102: Life Transitions: Building Resilience and Gratitude, with Debbie Weiss

Join us as we uncover the profound impact of gratitude on personal growth, leveraging the small, positive shifts that can lead to a more fulfilling life in this final episode in the Life Transitions series.

We discuss the transformative power of resilience with Debbie Weiss. She shares her insights on cultivating a mindset that not only acknowledges emotions like sadness but also empowers you to take responsibility and move forward and offers strategies for creating a vibrant life by weaving in positive elements daily.

Debbie Weiss is a Canfield Certified Trainer in the Success Principles, an entrepreneur running both an insurance agency and her online store, “A Sprinkle of Hearts,” host of the “maybe I can” podcast, inspirational speaker, family caregiver, and mother. She is an expert in chasing your own dreams in spite of your circumstances. She is the best-selling author of the memoir “On second thought,...maybe I can" as well as a co-author in the Amazon best seller collaborative book “Heart Whispers”. Debbie's soon-to-be-published book, “The Sprinkle Effect: A Guide to Living a More Colorful and Fulfilling Life,” adds another vibrant chapter to her literary journey.

You can reach Debbie on her website or LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 1:14 Building Resilience in Life Transitions
• 6:45 Embracing Resilience Through Change
• 24:07 Creating Colorful and Resilient Lives

Transcript

Debbie Weiss: 1:15

We're responsible for our lives, regardless of these transitions, regardless of these circumstances that happen that we have no control over. We are always responsible for how we respond to those circumstances, and that doesn't mean you're going to have something terrible happen and you're going to say, oh yay, that was great. Of course not right. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is it's your responsibility, like you said in the beginning. Of course it's natural, and we experience emotions, that we feel badly or sad, all of those things. Sad, all of those things.

Manya Chylinski: 1:57

But yet at a certain point, we then have the responsibility to figure out where we go from here. Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Debbie Weiss. In the last episode in our series, life Transitions Building Resilience in Change. Debbie is a bestselling author, trainer, an entrepreneur, a speaker, podcast host, a family caregiver and a mother. She has overcome her own limiting beliefs and fears, allowing her to live her best life. Today we talked about dealing with significant change. How to build resilience. What are the things we need to be doing and thinking about in our daily lives so that we're ready for those big changes that happen to all of us? You're going to really enjoy this episode, debbie. I'm so excited to be chatting with you today. Thanks for being here. Oh, thanks for having me, manya. The first question I ask all my guests this year if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?

Debbie Weiss: 3:18

This is challenging and I should have really given it some more thought because it's a tough one. There's so many people to choose from, right, but George Washington comes to mind because I am very intrigued with everything having to do with the revolutionary period and I think that I just can't believe when I think about the bravery of all of those people right, obviously, not just George Washington, but he comes to mind. I'm so interested to know, to understand, how you overcome that fear with this incredible desire that that overtakes everything, and so I'd like to pick his brain about his experience.

Manya Chylinski: 4:15

Yes, wow, that would be amazing, and I want to be clear. I asked this question of my guests, and every time I think to myself I have no idea what I would answer if somebody asked me this question. It's hard. It is hard and there are. I think it's true for so many of us that there are a lot of people we would have on a list, and I think it depends on the moment that you're asking the question. What are you thinking? What's top of mind? Exactly? I agree, though. I think George Washington would be fabulous, and I wish I could make any or all of these happen, because it would be amazing.

Manya Chylinski: 4:54

Oh yeah, okay. So we are here to talk about life transitions, so what do you think are the key components of thinking about resilience in the face of change, since we're all always dealing with change?

Debbie Weiss: 5:15

We are, and it all comes down to the way we think about change. For the longest time, I felt that change was scary and change was something to be avoided, not realizing that you can't avoid change. Like you said, nothing is constant. We are always evolving and things are always changing. And when I realized that change can be good, even though change is scary and sometimes we did not choose the change right, when we're talking about major life transitions and for me, the thing on top of my mind most is becoming a widow that's obviously not a change that I asked for, but learning to somehow embrace it is easier said than done, but it all starts with the mindset that you have going into it. Yes, absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 6:19

Well, as you're thinking about that mindset, how would you define success in dealing with these kinds of transitions? And I think we are talking about some of these larger transitions and things that we didn't necessarily ask for to have happen to us things that we didn't necessarily ask for to have happened to us.

