Sense of Soul - Mastering Your Life Towards Infinite Potential

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast is Sherry Stirling Fernandez. For over two decades she has been a speaker, a teacher, a mentor, and is now a bestselling author. Sherry joined Shanna to share her new USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Life Mastery: Personal Progression Toward an Infinite Potential. Her book tells her rags to riches story and explains the principles and tools she used for success.  Sherry has been a student of personal development for 40+ years, and what makes her program unique is that she practiced and refined the life mastery principles taught for decades before deciding to share them with others. She now has been a mentor and taught these principles to hundreds of people who have also found success, and the happiness that follows, using the Life Mastery program.  Visit her website for her book and workshops: https://lifemasteryinfo.com Order her book, workbook and planner on Amazon, Life Mastery: Personal Progression Toward an Infinite Potential. Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifemasterybook Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna’s mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Thank you to our Sponsor  KACHAVA, Use this link for 10% off! www.kachava.com/senseofsoul

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Check out our Patreon. Today we have with us Sherri Sterling Fernandez. She is the author of the best-selling book, Life Mastery, Personal Progression Towards an Infinite Potential. Sherry has been a student of personal development for over 40 years, and what makes her program unique is that she practiced and refined the life mastery principles taught for decades before deciding to share with others. And today she's joining us to share how we can work towards our infinite potential. Welcome Sherry, it's so nice to meet you. You too. How are you? I'm good. Where are you at? We're in Idaho. So where are you at?

Colorado. Colorado. Oh yeah. I'm originally from New Orleans, but I've lived here most of my life. But I just I just see myself one day, like maybe even if it's my 80s, because I have children. So I don't know if I want to leave them, but just living in the French Quarter, kind of like what I see in my life, actually. So maybe you can help me get there because I could help you do that that's my specialty you know one of the things being from a southern family like you just raised your kids and stayed home and you would have asked me Shanna what are you good actually someone did ask me that probably about 10 years or so ago a therapist said what are you good at Shanna and I

was like I guess I'm a good mom and that's just kind of all i had yeah it's been the journey of exploring this you know i'm not just a mother well you know shanna i'm this is my expertise right and i help people build big dreams and things but i raised six kids the thing that being a mother is still you won't do anything better than that you know we're always like well yeah but what else yeah but what else really matters I mean there's no go do other things for sure wow oh for sure but they end up being my greatest teachers my children right you can't learn you can't get more personal development than being a mother and the opportunities for personal growth um if you're not uh chained to a full-time job it's more difficult but the opportunities for personal growth, if you're not chained to a full-time job, it's more difficult.

But the opportunities for personal growth, if you're raising children, I could do what I do today if it wasn't been for all the things I learned and the opportunities I had to do it my own way when I had children. Yeah. Oh, I love that you said that. Six children? Yeah. And, you know, people say, well, yeah, back in the day. But I'm going to tell you back in that day said that six children yeah and you know people say well yeah back in the day but I'm going to tell you back in that day that was the now generation with a member the national organization for women and they were militant raising kids or staying home with kids

there was a lot of there was more pushback then than there is now now we're a little more like just do your own thing but back then it was really kind of like somehow we were not being true to womanhood. If we were staying home with children, it was a bit of a fight. My mom was totally traditional. She stayed home with us. She never worked. Which is good too. You know, so fortunately we can have it all.

And the other thing, how old are you, Shannon? I'll be 47 in May. Oh, you're the same age as our oldest daughter. I raised kids for a really long time, but I've reinvented myself a number of times since then. There's so many lives that you can still have. I've owned a business. My husband and I own several businesses. And one, I ran a fitness business for nine years.

I've done a lot of things. And then I wrote the book. I've been able to do so many things. So, you know, you can have it all. That's how I got into this is I just figured you can have it all. And I was going to figure out how to do that. And I did. And I do.

What was your childhood like? Or what was your role models like? I had the kind of upbringing where you say, I do not want the marriage or any of the marriages my parents had. And I don't want to be the kind of mother my mother was. So that was the kind of upbringing where you say, I do not want the marriage or any of the marriages my parents had. And I don't want to be the kind of mother my mother was. So that was the kind of upbringing I had. My parents were divorced when I was little and they each married somebody else. And then they divorced them and married each other. And then they got divorced each other and married the other. It was like that. I graduated at 17. And then I just sort of hit

the road and was in this, it was a hippie era and it was, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll, all that kind of stuff. When I got married, I decided I wanted, just Ken and I both just partied away our years between high school. And then again, I graduated a little bit early. So between high school and the time we got married and then we get married and I've already got one child, but we were always, I always had to quit drinking because I had a little bit of a drinking problem. I quit drinking when we got married or right after. And then we get married and I've already got one child but we were always I had to quit drinking because I had a little bit drinking problem I quit drinking when we got married or right after and then we went to town on ourselves we decided okay we got to make up for lost time and I decided all the things that I wanted in life and we had another baby not too long after married about a

year a little over a year after we got married but I thought if I'm gonna have these babies I want to do that and still be able to have a great body i think i can have it all and i missed education formal education and i'd been a debater in high school i mean i'm a pretty good iq and good mind and i like education but i missed it right so but i wanted it and not formal necessarily i just wanted to know things and i wanted a spiritual life i just and i wanted enough money we were so so, so poor. Like people talk about being young, married, poor people, but we were way below. So in such bad shape. And I wanted enough money that, that I, for Amy Friedman, we never had to think about money to do anything I wanted to do.

I wanted that. So I wanted a lot of things and I figured if anybody could do it, I could do it. And so I went to, but I just had to find out how. Ken, I think we realized this until after we were married, but he really felt the same. Once we settled down, we realized we both felt like we were really destined for something great. We just had to figure out how to make it happen. And we did. We just started reading and reading the motivators and the people that taught how to set your goals, mostly motivators.

