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172 The GREAT Strategy for Lifelong Growth with Madelaine Weiss

Season 5 Episode 172

What if you could unlock the secrets to mastering your mind and living a more balanced life? Join us as I welcome my guest Madelaine Weiss, a Harvard-trained Licensed Psychotherapist and Mindset Expert, with an MBA and Board-Certification in Executive, Career, and Life Coaching, who shares not only her professional wisdom but also heartwarming personal stories.

As the bestselling author of “Getting to G.R.E.A.T. 5-Step Strategy for Work and Life,” a coauthor in the “Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan,” Madelaine recently released her personal development book for kids, “What’s Your Story?” The book aims to help young people build lives of resilience, performance, and overall well-being, making it a thoughtful gift for families. By incorporating the hero's journey and other engaging exercises, the workbook encourages children to explore their own narratives and develop a strong sense of self-awareness.

One of the core topics discussed in this episode is the GREAT strategy, a transformative five-step approach to personal growth. Grounding, Recognition, Exploring, Action, and Taming (T) are the pillars of this strategy, which helps individuals transition from psychotherapy to coaching.

Madelaine highlights the importance of grounding in belief and creating a supportive space for clients, enabling them to overcome personal obstacles and foster change. The discussion on action emphasizes the Goldilocks principle, encouraging listeners to take steps that are neither too daunting nor too insignificant, but just right to spur motivation and creativity.

Where to find Madelaine

Website: https://madelaineweiss.com/

Find "What's Your Story: Building your best adventures in School and Life
Here

Social Media Connect - LinkedIn




Hello from your host, Carol Clegg. A coach for coaches! I work with women coaches to find balance with ease and flow, manage stress, cultivate self-empathy, and set meaningful goals that resonate with their individual coaching practices.

My clients often have too many ideas and struggle to decide which one to focus on first, leading to a HUGE BLOCK in just getting started. I love to help simplify the process, explore what is getting in the way and guide you to choose the next project, enjoy the journey, and celebrate progress while taking small, meaningful steps.

If you would like to take the complimentary Saboteur assessment to discover what gets in your way and then follow up with a complimentary coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here or visit carolclegg.com

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Speaker 1:

When I think of mastering the mind, what comes to mind is the idea that inside every single one of us there is this five-year-old, and I like to think very smart, very cute, very funny and very well-meaning.

Speaker 2:

Well, hello and welcome to Connect, inspire, create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together. Well, thanks to those that are here listening to this episode today and a warm welcome to my guest, Madeleine Weiss. Author, ceo, dancer and mom. I took that off your page and I'm gonna ask you a few questions about that. I did. It had dancer on the pod match.

Speaker 1:

No, that's really funny actually, I went to a wedding not too long ago and and in the morning a beautiful young man came up to me and he said well, we stayed up all night and I want you to know that we gave you an award for best dancer. But I don't consider myself a dancer Because that's so funny.

Speaker 2:

I was going to ask you. I was like tell me more about the dancer and the mom thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Speaker 1:

And I am definitely a mom.

Speaker 2:

I'm definitely a mom. Absolutely, I think, from from both sides, it's a blessing and an honor to be a mom. That certainly is so, madeline. I wanted to just share with our listeners just a little bit about the professional background before we dig into Mastering your Mind and then some of your books, so really excited to explore. But Madeline is a Harvard-trained licensed physiotherapist and a mindset expert with an MBA and board certification in executive career and life coaching. But she is also the best-selling author of Getting to Great, a five-step strategy for work and life, the co-author in the handbook of stressful there we go, getting to Great Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan, and then about to release a personal development book for kids, what's your Story? And we're certainly going to dig into that. I love the character. Tell me more about him.

Speaker 1:

I had a Disney illustrator Okay, this character for me, disney illustrator, this character for me and I was like nauseatingly particular. I told him I have to love this and he did such like I adore that character. So he did a great job.

