The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – On Second Thought… Maybe I Can by Debbie Weiss

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

On Second Thought... Maybe I Can by Debbie Weiss https://amzn.to/3QvmgCt On Second Thought... Maybe I Can is the story of a chubby, insecure, and scared little girl who spent her life doing what was expected of her and taking care of everyone but herself. Like many of us, she was ready to stop using others' opinions and her personal circumstances as an excuse to continue living a life she didn't love. When Debbie turned 50, she had an epiphany that changed her life: "On Second Thought... Maybe I Can." She realized she had the power to transform her life all along, she just didn't know it. Debbie's journey shows us it's never too late to pursue the life you want. Here are some key points from the podcast transcript: Guest Debbie Weiss is the author of a memoir called "On Second Thought, Maybe I Can" about overcoming obstacles and living out dreams. She became a caregiver for her father at a young age which forced her to mature quickly. This experience gave her tools to help others later. At 50, Weiss had an epiphany, realizing she had lost herself always caring for others. This motivated her transformation. She coaches women on personal development, limiting beliefs, goal-setting, and self-care. Mothers often neglect themselves helping others. The journey itself has lessons, not just the destination. Collecting life stories teaches us. Weiss shares stories in her book and coaching. Caregivers need timeouts to refill themselves. Self-care is essential, not selfish. In summary, Weiss aims to inspire people that circumstances don't have to define you. Her memoir and coaching help women put themselves first to ultimately help others more.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.

There you go. The opera lady makes it official. The chrisfossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. You know, we changed the format of COVID, or the format of the podcast over COVID, because we wanted to improve the world. We were talking about a lot of tech and CEOs

and all this sort of good stuff. And we're like, you know what? We want to open the scope of the show to talk about everything, to make the world a better place, to give people inspiration, to give people positivity, to give people tools that they can use to lead them out of the darkness of what goes on in our world and the challenges.

And I can't think of a more challenging time that we're currently going through right now, what we're seeing in our world and our news and everything else. But the beautiful part about the Chris Voss Show podcast, if I can do a little self-indulgent pitch here that helps others, is it gives you a respite from the world. It gives you respite from the dark news and it gives you tools. We give you advice. The authors that we have on, the people that we have on the Chris Voss Show have all the different aspects that they bring to you from all walks of life to help improve your life, make it better, improve the quality of the life around

you. And hopefully all give us, uh, you know, different things that we can utilize to make the world a better place, uh, and to hopefully leave the world a better place behind us. So I hope that you recognize that, uh, those of you who tune into the Chris Voss show and some of the new people that are always tuning in, especially coming in from LinkedIn newsletter, we hope that you recognize that because that's what the show is for. We are a respite and a bulwark against the evil and the darkness that's in the world. Hopefully, we're a positive light and inspiration to you. If not, send me an email and tell us how we can do better. We have an amazing guest on the show. She's an author

as always. We have these amazing minds for 15 years we brought you the ceo the billionaires the astronauts the pulitzer prize winners all the smartest people on the planet and none of them are me that's why we have them as guests on the show because we you know they're the people who bring the show up she's the author of the latest book that came out august 7th, 2023. On second thought, maybe I can. Debbie Weiss is with us on the show for her book, and I love it. It's a memoir of her life, a transformational story of overcoming obstacles and living out your wildest dreams. Although my psychiatrist and the judge says I can't live out some of my wildest dreams,

but that's for another episode. We'll talk about that another time. Debbie Weiss has over 50 years of experience in dealing with some of life's toughest challenges. She is an expert in chasing her own dreams in spite of her circumstances. She is the bestselling author of the memoir on Second Thought, Maybe I Can, as well as an author

in the Amazon bestseller collaborative book, Heart Whispers. In addition, she is an entrepreneur running both an insurance agency and her online store, Sprinkle of Hearts, and host of the Maybe I Can podcast. She's an inspirational speaker, family caregiver, and mother, which is probably the greatest job anyone can do in this world. Debbie has overcome her own limiting beliefs and fears allowing her to begin to live her best life and her life's passion is to help and inspire others to do the same

