Conversations That Make a Difference with Teresa Velardi

Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable - Dean Fisher on Growth

• Teresa Velardi

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What if the biggest breakthroughs in your life happen when things don’t go according to plan? In this inspiring episode of Conversations That Make a Difference, Teresa Velardi sits down with Dean Fisher to explore what it truly means to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and why discomfort may actually be the doorway to growth, leadership, resilience, and transformation.

Dean Fisher, a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) with over 30 years in the luxury events industry, shares powerful lessons from his transition out of corporate life, his philosophy of emotional awareness, and how learning to release control created greater peace, purpose, and connection. Together, Teresa and Dean discuss personal growth, leadership, emotional intelligence, Emotional Service Intelligence (ESI), mindset shifts, meditation, community, and navigating uncertainty with grace.

Dean also shares practical wisdom for professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders seeking balance, including his powerful “90-Day Rule” for navigating overwhelming life transitions. If you’ve ever felt uncertain, overwhelmed, or stuck between who you are and who you’re becoming, this conversation is for you. What if life isn’t happening TO you… but FOR you?

Connect with Dean O Fisher:
  / deanofisher 
Dfisher@meetingsme.com
   / @leadershipenlightenment 

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Conversations That Make A Difference with Teresa Velardi

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Conversations That Make a Difference. With your host, Teresa Vellari. We believe that authentic, meaningful, and diverse conversations are the glue that binds us together. Our discussions remind us we have the power to uplift, challenge, spread, and invite dynamic growth. Are you like feeling like your find out your hands to like it? Join us for conversations filled with gratitude, values, abundance, authenticity, and faith. Here's the host of our show, Teresa Villarreal.

SPEAKER_03

Hey everyone, and welcome to Conversations That Make a Difference. I am here with Dean Fisher, affectionately known as Dino, to his friends, as you see on the screen. And we're gonna get started. I'll introduce him in just a minute. But for those of you who are here most of the time, you know that I start the show with a prayer. We use a serenity prayer. So let's take a moment to do that. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And I also want to say that it is by God's grace that we are fabulous, blessed, highly favored, living in our greatness, using our gifts and talents to make a difference in the lives of others and all of God's great universe is conspiring and collaborating in our favor. And together we say amen.

SPEAKER_01

Amen.

SPEAKER_03

Hey Dean, good to see you, my friend.

SPEAKER_01

It's so great to see you today, too. How are you?

SPEAKER_03

I'm good. I'm good. Awesome. It's finally getting to be a little bit warmer on the East Coast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Getting around. We're enjoying the good weather out here on the West, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03

That's

Meet Dean Fisher aka "DeanO"

SPEAKER_03

good. That's awesome. Let me tell everybody a little bit about you. I'm going to read your bio so they don't leave anything out. So, Dean Fisher is an accomplished certified meeting professional with a wealth of information and experience spanning over three decades in the five diamond events industry of Las Vegas. As a meeting broker and meetings made easy, he leverages his executive hotel expertise to give his clients insightful advantages to cont in contract negotiations and develops synergetic relationships with hospitality partners. His extensive knowledge of property sales and large event operations enables him to navigate the complexities of site selection worldwide with ease, alongside supporting his clients' meeting and event strategy. Dean is an avid traveler and loves to golf with his family. He is also passionate about speaking on personal growth and development aimed at enhancing our industry's collective strength on his podcast leadership enlightenment. And we'll give you contact information and the podcast information before the end of the show. So welcome aboard, Dean.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my God. What a pleasure. I'm so privileged to be here with you today to have this conversation, my friend.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you. Thank

Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

SPEAKER_03

you. Thank you. So we decided we were going to talk about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Isn't that the topic of the day?

SPEAKER_01

I am living in that right this moment.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, you are. And I think we all are in one way or another. The world is a crazy place. And um we've got to find our way. What are some suggestions that you have that you use for yourself in order to be able to get through situations like the one that we just faced so that you can find your way to a place of comfortability in an uncomfortable situation?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's almost a hallmark of the way I see my life right now. Um, so everybody knows I'm driving down the highway, getting home for what I believe the appointment was going to be within an hour, and it turns out it's right now. And I said to Teresa, well, it's not no, just give me a moment. We need to adjust. And I found, you know, the biggest change in my life came out of my corporate world when I started working in my entrepreneurial mindset, is to allow life to happen around me rather than trying to constantly force it into these lanes that I think it should sit in. And you know, this circumstance, especially, like I would love to be home in front of my computer in my studio right now that I use to record my podcast. But you know what? It's a unique setting. People can see that it's an interesting place. And yes, I'm in my old 88-4 truck, which I love to death, and I use up in this area.

SPEAKER_03

Nice, nice 88-4 truck. That's a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01

It is, it is. It brings my heart back into you know a place where I really feel like I'm in balance when I'm in it and I'm driving around this northern Sierra Nevada

How to Stay Calm Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01

high desert area. You know, your specific question is what do I do? I keep my heart rate low. When things hit me and I feel like I want to jump up, my first instinct is let's keep that lower for a second because I believe I really can think through or at least feel through things a lot stronger when I'm in that heartbeat that's in that 90s rather than letting it jump up into 99. And oh my gosh, we have an issue at this moment. And that is probably my biggest lesson to myself consistently is trying to keep my heart rate low.