Ken had a goal when he was younger and then it resurfaced after we got married to be a millionaire by the time he was 40. So we were really way behind. I just like made a picture about how poor we were, but I don't think we knew how poor we were. We just were so dumb. We were a little bit behind,

but we did make that goal pretty close. I think he was 41 and we valued our assets and we were at a million dollars because we had applied. We were both learning and principles for personal development. And we were applying and we still have kids, too. Right. So we're having. All right. We're having these kids. And as fast as we can still do it and have the kids and make life work. We were learning and growing. now you know all those things i still i have all those things even more than i wanted like i'm 67 i still look really good in a bikini and i am and we have all the money you know i don't have to worry about money at all and my family and also the thing

about marriage too after those bad marriages I got married mostly because I wanted stability for my daughter and I thought marriage is just one of those torturous things you just have to do in life you know and then but I thought I'm gonna do and have the best marriage ever and we certainly do I don't see any marriages we have the most just lovely passionate warm close relationship um and can we tell you the same thing just so you know it's not just me uh we tell you the same thing we have a very sexy romantic wonderful marriage and so anyway i did get all those things it takes time but i believe anybody can have those things that they want it and they believe they can have it and then they apply the right principles you have to apply the right principles you can't just

I said one gal that I know said I think it was on Facebook actually said I'm visualizing she believes in this visualization which I do too to a point but she said I sit on my catch every day and visualize money dropping into my lap oh good luck good luck with that but you can you know if you can have a vision for yourself and then move towards it you really can do just about anything that you want to do you know I don't know how far your kids are having six there's probably a lot of years my oldest and youngest are 15 years apart I'm a totally different mother so I relate to what you were saying how you know you've kind of been several different versions of yourself over the years. When I look back and see what I was trying to be some version of like a good mom and a wife and all these things or what I was actually modeled as well.

But, you know, I didn't fit in the boxes, you know, and I think that, you know, nobody't fit in the boxes you know and I think that you know nobody really fits in yeah nobody fits in the boxes we always think oh they're the perfect this or that and everybody thinks I'm going to say this and we say contradictory thing too in a few minutes but everybody thinks they're on the outside too looking in this is interesting that they think everybody is in this group and i'm the one odd one out at church or you know whatever they do you know and it's so interesting everybody feels that way now the uplifting i would say it's contrary to that is i worked hard to be the person that was on the outside as far as i was going to do it my way you know like the song I think not having role models and not having any mentors we moved I went to like I think it was 13 schools before I settled into my junior high and

high school years so I didn't have any mentors and I was a thinker so I just thought what's the way to do this and I just did things my own way which has served me really well but also serves my clients and the people who read my book because because I didn't have to be locked into another way of thinking okay so you didn't have any role models as for like you know what a good maybe you know household maybe look like or whatever however you did mention that you were maybe studying and reading you know other people who were yeah putting out there some good stuff on self-help or who were these teachers? Yeah, that's really a good point, Shannon. I should, I felt like I was really ungrateful to not say that. There was nobody at the crossroads

for me. And I was a little child, you know, in a precarious situation because my mom divorced, my mom remarried an alcoholic. There's all the stereotypes that go with that and i was eight years oldish like around that so there wasn't really a person there for me and my parents loved they loved us there was five of us they loved us i was the oldest but they didn't they weren't present if you know what i mean they were they loved us and we were we were our basic needs cared for but there was no no interaction to speak of, you know, very, very little of that. But those mentors, like the first book I picked up, picked up off my mother's coffee table

and figured she was going to read it anyway, was Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top. And actually I'd read one in high school because I always had an interest in what makes the world tick and how does things, how do things work? I read I'm Okay, You're Okay in high school. So that had an interest in what makes the world tick and how does things out of things work I read I'm okay you're okay in high school so that was kind of but that was a different era so I did that one and um so Zig Ziglar Wayne Dyer was extremely important to me and I really a lot of my thinking was influenced by him totally huge fan find him till a little bit later I don't know where he was I could find him sooner but Jim Rohn I would have gone anywhere to listen to him speak. But by the time I found him, he died somewhere around the time I discovered him.

Jim Rohn, huge influencer on the way I speak and teach. Brian Tracy, Hiram Smith, and then lots of people. Earl Nightingale has a great recording called The Strangest Secret. Get it on YouTube now. But for years, can we give it away to anybody that was all interested it's a short one but that had a lot of earl nightingale that had a lot of influence on me and they helped me be able to weed out the pretenders if that makes sense these were people they did something and then they were and success was and then they taught it

right they didn't go out and say at 19 they're going to be a life coach and now off i go right they were people went out were successful in the world and were also honest about where they were not successful you know in the areas that they that they may feel like they felt jim rome especially is that way that's how you reach people though that yeah I've been there yeah um you know I mean I'm I'm kind of wary of the ones that you know have it all figured out and the younger they are the more they have figured out they may be unpopular probably but I'm not a big fan of Tony Robbins and because he just picked up from Jim Rohn and just started teaching people how to live and he

got better at it with time but his own life was a mess you want to tell people you want to be a teacher and a leader of people if you want to teach people you gotta have lived what you're teaching first in my opinion yeah life still is has its ups and downs recently I mean I had this little dip over the past few weeks that I was very shocked, you know, that I heard those loud voices again. And I'm like, wait, where did you come from? And I got sick. So, you know, it was like my immune system was compromised and I just had to be super honest with myself and dig back into my tools. You know, I mean, you have to be able to have a toolbox to be able to yeah absolutely and have your toolbox but you're going to find too that the more you do the kind

of work that personal development work you're going to have fewer ups and downs especially i don't know if you're i assume you're doing some kind of meditation but especially meditation work is you can learn more to just in and it's a long, slow process. Anybody who's making great strides and having marvelous visions when they're doing meditation, it's not doing the right thing. It's long, hard work, but the more you do it, the things don't get you, right? Yeah, absolutely. You can stay in the moment and then things don't get you.