she's the best-selling author of the memoir in her spare time she uh loves to laugh dance read and stay active and now she's gonna be doing all that on the chris voss show welcome to the show debbie give us your uh dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs sure it's debbie r weiss.com the r very important otherwise you wind up on a realtor you got that competition going huh oh yeah she's got that website probably i guess when urls are first started to be for sale yeah i've had the same problem with two or three Chris Vosses. There's a few of us that are out there. So give us a 30,000 overview of your book that you just put out. Sure. So it's my memoir. It's a story about stopping using your circumstances to rule your life. So I had a victim mentality. I had a lot of limiting beliefs,

felt like my life was really rough and it was unfair. And because of that, it was what it was and there was nothing I could do about it. And then I had an epiphany and realized wrong. We all can do something. We can all be in control of the path of our lives, regardless of our circumstances. And so the last half of the book or the last third of the book, I should say, talks about that transformation that I'm still on and we're all still on that has been happening since my epiphany about 10 years ago. Wow. And you had this epiphany when you turned 50 and you decided that that would change your life.

Give us the lead up to that. What was your journey like through life? What were the paths you were taking and some of the different obstacles you overcame. So I became a caregiver to my father when I was 17. He had a massive stroke. He was only 45, and he survived. My parents soon were divorced, and my dad never lived with me, but luckily he did survive for 30 years, and I was his main person. So I was in charge of his money and his shopping and where he was going to live. And, you know, in my 20s, I learned all about private disability and Medicare and Medicaid and all of these things.

And, you know, that's not what my friends were doing at 25 years old. Yeah, you had to grow up fast. Very fast. And have that role reversal. I think when we're in our 40s and 50s, we expect to, now all of a sudden, we're more of the parent to our parents and they're the child. But I lost my dad in that role at a very young age and had that switch. And after that, I struggled with infertility. I had, you know, a whole bunch of things, but when my oldest son was born, he was diagnosed

on the autistic spectrum when he was two. And then that led to, you know, years of trying to figure that out. And then more recently, my husband who had suffered from mental illness, depression and anxiety, but it never affected his life. Later on in his life, it really started to have an effect. But he was no longer able to work. He also had a lot of physical issues. And so I kind of lost my partner and now had yet another person to take care of. And after all of that, he was diagnosed out of the blue with a terminal blood cancer diagnosis unrelated to his other issues. And unfortunately, almost 10 months ago, he passed away. It was six months after he was diagnosed. I'm sorry to hear that.

Do you think that maybe this book and stuff was born out of these experiences and trying to get through them and overcome them and find the positive side of the coin in the end? Absolutely. Because like I said, for so long, I didn't. I was always a positive, upbeat person, so I don't want to make it sound like I was a Debbie Downer, but I wasn't. But it was always, oh, poor Debbie. Oh, what's happening to Debbie now? I would compare myself to others. And I felt like I got the raw end of the deal in my life. Of course, you could always find a ton of other people who have had much, much big trauma and all of that. But luckily, I wasn't living in that world. And comparing myself to the others around me, it just felt like, I wasn't living in that world. And comparing myself to the others around

me, it just felt like, I don't know why this is my lot in life, just one thing after another, but it is, and I don't have a choice. And I'm just going to ride it out and kind of let my life control me instead of me controlling my life. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean, you've into every life or some rain must fall, but you seem to have gotten some extra rain there. But it may have given you tools that maybe you've found that can more empower you and help empower others with what you do with your coaching to handle it. Is that a true statement? Absolutely. I think most of us, when we look back on the things that happened in our life, we realize the valuable lesson that they taught us,

and we wouldn't change a thing. And I can say that because as a child, I was extremely fearful. I was afraid of being judged. I always had a weight problem and that it dominated my life for a very long time, especially as a young girl in particular. And I didn't want to be seen because I didn't want to be judged. And so even though I was very outgoing to those that I knew, I was not in any other type of situation. And so when my dad got sick, it kind of forced me out of my comfort zone to learn to speak up because I wasn't speaking up on my behalf. I was speaking up for my dad and I wanted to make sure that I did whatever I could for him. And so that kind of was the beginning of giving me these tools. Certainly my book and my coaching is a culmination of everything that I've learned and everything that I've learned since I had that quote unquote

epiphany around the age of 50. So what was the thing that made that trigger, that epiphany of 50? So my friends insisted that we go away for my birthday on a girl's trip, four of us. And I didn't want to because I was afraid that my family would crumble without me even for two or three days. But I said, okay. And the minute that we got to the airport and we met and we were laughing, all of those fears that I had just dropped away. And I don't want to say that I couldn't care what was happening at home, but I really couldn't care what was happening at home. And it was the first time in forever that I was the priority. People were asking me, where do you want to go to dinner? What do you want to do today? It's almost like I'm looking over my shoulder. Are they talking to me?