SPEAKER_03

Well, that of course will keep your cortisol level low and keep your keep your um your mind from going into different places. If you can, I believe that if you can like look at the situation and the circumstance without jumping into the anxiety pool, got a better chance, right?

SPEAKER_01

Well, you do, and in practice, really comes into this play as being perfect. You know, I never lived this way before. I always felt like when that anxiety hit, that was a call to rise and I was to work within that emotion. But what I found is that it limits this connection I have with the universe and this idea of learning how to be comfortable when or uncomfortable being comfortable with being uncomfortable. And that's a really tongue twist

The 80/20 Mindset Shift That Changed Dean’s Life

SPEAKER_01

to say, but think about it in kind of mindset is that if you can allow yourself to be a part of the circumstances around you and not try and dictate them, then you can release from this pressure situation that you're in that I used to feel all the time. And I had a mantra that I used to look at it like I would plan 80% of my life and live through 20. Now I try to plan 20% of my life and live through 80. I say to my, yeah, I say to myself constantly, like the best stories you've ever heard start out with it didn't happen exactly the way I expected. So why do I live so expectingly? Every day needs to feel like it's within this flow, and I adjust around that and still hit my goals and my marks.

Stop Controlling Everything and Just Let Go

SPEAKER_03

Right. Go with the flow, exactly. And that's the best way to do things. You know, you would stuff um as you were talking, I was thinking about uh a line that Tony Robbins says all the time things don't happen to you, they happen for you, right? So yeah, and usually in the end, we we always figure that out. In the end, we say, Well, that was pretty good. What can I take away from that? Oh, I realize now that this wasn't something that somebody did to me or something happened to me. When I come out the other side, I recognize that it happened for me. Is that your general experience? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I take it another step to what is happening for us, you know. I've and especially in a lot of family conversation, um, a lot of times we'll be offended by a circumstance that we address from our perspective, but we forget that that also may be a lesson for us to learn from. And when we can see the circumstances around us happening for us, where your community around you is also experiencing this through you, you become part of a bigger, what I would call connection or relationship to what's going on around you, where everybody's input and everybody's actions are also creating these reactions within you and this anxiety. It's almost like your bloodstreams on the outside of your body as well. And take that in consideration and how that all affects. There's probably a long-term goal in mind for these actions that happen to you. And then there's also these short-term things that happen. I had this great story the other day. I was trying to catch a flight, an older car I drive back in Forth to Reno blew its head gasket out of nowhere. I'm in a place, I'm in a place where my first instinct would have been, oh shoot, I'm gonna miss my flight. I'm in big trouble. And my heart rate would rise. But in this circumstance, after I called my wife and asked her to come pick me up because I was stuck, I heard this little voice said, Why don't you check Uber? And my monkey brain says to me, No, the Ubers don't come out here, you know that. And my heart says, Again, why don't you check Uber? And I let my heart override my monkey brain now. And I said, All right, I'll check Uber. Let's see. And it turns out there's a guy that just dropped somebody off across the street getting gas, and he could pick me up within a minute.

SPEAKER_03

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01

I'm on my way to the airport without missing maybe eight minutes in the journey. I still have my 30 minutes to figure out coffee before I get on the plane. And I had to look at that as like, hey man, I'm not in control of that. Yeah, that is what's happening around me. Now I can either choose to not listen to it and call my wife, have her pick me up, miss the flight and go through that, or I could listen to that little voice within me. And I think that that's what comes from when you really start to experience this idea of this connection and how to be uncomfortable, being comfortable, being uncomfortable is that you know, I couldn't have fixed that situation. So I have to start to breathe into it. I had to keep my body at a certain level and I have to start to think in a certain way to allow these things to happen and help.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly. You know, I had a similar situation happen to me last weekend. Um, I was down in Philadelphia with a bunch of people who were um getting together to break a Guinness world record for the number of people signing a book simultaneously that we had all written in. And I I submitted something to this book and I was part of this thing, and we we beat the record. We beat the record. So Guinness Book of World Record holder here. I will get a certificate saying that. You know, I would, I just think it was just so fun. It was just like, well, okay, whatever. You know, is it gonna do anything for me? I don't know, but it's it was just fun to be with these people. So I'm I'm leaving, I'm getting ready to come back. My son had come, uh my son had come into town, and um he was he was here while I was in Philadelphia. And so I get my car, I'm leaving, I'm ready to go. My GPS tells me to turn a left out of the parking lot into a one-way traffic going the wrong way. So, but all the cars were at the traffic light. I could see that. I said, Oh my goodness, I'm in the right lane. Let me just make a right onto another street that was going the wrong way. So I see this little place where I can turn around. So I go to pull over and my tire blows out. I hit the little curb and the tire blows out. I'm like, okay, what am I gonna do with this now? I don't have my triple A card, but everything happened, everything was set up for success. God was in the middle of the picture, regardless of whether or not I wanted to believe it. I got my son to send me my triple A card. I called AAA. Within two hours, I was back on the road with not only my my tire change, but a new tire on the car. So everything happened in success. And I have to believe that it happened the way that it did to avoid me having to be part of something that may have been harmful or may have been uh more of a delay in getting home. So yeah, be uncomfortable, get comfortable with being uncomfortable in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01

And it's yeah, you know, really get excited about the fact that when you are uncomfortable, like the magic of life happens. Everything when when it's warm and comfortable, but it's not where the math happens and the excitement. And I'll tell you to finish the story, we got picked up on after the week's trip. The tucker I had this amazing conversation on the way back to take the car back out to my land I live in.