Debbie Weiss: 6:46

When thinking about mindset, I wasn't even aware of what the term really meant. I wasn't aware that I was telling myself stories that weren't necessarily true. And if I keep talking to myself and I tell myself that I'm not capable, I can't do it, I'll never, life will never be the same, then that's my truth. I forget the exact quote, but it's something by Henry Ford that says whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.

Manya Chylinski: 7:15

Yes.

Debbie Weiss: 7:16

And it's so true. We can talk ourselves in and out of anything and we just don't realize it, like we give responsibility to oh, my husband died, my life is over, it's that kind of thinking, but yet my husband died. It's not what I wanted, it's not what I hoped for, it's not what I expected my life to be. But that is my choice. Then, where I go from here at this crossroads, it doesn't have to define me.

Manya Chylinski: 7:52

Yes, it is so true, though, what you say, that we often go to the negative, and a little bit of that, perhaps, is fine, but staying there is the challenge, and I think that's the way our brains work, trying to protect us. So, thinking of what does this horrible thing mean? How do we get out of that thinking and understand that we do have some agency?

Debbie Weiss: 8:24

First thing when you were asking that question that popped into my head was gratitude, and gratitude was something a gratitude practice, quite frankly, I thought was ridiculous. When I first heard it I was like what, what do you mean? I'm supposed to say what I'm thankful for? Well, of course I'm thankful for my kids, my dog, whatever it is. It seemed to me to be a waste of time or ridiculous or fluff or whatever. And somebody gifted me a gratitude journal, but when my husband was still alive, but I was still going.

Debbie Weiss: 9:02

You know, I was going through a very tough time and she gifted me this gratitude journal and I thought, oh, my goodness, now I have to use it because she gave me this dumb gift and she's going to ask me. And so I tried. And it was a journal with specific prompts in it. It wasn't just like a blank journal. It told you in the morning to answer these questions and then in the evening to answer these questions. And so, being the A student, I had this pressure like, well, what exactly do they want me to say? And I had to realize nobody's grading or reading my gratitude journal. So just kind of go with it and forget that there's rules.

Debbie Weiss: 9:42

And what I found was, at first I was answering the questions the same way, like I said, every day it would be I'm thankful for my kids and my house and my job and whatever.

Debbie Weiss: 9:55

And then what I started noticing was, during the day, I started paying attention to other things that I never paid attention to before, like, wow, it's such a sunny day, look at how blue the sky is. Wow, look at the trees how they move in the breeze. And I really started paying attention to life that was around me that I was ignoring. It was almost like, well, I needed new things to put in my gratitude journal, but yet it changed me because, like when I was walking my dog, I would usually be looking at my phone and instead I said, put the phone down and just look around, take a deep breath, and really made me realize that it was like getting out of my own head and it helped me realize that there is so much that we all have, no matter how bad it is, no matter how bad it seems. There is still so much to be grateful for, and we have to notice it, because when we don't, we're just like in our own heads, in our misery, and we can't get out.

Manya Chylinski: 11:15

I love what you said about the gratitude journal, or doing that gratitude practice. Had you been more aware of your surroundings, realizing I want to have more things to be grateful for. And it's so true that when we really look at the number of things that we have to be grateful for and even if it is just, I am grateful that I woke up this morning, or just I'm grateful that the sun is shining that is still so powerful, as you have described.

Debbie Weiss: 11:51

It is. It turns out it's not a bunch of nonsense like I thought it was originally, but I have to be honest, because it was really. The things that help with resilience are being open to things that you might not have been open to before. That was one of them for me, yeah.