And one night while we were there, we're having a discussion and something came up and I asked them, did I used to not be known for my laugh? Because I kind of have this really loud cackle that I won't let come out. Don't let it out. This is a funny joke. And they looked at me like, are you kidding me? Because I was. You know, my mother used to say, I'd never lose you because I can always hear you laughing somewhere, wherever you are. And I realized, I was serious. I couldn't remember

if I was making that up or it was true. And I realized, you know what? I've lost myself. I've lost who I was as a person. I lost my laugh and I lost it all. And I think it was something about the age of 50 that kind of was like, oh, is that really middle life? I hope to live to a hundred, but let's just say that I'm on the downhill slide. And that idea of mortality, motivation kind of kicked in. Am I going to be laying there on my deathbed having regrets? Because I saw that with my dad. I don't want to be that person. But if my time were up now, I would be.

Because I don't regret and I didn't regret doing anything that I did for anybody else. But what I regretted was not also making myself a priority. Yes. Yes. You know, there's two things there that are really important that people should listen to and learn from. Number one is recognize that if you are a caregiver in some sort of way and even if you're like you know moms are really bad at this where they give so much and they eat last they you know they're they're always taking care of everyone first um and uh but if you're a

caregiver specifically especially for someone in hospice or uh someone who who um needs a whole lot of attention and work, you have to take care of yourself first or you can't share yourself or help other people. You have to get your sleep. You have to get your health straight. You have to eat right. It's so emotionally draining to be a caregiver. It's so physically draining usually to be a caregiver as well.

And a lot of people or caregivers don't realize they really need a lot of help. You know, I spent a year and a half in hospice care with my dog. It was psychologically destructive. It was damaging. It was hard on me. I should have sought better help. I should have been seeing a therapist at the time. Watching cancer grow on something you love is a whole different experience than just knowing someone has cancer.

And I see it in other people, like my mother who takes care of my sister who has MS. She's seven years younger than me, and she's in a home with people that are much older. And you look at it and you go, why is this young person here? She's the only one of her age that's in that home. But being a caregiver is draining. It is the hard, it is some of the hardest things I've ever seen or ever done in my life. It's rewarding and you feel good, but there's so many aspects of it that people forget about. And then I think the other second point is at 50, I think you kind of realize you're either halfway through the football game,

if you don't mind the sports analogy, or game, if you would call it anything. You're halfway through the bachelor rounds. And you realize that maybe the second half is shorter than the first half, and you're running out of time. And I think also at 50, you kind of look back, because I had the same sort of epiphanies around 50. You reach a point where you can go, all right, let's look back at what do we do?

And you start to see the patterns. You start to see, oh, wow, okay, that childhood trauma there. I've been dragging that through the through the detritus for um 50 years and i can see the whole pathway of dragging the anvil through uh everything and maybe i should dump that thing um and so i i think those are those are two things people really need to recognize from the story you tell does Does that sound about right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And let me just interject. J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets. You can talk about football anytime you want.

Okay. Go Jets. The Go Jets. If we could bring back, oh, who's the great Jet in the quarterback in the 70s? Oh, Joe Namath. Joe Namath. I grew up in the 70s, and I've always been a Raiders fan,

but he was so freaking epic. Just such a great, I mean, just on and off the field. What a guy. Exactly, yeah. I think he was probably one of those first big football personalities, right, that overtook with his commercials and stuff. The fur coats, I think it was. Yeah.

He was just so over the top. It was a great era of football. Yeah. So, you know, people need to understand that self-care is so important, you know, and that principle of you can't give to other people, you can't help other people unless you take care of yourself first. And you need timeouts too if you're doing self-care. And how was your relationship with your mother?

How supportive was your mother, if you don't mind me asking, in you ending up being the caregiver for your father? So my mother was supportive in the sense that, you know, initially she found the first place that my dad lived. You know, she was supportive in the sense of like on holidays, if I didn't, if I wasn't with him, he would be left in, you know, actually similar to your sister. He was living in those kinds of facilities in his late forties and everybody else was in their eighties. And, you know, so she was very supportive in that regard. But, you know, I think, I don't know. I mean, let's just say she was supportive, but she didn't really have much intervention with what was going on. Certainly if I had a question or whatnot, of course, she was always there.

