools that you have. What's the way that they can get a hold of you get involved with some of these tools? What's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Okay, so I have everything is on my website, and there are buttons at the top of it. And there's a free power breathing exercise, which I would love everyone to have. That's a 30 second mindset reset. So you put your higher brain rather than your emotional reactivity in charge. I have a lot to say some other time about how important the emotions are in our decision making but they don't get to drive the bus. So that's what this exercise is for. The online courses are there the book is there and a free strategy session for anyone who cares to please be in touch.

That is huge. Absolutely. Everyone who wants who absolutely understands all that we've been talking about is so critical to your future. So critical to what you can create in your life. Grab all the resources. Grab all that's here for you because you only live one. You have one life. Let's make it great. Use her words.

GREAT!

Madelaine it's absolutely great to have you here.

It's great to be here, thank you.

We've got listeners all around the world, listening to this podcast and being a part of our Maverick community, any last words to share with them?

Well, something that hasn't come up and I would like to bring up this the concept I mentioned, I think that I've been studying Advaita Vedanta for over 20 years, and they have a concept, which is, and I think, I think you're gonna like thisPaul, good company. So that's not just the people we hang with, although it does include them. It's the food we eat, the wine we drink, the books we read and importantly, the thoughts in our own head, the very best company we can find and afford. So good company. And I thank you for your good company, today.