Manya Chylinski: 12:10

Is there any way for us to prepare to handle big changes? We don't know what the thing is going to be, but how can we prepare for something?

Debbie Weiss: 12:22

I do think that caring for yourself and focusing on yourself is not selfish, and I always thought it was. I've been a family caregiver for my father, my son with special needs and my husband for over 40 years and it took me about 30 of those years to realize that I was losing myself. And why this is important in resilience is because you have to learn what you need, and if you don't know what you need and if you don't know, it will be very hard to bounce back from whatever life throws your way To have something of your own. I think about when my husband had a bunch of physical and mental illness but out of the blue, he was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer, unrelated to all of his other stuff that we'd been dealing with for a decade or more, and at the same time I was. It's a whole lifelong journey. But I was thinking of joining this course to learn how to write a book. And then he was diagnosed and I was seeing a therapist at the time and I said well, obviously I mean it's even ridiculous that I'm telling you about this class because my husband was just diagnosed with cancer and I don't know, everything's unknown, and I'm reeling from this and she said well, I actually think this is the perfect time for you to sign up for this class.

Debbie Weiss: 13:55

And that's what I said oh, really Like, okay, maybe I need to get a new therapist. And she said you need something just for yourself, totally separate from all of the chaos that is and will be going on in your life, that you can focus on. And she was right. She was right, it saved me, and it saved me after he died, and it showed me that I could survive. I had something else. It was almost like I wound up having something else to live for in a way, I never would have known. Like he died, I had three chapters left to write in the book, and so now it was like a whole thing that I came this far. I'm going to finish, but it just it gave me something for me, and I still had that afterwards was something then that I could take with me.

Manya Chylinski: 14:59

Absolutely. I think that's so important, and there's that cliche that we all understand and we kind of scoff at, of putting your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. It's so true, though, the importance of taking care of ourselves and having something for ourselves whatever. However, else we show up in the world, and I think for some of us, that can be a challenge, and then, when you're hit with big change, it can be difficult to navigate.

Debbie Weiss: 15:34

Yeah, like your reaction was who would think that at a time like this, it's a great idea to learn something new? I mean, it sounds ridiculous, it's ridiculous, but it was so true. That was my own form of self-care at the time, or one of my forms of self-care, about what to do for ourselves and how we think about taking care of ourselves.

Manya Chylinski: 16:00

What role do you think our community plays whether it's our friends or family or the larger community in supporting us as we go through change?

Debbie Weiss: 16:11

I think it's important to allow your community to help you right, reaching out to people asking for help, being there to support you. You say the larger community. I have to say, for me, support groups have always been a huge help to me, regardless of what I was going through. I went through a bunch of infertility struggles. I went to a bunch of infertility struggles. I went to a support group weight problems, weight watchers kind of support group. I struggled with family members with mental illness. That was a tremendous help for me.

Debbie Weiss: 16:49

I actually did not go to a grief support group after my husband passed away, but I was at a different place in my life. I went to caregivers support groups and you have to find the right people. You can't be. Someone had said to me well, sometimes that could bring you down, which is true. You just you have to find your people. You have to find your people. Just because you don't on the first try doesn't mean that they're not there. And I think that sometimes, when we're going through a transition, we feel like we're all alone. And that's the great thing about a support group is finding people who are going through the same thing and it makes you not feel alone, for goodness sake. Now on Facebook, I have to say I'm on a bazillion widows groups on Facebook and sometimes I don't want to read it, but sometimes I do and it helps. It helps to know that we're not alone.

Manya Chylinski: 17:51

Absolutely. There's such value in that validation you get and also that you have a shorthand in that group. There are things you don't have to explain that you might to other people who haven't gone through what you've gone through, just to help them understand the context of what you're feeling or what's going on. I have found a lot of value in support groups as well, so I'm glad to hear you call those out. After big transitions, often people change their lives, especially after a death or after something like mass violence that I went through. How can people think about redefining their life or finding meaning after a significant change? First question and second question does everybody?