And I just bring that up to frame it that, you know, here you are, you're a young woman and young women, especially in their 20s, early 20s, they go through whole different changes to who they are year by year. And you're in a role where normally, you know, you look to a parent to be that protector, that provider, that caregiver, that overseer, that kind of bulwark to build your life off of and hear your thrust into. And this happens with a lot of young people that end up having to grow up early or being a parent early is they kind of lose that portion of their childhood.

They kind of lose that building in themselves and understanding themselves and care for themselves as well. And so it's a tough position to be in because you're not always emotionally equipped at that age to deal with all this sort of stuff. You're still trying to figure out your own world. Exactly. My dad met a woman when he was living at that first place. And I knew that the woman was just trouble. She thought my father had money. He had no money. My father winds up marrying the woman, moving out of the place that my mother had to, you know, back then, you know, this is like mid eighties, the kind of facilities that are available now, they weren't around back then. So it was very difficult, especially because we,

my dad was living on Medicare and, you know, very small disability insurance. And the woman started verbally abusing my dad. Yeah. Wow. And when I was around 25, I had to steal him and take him to, I don't want to say, an undisclosed location to her. I had to find a place for him to live and set up this whole thing, this kidnapping, so to speak. But then the big thing was, here I was trying to figure out to learn to get him divorced. Wow.

And I didn't even have a boyfriend, and I was learning how to get divorced at 25. There you go. Yeah, that's a crazy story. It was crazy. Yeah, and you're just a young person going, why is this my thing? But that's a hell of a challenge.

We see that in the care centers where people try and prey on each other in the care centers. Sexually or financially, they'll try and figure out someone that has money and and uh it's it's a scary interesting dynamic in there and when you have a sister or someone who has dementia and everyone's got dementia um you know it's just some of the stuff that goes on there i mean she's been through five or six homes and so you know and elder, which it sounds like what your dad was going through there, patient abuse. I mean, all this stuff is prevalent in some of these different care situations. And you're just trying to care for somebody and do the thing.

So with your epiphany that you have at 50, how do you start taking back you? How do you start re-identifying you and taking care of you to where you, how do you go down that journey of like putting yourself back together, basically? So when I returned from the trip, I don't think it was, you know, I come home and say, oh, now I've seen the light and here's, you know, how I'm going to set out on my path. If only it was that easy, right? Yeah, right. Exactly.

But looking back, I can see what happened. And then the first thing that I decided that I was going to tackle was my weight because I have had a lifelong weight issue. And at that point, I probably a hundred pounds overweight. And so what I did was for the millionth time, I went back to Weight Watchers, which, you know, I've tried all diets, just like many of us. And for whatever reason, that's what had worked for me in the past. But this time I changed my mindset because I used to always go and say, okay, I have to lose 25 pounds in three months or by the summer or by this wedding I'm going to attend. And if I don't, I'm out. And I could see how well that served me at a hundred pounds to lose. So instead this time I said, the only goal that I have

is attending a meeting every week. That's it. Nothing else, nothing about my food, nothing about how much weight I lose. I am just going to show up. And that's what I did. I really didn't lose much weight, but once I got that down, then I added the next layer. Okay, 50% of the time, I'm going to track my food or whatever it was, and just slowly building. I'd watch other people. They're like, it was hard because I'd go to these meetings. They're like, I lost 30 pounds in four months. I'm like, well, I lost three in six months. I describe myself as a turtle, although I can get up off my back. But I was, you know, slow and steady, wins the race kind of thing.

And it's a, and you, you know, an important aspect of this is people have to realize it's a process. Not only are you learning about yourself, you're learning about this thing. It's a mastery of skill and it's time. Some people can do stuff quicker that are, I don't know, there's always cocaine. That's always good for losing weight. Maybe those other people are on

cocaine. We'll just throw it to that. Don't do cocaine, people, for losing weight. Please don't start a cold over the podcast jokes. So, but you know, everyone's different too. They have different metabolisms. You have different DNA. You know, it seems like a lot of this does come down to DNA.