Speaker 2:

I definitely want to hear, because I believe you know once this episode that you and I are recording right now, as that book's actually going to be available, so I think you had shared the dates November 19th, which is kind of around the corner, um, and we'll dig into the book in a moment, but it is a personal development workbook designed for kiddos and I love what you said and the adults who love them build lives of resilience, performance and overall well-being. But so, before we dive into that, I was going to say you can't tell me more about being a dancer and a mom, but then I'm going to switch that out. I love dancing too, so put on some music and dance in the kitchen, why not? But I'll switch that up and I'll ask you something else, and that is, if you had to reflect and this could either be immediate, in like the last few days, or going back who would you say has been the kindest to you?

Speaker 1:

You know, I have had a series throughout my life I hope I don't get teary here of what I would call sort of like surrogate moms. What I would call sort of like surrogate moms. There was always a dear woman who was older than I was, who for some reason sort of took me under her wing and mentored me. My most serious and appreciated professional mentor is a dear, sweet, kind, brilliant man. But when you ask the question, the first thing that came to mind was like this, this series of and I lost. Oh wow, I just had this thought. I lost one last year and the thought that I just had was that I don't have one now and probably that's because I am her now.

Speaker 2:

I know, I know.

Speaker 1:

That thought got me too.

Speaker 2:

But the full circle has come around, yeah, and that preparation, a full circle of women now, yeah, that you're now, but that you're obviously I'm sure there are people in your life that you're mentoring yeah, and giving that back to.

Speaker 1:

On the book it says special contribution by Gabby Robbins. Gabby Robbins is my going to be eight-year-old granddaughter and I do feel that I'll tell you kind of a cute story. So when I was writing the introduction I showed it to her. She really inspired me and then she actually contributed. So I showed it to her.

Speaker 1:

She said well, you know, you could ask a question like did you ever notice how you talk to your brain? And I thought, oh, my God, she's so right. Of course I'm supposed to ask that kind of a question. So she made those kinds of contributions but I inscribed and gave her the book. Like a couple of weeks ago I had ordered a few of my own before the release and a week later. And a week later she said to me you know, I'm writing my own book now. And I said, well, that's exactly what I hoped would happen. And so I do feel like I am giving to her in a way that was given to me because I had an Aunt Jeannie, who I used to write letters to like from camp. After my father died they shipped me off to overnight camp and I was writing letters to my Aunt Jeannie and she would praise the writing.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's so beautiful to share that, and just what an inspiration for your granddaughter, you know, to kind of step into this, and then for kids when they read the book, and then just relating to having another young person step into something and be bold and stand, you know, stand up and talk for themselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I asked her if I could see it. So the next time she came over she brought it to me and apparently they're doing some sort of project in her classroom. Okay, there was an actual book with illustrations and it was really quite good, oh my goodness, Then you'll have to.

Speaker 2:

The next step is going to be self-publishing, right? Oh well, lovely. Well, Madeleine, I'd love to move into talking about mastering your mind, and I know you know you've got mind over matters and you talk about it being a stepping stone to reducing stress in our life, and there's so many components when I think of coming into play when we talk about mastering our mind and yes, we hear this, we know that we need to do this, but sometimes it's the taking action or the motivation what's behind the motivation to take action that kind of propels us to. So I'd just love to hear you share with our listeners this mastering of your mind as a stepping stone, because I think stress, in capital letters, is in all of our lives, some good and some bad. I mean we need levels of it, but more often than not, the levels are more than we need.

Speaker 1:

When I think of mastering the mind, what comes to mind is the idea that inside every single one of us there is this five-year-old and I like to think very smart, very cute, very funny and very well-meaning, really meaning to help us back then when we were very young, with whatever it was.

Speaker 1:

And so the five-year-old came up with a strategy. Okay, and the strategy is not entirely conscious anymore, it's more like a habit, but it lives in there and as long as that unconscious is not conscious, it's in charge of us instead of us in charge of it. So when I say mastering the mind, it is to bring that to the fore, to put that more under our conscious control, because we're using the strategy, we're leaning heavily on the strategy. If we don't do that of a five-year-old and though the five-year-old was very dear and meant very well and, by the way, every single one of us has already lived through everything we've ever been through, so it didn't do that bad a job Right, we're here now, but it's a five-year-old in charge of our lives. So to me again, mastering the mind is to make the unconscious conscious, so that we can be in charge of it instead of it in charge of us. And by the way, I don't mean that it goes away.

