00:00:00.000hi I'm Teresa Greco the host of the happy hour we're on the show we talk about the things that
00:00:09.420can help us to live our happiest life physically mentally emotionally and spiritually today on the
00:00:15.660show I have a good friend of mine Kim over thank you so much for being on the show my pleasure
00:00:22.260thank you for having me Kim I would love for you to share a little bit more about yourself with
00:00:27.420our audience today okay so my name is Kim Olver I am the founder of the Mental Freedom Experience and
00:00:37.080the owner of Olver International my background is in counseling I'm also a board certified coach
00:00:45.000and I just love helping people learn the tools they need to live a happier life so we're really
00:00:53.040on the same wavelength with this we come at it maybe from different angles but I absolutely love
00:00:59.700that because I believe a lot of our unhappiness may be self-created because we don't have the knowledge
00:01:07.860about these tools that would help us so yeah thank you talk today yeah thank you and my my brand my
00:01:16.080company my shows my all all of it has to do with giving people the practical tools to help us because
00:01:23.220you're right we don't know these tools that me as an educator you know almost of 30 years these tools
00:01:30.300aren't embedded in curriculum we don't we don't learn them there we don't learn them in our social circles
00:01:36.060unless maybe some people have gone you know into some therapy and counseling but even there sometimes
00:01:42.360the tools aren't always shared right that they can go in and just have a a session of venting but not
00:01:48.840walk away with any practical tools that they can then use to help themselves and help those around them
00:01:56.520and so you've developed a solution for that yes yeah I have and I'm I'm excited I know you know all about
00:02:05.340it because you're one of my certified specialists in mental freedom so um we can talk about that or we can
00:02:11.820talk about whatever is on your agenda but I agree with you occasionally you'll find at least I see
00:02:18.900it on my feeds in social media there'll be a meme that says something like you can only control your
00:02:25.620own behavior you can't control other people's and everybody's like yeah right of course but but then
00:02:31.580what right what is this knowledge what do I do with this knowledge so that that's the other place that
00:02:38.260you might find it and you might feel like oh I know that I can't control anybody but myself but how does
00:02:44.440that change your life how does that affect what you do and what you think and how you feel and there's
00:02:50.780some you know strategies to put into place to create a better life for yourself a happier life yeah and
00:02:58.760people are going to love this show today because essentially the toolkit that your program gives
00:03:05.960them is six tools that have been shown I believe up to this point to be applicable to every situation so
00:03:14.180if you want to talk about how the tools that we're going to get into later have been applicable to a wide
00:03:21.740variety of of situations in in people's lives sure well it's interesting because when I created mental
00:03:32.060freedom I had a target market in mind and I was thinking women in business specifically male
00:03:38.780dominated professions because women who work in male dominated professions have a lot of pressure
00:03:46.100to conform to the male model of success which means no emotion right we're intellectual not emoting if
00:03:57.380we're emoting that means something derogatory about us as women but that is an essential part of what
00:04:05.920makes us feminine and female and it's important to be able to bring that with us into whatever environment
00:04:12.980that we're in so I think that there's pressure on women in the workplace to have this persona that
00:04:19.760they're in control at all times and everything is fine and there's nothing wrong don't look here there's
00:04:25.700nothing to see but there's always something I mean we women we have things that disrupt our happiness that
00:04:36.040bother us men have it too but men are much better at putting boundaries around those
00:04:42.980things and and you know fencing them off from what they're doing in the current moment and we women
00:04:49.480don't have that as one of our strengths so things that are bothering us leak into our everyday life and so
00:04:57.340that's who I was thinking I was developing this program for but since I've developed it it has helped so many
00:05:05.840different varieties of people it's really interesting so of course there's counselors who take it because
00:05:13.300who has more pressure to be okay than counselors do because they're the ones everybody's coming to for
00:05:19.160help but if they're having a problem then that says something maybe they're not a good enough counselor
00:05:25.100is what they tell themselves and then there's coaches life coaches business coaches not athletic coaches