And then part of that's getting older too, but. Right. And your kids, I assume, I also have 15 years between my oldest and my youngest. You do? Yes. We had four and then we had a space that we had two more. Like my co-host, Mandy, she's not podcasting with me anymore.

She decided not to return. And I had these voices going, you can't do this by yourself. You're going to fail at this. And I cried and I really felt that was true for a minute. I mean, thank God it was just a minute, but I was shocked that it returned in the way that it did. And I got sick. Like I said, like it literally made me physical.

Like my body reacted to this old pattern that returned that this old Shanna that I hadn't seen in probably a decade. The next day I meditated. I cut cords. I put protection around me me I connected back with my soul I put you know that other Shanna in time out and and I returned actually even stronger knowing that I can do it and that that was a lie yeah that that's a super I do just such a mortal human experience isn't? You can stand back and

observe it and be interested in it. And look how I feel like that. It doesn't have to undo you. It sounds like it sent you down that old rabbit hole that you've been down before. But I will tell you, we'll go through that again. I'm about, well, first of all, I learned that nobody's as competent as they seem. With that respect, I'm probably about well first of all I learned that nobody's as competent as they seem in that with that respect I'm probably about as confident as people get and believe in myself pretty well but when I wrote the book when the book came out uh life mastery that's my book life mastery when it came out I was it was in 2021 July so I turned 66 that year. Yeah, 66 that year. So I'm thinking, you know what the voice was in my head? I'm too old to be doing this. Like nobody cares when you're, you know, this is a

younger person. They're building careers on their books. That's why people write most of these books. That's why they're so long, by the way, they're going to save some information for the next book. I didn't have to do that but i i had the voices in my head too and to just get better at dealing with them but you get just new levels it's just new levels i do have a book if you've not come across it you might like it's kind of light and easy but a good listening is by john acuff called soundtracks and i recommend that to my clients a lot those voices in your head. He kind of deals with that. Love what you're talking about.

It doesn't kind of humorous way, but I teach daily written affirmations, daily written affirmations, not like standing in the mirror and saying, oh gosh, you're great. But things you really want to achieve that you write repeatedly over long periods of time. Well, I added, you'll appreciate this when you get to that, especially being what's your X generation or whatever. I think this is probably your generation, but my life is dope. And I would just be so amused every time I would say that. So I got that out of the book. And then I have two people. One was one of my clients and one was

my niece who I recommended the book to him, came back and said, in my daily affirmations, now I'm writing, my life is dope. I said, me too. It was fun. So anyway, it's a fun little book, but my clients have really, everybody, but I suggest that too, has really glommed onto it and got something. Talking about affirmations, it brought me back to Wayne Dyer. I had heard him say one time, you know, if you wrote your affirmations and put them by like your alarm clock, when you first look at it, you're kind of in that in between awake and asleep. So you're in that theta brainwave. And so there's no rejection. So you actually, in that moment, when you first see the affirmation, you're actually receiving it. I just thought that was so amazing. And it's something that stuck with me. And I always suggest, I'm fascinated with the mind, the subconscious mind and the consciousness. And I feel like a lot of times

you know getting to really know truly how your brain works how the thoughts work and when we're present with ourselves I mean just and we're so busy you know when you just stay on that fast track it is hard to be a mother raising lots of children or even just one or even none you know we keep ourselves very busy in the world. Yeah, we certainly do. I used to say, if you can't, you have to be a mother. You have to learn how to talk on the phone, hold the child on your hands,

stir the soup all at the same time. The mindfulness thing is being able to think one thing at a time, do one thing at a time. Then you got to go back and then learn all of that. So that you, but you almost do that for survival. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I became such became such a good well half-ass multitasker I would say yeah recovering have you heard of Dr. Carolyn Leaf did you read anything by her you're fascinated about how the mind works I listened to her speak at a leadership conference

in Florida last spring and it was just like I was just blown away by her understanding and depth whole new level of understanding the brain and how it relates to mindfulness her she has a book called i also recommend and everybody loves it's more way more work than the other one you have to read this one because it's too difficult to listen to but it's called uh cleaning up your mental mess by dr carolyn lee forget that super good and there's the mindfulness part in there but she's done studies and she'll show she was at this demonstration she held up this plastic tree short you know like tree in a pot and she said this literally looks like your thoughts in your brain when they're healthy and she had this old withered this is what they look

like literally in your brain so in the book she shows you pictures of the brain waves and the different things and just the science so what she's doing is she's combining the science and mindfulness and they're just like it's super fascinating i call that mess um clusterfuck in my brain is what i call it you may remember wayne dyer saying this but he said well let me first back up and say this when people feel stuck we all know that being stuck is miserable. Unhappy is stuck, right? I'm stuck. And usually we're not stuck, we're backsliding.

And we're miserable and we're unhappy. And we know that this is true of being stuck or being backsliding. Because there is no stuck. There's forward or backward, right? But we think we're stuck. The opposite is also true. We are happy when we're moving forward. And everybody longs to be happy.

I'm getting the Wayne Dyer thing here. That is, I mean, any religionist, any philosopher, any thinker of any kind has come to the conclusion that the number one thing as humans that we want is to be happy. Even when we do things that will make us unhappy, we do them thinking somehow this time it will make me happy. There is a bad relationship or eating chips and watching,

binging on Netflix at the moment, we think maybe this will make us happy, right? We do everything because we think it'll make us happy in the long run. So now to Wayne Dyer, and I'm not saying he's right or wrong, but he said that we long for peace more than happiness. My thinking is that it's almost the same thing. I mean, they're so closely intertw is that it's almost the same thing i mean they're probably they're so closely intertwined that's it's splitting hairs and then if i could just say this one thing for anybody listening because one thing i know about people is they can listen to

a conversation like we're having i think people think i'm so far from that i will never get there i've got to get to where shan is i'm way over here with all this anxiety and beating myself up and i want to be like shan and i just can't get there so far for me that all you have to do is make little steps towards what you want little steps forward and the happiness comes and the peace comes you don't have to get where shannon's at in her journey to have the happiness that shannon has right and then they and those steps multiply and they start building really rapidly so if anybody's listening to this podcast that feels like they're stuck, I would just say pick something. It doesn't have to be meditation.

