My Eco Story

Ripple Effects: Exploring Change, Purpose and Conscious Leadership with Executive Coach Mary Ostafi

• Executive Coach Mary Ostafi • Season 1 • Episode 2

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This podcast is an exploration of what it means to be a human navigating life on planet Earth. Mary and I talk about fear of change, the importance of self-knowledge and self-belief, and what it takes to unearth your soul’s purpose. You might want to take a breath or two, because we also delve into conscious leadership–what it means and what effect conscious leaders have on our culture and our future.  

And then we talk about love.

This podcast is deep and it’s dense, but it is not overly complex or hard to follow. Just relax, and give yourself space to listen slowly or multiple times. Think of it as the essential book you open when you need to be reminded of the things that really matter. When you need to remember who you are. When your heart feels compelled to open despite the resistance of your mind.

Mary is one of those people who gets straight to the point with refreshing clarity. And besides that, she has a deep well of empathy, finely attuned intuition, and incredible intelligence.

These are the very qualities she uses in coaching and you can sense it in my conversation with her.  Her style embodies the ying-yang of fulfillment-finding and potential-stretching, all while holding space for emotions. Her clients are lucky to have her, as we are lucky to have her with us on this show.

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Links:
The Dieckert Group: Leadership & Executive Coaching

Faun Finley:

My EcoStory explores the intersections of ecology, psychology and narrative. It seeks to mine the depths of the human heart and the expansiveness of the human spirit, while honoring and co-creating with the more than human world. Every month, My Eco Story takes you on an adventure with a variety of guests who share stories about their path to eco-consciousness and how they use their talents, gifts and insights to evolve our culture, our systems, our cities and our imaginations. We hope their passions are contagious, their stories compelling and their ideas inspirational. Perhaps today's guests will also motivate you to take action in some way. Welcome, I'm your host, Faun Finley.

Mary Ostafi:

Conscious leaders. They live intentionally, they lead with love. Always they examine the consequences of their decisions and the impact of their actions on their team, on their company, on their social network. And conscious leaders see that connection between all of us and therefore tend to lead with a higher purpose, a purpose to leverage business for good.

Faun Finley:

Mary Ostafi is passionate about the very thing most of us fear: change. That's why her work as an architect found multiple expressions, from a focus on sustainability and lead certification to the creation of a rooftop farm and community garden that she grew into a thriving nonprofit. Embracing change also led her to become an advisor and a chief of staff, experiences that transformed her into the successful executive coach she is today. Mary helps clients–– that is, conscious leaders–– find fulfillment across all aspects of their lives. That requires not only embracing change but leading it, and this is why I invited Mary to my EcoStory. We're riding the crest of an enormous consumption and climate wave and we don't know when it's going to crash. How do we navigate through? How do we find deep meaning in our lives and still manage the day to day? What paths will lead us forward and what kind of leadership is crucial? It seems to me we could benefit from a little coaching. Hello Mary, it's so wonderful to have you on the show. Welcome.

Mary Ostafi:

Thank you so much, Faun. I'm so happy to be here with you today.

Faun Finley:

What is it about change that is inspirational to you?

Mary Ostafi:

I think this might partially be a learned behavior. If I track back to my childhood, I experimented with a lot of different sports, from gymnastics to softball and dance to cheerleading, and I tried a lot of different things in different hobbies and my parents were always so supportive of me trying new things. And I specifically remember my father telling me over and over you can do whatever you want to do, just figure out what that is and do it. I think in a sense, like my parents, helped program my mindset around change. Since then, change just always feels really good to me.

Faun Finley:

For people who grew up with parents who said "ick something and stick with it. Do you think that's a deleterious thing in terms of being able to adapt and embrace change in the future?

Mary Ostafi:

Even if we were raised a certain way and we have certain mental models that we were brought up with, we have a choice to change those. If we recognize that we're not comfortable with change, then we have a choice to kind of figure out what is it about that? What is that fear was holding me back, and we can work through that and decide that I want to change my mindset around this.

