Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
How To Get What Ever You Want In Life: Lessons from a Rockstar's Journey
What do rock legends like Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, and Mick Jagger have in common with your journey toward self-fulfillment? Find out more with this week's special guest Dr. Glenn Berger, who draws powerful life lessons from his extraordinary career path spanning from recording studio engineer to psychotherapist.
Berger's transformational story begins at age 17, working alongside music icons. Despite the glamour, the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" lifestyle eventually led to personal destruction. His pivotal moment came at Ellis Island, where his immigrant grandfather's sacrifice inspired him to completely reinvent himself. This radical shift launched his 25-year career helping others overcome their own stuckness.
Through his work with clients and his personal journey, Berger identified six key characteristics that keep people trapped and offers practical, evidence-based approaches to overcome each obstacle.
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Hello everybody, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is Awakened Conscious Conversations podcast, and joining us soon all the way from the USA will be the one and only Dr Glenn Berger. And Dr Glenn Berger has a very interesting life and when he was younger he was in the music industry as an engineer and producer. On his first day in the music industry he met the legend James Brown. He's worked with Rock, rowdy, dylan, sinatra, jagger, to name but a few, and what these artists taught him? He realized that it held a key to success in life and he brought it into his program for self-realization. He pivoted careers and became a psychotherapist coach for over 25 years. He was very young when he got into the music industry and I've been reading his book Never Say no to a Rockstar and I think it really captures that, that excitement, but also all the elements of the, the music industry, and I've just started it, but from what I've read so far, I find it deeply moving and I'm really looking forward to hearing more about it and we're going to help you do this and how to get everything you want in your life, in a sense, how to navigate through that kind of sticky stuckness that we can get into, which can feels a bit more gluey and hardened glue as we get older, right, and so my wish for you today, dear listeners, is to find a way to kind of navigate through all this, and that would be fantastic for all of us. So I'm very much looking forward to speaking to Dr Glenn Berger, and he's going to share all kinds of different things of how he's going to be able to help us, and I would like him to share with us today how we're going to navigate through that Before it comes on air. You know, sometimes we get stuck in life and we think life each day can be a bit mundane.
Speaker 1:I've always found my way of getting stuckness is to look into nature, like earlier. If I hadn't been sitting quietly in like one spot, I would never have spotted it. A little leaf cutter bee came past me and had a. I didn't get a photograph because I was sitting meditating, but it had a little leaf in it and then it was burying into my strawberry pox and drawn strawberries and it was making its little nest. And I looked online. They don't live for very long. I think it's about six weeks, and if it's a female one, she'd be laying a nest, or it could be male, but I've got a feeling that it's a female one and if it's warm it doesn't take very long for the, the little baby bees, to be ready and out in the world.
Speaker 1:And the reason I was sharing this was that that is a way to kind of get out of the mundane and stuckness that we may have in in life in so many ways, and that's why I really want to share that with you today. And it sounds like, oh, a little thing, but it's quite a big thing because this is a little creature that's been really resourceful and has managed to quite dig a hole. And I'm going to be very careful when I walk around that stroke because of the bee, but it's. I find that really fascinating and uplifting. There are ways that I find I feel less stuck, so maybe everything's not working exactly how I want it to be, but then I can find little miracles. So things like that nature is always a miracle to me. So I'm very intrigued to find out from you, dear listener, what a miracle is for you, without further ado, dr Glenn Berger. Welcome to the show, glenn.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's such an honor. And where are you joining us today? Oh, I'm in uh pleasantville, new york oh wow, well, welcome, welcome, thank you so we thought what better person to speak to us today than yourself on how to get everything you want in life and get out of that stuck feeling first? First of all, would you mind sharing a bit about your journey so far and what inspired you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. When I was 17 years old, I was blessed to get an internship working at one of the greatest recording studios in the world, a place called A&R Studios, and I ended up being mentored by one of the greatest producers of that time, a man named Phil Ramone Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award winning guy, and I ended up working with people like Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra and Mick Jagger and Steely Dan and so many great artists from that time, and it was really quite an extraordinary experience for a young man like me, and I learned so much about how to make great art and how those great artists did their work to achieve so much. At the same time, it was, as they say, a place of drug, sex and rock and roll, and it was a pretty tough place to work as well. The demands were very extreme and the way that I was treated was not you couldn't, you wouldn't be allowed to treat somebody the way today, the way I was treated back then and eventually, after being in the business for many years, I pretty much destroyed my life. I destroyed a marriage with infidelity, I was taking drugs every day and I was completely lost. And it was my 37th birthday and I was out with some friends and I was mo drugs every day and I was completely lost. And it was my 37th birthday and I was out with some friends and I was moaning and groaning what should I do with my life? I'm completely lost. And there was a woman there who had a migraine headache. She was passed out on the table and she lifted her head and she said go to Ellis Island.