SPEAKER_03

Hang on one second, your audio is going in and out. Your audio is going in and out.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So say say what you were saying about coming back.

SPEAKER_01

I'm gonna have a problem with audio on this side. I hope it's not coming on your side. Uh we just had a main conversation and I had taken consideration that that was part of the whole training, that it wasn't just this case where my factors had control, but now I'm taking a tow truck riding with this individual and we're learning from each other, and I have to see how this still is feeding this way that I didn't have to fix it. And there was only one person in my life that really flipped it in when my wife called on the trip and said, What are we gonna do with the code? And that was the last thing I thought about. I'm like, well, the carholder, I'm gonna be able to fix it on the running system as some sort of a project. But it was never in the consideration of the whole process. I was comfortable with it not being being fit and being able to move on with my daily life and understood there'll be a place for that down the line.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Exactly. The situations happen and you'll you'll take care of them later on how it the best you can. So yeah, hey, life happens. Life doesn't wait for us to be ready for it to happen, you know, no matter what we're talking about. It's just um, it's just got a lot of a lot of twists and turns these days, every day. These days, every day, right? So um, so let me ask you another question. What how do someone who is really like going through it, let's say, how would what was the first, what's the first thing that you would recommend for um if so let's say somebody wants to make a real uh change in their life. I'll use a I'll use I'll use a situation where a lot of most people want to lose a few pounds here and there, and they just they just they get they get so far and then they and then they stop and they go back to the other habits. Get comfortable being uncomfortable is one of the first things I think that we have to do. I'm saying we because I'm included in this conversation. I'm forever up the yo-yo, up and down, up and down. So, how how can you use this comp this uh this concept of getting comfortable being uncomfortable for people who want to change a habit in their life? Totally no sound. No sound. Okay. It's all good. It's all good. Maybe we were meant to do this on another day. Well, there you are.

SPEAKER_01

I tell you what, I I I it's just I hope that the audio isn't horrible. I think that's the reason why I'm keeping trying to adjust with it. But you asked me a question. How is it all best to start to get into a practice of embracing the idea of being uncomfortable and accepting that and feeling your comfort behind it? My practice that I like to share is is to involve yourself in experiential learning, to put yourself in a place where you haven't banned the whole experience. One of the examples I give my wife and I when we really got comfortable with this, we bought taken and out of Amsterdam a couple years ago and left 16 days in the middle that we were gonna go travel to Europe and figure out where we were going and how we were gonna get there. And we knew that we wouldn't have things exactly the way we wanted along the way, and so that we would present comfortable situations that we had to respond to. And what we realized along the way is that we we were communicating with people through body language, and that mainly people were nice, and they're all doing the same thing. They're eating, working, and sleeping wherever you are, and if you respect their boundaries or their pumps, and that you're a visitor in it, all of a sudden this amazing communication started

Learn From Yourself - Learn Through Yourself

SPEAKER_01

happening. And I started learning about myself and how people saw me by putting myself into these uncomfortable situations. So that's my first tip is that if you like to live in a way where everything has to be in order and you have to have this big plan, I would say stretch a time frame in your day where you're not in a plan and see what happens. And as you go along in that plan during that time frame, whatever makes you feel uncomfortable, whether it's the cashier at the store that's addressing you in the wrong way, or maybe the traffic you're in, or maybe it's just the weather, you're uncomfortable where you are. Start asking yourself these why questions, like why do I feel this way right now? What is it about this situation that I'm not responding to in the way that's making me feel comfortable? And a lot of times you're gonna get down to this place where it's it's built within your fight or flight, that your mechanism inside of you is always trying to protect you from this thing that you don't understand, or there was a comfortable experience, uncomfortable experience in your younger years of your life that'll start to uncover, and you'll start to really find these places in yourself where you'll you'll realize, like, oh, oh, I see myself now and I can adjust to that. One of my first experiences going into a hotel conference after leaving the hotel industry, I was so offended by the hotel and everything they did because it wasn't the way I expected from where I used to work. And I had to go to my room and kind of recapture where I was and say, Dean, what is it about the situation that's got you so upset? And I realized I wasn't in control of anything. I wasn't the boss in that hotel. I couldn't call people to fix things, and everything around me didn't look like the way I would have wanted to see it. And I had to release from this idea of needing things to be a certain way, so allowing them to be in front of me this way and for me to address what was it about me that I could change to find some semblance of order. And that's where that turn comes in about being comfortable with being uncomfortable is you saying to yourself, like, you know, it's okay. Yeah, I realize that this circumstance right now is gonna make me feel this way, and then you start to embrace that and learn from yourself rather from these other things around you.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Great tip. Great, yeah, that's great. Uh, because I tell you, I think, you know, the flight or flight thing that you you referenced, I think everybody has that. Um fight, flight, or freeze, right? So, how often do we get into situations where we are in one of those circumstances and cannot bring ourselves back to the exact moment? I mean, I think that we that's where I think emotional intelligence comes in, which is another whole conversation that we can have.