Debbie Weiss: 18:44

have to do that. Well, I don't think everybody has to do that. They have to everybody. There's no one size fits all right, you have to do what works for you.

Debbie Weiss: 18:57

In my own case, I kind of started this journey. It was almost like I was transitioning before the transition, and not on purpose. It just kind of happened that way and my husband used to say you're planning your life for when I'm gone, and I wasn't. It had started when I really started focusing on myself and trying to figure out my own needs, my own desires and wants. It just kind of coincided with this and so there I was.

Debbie Weiss: 19:31

But it's still so hard, I think, even though I built a life. Well, let me go back and say for me it wasn't just my husband dying. I lost my husband while he was alive and not just when he was diagnosed with cancer Years before, with mental illness. He was with me, but he was no longer my partner. All of a sudden, I was experiencing that loss of he wouldn't go out with me socially, was experiencing that loss of he wouldn't go out with me socially. He and I worked together. All of a sudden, he just walked out of work one day and said I'm no longer I can't work anymore. So I had already gone through those types of transitions before he actually passed away and with each of those things it was incredibly, incredibly difficult.

Debbie Weiss: 20:24

But I have to just keep going back to the self-care and realizing that we're responsible for our lives, regardless of these transitions, regardless of these circumstances that happen that we have no control over. We are always responsible for how we respond to those circumstances, and that doesn't mean you're going to have something terrible happen and you're going to say, oh yay, that was great. Of course, not right. That's not what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is it's your responsibility, like you said in the beginning. Of course it's natural and we experience emotions, that we feel badly or sad or all of those things, but yet at a certain point we then have the responsibility to figure out where we go from here, and that's going to look different for each and every one of us, and I think it takes a lot of inner work and soul searching and just exploration listening to podcasts, hearing different people trying different things, like the Gratitude Journal For me, also like regular freeform journaling turned into something that I another thing that I was like are you kidding me?

Debbie Weiss: 21:50

I would stare at a blank page and almost have an anxiety attack of what to write. But in the end it turned out to be quite a tool for me and I learned things about myself just writing my own thoughts on paper. And when you try different things, when you experiment, whether it works or not, you're learning something and makes you feel good because you just feel like you're progressing, you're taking baby steps. When you start taking any kind of positive step or in a different direction, it fuels itself and it snowballs.

Manya Chylinski: 22:32

Yes, I got to a point where I decided I was going to default to taking an action. Could be very small, but when I get hung up or something is happening that I just need to do something and that will move me forward in some way, and that has been really beneficial to my own healing throughout these years and as I deal with transitions in my life.

Debbie Weiss: 23:02

Yeah, I love that. It's so true. Sitting around and ruminating that's going to get you nowhere, and you're right taking any type of action. It gets you out of your own head.

Manya Chylinski: 23:15

Yeah absolutely Well. What advice would you give to someone who is currently facing a significant life transition?

Debbie Weiss: 23:23

I think it's a perfect time to just reassess and dream. I think so often we don't know what our dreams are. We stopped dreaming, Life kind of took over and we forgot what it was that we used to dream about and think about when we were a little kid. And if you bring that back it'll help you tap into act two or act three or act four.

Manya Chylinski: 23:56

Yeah, I love that. That's a great advice. Thank you, and before we wrap up, tell our listeners what you do and how they can reach you.

Debbie Weiss: 24:07

Well, thank you. So I am an author of a few different books, the latest one called A Sprinkle Effect, a guide to creating a more colorfulful and Fulfilling Life, because if we just start to sprinkle in certain things into our lives, it makes all the difference and you can create a new life. So anything about me you can find out on my website. It's debbyrweisscom. You got to remember the R, otherwise you wind up in a realtor in California, and that's not me.

Manya Chylinski: 24:43

Well, I will put links to your website and how people can find your books and all of that good stuff in the show notes to make sure people can find you. Debbie, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

Debbie Weiss: 24:57

Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 25:00

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership To build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.