Faun Finley:

So no one's stuck necessarily.

Mary Ostafi:

Correct. Ultimately, it's a person's choice how they want to think and move through change.

Faun Finley:

How can you help those of us who might fear change, reframe it and who might be less conscious of what's holding us back?

Mary Ostafi:

I think a lot of people fear change because they see it as a risk. What if I fail at this new job? What if I move to another country and I absolutely don't like it? It's just a matter of the questions we ask ourselves. What if I say no to this job and I miss the most important career opportunity of my life? What if I say stay and stay home rather than moving to a new country? What could I be missing? Like? What if I went for it and transformed my life? My real risk is living a life of stagnancy. What's the worst that can happen? You dislike the new job or career that you choose. You can always go back to what you're doing or find a new position. There's no regret because you've tried and whether things work out or whether you fail terribly, failure is feedback. You learn from it. You grew, you expanded your consciousness and so now you have more information to go by.

Faun Finley:

Failure is feedback. That's a compelling idea. Please expand upon that.

Mary Ostafi:

You can look at failure in two ways. You can make it a completely devastating experience that completely ruins your courage and your confidence and your pride and all of those things and constricts you to be small. Or you can say, okay, this was horrible, this was really challenging, this was terrible. I failed completely. What did I learn from this so that I don't repeat it? What did I learn from this so I can share with other people and help them avoid the same mistakes? Maybe that you look up to in this world, whether you have a personal connection with them or not. We've all failed terribly on their path to get to where they are. I think it just goes back to mindset and how we want to look at things in the world.

Faun Finley:

In reframing change. I heard two things: Ask "What if?," and you didn't use these words, but essentially we always have the option to course correct. Those two seem like a good pairing. Do you use those together in your own life?

Mary Ostafi:

Absolutely all the time. I've changed careers four times. I've moved around a lot throughout my adult life. For me, a big part of change is just listening to the signals, listening to your intuition, because it will guide you. If you can hear it, you can start getting really curious about those things that it's telling you. If you spend some time discovering something new, it may pull you into a new place. With every change in my life, it has never been a matter of leaving something. It's always been a matter of being pulled into something that I was really curious about and wanted to explore.

Faun Finley:

That leads me to ask this question. Each of us is the executive in charge of our own lives, but that doesn't mean we have total control. There's a whole world out there that influences and informs, takes us out of control. What are some of the ways you help executives empower themselves in light of this?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, that's a great question. You're right, we can't control the circumstances in life that come our way. The only thing we can control is how we respond. I think we respond in a more intentional way that's in line with who we are. I truly believe that the fabric of the universe is love. On one end of the spectrum is pure, unconditional, radiant love. It's expansive, it's high vibration. The other end of the spectrum is fear, which is very contracted state. We can easily get stuck there. Most of us live somewhere in between that, on that spectrum, as a code which I help people move more towards that elevated, expansive life. Therefore, when circumstances come up that rattle us, we can be a little bit more calm and prepared to respond in a way that's in alignment with who we are and who we want to be.

Faun Finley:

We are all on the spectrum of love and fear. If we bring that idea into places we work, into our families, into our politics, into our economic decisions, into how we relate to the planet and how we live on the planet, I'm wondering if one of your goals and I don't want to put words in your mouth- but I'm just wondering if one of your goals is to bring us especially leaders, because that's who you work with closer to the love spectrum, in hopes that that can also create a cultural shift.

Mary Ostafi:

That's the ultimate goal here is to move more people to that place of love. You can't lead the people if you don't love the people.

Faun Finley:

How would you describe a conscious leader?

Mary Ostafi:

Conscious leaders, they live intentionally, they lead with love. Always. hey examine the consequences of their decisions and the impact of their actions on their team, on their company, on their social network. Conscious leaders see that connection between all of us and therefore tend to lead with a higher purpose, a purpose to leverage business for good. Conscious leadership emphasizes introspection. It's really deep work in finding: Who am I really? Who do I want to be? What do I do to get to be that person so that I can have the contribution on the world that I want?