Speaker 2:Now for those of you, your listeners, who may not know, ellis Island is in New York Harbor and it's the place where millions of immigrants were processed in the early part of the 20th century and now it's a tourist site. So I took it as a sign and I went out there and on the seawall are etched the names of every immigrant who has come through that island. And I found my grandfather's name, who came there in 1906 without a nickel in his pocket from Ukraine, escaping the pogroms. And I spoke to my ancestor. I spoke to my grandfather in desperation and I said Grandpa, what should I do with my life? And I heard his voice in my head and he said go back to school, because, as you may note from the beginning of my story, I never went to college.
Speaker 2:I went right into the recording studio when I was 17 years old. So I didn't have one college credit at 37. And I said I can't go back to school, I don't have the time, I don't have the money. And he said why do you think? I came here? I knew I would never make it. I came here for you, for the promise of my grandchildren. So don't tell me you don't have the time or the money. Work it out. I couldn't argue with that. That was October and I was back in school by January and I decided that what I would study was how did I get so, so lost and how could I find myself again? And maybe, if I could figure those things out for myself, maybe I could help other people do the same thing. And that has motivated me for all these many years. That's been my mission in life and that's what I'm passionate about and that's what brings me here with you today.
Speaker 1:Oh, what a fascinating story and to be able to kind of change from being in that rock industry, but exciting. But, like you said, I remember reading in your book on your first day they gave you drugs, didn't they? On your first, your very first day. So it had its wonderful parts. On your first, your very first day. So it had its wonderful parts, but obviously challenging bits as well. And if I'm a listener and I'm thinking, why is it so hard, why am I so stuck? And my life feels hard and it's easy for other people, what would you suggest they can do today?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, first of all, I was working with somebody this morning and I came up with the line you're caught in the headlights of life, right, and when we are in fear, we can either run or fight or freeze, and a lot of people freeze out of fear. So what I've noticed is that people who are stuck in their life tend to have six characteristics, and those are. The first one is shame. Where shame is the feeling that goes along with the belief that I don't measure up as a person. It could take the form of I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm stupid, I'm unlovable, but the underlying feeling is the same and people believe in the way they talk to themselves negatively. They believe that they need to beat themselves up to get themselves to do things, but tons of science and research shows us that that is not the case, that you need to cultivate self-compassion in order to get out of your stuck place in life. The second characteristic of people who are stuck is, as I was just saying, they're afraid. They avoid, they procrastinate, the body says don't do it, and then they don't do it, not realizing they're afraid of the wrong thing. The way to get out of that stuckness is to cultivate courage. You have to do something scary every day, even a little thing, and again, tons of evidence that that is the means for getting unstuck out of fear. The third characteristic of stuck people is they have bad habits. So the man that I was talking to this morning he drinks hard every weekend and then Monday's a rough day and then he'll recover for a couple of days and then he'll go back to drinking again. Why does he do that? Because he's medicating his feelings, he's medicating his pain, he's avoiding, out of fear, doing what he needs to do to make his life better. So I don't know if you've heard of Dave Goggins, but he's a kind of a world famous figure for having changed his life. He weighed 300 pounds, he didn't know how to read or write and he decided to change his life, and the method was, he said I'm going to do what I don't want to do every day until I become the person that I respect. So the third way to get out of stuckness is to do what you don't want to do. Right, you don't feel like going to the gym? Go to the gym.