Speaker 2:

What's funny I had somebody once share with me is that would you let the five-year-old drive the car or does she belong in the back seat? You let the five-year-old drive the car or does she?

Speaker 1:

belong in the back seat. Nice, nice, nice, yeah, yeah. And you know, sometimes the five-year-old's idea is a good one and is the right one. It's just that it needs to be considered by the adult that we are. And I like to use this analogy sometimes, of an airplane. You know, the people who gave us airplanes didn't try to get rid of gravity, the thing that pulls us down. They tried to learn about it so that they could work with it or work around it. And that's how I feel about us. It's not that we try to get rid of it. That would be probably not a good use of our time. Anyone who's tried to make a recurrent idea or thought go away knows that what we resist persists. It actually makes it stronger. So what is better is to maneuver, to use it if it's a great idea, but if it's not to be able to maneuver around it and do something, yeah, take a different action what are your thoughts if I had to say to you feelings, feeling your feelings as healing.

Speaker 2:

Say that again feeling your feelings is part of healing, because you know how often we want to steer away from. We only want the good feelings the five-year-old feelings perhaps of joy and fun and play, but that's if you're on this journey that you know feeling. Other feelings should be allowed in as well.

Speaker 1:

Yes, indeed, did you ever see um dan siegel's hand model of the brain, which I'm about to show you? No, so this is the hand model of the brain, and in here is the amygdala, let's say the more emotional center of the brain, and when the amygdala is going berserk, it's feeling too much and it's like out of control what it does. According to this hand model of the brain I actually have a graphic of it in one of my PowerPoint presentations it throws this, the higher cortex, offline. Okay, so now this out of control crazy thing is driving the bus. Right, it's free.

Speaker 2:

It's like in control.

Speaker 1:

And you don't want that. We don't want that. We don't know what to make of it or to do about it from here I love your visualization because that's such a beautiful reminder.

Speaker 2:

I mean, we can take our own hand and do that and kind of visualize and and and wonder. And when you talk about that breathing I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but is that the, the in-breath, and then you hold for a period of time and then you out-tail for even longer, or am I not on the right?

Speaker 1:

track. Well, you're definitely on the right track. There are so many different ways of breathing. Well, on my website at madelineweisscom, there's a tab at the top, and I like to call it power breathing because of how empowered we can be when we do this, or I otherwise call it a 30-second mindset reset, and there's a one-page instruction for anybody who clicks that tab, and so the instruction is not a hold the breath and do the out-breath longer one, although I'm familiar with that.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

And I'm sure that's fine too. It's basically three luxurious breaths in through the nose and out through the nose and what it is that stimulates the parasympathetic nerve. So we shift from the sympathetic activation to the parasympathetic activation, which is the clearer, calmer one is about the belly. So especially anxious breathing is, like you know, like we're filling the lungs, we're filling the chest Shallow breathing yes.

Speaker 1:

This one is you fill the belly like a balloon. Okay, so when you breathe in through your nose, your belly goes out. Yes. So if I'm looking at you, I don't even see your shoulders moving, because it's not about your shoulders, it's not about your lungs, it's not about your chest, it's your stomach is moving in and out. So on the in-breath, it's like the air is filling the belly like a balloon, and then on your luxurious deep out-breath, the belly goes all the way back in. And three of those seem to do the trick in less than 30 seconds. So I'm a really big fan of it.

Speaker 2:

Very, very powerful. And you know what a gift. Because you don't need anything, or you don't need anybody to leave the room, or you know you could be in a meeting, you could be anywhere sitting at the dining room table, you know, with people, and you could still bring yourself back Everybody's breathing anyway. Exactly, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that and I will make sure that we have a little comment in our show notes that people can head on over to your page and find that. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about your books. So, first of all, the five-step strategy and the great and I'm guessing great stands for something.

Speaker 1:

Well, you're especially going to like the A because I noticed in your write-up that you talk about action. You know, I kind of morphed over from being a classically trained psychotherapist to becoming a board certified executive, career and life coach for the action. So at the end of my sessions now there's always an action step Right. And as a again classically trained psychotherapist, there wasn't Okay.