Faun Finley:

If conscious leaders are leading with love and it's about introspection, does that inherently have some of the principles of sustainability mixed in there?

Mary Ostafi:

Absolutely. This is exactly why I love serving social and environmental entrepreneurs and leaders and emerging leaders in sustainability, in social impact fields, because I think it takes a specific perspective. What can I give that will benefit a cause beyond myself? What can I give that might benefit the world? I think just having this intention of having a positive impact on the world sets somebody's mindset to align with that and it becomes a force, it becomes their North Star.

Faun Finley:

How does sustainability play a role in your coaching methods and values?

Mary Ostafi:

I think having that sustainability lens makes coaching much more focused for me, much more passionate about serving people that want to do good in the world.

Faun Finley:

Your entry into leadership was through a sustainability lens. How did that come about?

Mary Ostafi:

I've always had affinity for nature and animals. That's really where my love came from. In architecture school I specifically remember this was before LEED was a thing. This was before green design was just starting to emerge as some term that we used. I was fortunate enough to have a professor who had just built a tiny little sustainable home for him and his wife. I was just so impressed by the solar panels and the energy efficiency and the minimalism, a real conscious use of materials and local materials. A light bulb went off in my head and I said this is what I want to do. I want to be a sustainable designer. I was just really focused on building in a way that was in line with our future. That led me to pursuing a master's degree in sustainability. For me, sustainability is incredibly important. I want this world to thrive. I want all aspects of it to thrive, every living creature, from humans to plants to animals, all of it. I would love for the world to be as it is for generations to come and actually be better.

Faun Finley:

How did you go from design to food? What was in your head?

Mary Ostafi:

What was in my head is I'm curious about this and I want to learn more about it. I want to do something about it.

Faun Finley:

There's that comfort with change.

Mary Ostafi:

Exactly. Something lights me up and I go for it. I want to build a community garden in downtown St Louis. Several people have tried before me and failed. It took almost a year. Finally, we found a building owner who had small plot of land and they were willing to let us put a garden there. That's how we started From there. We decided to incorporate into a nonprofit. There was a clear need in the community for access to healthy food. That led us to building our next farm, which happened to be on a rooftop, because there's no land. This time we changed our strategy and said wait a second, I'm an architect, my husband's an architect. Why can we not build something on a rooftop? We built the first rooftop farm in the region. The nonprofit took off from there and today it still exists without me. I think they have seven urban farms and are having an even bigger impact than I could have imagined.

Faun Finley:

You left an amazing legacy. There was the "what if that we talked about earlier, and what I heard in this was why not? Why not build it on a rooftop? I want to add that you did a TED talk about this that is fantastic. There's so much in there to learn from and be inspired by.

Mary Ostafi:

I appreciate that, that was a long time ago.

Faun Finley:

It was, but because you were so ahead of your time, it's still so relevant. We've talked about who conscious leaders are and how you work with them, but I don't think we really transition from how you went from sustainability to coaching.

Mary Ostafi:

When I was leaving the nonprofit that I founded, I started thinking, what am I going to do from here? I've always loved to mentor and teach. I've been an adjunct instructor for two universities and... I think I'd like to be a coach. That would be really cool. I liked being in that role. It came naturally to me. I literally just went on LinkedIn and searched for specific jobs in San Francisco. One of the first ones that popped up was chief of staff to the CEO at Fairtrade USA. I'm like, I can do this. I want to do this, I want to do this. I got that job.

Mary Ostafi:

I found myself in the CEO's office working with the executive team on the executive team. It was a really incredible experience. It was also my introduction to coaching. The CEO that I was supporting had an executive coach. He shared his executive coach with me to kind of train me to be a coach to the CEO on a daily basis. The more I worked with this coach, the more I was in love with this type of work. I went through a coaching certification and I started coaching people on evenings and weekends and pretty quickly, within six months, I decided I can do this full time. I continued to train with that same executive coach and today I am a partner in his business.