Speaker 2:The fourth characteristic of stuck people is they tend to be negative. They don't believe anything's going to work out for them. They think the world is against them. There's so much in life right now where it's so easy to be negative, especially if you live on this side of the pond but if you get stuck in that negativity then you're not going to do anything because you're going to say what's the point? Nothing's ever going to work out for me. It's natural to be negative. It's evolutionarily in our genes to be that way. The anxious people survived, but it doesn't help us in the world that we live in today. So we need to cultivate, through visualization, positivity. We have to see that things are going to work out for us. We have to believe that things are going to work out for us and we need to cultivate that on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:The fifth characteristic of stuck people is people are afraid to learn.
Speaker 2:Somehow we learn the wrong things in school, that they're stupid or that learning is boring.
Speaker 2:But how are you going to grow skills, how are you going to become empowered with knowledge, unless you're willing to learn every day?
Speaker 2:And the sixth and final characteristic of stuck people is that they tend to be self-hating. They don't take care of this beautiful temple that we have, of our body. And so if you eat the right food, if you get sleep, if you exercise, you're going to have more energy, you're going to be more motivated, you're going to feel better about yourself, you're going to heal your shame. So you put all those six things together. Then you are going to start feeling good about yourself, you're going to get things done, you're going to change your bad habits into good ones, you're going to start seeing things in a positive way, you're going to learn things and become good at things and you're going to love yourself. And then you're going to feel great about yourself. So this is work. This is daily self-cultivation. It sounds like a lot, but if you do a little bit every day, five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day of cultivating yourself, you're going to get unstuck.
Speaker 1:That's great advice and as I was listening to you, dr Glenn, I was thinking about the times when I kind of allowed myself to feel it's a bit of an indulgence Sometimes, when's feeling sorry for oneself. I guess that's going to happen, but it's how we kind of get out of that and and and changing um, because my bad habit is sometimes I like to have dark chocolate because that makes me feel like comforted and stuff, but then it's not best to have it.
Speaker 1:Ah, yes, exactly, we both just a nibble, just a little nibble nibble, yeah and um, our like, I kind of can go into that thing of feeling sorry for myself, but it is the moments when we pull ourselves out of that and, like you were saying, if we keep doing the same things the same way, nothing's kind of gonna change. I guess that's the way your course can help people, because you've got, you've done, this amazing course, which was inspired by the artists that you met and also your own life's journey. Could you explain a bit about the course and how our listeners can connect with that?
Speaker 2:absolutely I. Along my journey of trying to figure out how to get myself unstuck and how to help other people get unstuck, how to find themselves, I discovered a Chinese sage named Mencius, who lived 2,500 years ago. And of all the wise things that Mencius said, my favorite was pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it, and has lost his heart and does not go out and recover it. When people's dogs and chicks are lost, they go out and look for them, but when their hearts or original nature are lost, they do not go out and look for them. The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to find the lost heart, trying to find the lost heart.
Speaker 2:And when I heard that, I knew that I had found the pathway to figuring out the answer to this question. It asked more questions than it answered, which were what is the heart? What does it look like to have a lost heart? How do we lose the heart? And, most importantly, how do we find the heart again? And that sent me again on this road of the many decades to answer those questions. And I would say that, as Mencius says, as the eye knows the beautiful and the mouth knows the delicious, the heart knows the good. If we learn how to listen to and contact our heart, it will direct us in the right direction in our life.
Speaker 2:But unfortunately, so many of us have lost contact with this essential part of ourselves.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to make it as easy and as simple as possible for people to be able to reconnect with their heart, to be able to learn how to listen to their heart and to be able to work.
Speaker 2:Those six attributes of the heart that I just named, which are self-compassion, courage, strength, imagination, wisdom and love, learn more in several hours than you would in 10 years of therapy and 60 exercises that people can actually do to self-cultivate, so they don't have to figure out what to do in order to cultivate those attributes of the heart. And finally, there's a community aspect, because we know from ample research that we can't do this alone, that we need to connect with other people and to get the support of other people. So you get all of that in this course. I recognize that therapy, which I love and I do every day, and people obviously get a benefit from, but most of the time it's not enough. Talking to me for 45 minutes is not enough. You need to do this work on a daily basis, and so I wanted to provide a platform where people could easily do this work so that they could become their best self, so they could realize their optimal potential and what a great gift to give to the world.