SPEAKER_01

So I would also throw in the idea of codependency and the fact that we've all been conditioned as young young people in this country after schooling and parenting of no fault. But the truth is we we were made to want to control things. We were we were really positioned to look at life as not being can something you can control less it's tangible and not realizing like maybe there's other factors around us that are actually helping the progress along and like that that theory that you said earlier about you know, life's happening to me, not to me, but for me, and maybe for us. And then like this idea that this experience you're going through that's uncomfortable. If you reinvest that back into your community as a learning curve or something that they can learn from now, haven't you just kind of increased the energy for everyone to kind of look to look back at themselves and say, Oh, maybe I can face this. Maybe there's something behind this step of fear that I can step through and realize like the other side of this being uncomfortable is where the true magic's gonna happen in my life, and I'll start to experience change and I'll start to learn through myself and listen and hear those things that guide us.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, learn through myself. That's yeah, because a lot of times we abandon ourselves for something else, right? And then and we never get the lesson that truly belongs to us, and we are in the soup, so to speak, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And I think that you know, another great strategy point would be to take assess a self-assessment drill for yourself, uh a step process that you can look at yourself from the outside and observe yourself in natural settings. It's not hard to do if you really are interested in learning about how others are reflective to you, how you're actually presenting yourself in certain situations. And you might also see yourself respond to things where you look at yourself and say, Oh, that's not exactly the way I want to be seen. And you can reassess these things in yourself and have grace and realize, like, oh, that's a conditioning factor of me wanting to be codependent in control of this situation, working in that 80-20 mindset rather than going back to thinking about it from a 2080 mindset where I've I've already done my work and this is gonna happen the way it's gonna happen today. And if it's not exactly the way I had hoped to be, then that's okay because I realize other outcomes are gonna come behind that that are also supposed to be there. And those were where the gifts lie. That's where the real, you know, the real truth comes from and where the real energy grows is from this momentum that you create within yourself and keeping this momentum that you're uh of a frame of mind where you're really. In in this place of balance and realizing like it doesn't have to be good or feel comfortable for me to know things are happening the way they should.

SPEAKER_03

Right, exactly. You said you said a word in the middle of that grace, give yourself grace. How many people do you know that in this process of trying to get comfortable, being uncomfortable, you you were like, I know me, I tend to beat myself up. I beat myself up. I didn't do it perfectly, blah, blah, blah. The the and the what ifs and all that what ifs number one are a trap. I say this all the time, the what-ifs are a trap, because most people will not know that you're in this space of uncomfortability, so to speak, when you but you have to give yourself grace in order to be able to move through it. And I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up.

Community & Building Meaningful Relationships

SPEAKER_03

But I want to take this into the conversation about community. You said you mentioned community, take it to your community. Well, who is your community? You get to determine that, yes, and how you show up. And I think that I think that there's a there's a message of leveling up in your community with this conversation that we're having. Let's talk about developing community with like minds and people who are um part of your circle, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's it's an interesting science. I mean, I'm always trying to weigh in on how best to be agile in life and and how to present, you know, your best self around others to create, you know, great outcomes, whether it's in your family, your business, circumstances. And we're gone through a change. Like times are not dialing for dollars anymore, calling people, telling them you have this great thing and they need to understand what that is and talk to you. It's a time where people need to know you more and they need to understand what it is that you're a part of. And so we have this incredible social media presence now that we can we can live and work within, and we can really create these relations with the relationships with uh other people that are outside of your privy of uh of need, we'll just say it like that. And I call it referral, referral marketing, realizing like there's an energy we can connect with out there that actually connects energy. And when you find promoters in life, people that are actually interested in you doing well, and you are actually interested in them doing well, it doesn't matter if they're in your specific market strategy or a product, it's how a network of relationships that are looking out for each other and they're referring each other back into circumstances of need. And that referral process is where the real magic happens and where people start to trust and realize like, hey, this is possibly a value that I can take advantage of. And my industry, it's extremely confusing. It's like the real estate agents or uh real estate industry. The hotels pay my commissions, help my clients find the best solutions and their and their means, and and at the end of hotels pay my commission for that effort. So the king actually is like the buyer when the seller's paying the commission for real estate. Well, event industry, this doesn't make any sense at all because everything is one plus one to an event industry, like this comp this there's an outcome for this. So, how can this be a resource that can be shared? Well, it's it's really about understanding people are starting to work within our own strengths, and then they can help each other overlap into the other strengths. And some people are better doing you know, event planning, and some people are better looking at the location and contracting it. But when you add those two on together, the real value comes out of the individual and trying to do it by themselves. Like the fact that if you've been bought community around you and the resource of others, you're taking advantage of a hundred rather than a hundred percent of the efforts of your own actions.