But, and you know, you have different things where people have different insulin resistance and stuff, depending upon how you've lived your life. So, you know, really the thing that people should judge themselves by is by themselves and the way that they're going through things and whether they're, you know, and just the fact that you're making progress.

Like I like what you said, I focused on just showing up. And for a lot of things, going to the gym, losing weight, just about any sort of thing you want to achieve in life, becoming an entrepreneur, just showing up is usually half the battle because most people don't do that. Exactly. Exactly. And what I realized was weight watchers didn't change their program, right? I mean, yeah, they do little tweaks every couple of years.

What was different was just the way I thought about it. It was just a mindset shift, which I say just, it ain't that easy to do. And it's a constant work in progress. But when I saw, oh, wait a minute, I did realize I'm not coming off this. Like I have to commit, this is for life. This doesn't mean I can't eat pizza again. I had to understand that all those people that I would look at and say, oh, poor me, another example of how I had a victim mentality. I would see someone eating a certain way and I'd see, oh, look at them, they can eat that. And if I look at that, I'm going to gain weight. Well, I don't know what they're eating the other, you know, however many meals it is a week, the other 20 meals a week, right? This could like be, you know, their 20%, their indulgent time. But I was thinking,

you know, no, that wasn't the case. And so over the past 10 years, it's just kind of been learning how to think differently about it and not having that perfectionist mindset and that I'm on the diet, I'm off the diet. Nope. That's why my kids used to laugh at me when they would say something about my diet. And I'd say, I'm not on a diet. This is my lifestyle. There you go. And they still laugh.

Mom, does that cookie fit on your lifestyle? Yes, it does. Thank you so very much for pointing that out. Well, at least you have some accountability crew there. It's always good to have accountability people to give you shit, keep you in line, keep you a little bit honest, let you know they're watching. I've used accountability groups to help me write books, help me stay on my diet, help me go to the gym. You know, sometimes I'll just post on Facebook that, hey, I'm at the gym today. So that people are like, yeah, he's at the gym. And, and, and, and sometimes it helps inspire others. There's

an aspect to that too, but you, you bring up a good point. You know, the hardest thing for me to learn and I, and I really had the hardest time with it was people that would always say to me, it's Chris, it's not, you know, cause I had that perfectionist thing you mentioned. They, they say, Chris, it's not about the journey or it's not about the, uh, it's not, you know, because I had that perfectionist thing you mentioned. They say, Chris, it's not about the journey or it's not about the end goal. It's about the journey. And, you know, and I was a results-oriented person. I'm like, I want it now and I want it done now and I want to do it now and I want to achieve it now. And it used to make me mental when people say that.

I almost want to physically do something to them. Like, hey, Christian, you need to calm down. It's not about the end. It's about the journey, man. And it took me a hard, probably most of my life, to get through what that message meant. And what you are in, you understand now, that it just isn't going to happen overnight. It's the journey. You've got to develop yourself and grow through it and build that thing. that it just isn't going to happen overnight. It's the journey.

You've got to develop yourself and grow through it and build that thing. And it is a lifestyle. You bring up some good points that people, they do a diet. They're like, well, I'm going to do a diet for a few weeks and lose some weight. And then I'm going to go back to eating McDonald's and going to buffets.

Yeah. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. You know, your metabolism slows over the course of a lifetime. It doesn't improve. It slows. And,

you know, it just, it just gets worse. So you've, you've just got to get better. You've got to meet it in the middle somehow or beat it. But even then, you know,

I think we get smarter at taking care of our bodies and then we also learn that you know you can't do all the stuff you used to do when you're young you used to produce all that collagen and you know all the different things that keep you alive with the you know advanced cell growth and so you've got to start taking better care of the ship you're on because it's the only one that's the only one you get. It's the only one you got. Yep. There you go. So now let's talk about what you do with coaching. Do you mostly work with women? And what sort of advice do you give them and help for coaching and tools? So, yes, I do mostly work with women.

Nothing against men. I love men. I live in a family of men. I have two sons. And of course, I had my husband and I even have a dog that's a male. Why I didn't get a female dog, at least so I wasn't in the minority. I don't know. But so yes, I do work with women and I help them. You know, we each have to discover. I didn't even understand what the term limiting beliefs was, you know, until I entered this world. You know, I, my target are really women who are just learning what personal development is.