Speaker 1:And sometimes it can be hard for people to get to therapy as well with yeah and yeah, it's part of the challenges and it were kind of a bit. People can feel time starved. Starved these days and I think the only way you can cultivate change is if one works on oneself daily in a way that's going to kind of like help. So I understand that you also help. Creativity within this fits in with all of this. I'm guessing the creativity, because because of all these rock gods I've got that you you've worked with and yourself becoming this amazing producer and and sound engineer. How does the creativity part fit into all of this?
Speaker 2:yeah. So what? I, if somebody? When people ask, what did those artists have? That was different. Yes, they were extraordinarily talented.
Speaker 2:But more than seeing flights of imaginative creativity, what I saw was dogged perseverance. When I couldn't take another minute, they said let's do it again, let's do it again, let's do it again. They were in pursuit of something and they were relentless in that pursuit. So if I was working with Steely Dan and we were working on a basic track, maybe we'd work on that one track for 12 hours. But I tell you something, when it was done, it was extraordinary. It was incredible, and I wouldn't even know what they were looking for. I said what are you? It's great, it's enough, let's stop. And they heard something that they were going after and maybe the average listener wouldn't know what those things are. But you feel it and that's why here it is, 50 years later, and people are still listening to that music that I worked on 50 years ago. Who knew? I never thought that that was going to be the case. I would have taken more photographs if I would have realized that, to maintain the history. But we didn't know that was going to happen.
Speaker 2:So there's a book called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, book called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and in it he says that anytime you're trying to do anything creative whether it's music, film or science or anything you are going to have resistance. There's going to be a force within you that is going to try to stop you. That force can take many forms. It can be what's the point of doing this? You stink. It'll never be any good, whatever the content is. It's a force within you, and part of the reason that I advocate cultivating these attributes of the heart is because it's hard to push through that resistance, and these are all tools to get yourself to do something. So I have.
Speaker 2:I have a client that I work with now who's a funny guy. He's always wanted to be in comedy and but he's always stopped himself and and through our work together, he's now putting out TikToks, and one that he put out a couple of weeks ago went viral and now has millions of views because he pushed through that resistance, he allowed himself to do it. Who cares if it's good, bad or otherwise, you never know what's going to, what's going to connect with people, right, and it's funny and he's brought joy to the world. People are laughing. You know we need laughter so much in the world that we live in today. It took a lot for him, a lot of self-cultivation, to have the courage to just put himself out into the world.
Speaker 2:And and when somebody says, well, how do you make something great, I say, well, you. You always ask yourself the question how can I do it better? How can it be better? How can it be better? How can it be better? Not at the beginning of the process. At the beginning, you just throw whatever, you just play question and you keep getting better over over time and and and, to recognize that what you're offering we get so caught up in. How is somebody going to react to it? As compared to? This is my gift that I'm offering to the world oh, that's a beautiful way to to put it.
Speaker 1:and the humor aspect, I think, is a missing component in many people's lives, and you know, people have got through crisis by finding the humour and the joy, and I feel like you've shaken me with what you're saying in a good way, like actually, these things, these hang-ups that we have to stop us putting ourselves out there, it's kind of barriers that we've allowed around ourselves, and we can get through that by just being a bit more brave, and courage is one of the aspects of coming back to the heart. I'm interested to find out. So in the music industry you're 37, which is still young today, but it is actually you realize this isn't the path you want to go down anymore. How did you come out of that life crisis and kind of become the the psychotherapist you've been for the last 25 years?
Speaker 2:I'd always been interested in two things music and psychology. I realized after some point they both involved listening. To be a great therapist, you really have to be able to listen with authority or to really penetrate what somebody is going for. With music, it's the same thing and with music, it's the same thing. What I loved about being in the music world at that time which seems like ancient history now was the people I got to sit in a room with. Sometimes there'd be 40 musicians in the room producers, arrangers, engineers, assistants and all of the musicians and that was really the joy for me. These are some great, great people the studio musicians that I worked with.