SPEAKER_03

Right, exactly. And and that being said, you know, I mean, nowadays you you just talked about um playing into people's strengths, make sure that they're operating in their strengths. Like my team, that's the conversation that I have with my team all the time. You know, I want them to work in their strengths because that's where they are most comfortable, that's where they are happiest, that's where they get to show up and shine with what they what they bring to the table, so to speak. And you're absolutely right. The referral, the referrals in community are definitely um definitely alive and well. And the way to the way that I think marketing per se is going these days because you've got you build relationships. It's not just about, it's not just about uh the com the conversation and the um you know and the connection. It's about building the relationship with people in order to be able to uh get to that place of know-like and trust where you where you actually find the comfort of being um in a working relationship or otherwise with those people. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's true. I I mean I develop analogies for everything I try to remind myself in life and what I like to share. And I see it as this big etherical bank. I realized along the journey of experimenting in this that when I invested into other people just for the sake of investing them, whether it was a great conversation or making a connection for them without needing anything from it or expecting an outcome, which is hard in sales because you're always trying to balance your efforts. But when you truly believe your place is just to be in that circumstance, I would I would experience this amazing referral two days later that would come out of thin air. And I had to recognize that like value in, value out, like it's the yin and the yang theory, but it's not within the individual individual anymore. It's within this idea of investing in something bigger, like this energy that you're gonna be part of something bigger, and that this this world and this business in you are also connected to all these other things that you're part of. And it's not about your individual success to prove to people that you've done something more than your heartfelt way that you've invested yourself into this action. And that you know, it goes back to that idea of how you're intentionally spending your day and the things that you put forward as this investment. And like right now, this is to me, this is an exercise because you and I both would love to assist been in the studio setting. But the challenges that we're going through to have this conversation are also setting a lot of the intent of the reasons why we live the lives we live. We can't we don't have the time in our lives to always be perfect about what we do, and I'm not gonna sit back and beat myself up over that. You mentioned the grace part that is allowing you to you know

Plant Seeds of Connection & Trust the Process

SPEAKER_01

see it like you've planted a seed in the ground. You can't dig the seed up to see if it's sprouted, you have to trust it's working, and the day it pops out is the day you get the excited that now you can actually tangibly see the efforts that you put forth. But this is happening constantly around you. You're not able to see like the end result. And I framed I framed it in like a nine-month theory mindset that if you're able to keep within your mental momentum and consistent about whatever this project is or whatever the experience you're trying to evolve through, family, emotionally, whatever it is, and you maintain for nine months this ideal that you're gonna get to, it will come to fruition and you'll be able to see that plant pop out of the ground. If at any during any time during that nine months, you decide to dig in there and check the seed out to see if it's working and question this thing happening around you and not just do it. You kill the opportunity, you gotta start over and put another seed in the ground. But the great news is you get to start over again. Nine months later, it's gonna pop out. So you've never lost anything, you're just constantly learning how to trust that we're not always in control of everything around us just because we can't see it.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

And the more we invest into that, the more we start to see it invest into us. Yeah. Life tends to have a way to invest in you when you invest into it, and you start to selflessly look at what you're doing around your investment of time every day and what you might see, that community. And I think it's a responsibility of ours to take the lessons of our lives and the struggles and communicate that back into the collect somehow, so that in its essence, everybody can draw from this ultra-learning example.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm gonna

The Daily Gift Book series - Timing and Connection

SPEAKER_03

use the I'm gonna use the series, a daily gift, the daily gift book series as an example of that, because it's something that um the seed was planted probably five years ago or maybe five years before it started, right? Just like bamboo. Okay, by the way, if you plant bamboo, you got to wait five years for the plant. Takes five years to come up. So just like bamboo. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. So yeah, every every everything has its time, everything in its time. And here's something else too. God's timing is always perfect. God's timing is always perfect, and we are all connected, every single one of us is connected. So, one way or another, something that somebody is um doing in the community will eventually get around to everybody and it will be dealt with in one way or another through all the people who are part of the community. But the daily gift book series started out with a whisper. We talked about whispers a little earlier to do gratitude first, right? So we did gratitude, and then from gratitude, we did hope and they build on one another because if you have a grateful heart, your heart becomes hopeful, and then you become more kind with a daily gift of kindness, right? And then a daily gift of peace. When you have all of those things, you can leave a peaceful, more peaceful life. And then we put a daily gift of friendship out because relationships get built on all of the things that were prior, that came prior to the friendship, right? So, um, and I think that when you work with people who you can call friend, you know, or when you meet people who you click with that you can call friend, as we can call each other, thanks to Heather, our friend Heather, um, you know, um, it becomes it becomes um a great conversation. It becomes a better place to uh to you know really just do life in ways that that will uh benefit both of us, all of us, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, it's a living it's a living experiment that we're both in. And the crazy part is when we start to get into this kind of conversational point, my words start to get jumbled a little bit because I'm realizing the benefit of what you're saying in real time right now. I was one of these corporate guys that worked for 20 years to prove that I had done something and had the car and the house and the suits and all the things. And I really thought my family valued that. It turns out all they wanted to see was that I was happy. They could care less what I was doing, and that started this journey of understanding like how am I being perceived and what did I perceive myself as being. And it's interesting we could get really caught up in these things that define us, or we can allow them to release and we could start to find ourselves into these rhythms, like your book series is amazing because those are the cadences, those are the rhythms that I found myself in. It was that first question that I love myself. Like, was there a possibility that all those little things in there I hid about myself I could really enjoy? And the answer is yes. And then could I be grateful for like these things in my daily bread? I love that part. Like, I don't need the big outcome to happen tomorrow for me to say, Whoa, it is real, because then you're back into this whole thing again. Like, there's a a reasoning for this kid of of being in this patient way, and then investing into others, helping learn and ensure the information itself starts to create the kinety saying you're saying that's investing into you. And I think that's where I start to really leave it with the audience and how do you feel about this? Because I invested myself for the last 70 billion friendships around non-narcissistic mindset, not needing something from it, and realizing the blessings that have come out the other side of it, I could never have created. And those are the what I would call miracles, not magic. I mean, like those things are happening, and so the more I saw this momentum, I could say to myself, like, hey, that staircase theory I used to use, like climb the top, beat everybody to get to the top, be the best. That worked very good in this rationale of ego and my monkey brain. Yeah, I was the best at that. But in this other world where I've invested into life now, not just into myself and allowed myself to be a part of a life, like a receiver of this experience and living these experiences. The blessings on the other side of that started to create this idea of a quality of life. Not needing things for me to feel like I'm good or right, but realizing like the things that are in my life are proving and showing to me all the time that I'm being loved back.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that is, you know, that's the strength every day I wake up to that I realize like that's the exciting part. Like literally the reason why I look forward to like that next phone call or that podcast view is like what could be creative for somebody that hears later that goes, is it really that simple to just try and like start working on myself? Yeah, you'll find yourself in the rings of the feet. Like I feel like I'm in now. Everything makes sense. You're not trying to get anywhere, you realize it's challenging for a reason, you enjoy the opportunities of experience, and you take the other side of whatever it is and realize like that's the blessing for the next step and do it again.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Exactly. And when you recognize, I think when you recognize that your gifts and talents that you have, like I wouldn't uh I to look at you to have my even after having the first conversation that we had, I would never think have thought that you had spent so many years in corporate doing what you did because you're more of a yeah, and and me too. I was an insurance agent for 20 years. Hello. Yeah, it was right. It was, I was not using any of the gifts that I was given when I came here. By the way, people hear me say this all the time. I believe that each one of us has the gifts and talents that we need in order to be able to create the most prosperous life that we can here. And I don't mean just prosperous in money, I mean prosperous in relationships, family, love, uh, all of the things that we discount for the sake of money, you know.