Speaker 1:

It was more insight oriented and people sat there for decades hoping something was gonna click and my sense was that, um though the attention you know, the kind and warm connection and attention was pleasant and appreciated by the client, it wasn't always the case that anything changed. So it was nice, since nothing changed, the pain was recurring, and it was nice to have a therapist who cared about that for you. But wouldn't it be better, I thought, if we could get in front of the pain and either reduce it or eliminate it, whatever it was, would be even better, and for that I think it takes a more active stance and courage. Coaching.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. As an accountability coach, hearing the word action is absolutely. We feel so much better taking action and we get various different things that step in our way and I have to think even of myself yesterday. I do part of the positive intelligence training as part of my coaching and we talk about saboteurs and things that get in your way and it rakes on a scale and my big one is a voider and so I tend to avoid many things. But I took action on something yesterday and kind of dealt with my voider and the sort of euphoria that happened is I was so creative after that that I moved straight into doing a bunch of things for my business and I was like you know.

Speaker 2:

So that taking action, deciding on whatever it, is small step, tiny step, but it gets the ball rolling.

Speaker 1:

It activates your brain because there's something called the Goldilocks principle. Okay, so when people are changing, you don't want the steps the action steps to be so big that it just freaks the person out. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'm not starting.

Speaker 1:

But it has to be big enough to titillate the brain. So the brain loves novelty. So when you did whatever that was, you did that you hadn't done, but then you did. Your brain is going whoa. And what it does is it activates the learning and motivation centers and you said it so well, it makes you want to do more. Yes, Because there's a brain activation. Right, it isn't just like how you felt about it. Your brain Played part.

Speaker 2:

Turned on. That's yeah, that's encouraging to hear, so yeah, and then a celebration, of course, when you take the action. So what is the G and the R and the E and the T for?

Speaker 1:

The G is for grounding, okay, in this idea that we all have everything we need to get from here to there. There might change along the way, but to get off the dime the way you did. And so it's the grounding and that belief, and what I do is create that ground, create that space, because people don't typically come to me saying I want a great life. They usually come because they're in pain and they don't even believe necessarily in a great life. They just want some of this pain to stop, which makes sense. But I know what's possible because I see it over and over again. I've seen it in my own life. Over again I've seen it in my own life. So I hold that ground for them until they can step onto it and run with it and own it for themselves.

Speaker 1:

The first line of the book is and I have to say this to tell you what the R is. So the first line of the book is great life depends on a great fit between who we are and the environments in which we work and live. So if it depends on who we are, then we have to recognize are.

Speaker 1:

So it's the recognition of who we essentially are, not who someone else said we should be, we are essentially are not who someone else said we should be we are, and not who we may have even thought we should be, but just a more essence of who we really are. Okay, so that's the r begins to come clearer and take hold. Then we can go. E for exploring the environment. So there you know, it's a pretty big world out there, filled with all kinds of opportunities, and our sense of them sometimes tend to be very limited. So we like to blow that open.

Speaker 1:

Now I can tell you that I'm talking about not just the external environment but the internal environment also. So I've had like a client comes to mind who was a physician. He didn't like the american health care. He said to his family what would you think about? And I think it was New Zealand, and the whole family picked up and moved to the other side of the world. So that's a nice extreme example of an external environment shift. But I've also I've also had people rearrange the furniture in their heads and fall in love with exactly where they are. So somehow, just by being in it differently, seeing it differently, experiencing the internal environment differently, it became a better fit.

Speaker 2:

It opened up a window of opportunity is what I kind of feel, as you share, that that you don't have to move lock, stock and barrel to New Zealand, which is funny enough where we almost moved to when we left South Africa, but we ended up here in the US. But New Zealand was on our short list. Still have to get there one day in the US, but New Zealand was on our short list, still have to get there one day. And then we've got A, which is action.

Speaker 1:

So William James said action doesn't guarantee happiness but, there's no happiness without it, and so being an E for exploring a lot of people want to stay there. Okay, and imagining that they're going to go for their PhD actually does it for them. It's like they sort of adopt this new persona, and that's not sustainable. Like yourself won't let you get away with that for very long. Like yourself won't let you get away with that for very long. If you're not really manifesting it, it doesn't make you feel that good forever, right. So it starts off being exciting to think about. I'm going to get a new job, or I'm going to go back to school, or I'm going to this or I'm going to that. But if you don't actually take the action Right, you can't fool yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yes, just hold on to this pipe dream, or pretend and visualize it and never do anything about it.