Speaker 2:In my book, which is called Never Say no to a Rockstar, it's dedicated to the people behind the scenes. Everybody wants to hear about the great artists and I write about them, but very often the great artists were not great people. They were in a lot of pain and they could be very difficult. But the people behind the scenes, the studio musicians and the arrangers these were incredible folks and I loved being with them. But the business changed and I ended up sitting in a room with one person with a laptop, because everything is so much is done just virtually now, and that wasn't fun for me anymore, and so I recognized that my love was really for the people, and so I work with a lot of artists now and I understand their pain.
Speaker 2:It's not easy being an artist everything that we've just talked about and it's hard right now in so many of the arts, to make a living, to get the attention that they deserve actually. And even the ones who are successful suffer a lot of rejection and a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of pain, and I love them. I love the personality type. Many artists are, shall we say, eccentric, and I relate to those folks. I am an artist myself myself, so I'm really doing much more of what I meant to do working with people in this way and helping them to get to the point where they can create or do their best creation than to be in the studio pressing some buttons on a computer oh, and what a gift to the world that we can help people, because I think so many people are stuck, either artists or not, and it's not something that we learn at school, is it?
Speaker 1:How to, kind of like, navigate life. We might learn how to do maths or English, but navigating through life, and it can be a tricky thing. So I think your work's going to be of great benefit. What is the biggest? I know there's something you've drawn which is the Heartfinders Project, and what is the biggest another thing that you've drawn, which is the heart finders project, and what? What is the biggest dream that you have relating to that?
Speaker 2:if you would share about what the heart finders project is, that would be great yeah, what I see is that so many people, for so many reasons that we could go into, in the culture that we live in, in the very materialistic culture that we live in, that so many people are suffering, they are stuck, they are not realizing their inherent potential. Aristotle has this word, entelechy, which is that which we are meant to be. Within the acorn lies the mighty oak tree. We don't end up the way we start out, and if the acorn gets the proper sunlight, soil and water, it becomes what it's meant to be, which is the oak tree. We, too, have an entelechy, something that we're meant to be, the full expression of our potentials. And everywhere I look, I see people who are not realizing that potential.
Speaker 2:And right now, in order to make the world a better place, to get out of this difficult time that we're living in, each one of us needs to do the work of becoming our best self, because when we become our best self, then we can do what we can do to make the world a better place. So I had to figure out what it was that I could do, what my contribution would be to make the world a better place, and that's to help other people realize their intellikey to realize their potential so that they can do make their contribution to it, to a better world. So I want to spread that message to as many people as I possibly can I love that we change ourselves, we kind of change, change the world and what.
Speaker 1:What a wonderful thing to do if I'm a listener and I'm thinking, oh, this is really feeling right to me. How can they access the course and stuff? So how could they find your course?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So if you go to goheartfindersco, you can set up a free consultation with me. I've got a video there where you can learn more about the course. So it's goheartfinders H-E-A-R-T-F-I-N-D-E-R-S, which is one word, co, and that is the best way to access the course. Also, if you join the course, there's a seven day free trial period if you want to try it out, and I'm trying to make it accessible to as many people as possible, and I'm I'd be more than happy to have a conversation with anybody who's interested oh, fantastic, and I'll put links in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:I think it's really really important work. I would like to ask I like it's one of my favorite questions is is there anything in the world that you wish that? Is there something that you wish everybody knew in the world? And so what is it?
Speaker 2:that's a great. That's a great question. What do I want everybody to know? Yeah, I want everybody to know that they are lovable. I want everybody to know that they are worthy. I want everybody to know that they have unrealized potential, that they can cultivate, that nobody is stuck or nobody's broken and that if we work on ourselves every day, we all have infinite potential for growth. And so, again, in the face of so many people feeling despair, that there is hope, and to encourage everybody to look in the mirror and see the beauty instead of the ugliness or whatever it is that they criticize themselves for, to be compassionate to themselves, to be kind and gentle and encouraging with themselves instead of critical.
Speaker 1:Kindness goes a long way and it's a much nicer lens to view oneself because we can be quite self-critical and see all the things that are wrong. So what is the one course of action that any listener could do today to make their life better?