Just pick something. It might be brushing your teeth. Who knows? I bet clients would start it right that far. Pick a daily thing that you can do every day and just start moving forward in it. And then when you've got that down kind of, feel comfortable, move at another thing. And you'll be amazed.

Because if happiness didn't come till we arrived, none of us would be happy because guess what? Nobody arrives. You haven't arrived. I've not arrived. I've been out longer than you. I've not arrived. We're not going to meet this potential that we have in this life. So when they say it sounds trite and it's been said a million times, but really truly happiness is in the journey towards our potential now do we do have to be moving forward towards our potential we can't do a journey that takes

us down a bad road expect happiness out of it but we're moving forward to what we what our potential is the amount of happiness unlimited and it can't be shaken this is real true inside out happiness when you said what wayne dyer had said you know what does happiness look like for me well happiness looks peaceful yes certainly that's why you can't hardly argue with me right right it feels very peaceful when you think about it like there's a stillness and a inner freedom from things right freedom from all that garbage out there what would you say is reaching that infinite potential then if we can't even reach it here what is the finish line that what is the infinite potential yeah well there's lots of ways that it's been expressed we're not going

to reach it in this life we're not going to i would say from my perspective and from my language in my world i would say it is to be gods ourselves at some point in the ever right part is it so you all like to evolve to the point that we are and it says you know in the in the new testament you've been called god by god gods you've been let's say it calls you gods or whatever that should be god I think this is a truth. However, I don't know exactly what that looks like. Nobody does. But when you think about, like,

we taught smart goals forever. A lot of people did. I didn't. But people taught smart goals. I do not teach smart goals. It's not a good way to live because it brings down your goals to something very ungodlike

or very unprogressive like you have to be so little to be a smart girl if you think about what do you ultimately want in any area financially you can't really almost describe it right i want freedom it's not a dollar amount i want this but you know what it feels like but to actually describe it to somebody else is very difficult even our fitness level i want to be i know what it feels like i want to actually describe it to somebody else is very difficult. Even our fitness level, I want to be, I know what it feels like. I want to be lean and I want to be strong, but I can't really describe to you

in detail what that will really look like. Any of the eight areas that I teach, your character, what kind of a character, what kind of integrity do you want to have? I know what I feel like, but I can't quite describe it to you. I want to be honest, of course. I want everything that come out of my mouth to be actually as it is it's really hard to define so my point is those are infinite goals they can't

be tied down that's our big goal now we've set little goals between here and there ideally in 90 day increments for the most part. For 90 days, I'm going to do this thing. It's going to get me a little bit, just a little bit closer. At the end of those 90 days, I'm going to regroup, maybe continue with the same thing, maybe change it, say it's a workout. I'm going to work out for 45 minutes four times a week for 90 days to get me to this fitness goal that I want. My business is a fitness business so I use a lot of analogies for it so then at the end of nine days I might say you

know rather than do this little do daddy thing I'm doing around at the gym I'm going to actually take these classes and I'm going to do it five days a week for the next 90 days at the end of that nine days I might say you know I think I'm going to incorporate one day of yoga and four days you see what I'm saying we're going it's going to incorporate one day of yoga and four days of you see what i'm saying we're going it's going to that 90 day goal will evolve it won't be the same for forever but every 90 days we regroup we still have the habit of working out we change it up and whether it's a spiritual thing maybe my i'm going to start with mindfulness and i'm going to start with 10 minutes maybe start with five minutes of mindfulness and then the next 90 days i'm going to

regroup and or maybe i'll try a different kind of meditation the next three days but the habit stays the meditation space and if i keep meditating every day for the rest of my life in some form i'm going to get closer to my spirituality goal if i work out five or six days a week for the rest of my life i'm going to get i'm going to eat a week for the rest of my life i'm going to get i'm going to eat a certain way the rest of my life i'm going to have these goals i'm going to change them up but they're going to be the habit that's going to remain does that make sense it totally makes sense in fact it reminds me of i was in this boot camp and randy spelling um was doing a talk and he said you know it's really hard if your finish line, you know,

is way out here, like make small ones. So I was thinking about that when you were talking, I saw a finish line at the end of the day for maybe, you know, your meditation and whatever you had to do or for the week for this and, and just keep moving your finish lines up a little bit. You know, when you think that it's such a long road you do get exhausted because you're trying to meet these conditioned you know outcomes that are actually not yours yeah that's going back to what i said to these people who are might look at you and say i want to be like her it seems too difficult all you have are little steps nobody nobody can get to anywhere except little steps

that's all there is now you can take them a little more rapidly maybe or a little slower but you only have little steps in especially with our social media world and when we have instant gratification sort of a thing we just think and it sounds like people are i was over here now i'm over there that you don't see the steps that people are actually taking for real change if somebody changes very fast it's not a real i've never seen it if somebody changes really fast in some direction they still have to go back and do the back work there's no other way diets yeah like it's like a diet or now i see on facebook that you can buy these pills and you can lose all of your belly fat in two weeks right so that would be so we all know

that for a wedding once i had to fit in this dress i did it works that's not gonna change the next that night and you're always gonna put it back on because it wasn't no change that's the problem right you did 18 for 12 weeks but you didn't change and so we don't want to do a diet in life we want to do it the steady every people are afraid to change afraid of change it's the one thing that hit me over the past you know that change put me in fear you know why you know oh my god i don't want to have to change know, oh my God, I don't want to have to change, you know, everything's going good. I don't want to bump in the road. But, you know, I think that I never, ever looked back and said, God, I wish that didn't