Like, I just thought that that was a bunch of mumbo jumbo that no people, you know, only a certain type of person paid attention to, not really realizing how life-changing it is to learn some of these skills. And I think what we do have to understand is that we are all born with these limiting beliefs, and we need to kind of explore them and understand them and figure out a way to flip that switch on those beliefs. And then to discover, I didn't even know, okay, well, what do I want to be, do, have when I grow up? And I'm 50 something and I had no idea. We're always evolving. And so we're different people. Although I have to say that as a child, I always wanted to be a teacher. And my mother was a teacher and she was not meant to be a teacher.

And she soon discovered that and became something else. However, she said to me, you're the first generation of women who can go to college and be whatever you want to be. You don't have to be a teacher or a nurse. Not that there's anything wrong with being a teacher or a nurse, but those were really the only choices for women, you know, back in the fifties and sixties when my mom went to school. And so she kind of pushed me away from the teacher deal and I became an accountant and then an insurance agent. And now I find myself, what do I want to do? What's coaching? It's teaching. And so it's interesting to me that, you know what, what I felt as a little girl really was what my passion and my purpose is.

Maybe I'm not a classroom teacher, but now, you know, I get to teach other women how to find their passion and their potential and really figure out what is the life that you want. And the accountability piece that you spoke of, to me, I don't know if I could have accomplished anything that I have without having somebody hold me accountable. And it's just, there's something different. There's something different. Just like you said, even if it's posting in a Facebook group or on your Facebook page, saying it out loud. I remember when I, I don't want to even say this because I'll get booed, but I was a smoker back in the day. It wasn't like it is now this because I'll get booed, but I was a smoker back in the day. It wasn't like it is now. And I loved it. I didn't want to quit. Everybody else, it was like,

oh, and now it would have become like, oh, this is really no good for you. And I was about 27 and I got really sick with mono, very sick. And I was still smoking. And one day I'm sitting there by myself and I'm like, I can't even like breathe. What am I doing here? I'm going to just put it down and, you know, for two hours or whatever it was. And I actually didn't smoke for six days. Wow.

But I said, I didn't tell anyone because if I told someone, now I was going to be accountable. Now they were going to expect me to quit the minute I put it out there. So I didn't until I made the decision, I'm going to do it. And then I shared it. Oh, wow. There know, there's some people that tell people what they do and there's some psychology that when people tell others what they do, their brain thinks they've completed it. It's kind of weird. I read some sort of paper on that one time.

It was kind of interesting. So when you help women, what do you find most women are coming to you with their problems for that they're seeking you out and, you know, you're usually coaching and helping them with? They need to rediscover who they are other than being two different types, other than being the mother, the caregiver, a woman who's midlife and has spent most of her adult life worried about everybody else and not realizing or feeling like she deserved time to herself or, or had the excuse that she couldn't

because she was so busy helping everybody else and helping her discover that no, there is time. The other audience that I have tapped into that I have to be honest is kind of unexpected is young women. Young women who are just trying to figure it out and figure out their path in life. And I love that now younger women are more attuned to that instead of doing what society or their family or whoever else, the other people in their lives feel that is expected of them. They kind of want to figure out, no, what is it? What is it that I want? And how do I establish goals and set the course? There you go. Yeah. It's a hard journey today for people in the world,

especially the young people, the Gen Zers there. You know, it's a tumultuous time, I suppose. I don't know. What's the old Chinese curse? Maybe we live in interesting times. I think we're all kind of born into tumultuous times and tough times. But I don't know, economically wise and, you know, everyone's still waiting for trickle-down economic checks from the 80s. There's a lot of interesting things going on in our economy. But then there's a lot of grand opportunity, too, to take from it. You know, I look at, uh, I talked to my young nephew and, and there's so many great opportunities he has and the, the amount of information that he has, um, in recognizing stuff, you

know, I, I talked to him about collecting stories and, and, uh, and, uh, watching through life. And I talked to him about, you know, doing what they call the T sort of aspect of business where go learn something really well and master it and become really good at it and then go teach others how to do it. And that seems to be a model a lot of people do now with coaching and everything else. And I remember talking to him about it the other week, and he goes, so I can write a book like you, right? I can collect stories and write a book like you right i can collect stories and write a book like you i'm like oh yeah yeah there you go and he's like 23 and he's he's got it he's got more he's got more information and more data than he knows he probably has just encyclopedia

knowledge about so much stuff i mean that you can access the internet that we never had you know me i was just trying to listen to party line to see what was going on that's why you know what connection the world oh that's so funny what three channels and then one that had black and white godzilla on it that's yep exactly yep um so yeah we didn't uh we it was smoke signals were our internet or something i don't know that's right antennas on the tv or something. I don't know. That's right. Antennas on the TV. But even then, it's so overwhelming because at least for us, we could slowly take in the world because it wasn't so much coming at you. You can get on the internet and it's an open express lane. There's just about everything that can come at you.