Speaker 2:of action that any listener could do today to make their life better. So here's what I recommend is a very simple exercise that you could do every day. I do it every day. It takes about two minutes.
Speaker 2:I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do an affirmation, which is you're amazing because and the evidence indicates that if you put it in that second word, second tense, where you're talking to yourself, that that's more effective. So you're amazing because and fill in the blank, think of something that you did yesterday. It doesn't have to be the most amazing thing in the world, it's anything right. You're amazing because you wash the dishes right, whatever it is. The second one is I'm appreciative for. So I appreciate, as Patti Smith said, I appreciate that I have a toothbrush.
Speaker 2:Again, it doesn't matter what it is. Find something that you're appreciative for. I'm appreciative for my health, I'm appreciative for this conversation with you. That's what I'm going to say tomorrow. I'm going to say I'm amazing because I did this and I appreciate the fact that I had the opportunity to do it and to meet you. And the third one is to envision. So, whatever you want to bring into your life, into the world, whether it's short-term, medium-term, long-term, something you want tomorrow, something you want next month, something you want in three years. To start seeing it in your mind's eye, to cultivate that vision, because, again, we know that mental rehearsal makes it more likely that that thing is going to happen. So I wake up. You're amazing because I appreciate, fill in the blank, here's my vision, takes two minutes, starts my day, and that's a simple thing that everybody can do to activate the neurons in your brain that are going to get you a little bit unstuck.
Speaker 1:That's a great way to start the day, instead of waking up and looking at the news and then kind of things that you can't change right.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly. Or hitting the snooze button and pulling the covers over your head, yeah, or hitting the snooze button and pulling the covers over your head. Yeah, you know. Open up the shades, let the sunlight in, start the day, and you're going to feel better.
Speaker 1:That's a better way to start the day. I like that a lot. I'm intrigued. Out of all the it's probably a bit of a difficult question to answer, but out of all these rock stars that you worked with, what was the most inspiring experience? I bet there's probably many, but maybe there might be one yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know the the the ages of your listeners, so I don't know if they'll be able to understand or relate to what I'm about to say, but I'll try to put it in a way that it makes sense. So I had the extraordinary experience of working with Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones. He's still performing in his 80s, so I hope some people still know who the Stones are and they're still doing amazing work. And he I mean he talk about somebody who's realized his potential that this guy is in his 80s and he's still rocking for two and a half hours on the stage. It's just a great, great role model.
Speaker 2:And so we were alone in the studio together one Saturday morning we were mixing a recording of a live performance and nobody else was in the room at that time. I was still very I think I was 19 years old at the time and we were listening to a track and he said you know, I don't like my lead vocal. Sometimes, secretly, even though it's called a live recording, people would replace parts if they didn't like it. So he said, well, set up a microphone out for me in the studio. And he went out into the room, which was right across the glass from me, maybe six feet away from me, and he sang the song Honky Tonk Women, which was one of their biggest hits in the late 60s. Looking at me singing that song right to me, I got a solo performance from Mick Jagger singing one of his biggest hits and that was a very special.
Speaker 2:That was a very special moment and at that time I had a lot of red hair and he said that one's for you, ginger, and uh, I love it. Wow, oh, that's a good experience. That was absolutely great. That was a memory and and you know this is if I could just wax poetic on this subject for one more minute this is one of the things that I encourage young people to do is have adventures, take risks. If I hadn't have overcome my fear and walked into that studio and suffered what I suffered and put up with all the crap that I put up with, I wouldn't have that memory. Today, 50 years later, I'm telling you this story and I'm remembering this, if you'll screw up your life the way that I did, but it left me with memories that are extraordinary and, in fact, that I was able to write a book about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what a book. Never Say no to a Rockstar. And it's interesting because I've got some family members that are only in their teens but they love the music from that era. There's something timeless about the music from that time and I think it kind of makes people want to be more creative, or it does myself. And your book Never Say no to a Rockstar. That's available worldwide, isn't it? On Amazon and all the other different platforms and on Audible, so I was starting to read it on Kindle, but I'm actually going to download the Audible and listen to it in the car. But we've reached the point in the interview where I'd like you to share whatever you would like, dr Glenn, because I think sometimes I'm directing the interview, but is there anything you would like to share with the listeners that we haven't covered?