SPEAKER_01

So I think, yeah, I think that you get I mean, you're you're you're hitting on the core right there, aren't you? I mean, that really is the difference between who I used to and do, and I worked for money. I was raising a family. My expectations were I needed this to accomplish that. And the truth was I did. But the question was, is there another way to make money or to create revenue or to create abundance in my life, like you said, that will offset this need for things to establish this balancing point and to take you know, take stock, like we're humans, so we love dopamine. We're doing things every day to get this dopamine. What is it you're doing personally to get dopamine and take responsibility for that? It's okay. But maybe, like you said, if you're investing into a talent of yourselves, like something maybe you thought was a hobby, and then all of a sudden it starts to become something you enjoy, and then revenue follows it, you're starting to really kind of tune into this different frequency, and you realize like you've been this radio station, you know, tuned to rock your whole life, and now you can tune into you know the waltz or jazz or any other way you want to feel, you're not obligated to this one thing, and these stereotypic um things start to come true, you know, all these isms that you wonder, like, oh yeah, so easy. No, actually, when

Meditation & Self-Awareness

SPEAKER_01

you start these beginning examples of your own reflection of yourself, I personally use meditation as my baseline every day. It gives me a place that I can start from where I realize like I'm the finger connected to the hand, connected to the arm, that's connected to something else. I'm not the something else, and I definitely don't want to fight with all the fingers all day long. I need to do my job well, and I need to figure out in the beginning. I don't know why every morning I have to remind myself, like, you know, you're the finger, you're not this whole hand, you're not this whole thing, and you really just need to enjoy the fact that the experience of that touch every day is my job to report back. Like, this is what happened, God. There you go. I went through it, and here I am on this side of it. And so I don't know exactly what you want to have come out of this, but I'm so grateful you gave me a chance to be part of the play.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

So cool.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Yeah, just like the series. I can't do the series by myself. It's a it's lots of voices talking about the same topic, and we get to we get to be on the other side of it, all holding the book with that we've could contributed to, right? So that's where the

DJs Against Trafficking and Hunger Event

SPEAKER_03

that's where the you said something about music. I want to tell, I want to tell the audience about this. I want to tell you about this too. Um, I have a great relationship with a woman named Andy Berger who has an organization called Voices Against Trafficking, and our DJ, Dizzy D, who is our producer, has put together with us and uh Voice Against Trafficking, um, an event that's gonna happen on September the 26th called DJs Against Trafficking and Hunger. It's a music marathon, and it's gonna be with DJs around the world, all different kinds of music. When you mentioned the different kinds of music, it sparked in my brain that this is going on. See, all connected, all connected, one way or the other. So we were we're gonna have um we're gonna have some panel discussions. We're gonna have music from DJs around the globe, and we're going to just really pour into people who are um, you know, cannot care for themselves because they're either um trafficked or they're they're hungry, or you know, they're they're helping. There are lots of people who are helping people to get out of circumstances and situations that sometimes are beyond their control. And that's what this community is. They're in situations that are beyond their control. And so we're gonna do whatever we can to raise enough money to help these both organizations to make life a little bit easier for those who have come through those circumstances so that they can be healthy, whole, and complete, just as they were meant to be before the situation happened. So I hope you'll join us. Hope everyone will join us on the soul 105.3. Get the uh get the app. Just go to your app store and get the soul 105.3 and join us on the 26th of September. We're excited to bring this information and excited to support this cause. So thanks. And so yeah, so here, community, bring it together from you can you can pull people from all over the world who have the same vision as you and get through it, regardless of whether or not they're comfortable. Somebody said to me, somebody talk about being get comfortable, yeah, get comfortable being uncomfortable. My circumstances and my situations that led me to start writing and to start stepping out of the box, so to speak, where I was like based in, I was based in fear. I was like, what if, what if so-and-so finds out I'm talking about them in this book? Even though I might the names can be changed to protect the innocent and the guilty, but you know, they will know. And then I realized that people who I was talking about or I I had experienced in my life that may or may not have ended up in something that I wrote, they don't read books anyway.