Just like, holy shit, there is a lot of stuff here. Um, and so I can see how overwhelming it is, uh, for people their age and hopefully they're a little bit more equipped for it, but yeah, trying to figure out who they are, who they want to be. There's so much confusion now between who men and women are, what they are, where they're going, what their roles are. And I imagine young women have a lot of issues with that. And there's, women have a lot of issues with that. And there's all sorts of great examples of how to be good people in the world and bad people in the world. And what does it mean? And sometimes it seems like all the bad, evil people win.

You know, we see that on news and politics and other things. And you're like, see, Jesus, is anybody a good person anymore? And so you're trying to balance, you know, who do I want to be and how do I want to be and am I doing it right and is there right? And it's just a really confusing time, which it's already confusing when you're young. Oh, gosh. And really, you know, I think what's missing and hopefully I think it's becoming more prevalent is coming up with those soft skills or those exercises that help you really tap into who you are, what you want to do. My youngest son is actually a junior in

college and he's got his eye on a prize that I don't really think. I think he's trying to fit himself into a mold that he feels, not me, is expected of him or that will serve him best, maybe financially moving forward. Instead of, and I keep urging him, let's really figure out what do you want? And he just feels, I don't know what I want, or this is what I want, or leave me alone with that kind of stuff. So I feel like saying, no, no, you're not going to be a good example for me if I'm supposed to be a coach that helping transform people. And you're going to go out and do something that, I don't know if it feeds your soul, but I guess we'll see. Because you know what? I've kind of resigned myself. That's how you learn. You can't tell anyone what to do right he has to experience for himself and maybe maybe that is you know his direction is is the right path for him there you go although mommies do you mothers you

do know best uh well i mean let's not push it uh i'm kidding i mean the one thing that are great about mothers is they love you and they usually love you unconditionally most people if you're lucky and you got a mother that puts up with your stupid stuff um you know god bless mothers um but i don't know about mothers knowing best uh my mom's my mom's a great mother and i love her um but sometimes I might know a little bit better. I guess. But we'll give them, let's say 75% times. That's like a fair negotiation. All right, that's fair. I'll give you that.

Mother wants what's best for you 100% of the time. That is true. I know that is very true. There you go. That's true. But it sounds like his thing is just like your thing and like what we talked about with the journey. It's all about the journey and not the destination.

You know, that's why I told my niece and nephew when they were graduating life in their school. And, you know, I've talked about this before on the show, so it's a callback. But, you know, look around, enjoy the journey, but collect stories. I mean, that's what we do on The Chris Foss Show. We're story collectors because the stories are the owner's manual to life it's it's how we learn about life it's we learn from each other each other's mistakes each other's struggle and and our journeys and and and it's interesting how much we learn this is why we write books this is why people read books this is why people watch movies movies. They watch TV. Everything is story collecting.

That's what we're doing. We're trying to figure out life and square things and learn things. Sometimes through just entertainment. You know, you may see something as entertainment. You might learn something from it. But everyone's on that journey. And, yeah, I guess your son's on his journey, discover himself and figure stuff out. And, you know, it's interesting to me

throughout my life on how many adventures I've gone on and how many, you know, I'll be like, Hey, for five years, I want to be a cameraman. I want to be a photographer professionally, or maybe professionally. I don't know. Let's see how this works out. You know, you spend a bunch of money, you toy around, you go learn something and sometimes it doesn't work out, but the lessons you learn from that journey are the most important things that you can take to other things um and that's why that journey statement is so important of people saying it's about the journey not about the angle because the things you learn on the journey are some of the most important aspects to change your life you know remember steve jobs