change in my life. You know, no, it was part of the metamorphosis of who I am. And, you know, I've learned to not stay in the suffering but you know appreciate those boulders that came at me when i was hanging on the cliff i know i'm on a roll with this but ryan holiday has a book it's my third book recommendation i should get a kickback i know um ryan holiday has a book called i love all his books and he has a book called obstacles away but this is actually uh scripturally and philosophically a truth that's been taught by all the great teachers from buddha to jesus to everybody but but it's the things that it's the obstacle is the way it's the bumps in the road that get us really

where we want to go without any bumps like somebody said i can't remember it was if you find a road without any bumps in it well without any obstacles i mean how they word it it probably doesn't go anywhere right it's actually it's not only is it we have to they're required to make progress the bumps are because that's when we really grow the most slow run take it easy because really if you go slow through life and you're present and aware, then you have options when you get to a bump in the road. Rather than going steam ahead, not paying attention, and end up with your car jacked up. And it's an old quote. I think it's Victor Franklin when he said, between stimulus and response, there's a space.

And in that space, there's our power to choose. Well, what does mindfulness give you it gives you the power that space between impulse between a stimulus and impulse and the decision that we make mindfulness gives it that space what buys us a lot of time and saves us a lot of grief which gets us down the road faster so is it taking it easy well that taking it easy attitude not being stressed because nothing you know those days when you like you've got you're really rushing you have so many things to do and then you keep making mistakes and it's really a true thing right and that ends up being not a productive day and you feel stressed but if you take it with a little bit of mindfulness it seems like you're

wasting time but you make better choices and that's like a daily thing but it's also a whole life thing my thing that i teach is in day now it was intentional to end up use that phrase very often but intentionally be planning my life so I've got a plan so the decision's already made and I already know where I'm trying to go and of course that saves you a ton of grief too but what happens when the plan falls through oh they always fall through that's actually it was interesting anybody does daily day they plan their days just does the day planning of any kind knows you have a plan a and then it it never happens but if you don't have a plan you have a really horrible day right so if you have to have

you have to have the plan has to be in place but you have to have a plan and you try to follow it but the plan is not going to go the way you think it is. So it's the same as what we said about the infinite potential. You might not. You're not going to get that, maybe. You're not going to get that. But by planning, you'll go somewhere. Right. It's just like if you plan your day, you're going to have a better day.

Even if you plan B or C. If you plan your life, life will take you its own way. But you're going to get a lot farther down the road and have a lot more of what you want by making a plan even if you end up having a different one of the things i go back to 90 days one of the things that's beautiful about 90 days and even in business they're teaching this what used to be like have a five-year plan now businesses like have a 90-day plan right and i think that eos thing that's really popular my husband's been reading it too but i think that's really set up on a 90 day plan.

It's really hard for life to send you very far off course in 90 days. So I can say for 90 days, I can't commit to this for five years. I don't know what I can do in five years. But 90 days is reasonable. Yeah. The last three businesses I've owned

which have been two coaching and one fitness. I made these free and available. They're simple. They're on my website, lifemasterinfo.com. And they're a tracking sheet. I call tracking sheet. It's a chart. Basically I started in my twenties because I was so undisciplined. It was pathetic. I need these goals. So I do have to rely on these kinds of things. Everybody that I teach this to that I've taught this to that I know of that I've stayed in contact with still uses this, at least to some degree.

I've been using this for a system like this, or this one, for 40 years. And if I could just point to one thing that got me the farthest down the road for actual end results, it's this. This is just a little piece from the book. Okay, gotcha. This is an actual copy of one of my tracking sheets i put in the book but what you do is you put the things you want to do every day down here okay and then the days of the week across the top this is so simple it's like a child's work chart right right right right that's the things i want to do it's like it it's like a ready to do list for the

personal development so then i have like i have on my I'm right now tracking 14 things I just happen to count them so I don't start with 14 start with I've been doing it for 40 years like I said so uh more than that so like my first habit I wanted to develop when I was young and married is I wanted to pray in the mornings I just felt like my days would go better if I would pray every morning and I wanted to write in a journal and I wanted to read. I wanted to do a devotional reading. So those were my first three habits, which I still do to this day. And then I wanted reading. I wanted to work daily workout. And that's one of the first things I teach my clients to use a tracking sheet. You can choose a tracking sheet effectively.

You won't get blown off course of your goals. In fact, when I speak, one of my favorite topics that I get to choose is why systems are more important than goals because you have a system i really believe new year's resolutions are a real thing i think people are sincere we laugh about it but i think they're sincere the problem is in our system and so they forget the kids get sick and you know you have to go into work early and pretty soon you forgot about the workout and then you oh what happened to my workouts right you didn't have a good system this tracking sheet is one of two systems i teach other ones written affirmations that they're just the bomb for making things happen in your life and you just if you do it you get a check if it's not required that day like i don't work out on sundays for example or i only

wanted to write in my write my book five days a week because i got a couple authors right now that you want to create a new habit to do. And so then you're working yourself accountable. And your brain and your ego hates that blank spot. You will hate that blank spot if you don't get it done so bad. And I'll do it. And my clients always come back and report this too. I wanted to get my checkmark.

I wanted my checkmark. And so you'll stay up late to get that checkmark and get that thing done. Do we have no problem doing the bad habits they're the path of least resistance so you know take that bad habit and you replace it with a good one well that is there's a lot of truth to that look for example sugar is going to kill you i mean we just got to get sugar out of your diet we all know there's people addicted to it it's an addiction problem it's as addictive as any drug and that's why making people fat sick and unhealthy one of and it's in every processed food just you can hardly find a processed

food without it okay so but whether we're used to it or and we may be biological in us in our dna that we like something sweet especially after we eat okay so if i just cut the sugar out it's going to feel i'm going to feel deprived but if i have a thing i can replace it with that i love i don't feel deprived i eat a lot of very very dark chocolate like 85 percent cocoa that's what i because i do have that right desire for something sweet afterwards insulin response won't hurt my weight you gotta've got to have a plan. You've got to have a plan. Another thing we keep in our freezer are frozen berries. And I keep canned whipped cream.