Speaker 1:

And then you get imposter syndrome. So the idea is that it has to be action, but not any old action.

Speaker 2:

Right Strategic action and small steps, I'm sure to get you going.

Speaker 1:

With the higher brain in charge.

Speaker 2:

Not the five-year-old. And then we finish with T All right.

Speaker 1:

So T is the predictable, expectable, the tendency to want to resist the change, t phase. And you can pick which T you like. We could say tackling or tending or taming, and different things work for different people and different things work for a single person, individual, at different times in their lives, whether you want to tell it to get in the back seat Right, or whether you want to tell it to get in the back seat Right, or whether you want to be tender about it. I understand, you know that this is, you know, painful for you. Trust me, give me your hand, come with me.

Speaker 1:

You talk in a way to your resistance in a way that is best for you and even that is very nuanced.

Speaker 2:

I love that, the choices that you now have on tea just as you say, because it can be so individual, and then it also depends on the stage that you're at and where you've got to, after you've done all the other steps, what it's opening up for you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you can count on that if things go well. There was a woman who a client of mine, who not yesterday but the week before that was telling me that she was on such a roll she was with the Mayo Clinic diet and she was doing something in her career and she said I'm so afraid that I'm not going to sustain it. And I said to her that it made sense that she knew that there would be a backlash. Right, because I think when we begin to grow, there's a part of us that's like what are you doing? Right, resistance, it might not be safe out there. What do you think you're doing? Well, that is the sign of growth.

Speaker 2:

Super inspiring, so obviously I am presuming getting your books. Are they all available on your website? Is that the first link or do you have an Amazon link?

Speaker 1:

Well, actually I tried to make it easy. So on the website, if you just go to madelinewisecom on the left side, right at the top, you'll see this book. If you click on that, it will take you to Amazon.

Speaker 2:

Wonderful. Well, I'm excited for that book to get out into the world because, as I said to you earlier when we were starting that, giving our kids a chance to build a foundation and create awareness of their mind and building resilience, and that it's. Yes, all the other skills that one learns at school are important, but some of these foundational ones stay with them.

Speaker 1:

I have the breathing. I put it in kid form in the book. It's in a little box in there. And then the other thing I did is I used so I have a pair of these boxes, I use the hero's journey, joseph Campbell's hero's journey, all the exercises. The book is full of exercises and all of them start with sort of a version of the hero's journey what's happening, what's possible, what's next, and then happily ever after, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, celebrating with you. I cannot wait and, as I say, as when this goes live, your book's going to be out there, so people are going to be able to head on over to your website, so I will make sure that that is on our show notes. And then, connecting with you out in the big wide world of social media, what is your preferred platform?

Speaker 1:

I'm a lot on LinkedIn and if anyone wants a complimentary, you know free strategy session. So right at the top there are these four buttons and one goes to my online courses and one goes to the calendar for strategy session and in fact, all of my social media links are right on the top of the website.

Speaker 2:

Madeleine. This has been so informative and I just encourage the listeners that if you want to explore great, then book a strategy call with Madeleine and just see what comes up. I always encourage people that you need to step into that to see if you're a fit, if you're a good match, and then if there is what beautiful synergy because we all need somebody to walk alongside this journey of life and if that'd be a mentor, as you spoke about in the beginning, or a coach? There's somebody that you need to journey along in life with you. So thanks so much.

Speaker 1:

It's a pleasure to meet you, and your clients are very lucky to have you. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much and I am inspired by what you shared. I'm definitely going to go and check out the book and then I think that makes it a good Christmas gift for those of us that have grandkids and little ones right.

Speaker 1:

Well, the adults are saying, you know, there was this book, oh the places you'll go. It was a kid's book but the adults were all reading it. I'm hearing that this is like that and I really like hearing that so well, exciting times, super well.

Speaker 2:

Thanks again for being my guest today. Thank you.

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