gave that commencement address um where he talked about he hated college. He flunked out of college. He ditched out of college basically. But he loved going to his course on, what was it, like fonts and calligraphy and writing and stuff like that and how fonts were used and presented to stuff. And he was fascinated by that. And he would steal his way back into college just to take those classes. Well, one of the major proponents of selling aspects of the early Apple was the fact that you could go from typewriters to doing text scripts on the Apple thing. It was a huge selling point. And the fonts and being able to have those different ways of designing uh marketing or books or whatever you wanted to write was a huge seller for it and who

would have known you know he didn't you know at the time that that was going to be something that was going to be his thing uh i never knew that all my stupid stories through life would make a book or future books that i'm currently working on right now. And so it's all about that journey. So I think that's a really important aspect to people, what they can learn and especially helping people through their life and what they want to accomplish with your coaching. Absolutely. And I can say the same thing. When I wrote my memoir, I thought, is just putting these stories? Because in the end, what it wound up to be is a collection of 30 plus stories that, you know,

tell an overall story. And I felt like, does it need more? You know, does it need to have an explanation at the end of each story? And in the end I decided no, because the stories stand on their own and it's there for you to take what you need from each of the stories

so and it's interesting what people learn from like they just you'll have somebody like hey i really like this story and you're just like seriously that one like all the all the ones that are in there that was the best one but it's what identifies with them you know it's kind of when you write when artists write music and lyrics and stuff and people, you know, interpret them all different sorts of ways, but they, it's, it's applicable to them and it helps them. You know, I, I've heard some people, you know, say things about a song or a story or a lyric and they're just like, yeah, that's about this. And you're like, that's not really what it's about if you Google it on Wikipedia, but thanks for playing. Um, but that's not what's important, right? No, definitely.

It's important about how I interpret them. You know, I shared stuff about things that, you know, all of my different journey on Facebook and social media. And a lot of people, you know, it's, you know, I've had people say, wow, I didn't, you know, you sharing the closure with the death of your dogs or a parent, or made me realize I didn't get closure with my parent or a dog or cat or a pet. Um, and now I've helped me cry. You know, these are the ways that these stories are important.

So I'm looking at your website. There are several different offerings you have, as well as coaching. You've got some, a free PDF that can help with self-care on all the different aspects of self-care on life. There's the Unlock Your Inner Power, A Guide to Embracing Your True Self as well. Tell us how people can onboard with you, find out if they're a good fit, reach out to you, and get involved with what you're doing with coaching. I appreciate that. So my website is the best place, debbyrweiss.com. On there, there's a wait list for my coaching program that will be launching the end of November, beginning of December, and we'll be starting in January to get ready for a wonderful 2024. All of the downloads that you mentioned, as well as there's a couple of

free chapters of my book that are on there as well. You can find everything on my website. And then there's contact information, or you can email me at debbie at debbiereweiss.com or DM me on Instagram. And there it is, debbie.r.weiss. There you go. Well, Debbie, it's been fun to have you on. Very wonderful and great story. Thanks for sharing your touching stories. And I think giving people a lot of inspiration, you know, more moms, moms are such giving people, they give to everybody first, but they, you know, they need to take care of themselves. They need to feed themselves. They need to make sure not only feed themselves, you know, they need to take care of themselves. They need to feed themselves. They need to make sure not only feed themselves, you know, not being the last to eat, but, you know, feed their soul, feed their ambitions, you know, take care of themselves first. You need time out.

I mean, if you're the one advice I would give to to people is if you're away on your girls trip is you need to take some time to refill your basket, your mental, physical, spiritual health basket and, and go do things for yourself. I've learned, uh, I have to do that with even my work. or peacetime or time to decompress and kind of reward myself and fulfill myself a little bit so I can come back refreshed and be like, okay, pat on the back. This is why we do this. Absolutely. And you know, I don't have it in front of me, but it's something like about 25% of caregivers wind up having health problems because they're not paying attention to themselves. And then what happens? You can't even be the caregiver that you want it to be. So people think that self-care is selfish, but it really is just the opposite.

It's really essential for you and for your loved ones. It can grind you down. And so take care of yourself first, and then you can share yourself with others and build other people up. But unless you have that foundation, it's hard to build on that. Thanks to you very much for coming on, Debbie. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneschristmas, linkedin.com, fortuneschristmas, youtube.com, fortuneschristmas, and christmas1 on the tickety-tockety over there. Order up Debbie's book. On second thought, maybe I can just come out and published on august 7 2023 uh thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time