There's a little bit of sugar in that, but they're mostly air. And then that canned whip with some whipped cream on those blueberries, that I'll eat. So you decide what you're going to eat instead of those things. And you stick to that thing rather than just ripping it out of your life.

And with time, your desire for it will go down. When I first quit eating sugar, which was embarrassing, not as long ago as it should have been, I was 50. I was eating teaspoons of peanut butter with honey on it. Because honey doesn't do that. Weirdly enough, honey does not seem to be, perpetuate your desire for sweetness. So I was doing that.

My daughter came in. She said, mom, do you have any calories? I said, I don't care how many calories. Yeah. I don't do that anymore. For a few months, that was my thing, you know? Yeah. So you replace that thing when possible.

Some things should just be rooted out. Should just not do some things. You think about the habits. I mean, like, of course, everyone gets up and brushes their teeth. I get my coffee. I have all of these things that are ritual in my life, the rituals, right? I do meditate as well. And if I don't have one of those things, I feel like I'm cheated. I mean, I'm upset. I didn't get this time to meditate or I didn't get my coffee. I remember one morning I was trying to like wake up peaceful and I go downstairs and I see uh brick the dogs have

brick one of the dogs had diarrhea I'm like great and then I go to get my coffee hmm we're at a coffee someone drank the last coffee I'm the yeah you know I'm just like okay great you know and I get you know it was really was really funny. It was actually, it was the worst morning ever. And I just, you know, you make that choice. If you're able to find a moment, you can make a choice because that day was crazy. It was like the second day of school. My son misses, no, I don't know if he missed the bus or something. It was so bad that morning. And then I was late because I had to bring him to school if he missed the bus or something it was so bad that morning and then I was late because I had to bring him to school because he missed the bus that's what it was so I had to bring my daughter up to the school and I wasn't planning on it I'm in my pajamas

no bra and then when I got back in the car I realized I had two pairs of glasses on one on my head and one on my face and this is how I showed up at my kid's school it was a bad morning but I remember this morning because it was a morning that I chose to say you know what I'm not gonna let this be my day it's only nine o'clock and I choose to turn this all around after I pick up all the shit yeah yeah you Yeah. You can make, you know, you do to use that space, right. And you've made a different choice. And one thing you said that I liked too, as you said earlier, you said, do you feel cheated if you don't get certain things,

some of your daily habits will become like that, right. That right now might feel, I'm not saying you, but people who are working on habits. Well, I'll say me. If I I'm working out and if i was of some reason not get to work out this important to me and if i didn't i would not be happy about and my meditation you know i have to do it in the morning i know because it turns into a nap in the afternoon this has got to happen first thing once in a while things happen first thing in the morning and i had a day like that recently where it was by the time I really could have it was evening and I just knew it was going to be

pointless and I was not happy having missed it so what might start off as a drudgery can become something that you learn to love because you maybe you love it because how it makes you feel maybe it's just a habit I don't know maybe it's a lot of things but what's my reading sometimes and still sometimes I'm like oh I don't want to work out today you know but I go anyway so this is why you need to plan then and in your plan you need to ask yourself what do I want my life to look like what does my happy look like what does my peace look like what do I want not what the look like? What does my happy look like? What does my peace look like? What do I want? Not what the world says it does, but what makes me happy and peaceful and make a plan? Maybe even do you suggest like writing down these things? Because how do you come up with like 14 habits? I know you said don't try 14 new habits, but you know, how do you get there? Because first

of all, you have to drop all the conditions of the world because just because your neighbors have all these things and they say they're happy doesn't mean you will be well i start with when i'm working with clients we already know what we want ultimately reading yourself and think about it the nice thing about being human is we can just we can imagine and use our imagination and feel i can look and say if my life was like this, how would that feel? And so I can do a visualization with clients. But also, this is a copy of Life Mastery.

It looks like this. By Sherry Stoney Fernandes. On the back, this is me. This is me. It's not a very old picture, but I'm going to put a new one on it because I want my hair to go gray.

But that's another subject. But there's eight areas. So I've asked myself, what do I want my physical self to be like long-term? And where can I start today? What do I want my spirituality? Like what one thing could I do today right now?

What habit could I develop now? So what habit could I develop physically that would get me there eventually? I know it's gonna be a long time, but whatever. I've got the rest of my life, right? If I, one thing, if I did it every day, okay every day okay well i might work out i might give up sugar i probably should do both spiritual what one thing could i do maybe it may be prayer maybe it'd be devotional reading maybe it would be whatever it could be a meditation every day i'm going to go for meditation walk maybe what can i do spiritually every day for the next 90 days that will get me to that spiritual point?

Relationships. What can I do in my relationships for the next 90 days that's going to get me that kind of relationship I want? Education, money, vocation, lifestyle. What can I do for the next 90 days that would improve my daily lifestyle and my character? What one little change could I make? What could i commit to now not everything will fit on your tracking sheet so that's why i teach daily written affirmations like maybe on my character i want to everything i say about my mouth to be

totally true that's a really hard thing to define if it's if you've done that or not so anything that's not definable that doesn't fit the smart criteria for example in the 90 days only used for the 90 days then i put out my affirmations then i would say everything i say is exactly as it is that might be my affirmation maybe i want to respond more kindly to criticism on your tracking sheet i wrote my affirmations. These are daily affirmations. So now I track my affirmations every day too. Yeah. So you could do the same. You like to put yours by your bedside.