SPEAKER_01

So get out of you know, get out of your own way, realize like it is the message you're sharing. I was so interested. You have such a power behind you in bringing your community together. I was enamored the first time we talked. I loved your story. And how did you really start to get into it outside of your other career yourself?

SPEAKER_03

Um, it was a it was a push from God. It was a push from God. Like I would I was insurance agent for 20 years, dry business, like talking about insurance. I mean, I could I could do my job and do it well, but it was my heart wasn't in it, you know, and I was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable. And so I decided that um my circumstances led me to a situation where I really felt like I had to move from where I where I lived because uh I and my my child were in danger, and so I just picked it up and moved it. I uh there was a circumstance that happened that brought me to from from point A to point B, which ended up to be something that wasn't for me, but brought me to a place where I needed to be. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

There you go.

SPEAKER_03

There you go. And then from there, I set up my studio, I in the pottery studio. Um, and then um, and it was at the pottery studio, which was a very spiritual experience for me. And and I knew it was a gift, um, because the first time I touched clay, the teacher said to me, You've done this before. And I'm like, uh, not this lifetime. I don't know if there is more than one light. But it was it was it was something that soothed my soul. I knew that it was a gift, and so I did that for a long time. And uh, and then I said, I had a you know, the the had a conversation like what's next? Is this what is this what you want me to do? Is this what I'm supposed to leave behind? Because I do believe that every one of us is supposed to leave something to make this world better, a legacy of some sort, regardless of what it is. Um, is this what it is? This and I heard there was books. And then from that, the series was birthed. And I had been journaling throughout all the situation. It was the way that I got through a lot of the circumstances that I that had happened, the things that had happened. So, and then community. I just when I started showing up as myself, when I just started showing up, it was amazing. It just is amazing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that well, that's the true blessing and the and and the miracle behind it all. Your story is exactly the same as mine, and so many ways of taking steps, you know, following the breadcrumbs, and realized like something had whispered into my heart like seven years ago. I'm fascinated by saying that out loud because I've run into other people that were like, yeah, it was like seven to ten years ago. All of a sudden I had this tap on my shoulder, like, hey, why don't I look into this for some reason? And it led to these, you know, other things. I saw this entertainer once um do this great concert in Cancun. And the setting to me just didn't define on the front end logically that this would happen. But the guests had this amazing evening, and I saw this light shining out through this band, through these people, and they just all like got into it, and it didn't cost them anything. The person that was singing to her the band itself wasn't like, you know, the top of the top of the line necessarily, but they had something in them. And at the end, I started investigating, and it turns out like they had this light. And I thought to myself, well, is that because they're in like they're talented or they're in a specific situation they're supposed to be in? Turns out it's the second thing, and everybody has this ability to find this place where they can shine a light through themselves that affect others in this way, like you said, that are changing, you know, the topography of it or the stitching of the master quilt of humanity, and realizing, like, look, guys, it does matter that you're facing these fears that you're facing every day.

The “90-Day Rule” for Navigating Difficult Seasons

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And that you're working through these things. And I'll leave I'll leave this next little tip of advice if you're in a tough situation. My mother recently has uh been living with us, she's in full split uh stage dementia now, and it's obvious how we're gonna go into this throughout the next few years, and God willing. But in the beginning, it was super upsetting and uncomfortable for everybody. We just didn't like we just didn't get it. We didn't understand what had happened and what we were dealing with. And I decided to take 90 days before I allowed myself to think, feel, or do anything about it. I just said to myself, do you know, let's give this 90 days and see on the other side of that 90 days where you're at before you do anything or how you feel about this, or making any adjustments to the living situation. Let's just be. And it was an amazing experience because after about 30 days, I could definitely reflect on, hey, things are difficult, but they're not as difficult as they were 30 days ago. And at six 60 days, I could say to myself, like, hey, we're finding you know answers to these questions now, and we've put strategies in place and we're all getting along well, and it's working, and she's and she's getting healthier. By the 90 days, she walks into my office and asks me about her life, and felt she said she felt she could trust me in asking that question, not knowing I'm really her son, but it was so heartwarming to me to realize, like, yeah, 90 days she even felt more comfortable with the whole thing. And I was able to say to myself, like, look at the experience she just went through and the lack of emotional stress and turmoil that you did. And we still I still deal with these things now, even after the 90 days, but they're not about fixing it more than they are about finding solutions around how am I supposed to relate to this? And is this something that happened in my childhood that maybe I have an opportunity to release this pain now and not have to hold on to this anymore? So, like the gifts became we gifts, like you said, it was happening to us now. It wasn't just her, it wasn't just us experiencing it. It was like this ideal that we were coming through and really learning about all of ourselves. And we got to know Sharon, the lady before she had me, my mother. And that's you know, to me, that's exceptional. Like, how do you ever get to know your mother before she was actually your mother? So there's really neat things that came out of it. And I felt strong about not being upset for 90 days about it before I decided to take some action. And so that's my piece of advice I'll leave for you. If you're going through something in life right now that seems so overwhelming, give it 90 days before you do that digging process that you normally would do and try to fix everything and make it feel like did. Yeah, yeah, you're not walking north anymore, you're walking west now, and that's okay. You're still walking and you're still living life. Nothing's necessarily changed, it's just a difference in perspective.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it reminds me of the saying, let go and like God, you know. So you've got you've you've given yourself these 90 days, let go of what you can control, figure out what it is that you can, and let God handle the rest, you know. So that's where that's where that comes in, that came into my mind immediately.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we keep following these mathematical equations, you know. I like to life like it's math. You know, we use this theory of 90 days, we use this theory of nine months of, you know, it's very similar to the thing when you're talking about starting a business or something like that. Um, you're you know, all of these steps to consider are really mathematical ways to show your mind a way to learn a lesson from a baseline that you can see,