Speaker 2:What I was thinking a couple of minutes ago is, when you were talking, we were talking about creativity and resistance and having the courage to express yourself that I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you doing this, that you're taking the risk of having this podcast, bringing people on, having these kinds of conversations, sharing this with the world. And one thing that I learned I had an experience some years ago where I worked with a woman who had terminal cancer and she died and for a minute I thought what was the point of our therapy. I wasn't able to save her and I went to a memorial for her. I'm feeling a little emotional talking about this and different people spoke about this person and one woman was speaking about her and she said you know, barbara always said to me and then she said words that I had said to Barbara and so and she said and you know, whenever Barbara would say that it helped me so much.
Speaker 2:And it made me realize that we never know. We never know who we're helping and how we're helping them. We don't know you and I don't know who's going to be listening to this and maybe get something out of it. Maybe they'll never reach out to me. Maybe they'll never tell you, but maybe it'll change them in a positive way or inspire them or make them feel better, and we'll never know that. So I appreciate you doing this with that faith, with that knowing that if you put yourself out there it's going to have a positive effect in the world, that then that person might pass it down to somebody else, who might pass it down to somebody else, and that's why we do this. So I just want to thank you for having me on here and for doing the work that you do and taking the risks that you take to be creative.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dr Glenn. I feel emotional talking to you as well. It resonated. That's why I started doing this. It wasn't something that was natural to me and it wanted to help people. But listening to you today, I feel that you've changed my life and what the conversation you've had you reminded me of, like the places I'm stuck and how I can move forward. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I agree if this podcast helps listeners in whatever way, then that's the way it's meant to be. So thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. Dear listeners, as always, there's a meditation inspired by today's show, but, Dr Glenn Berger, I'll put a link to Dr Glenn's website in the notes and also to his amazing book, which I'm really enjoying. Never say no to a rock star. But thank you once again, Dr Glenn.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun.
Speaker 1:It's been so much fun for me as well. So thank you. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back always nice to sit on a block or a cushion. Although that's not available for you, you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching, and if you're doing something that requires you concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation at a time that is good for you, if you're doing the meditation, let's begin. Here's today's meditation, inspired by today's deeply inspiring show.
Speaker 1:Some days we may approach things and find things flow, and other times they don't. So here's a quick two minute meditation which is aimed to help you feel a bit less stuck and a little bit more in the flow, closing the eyes and breathing calmly and deeply through the nostrils and feel as if the nostrils flare a bit. That allows for a bit more air. And as you exhale, try and make the inhalation and exhalation the same length, but try to make it so it's not forced. It feels like a flow and as you breathe, when you're closing your eyes, just keep coming back to the breath, keep coming back to the breath, keep coming back to the breath. So if your mind wanders here or your mind wanders there, just entice it back to the breath and you just allow that flow. So, in and out it flows, all around, round and round, the breath does flow and you feel as if you have arrived in the most creative room that you can imagine in your imagination, in your imagination, and it's a simple meditation. As you breathe, a beautiful board is in front of you and on that board is a chalk. And as you breathe and you're calm, and even if the mind flitters off somewhere, you can come back to that breath and just be slow.
Speaker 1:So there's nothing big that you need to do in the meditation today, but I invite you, from of calm, to go and pick up the piece of chalk and just write on it one thing that you love about yourself, the first thing that comes into your head. Take a few more breaths as you breathe in and out through the nostrils, that sense of calmness, that sense of being and that sense of yourself, and pick up the chalk again and write one thing that you're proud of One thing that you're proud of, and then return back to the breath, nice and calmly, nice and deeply. Finally, when you feel stuck, write one word or phrase that in your imagination that will help you. It could be get more fresh air, go out in nature. It could be anything but something that is good for you, that is going to help you on this journey, and then slowly come back into the moment, come back into the room and you may want to jot down those details on a piece of paper to help you navigate through the day. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:There's always a meditation on the end of the episode, so if you want a longer or shorter meditation, then by all means explore those meditations. So thank you for listening.