And I would still suggest you write those besides that, by the way. But then you could bet I reviewed my affirmations before I went to sleep. And you put that on your tracking sheet. So you never forgot. Interesting thing. Clients will come into me and they'll say, I'll say, well, what habits do you want? What I'd like to work out. How does she work out now? I work out probably three or four days a week then they'll

so i'll sign them the tracking sheet not come back to you know i was probably only working out one or two days a week we're kidding ourselves about how much we really do i do this pretty much every day well when you start tracking it on that tracking sheet you will be surprised that a lot of things you think you i'm not saying you then you're not making change right if you're not making the chain then you're wondering what why is nothing happening well nothing's happening honey because you're not really working out five days a week right this is temporary yes so then we track these habits and if you know if you know that you're working out it's going to get you i want more muscle and better cardio i know if i work out every day i'm going to have that right. I don't have to,

I don't have to debate it. I just know this will get me there. I don't have to have a timeframe, a diet, a 12 weeks. I'm just going to do this every day for the rest of my life. You don't have some short term goal that says I need to just lose 10 pounds because that actually, there's an ending to that because once you lose it you're not going to do it anymore and you'll probably lose your 10 pounds and then in 10 days you'll start gaining it back because it's your goal is only to lose it diets are so damaging in so many ways i can't even i could go on forever it's a mental right mental this is what i hate most of all about diets and this could be applied to anything that you do in a temporary form.

But dieting is the ubiquitous one. It's a heartache that comes and the disappointment. You go on this diet, you lose this weight. Most diets work. I mean, they do work. If you do them, they'll work. And you lose this weight and you're like, oh, I feel so good. I'm so proud of myself.

But you didn't change. And then the weight's going to come back on and you probably didn't work out. So you probably lost a ton of muscle. So now your metabolism is lower and you think it's your fault that you gained the weight back. I'm just weak because I gained that weight back. I'm telling you from experience, I didn't get this under control very early. It took me a lot of ups and downs for me to get this under control. You think I'm weak. I did. I lost all that weight and then look at me. It's not fault this is biological this is what a while later you try another one in order to evolve right to get to that infinite potential requires real change a

life change right the life mastery is actually accepting that you're going to change and morph and evolve through it all. And that requires a life change, not a temporary. And remember, this is little steps. Okay, I'm not going to lose 20 pounds in 20 days or in 40 days, or probably I'm not going to lose a lot of weight fast if I do these things although I have a client that just gave up flour and sugars I suggest people do and they want to lose weight and lost 18 pounds in three months just by the way yeah no flour no sugar that's the key that's the key there by the way that's the thing right like if we could mentally accept why it's not

good for our body rather than just the weight part because the weight part is so connected to I'm not comfortable with myself yeah I'm not good enough yeah really and they'll say fine I'll turn down I turn down desserts I'm probably time because I'm not saying I would never eat dessert at this point in my life I could eat one if I chose I mostly always choose no but the one the reasons we like oh you're so good like it's not a discipline for me I know what happens to my body I got the science behind it I know both from experience and scientifically what is going on when I eat that sugar so it's not very difficult plus I know I feel wow this is amazing this sounds so great no wonder why it has been so successful

that's how you book because it sounds like the way you've explained it anyways, is something I think that a lot of people can understand and receive. Because that's sometimes, you know, the thing when you're talking about some of the self-help books and all that stuff, they'll just confuse the shit out of you because there's like all these different steps and am I doing it right and this and that but this is more of your personal this is going inwards for you this isn't you're not telling people how to be you're telling people to trust themselves really yeah you know one of the couple things I'm really proud about about the book is that were important to me one is that I didn't teach anything that I

didn't know to be true by my own experience and having taught it to other people lots and lots of other people successfully yeah that was one thing so a lot of books are written and they've done research to prove a point I didn't even feel the necessity although I think I do quote a few things in there but I didn't feel the necessity I only knew them to be true and so you'll just have to accept it but I've taught it and I've seen it and plus it speaks to you you know it's authentic when you read it you just know it's true the other thing is that i give you something to do that was a problem i had with all my early reading is i'd say okay i'm motivated but tell me

where to start i give you a starting point and that's really the tracking sheets start here start with a daily habit and write your daily affirmations that would be the second one keep a list all things you want to accomplish in 90 days that would be the second one keep a list all things you want to accomplish in 90 days that would be the third one so i teach those three things i got a few other tools in there too for different things but i give you something to do because while i was highly motivated i was not trained at all and when you motivate somebody and you don't train them you just leave them more frustrated right so i'm really proud about those two things i never planned to write a book it's never was on my to-do list, but I did.

And I think it's been really well received and I'm pretty proud of it. So, well, thank you for writing. I think it's beautiful. And, you know, I think that as you get older, we just get wiser. So I think that you did a good thing at your age, right? I mean, just, I think a blessing to us younger people. So not much younger. It was a blessing. It was enchanted. the one thing you can know for sure there was no ego and i wasn't trying to set i wasn't trying to build a career on it i didn't need that i didn't need the money i could do right

what i wanted to write without having to worry about how it sold yeah you wanted to help other people and one of the thoughts was and of course growing older doesn't necessarily mean you're getting wiser. You could get dumber. But I did feel like I had all this knowledge that I wanted to leave, you know, and I'm only working with, I mean, I still, I value my freedom. We travel, we travel a lot. And so I work with a limited number of clients. So I just have this handful of clients that I work with. I think this rate, they're really good to share what they're learning to their people. But still at that rate, it's going to be a slow go. So if I could share, I've worked

my whole life reading, learning, studying, practicing. I wanted to be able to leave what I've learned. Yeah. You know, I thought a lot about that lately because I, you know, I've been studying the Gnostic Gospels and looking at scripture and stuff and thinking this is what they left behind their wisdom that they left behind and you know I think that as an evolving changing soul that's trying to reach your infinite potential what are you going to leave behind so you're helping the younger generations that's part I think of that what we should do for the collective when you find your gift you give it away yeah so true is that you have an obligation if you learn something you may not want to write a book maybe it's not for everybody but still once you learn something and practice it and you

know it to be true of yourself and your practice you really owe it to the world to teach other people and I tell my clients that I still write at the beginning. You are going to learn a lot of stuff here. And you have an obligation as you learn it and prove it to be true. To share it. And they do it anyway. But this is the obligation. We have an obligation to share what we know.