Faun Finley:

That's when you know you're going the right direction for yourself.

Mary Ostafi:

Exactly. I truly believe that part of my transition into that chief of staff role was specifically to meet him.

Faun Finley:

If I contacted you for a consultation, what are three questions you would ask me?

Mary Ostafi:

Tell me what brought you here today and if we work together six months, a year from now, what are the most important outcomes that we could achieve together? How would that change your life? What's been holding you back from getting to that place? Tell me about your mental hygiene. Tell me about that voice in your head. How severe is it? What does it say to you? Tell me about your life beyond your job. I look at coaching as a system. We're focused 100% on our career. Sure, we're activating our career and we're having a lot of success, but if we're letting our health decline, neglecting our relationships, if we're not giving ourselves space to do our hobbies that we love, is it worth it to have our career up here in the rest of our life down here? I'd like to understand where people are across their lives so that we can bring all of that into balance. Because if you're thriving in your health and relationships and everything else, you're automatically gonna have more momentum and more energy to thrive in your career. They're all connected. They're all interrelated.

Faun Finley:

There are a couple keywords that have stood out for me, and they are mental hygiene and love. They don't seem to go together–– like love is just this really beautiful word, and mental hygiene seems a bit clinical–– but I wonder where those two come together in relationship when we think about the state of the planet.

Mary Ostafi:

When we make decisions and take action out of love and not out of that fear that's coming from our inner critic in our mind, then our results are more loving. So kind of raising that level of consciousness and really acting out of love and truth and feeling within. That's where the transformational change comes from.

Faun Finley:

We've talked about choice and thought and intention and all these wonderful ideas, but we are emotional beings. How do we synthesize, integrate our emotions into this in healthy ways, and what do we do when we're just feeling pissed off, when we're in grief? So how do we manage all that?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, that's a really deep question and when we deal with grief or overwhelm or shame or anything that could be considered negative, we try and just shove it away. But I think the power is in going through it. We have to go right through it, let those feelings be heard and once you get to the other side, there's always growth, there's always learning, there's always expansion. No matter how hard it is, we are all going to experience the loss of a loved one at some point in our lives. We all have to go through that grief. We can carry that with us for the rest of our lives if we want to, and feel really bummed about it, or we can celebrate the person that we lost and carry their legacy forward and move through grief in a way where, yes, it hurts and I'm gonna feel this sadness, I'm gonna feel this pain, and once I get to a certain place, there's acceptance and then that starts to transform into hope and so... I get so emotional talking about emotions!

Faun Finley:

You're so together. I'm glad––for lack of a better word–– that we could experience this with you, because if I were a listener, I would be like wow, she's perfect. How do I do perfect? Not that having emotions is imperfection, it's the opposite, and that's what I think is being revealed here.

Mary Ostafi:

Well thank you for sharing that, and I'm definitely far from perfect, and I will say that one of my gifts is my emotions. Like I'm an emotional person I've always been an emotional person. I cry very easily in sadness and in happiness, and for so long I would apologize for that. I would apologize, and now I don't care. I will cry in public if something moves me and I see a beautiful ra inbow that I feel in my soul and I might get a tear in my eye, and now I see that as that's just why I have the right to feel this, and everybody has the right to feel their emotions and to express their emotions without judgment from others.

Faun Finley:

It is so beautiful to feel your compassion and have that expressed in emotion, because sometimes we're afraid, just like we're afraid of change. We're afraid of vulnerability, and you just demonstrated how to be with your emotions. If you can share with us how you do that and why that's important, I'd really appreciate it. We would really appreciate it.