YOU Are Responsible for How You Feel About Things

SPEAKER_01

and to take accountability for these things that you're experiencing from your perspective and how you feel about it. It is really true. You're responsible for how you feel about things. I never believed it before until I learned what that meant. But now I realize like when I get upset about something, that's not the other person. That's me seeing myself in them through that mirror and realizing that's unfinished business. I need to get in there and look into myself and go, what is it there that just stimulated that? Because I was in a great mood just before that. So something just happened and I gotta figure out why.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly. Well said, You got to take responsibility for your feelings. And yeah, and we all have challengings, we all have challenging relationships. We all have, you know, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. A lot of those challenged relationships are in the family uh situation and circumstance, my family of origin. Um, and I I just we we learn, we learn where the boundaries are, not just for them, but for us. Not but for us, the boundaries need to be for us in order for us to be able to maintain our integrity as to who we are and how we show up in life. And other people's circumstances may not have anything to do with that. And sometimes you just gotta like let the situation go. They have their own path, you know. So, and again, it's getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Sometimes we have to release and let them go their own way, you know. Mel, Mel, what's her name? Mel Robbins, let them, you know, that book that she she put out about a year ago or so, um, gives great advice on that situation. Can't control anyone but ourselves. That was a hard lesson for me to learn. Hard lesson for me to learn, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Mine too. I think it started to develop when I started to hear my own personal language with the universe, and that was through meditation. When you first get into it, it sounds like a bunch of noise, nothing makes sense. But after a couple of years, I'm sorry it did take that long for me. I started feeling these senses and signals that started giving me a much stronger ability to understand what was happening to me and outside of me. And then that gave me this balance point where I could start to perceive it the way you and I were speaking from it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. It takes some, it takes time, it takes um insight, it takes um integrity, and and to in order to be able to come come forward with who you are authentically and how you show up. And um, I think that this conversation about getting comfortable, about being uncomfortable, uh with being uncomfortable is um is one of the ways that we actually find out who we are, who we were created to be.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, so true. And again, not not to beat the horse, but this boy, today's example was a prime of that, you know. Yeah, I'd love it to have been a setting where it felt exactly the way we might have imagined it the first time we talked, but I got a feeling the conversation we just had was probably a little more meaningful than it would have been if it was shined up like that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you're you're probably right. You're probably right. So um this little this we're coming to the close of our time here. We have about a minute left.

DeanO Fisher - Leadership Enlightenment Podcast

SPEAKER_03

Dean, would you tell people how they can get in touch with you, what you've got going on, and where they can listen to your podcast?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, absolutely. I I I hub out of LinkedIn. My main uh my main site of communications and connection is out of LinkedIn. You can find me on there under Dean O'Fisher. I love my podcast and the idea of having bottom-up conversations with individuals in life about you know how we essentially the conversations that you and I just uncovered and how it affects them. The POSEC, the podcast is called Leadership Enlightenment. I'm sure you'll have it in the show notes as well. And it's really a conversation with like-minded beings as we are, and how they're enjoying this experience along the way. You can reach me at dfisher at meetings with an sme.com as well through email. It's been a pleasure talking to you today, my friend.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. It's been a great pleasure talking to you today, my friend. I'm so glad we get to say that. My friend, we develop friends as we have conversations. This conversation has made a difference for us as friends. For those of you who are listening, I know because I see it in the in the chat over here. And I thank you all for listening. My goal with this this um conversations that make a difference podcast is to bring conversations that will indeed make a difference for you and your life and those that you love and and also for yourself. So, my my request is before we meet again, may all the conversations that you're having make a difference in your life and the lives of others. And we'll see you next time at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Eastern Time, right here on the YouTube channel and my Facebook page. See you next time, everybody.

SPEAKER_00

That brings us to the close of another episode of Conversations That Make a Difference with host Teresa Vellardi. We want to sincerely thank you for tuning in and sharing your time with us today. Our greatest hope is that today's discussion inspired your personal growth, encouraged you to share your unique gift, and gave you the courage to write your own magnificent story. If this message resonated with you, let's keep the conversation going. Take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe on YouTube and follow us on our Conversations That Make a Difference Facebook page. This will ensure you never miss a moment of inspiration. We air new episodes every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. It truly helps us reach and empower more people. Until next time, keep making a difference. We look forward to welcoming you back next Tuesday to our next conversation.