And the faster we learn, the more we need to share. And that's just, that's how we, if we don't, we're just a suck on the planet. And it comes natural though. I think when you do something really well. My husband is a business genius. yes that's how we if we don't we're just a suck on the planet and it comes natural though i think when you do something really well my husband is a business genius he's writing a book on business too it'll be great but wow he spreads he helps other people he doesn't care what business area and they could be competing with him i'm sure he wouldn't mind he would still help them in their business because that's what we do good karma so do So do you still coach? I do workshops.

So I like to prefer the workshops. I do speak. I do speak. I do like the workshops because I've got enough things that I'd like to see people actually do, but I still do quite a bit of speaking. I do coaching, but mostly right now I'm promoting the book because I've got it. I have my own goal. I'm going to promote the book until July, and then I'm going to give it a rest

and work on my speaking and teaching. But I'm still doing those things. Workshops, I do love workshops. And I work doing in businesses or personal groups, clubs, all kinds of things in different hours. I don't have a one set. I usually tailor it to do. What's the pine cone in your book?

It's a redwood cone, actually, which you wouldn't know until you got into it. I mean, it's a pine cone, which could be because of the potential of a redwood. And if you've ever been to the redwoods, have you been to the redwood cone actually which you wouldn't know until you got into a very big spine cone which because of the potential of a redwood and if you've ever been to the red have you been to the redwoods shannon yeah my brother redwoods he went to college in monterey and we went driving around and yeah so those buildings like you know i live in boise idaho and we've got a fairly good 17 story building my husband tells me he grew up over there in the redwoods and i've been there a lot but he tells me that that's i've no spatial building but that the red over there in the redwoods and I've been there a lot. But he tells me that that's, I have no spatial ability, but that the redwoods,

there are redwoods that are three times the height of that building, that 17 story building. They're just phenomenal. You stand below them, they're just like, if you stand below and look up and just contemplate it, they have their own ecosystem at the top. It's crazy. They're so high up there. So people are like that that but the pine cones are really this big the the redwood coniferous cones are like an inch tall oh i didn't know so here's the tiniest of cones is the biggest of trees it's like the analogy for human potential i was listening to um joe dispens's book on becoming supernatural he was just talking about how the heart works and he said and then this is where physics kicks in. And I just have this thought.

I think all of the sciences, people that follow the science, the science has changed so much since I was a girl, right? You can't really do that. But the sciences, spirituality, all that thing is getting close. They're all getting closer to go. There's not going to be this science, this ology and this ology and this ology. They're all just blending together with spirituality to be one whole. All the religions are too. And the religions religions too i'm very committed to my religion but what

i've acknowledged and realized is that truth seekers of spirituality of truth all end up at the same place we think oh this these people believe this i've heard catholic well-known catholic priests teach doctrines that are not catholic that i believe to be true because when people when people are really seeking truth they're all going to end up at the same place it's just because there's truth and that's all there is so true there's a lot of believers right now and i'm finding this even in my own church that meditation which is not an eastern practice by the way meditation isn is around since the beginning of time, meditation, but there's a lot of people who are moving that direction and believe that it's a movement. And wouldn't that be awesome? Wouldn't that change the world? I think so.

It certainly would. And I think that one of the most beautiful things that I've seen in today's time is that we have the space to be this and do this, the opportunities and, you know, to be successful and heard in ways that, you know, all morning I am doing, I have a side podcast and right now I'm working on an episode of Mary Magdalene and just, you know, her story is so powerful for women today. She was one of Jesus's greatest apostles. They talk about the divine feminine rising. She's the perfect example of that from someone who was just put aside and falsely accused and, you know, for thousands of years. And now, you know, we know. I'm doing a lot of research on it in the church in 2016. Pope Francis says that he changed her memorial day to a feast. And now she is known as the apostle of the apostles.

And yeah, and I just, I'm like, good for her. You know, Jesus didn't go and tell Peter who denied him three times. First, you know, he went to her. She's obviously special and she's a woman. And that was unheard of. Her testimony was cast aside and not even legal, I think. So, you know, we should see her for who she is. And so I think that, you know, now is the time for women and for all that have been set aside

you know to rise and be who they truly are yeah well certainly we certainly have the opportunity and the by we I mean all people we have more like you said more time and freedom and that's that's a gift and I think it can lead to either a waste of debauchery and a waste of our lives or it can lead to more time for personal development and time to think and more thinking time which is the agent some of the agents had that time then life got hard a lot of poverty and we defeat ourselves but as long as you have some tools right getting to your toolbox that's true it's just a sudden there's so much availability of knowledge's just uh so there's so much availability of knowledge but then of course there's so much availability of false knowledge so you just have to learn to do

that discerning thing too but true yeah that's actually my biggest message is discernment so tell everybody where they can find your book the book is life mastery it's all available on audible amazon there's a workbook for setting goals it looks the same has the same design more or less as the front life mastery it's got track with tons of tracking sheets in awesome it's got all the instructions on how to apply the things i teach it's got a space to write all the things i teach in the book that's the workbook and i have a day planner which is like a regular day planner to-do list calendar of your events that and then there's a place every day to write affirmations and then there's a place for the monthly tracking sheet in it that's awesome

and now it's time for break that shit down people are wanting rights for who that group that they belong to or they don't like the political system or they want whatever change you want in the world or whatever change you want in your relationships and the people around you there's one way that you can make a change and that's that you change you it's actually the only way you want to make a change in the world you work on yourself yeah it's what mccaughtland gandhi said when he said be the change you wish to be in the world it's the only real way you can do a lot you can do marches till the cows come home, but when you change you,

it has a ripple effect and it changes the world. And so you want to make the world different. Go to work on you first. That is so wise. I feel like I've been a student. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a delightful conversation.

Thank you so much. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.