Mary Ostafi:

I finally came to realize like this is who I am. This is my gift to the world. Me being so emotional enables me to be compassionate and empathetic with people, and so I embrace it. I'm actually proud of it. The ability to just feel what you're feeling in the moment, you know it's just so much more empowering because it enables you to be who you are deep down inside. When I see somebody else who gets emotional, I just hold space for them. It's not about going in and trying to solve somebody else's problems or trying to save them or trying to make them feel better. It's enabling them to feel their emotions. It's safe to feel that. It's safe to be here right now. So I bring that into my coaching a lot, help people sit with their emotions. It's not about controlling them, but what we can do is feel them.

Faun Finley:

With Hatha Yoga, which is using asanas, you move through the entire pose, you don't just do it. There's a process to get there. Now we can all take yoga classes and we can learn how to do that, but how do we learn to do that with emotions? How do we learn to move through them?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, that's a great connection there.

Mary Ostafi:

And the beauty of yoga is how we respond on the mat is typically how we respond in life.

Mary Ostafi:

So if we're going into a really difficult pose and we're dreading it in our minds and we know this is gonna be really hard, I'm not gonna be able to hold this, and all we can think about is how much this sucks, Then we're gonna be stuck in that place. But if we can just get to that place and say, and here I am and just sit with it, it learns to kind of calm down that inner critic in our minds constantly rattling off If you can't do this, this is too hard, this is too challenging. If we can take that and apply that to our lives and find some way to just regenerate ourselves whether it's yoga, whether it's meditation, whether it's sitting outside in nature under a tree and letting the sunshine on our face and watching the birds fly and the gentle wind in the leaves, like whatever it is that regenerates us and helps bring us back into balance and bring peace within our body. That is how we gain agency over our emotions.

Faun Finley:

Bringing peace within our bodies. That's not a phrase you hear very often, and yet so many of us want peace. How would that manifest and what would we gain from it?

Mary Ostafi:

What if we were calm enough that we could just take a step back and pause and say, how do I really feel about this? And listen to that and let our intuition guide us.

Faun Finley:

Let's talk about intuition because I think a lot of people struggle with it. How do I know if it's my intuition or my head talking? How do I know it's intuition or pressure that I'm feeling on a subconscious level? And let's say I recognize it is intuition, but can I really trust it? Because there are all these other pressures and expectations and things I think I have to do and people I think I have to please. How do we get fully connected and trusting of our intuition?

Mary Ostafi:

I don't think there's one easy answer to this, because I think we're all very unique individuals and some of us are much more somatic than others. Like some of us can really feel deeply in our body yet, and so for me, like I can feel it in my heart when I know something is calling me, and if I feel it in the back of my neck or my shoulders, then I realize that's actually coming from my mind. That's a constriction, but if I feel expansiveness, if I feel warmth instead of cold, if I feel really energetic, that's how I know. Getting to that point of being able to listen to that, that's the real work. It's going back to having practices or rituals in place to put yourself in stillness so that you can hear, quiet the mind so that you can feel.

Faun Finley:

Do you have a daily practice that helps regenerate you?

Mary Ostafi:

When I wake up, the first thoughts in my mind are around gratitude Thank you for this breath, thank you for this body, thank you for this life. I do a little bit of stretching, a few yoga, sun salutations, and then I go into meditation. I start out by filling myself up with love for myself and then I start spreading it beyond me. I might send a politician all of my love and I might say may you be loved and may you be love. The goal there is to just spread myself as loving awareness across the world and out of that I just feel so wonderful. I think it really helps set me up for success and helps my energy throughout the day as well.

Faun Finley:

What are some of the ways you empower the clients that you work with?

Mary Ostafi:

Every call is an empowering call, no matter where they are at. I think what it comes down to is helping them get back to that place of peace, calm, groundedness, certainty and intention. The more they can understand who they are and what they want out of life, the more I can help them align their direction and their path, enabling people to be in a safe space where they can say anything, be as vulnerable as they want it is emotional as they want, knowing that there's no judgment, there's no telling them this is right or wrong. There's just someone there holding space for you, wanting the best for you, loving you unconditionally, then helping you think through different issues and different perspectives and formulate a path forward.

Faun Finley:

Being conscious of whether a decision we're about to make is out of love or fear just seems like keys to the kingdom, how we live our lives and our inner state, whether it's at peace or not at peace. Does this bring me peace? Does it not bring me peace? And if it doesn't, it's probably closer to fear. Now, this conversation implies that people would be willing to ask that question, but what about the people who are not willing to ask that question?

Mary Ostafi:

When they're ready, they'll find the right teacher, they'll find the right inspiration, they'll find the right community or person to help them learn more and lean into that and do that work. Some people are never ready in this lifetime, and that's okay. The best that we can do is live our lives to the best of our abilities and hope that that has a ripple effect.

Faun Finley:

Sometimes, however, we stand back and we look at what's being destroyed. It's a very hard place to stay in. How do we constructively create good in the world when so much is coming in opposition?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, I think just by living in alignment with our values. If sustainability is super important to somebody, then every career that you have, every job that you take, make sure there's some component of that, that you're having some type of impact in that. My focus on sustainability is taking me on a very nonlinear career path. First, in a very tangible way, with built environment, and then growing food and helping people to coaching people. They're all very different, but they're all impacting the world in a positive way that's in alignment with my values to have a positive impact in the world. Knowing who we are and knowing our purpose helps guide us and potentially change some of those things that we are not satisfied with. Each one of us in small way, even if you're just growing your own food at a community garden you're playing a role.

Mary Ostafi:

You're teaching your children and your neighbors how to grow food in a healthy way that's safe for the environment and safe for humans. We can't discount the impact that our lives have on the people around us. We all have a ripple effect. We're all continually influencing everybody around us in some way. If we're living out of positivity, if we're living in optimism, that's what we're spreading. That's what we're putting out in the world.

Faun Finley:

Knowing yourself. There are multiple avenues to getting there, but that's what coaching is really useful for.

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, sometimes we need a little bit of support to help us see a little bit differently. Coaching has transformed my life so much that it became my profession.

Faun Finley:

Somebody said everything starts with the imagination. Nothing has come into this world without someone imagining it first. Do you use any of that in your coaching's idea of imagination?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, absolutely. I think of it in terms of everything is created twice first in thought and then in action. If we don't think it, we can't do it. It has to initiate in our minds. I think you articulated it perfectly. It's really about imagination. It's imagining what you want, what results that you want, what contributions you want to have. Step by step, figuring it out, how to go along that journey and make it happen.

Faun Finley:

Let's say we've got the imagination piece down and then we arrive at the door of how and we have no clue how to open it. Can you help us with that?

Mary Ostafi:

That's what stops so many people! They have great ideas and wonderful imagination and then the fear sets in, and they say, well, I don't know how to do this. I'm not capable of doing this, I don't have enough time, experience, I'm too old, I'm too young, I don't have enough money. All of that kicks in really quickly. But if we can trust we're on the right path and just take it one step at a time, one day at a time, we're continually making progress. We're climbing the stairs to that place. When we're more grounded and articulate on what it is that we want, we can stay really focused on that. We're putting more energy, we're putting more attention, we're putting more time into something. We're automatically going to grow that. Wherever we have more structure in life, is where we get the results.

Faun Finley:

We've talked about the importance of imagination and how it serves us, but is it also possible that we can get stuck in a myopic way on one idea like it has to be this way or no way?

Mary Ostafi:

Attachment is the root to all suffering. We get so attached on one particular idea and once we have a little pivot in that workload we might give up or completely think like this is not the right path. I'm not supposed to do this. It's just a test to show you another way to bring more insight on your path, and sometimes the results can be even more amazing, even if they're different. And all of this comes up in coaching. In a lot of ways it's also just generally an approach to life.

Faun Finley:

Is that a way things can come up like offers at the same time? There can be this desert for a while and then, all of a sudden, all these opportunities arise and I'm thinking well, that would have been nice if they were just a little bit more spread out and I don't have to decide among them.

Mary Ostafi:

I think when those opportunities come to us at once, that's showing that we're in flow. We're being presented with all of these possibilities because we're open to them, because we're ready for them and maybe we weren't exactly ready for them in the timing that we expected and we wanted, but if we can believe in ourselves and trust for journey throughout, even when we're not getting to the place that we want to be, instead of focusing on that, just focus on. I trust them on the right path and I believe in my capacity to do this. When we align our thoughts with what we want, then eventually we get to that place. We just never know what timing is going to be.

Faun Finley:

Okay, so before we close, I have to ask this question. It would be a huge oversight if I didn't. How did you discover Simon Sinek, and what has his influence been on your life and career?

Mary Ostafi:

I love this question. I'm a huge fan of Simon Sinek and he has definitely transformed the way that I think about my life. I first came across his TED Talk I think around the same time that I was giving my TEDx talk, and I came across his book Start With why and it was around the same time that I was starting the nonprofit. So I leveraged that concept in the business and everything we did. We had a "Why statement where strategic sessions would start with why our decisions does it align with our why? I really built that into the company and I truly believe that is what attracted so many people to be a part of it. That's how we got all the support that we did. That's why people stayed, because we had strong reason for what we were doing.

Faun Finley:

Mary, there's more to the story, isn't there? Would you share it?

Mary Ostafi:

Yeah, through the nonprofit we were supported by a lot of local businesses and one of those local businesses was quite a large business and they were having a company retreat and their keynote speaker was Simon Sinek. Somehow they selected me to be a part of a very small group of about 15 or 20 people to have lunch with him afterwards and there's something that he said that really stuck with me: "we're all here to give. It's that simple. That just hit me so deeply. So when I went to have him sign my book, he said what's your name? And I said well, it doesn't matter, I just want you to write one thing in my book so I never forget it. Can you just write we're all here to give? And he looked at me like and he said what's your name? And so I said I'm Mary, and so in the book I still have it today. He wrote "hi, mary, I like you because you're a giver. Keep inspiring people to give.

Faun Finley:

Ye Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. Your story kind of reminds me of an autograph my dad got me from Henry Winkler when I was a kid. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not expecting this, "Fun. Self-respect is joy and I'm like what does that mean? It was way over my head as a kid, I was just like huh. As I got older I realized the sage-like wisdom in that, and Henry Winkler props out there to you for that.

Mary Ostafi:

Beautiful, and it just goes to show that what we hear 10 years ago might not have the same impact to what we hear today. But when we're ready, the right messages come to us.

Faun Finley:

Well, Mary, it has been so much fun. Informational, also transformative. All the work you've done on yourself has the ability to inspire others; it has inspired me today. Is there a parting thought you'd like to share?

Mary Ostafi:

If we could just pause and feel love for that human that's in front of us, treat them like they are your brother or your mother, or your child or your dog, or someone or something that you love intensely, like if we treated everybody as family, I think the world would be a much happier, much more fulfilling, much more positive, much more sustainable world.

Faun Finley:

Thank you so much for being on the show. A joy indeed.

Mary Ostafi:

It has been my pleasure, Faun. I really enjoyed being here with you today.

Faun Finley:

Here's how to learn more about Mary's work and connect with her: Go to deickertcoachingcom. That's where she's a partner and an executive coach. She can also be contacted through LinkedIn. Find links in the show notes at myecostorycom. Thank you to our guests for sharing their knowledge and stories and to our listeners for tuning in. Please join us again next month. Visit myecostorycom for links to projects and work by guests and collaborators. Podcasts are released the last week of each month. Any exceptions will be listed on our website. Audio editing and sweetening, along with myecostory logo and website art courtesy of Loreen Anderson, also known as yes. Ws Logo designed by Lawrence Peterson. Ecostory, theme music by Lexin Music. And I am your host and producer, pawn Finley. All rights reserved. Everyone involved with myecostory gives of their time freely. Please support their work if it resonates with you and remember please take good care of yourself and this amazing planet.

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Faun Finley

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