00:05:32.800and then I have a man who got certified with me who uses mental freedom to help other men transitioning
00:05:42.360transitioning from prison into the community and he said he hasn't he's been looking for 40 years for
00:05:50.340a program that would really help empower people rather than keep them dependent and he says mental freedom
00:05:57.200was the answer for him so he wants to share that with others and then there's people who use it in the
00:06:05.040classroom so they're teachers and educators and they've worked with people in high school middle school and
00:06:13.240even college age so it it's it's been a wide range I was not sure if this would be appropriate for
00:06:22.640people who had experienced trauma in their life but I found that it has been incredibly helpful
00:06:28.320for people who have experienced trauma sometimes people have already had counseling and thought that
00:06:35.280they were all worked through whatever trauma they had and some aspects of it come up in mental freedom
00:06:41.480that they're able to really take out and look at and correct and then sometimes mental freedom is the
00:06:48.980first place that they're looking at their trauma and they may get everything they need in mental freedom
00:06:53.920or they may decide to go on for some trauma counseling with a certified counselor so it's been really an
00:07:00.120exciting time for me and I still am holding out the possibility that there might be some problem out there
00:07:07.440that mental freedom is incapable of assisting with but we haven't found it yet and it's been five years now
00:07:14.660and that's because mental freedom has roots in another psychological program as well which is I mean yeah and
00:07:24.900that that's been decades right so I have been a student of William Glasser psychiatrist in the United States
00:07:33.720who created reality therapy first and then choice theory psychology and his choice theory psychology grew out of
00:07:42.920a concept called perceptual control theory which was an engineering theory that was created by William Powell
00:07:51.660an engineer and ironically Glasser himself psychiatrist that he was first studied engineering so he and Powell
00:08:00.360had this in common and Glasser added some things to Powell's theory and choice theory is what I work with
00:08:07.480and use in my counseling sessions since I started counseling which is 1982 and yeah it's been a long long time
00:08:16.980and that's been a theory especially the engineering piece that's been evidence-based scientifically based
00:08:27.740and my mental freedom is built on Glasser's choice theory psychology so it's like the work keeps expanding and expanding
00:08:36.040so my technique is mental freedom the theory behind it is choice theory yeah I love that because that's the key point
00:08:43.880the technique is the like how do we apply the theory that it's great to have you know lofty ideas about you know how things
00:08:52.080work but how do you actually put them in into into place so I that's um that's important too and so if we if we talk about
00:09:02.040some of the issues that perhaps are impeding people's happiness that the program could assist with and essentially the program has
00:09:09.040the program has it's a six-week program with six distinct tools and so I mean one way to approach this could be that we talk about a
00:09:20.040a situation for a couple of the tools right and what the solution could be so like if we looked at week one for example you know what that particular tool help happens to help with then we can see how many we we managed to give examples for today what do you think about that that works for me okay okay so um let's talk about the without introducing the tool you know what that works for me okay okay so um let's talk about the
00:09:47.040um let's talk about the without introducing the tool yet what would the first tool perhaps assist people with um getting some ease around okay so the first tool is about first learning what things are your responsibility and then accepting that responsibility like if it is to be it is up to me this is my responsibility so I'm going to
00:10:17.020I am going to take ownership of these pieces of my life I'm not going to subcontract them to someone else and once we step up and take responsibility for the things that are ours then we also have to look at are there places in your life where you're taking responsibility for something another person is actually responsible for and how that affects you is in some ways
00:10:45.020it exhausts you right there's enough to take care of your own responsibilities and and and in another way we're trying to do good for another person that's usually what's motivating that behavior and we may do short-term good meaning we take care of whatever crisis is on the table but the long-term effect of that is we're robbing that person from the opportunity for growth
00:11:14.020in facing these problems in facing these problems on their own certainly we could be there and walk with them and help them through it but we don't just fix it for them and so that can cause a dependence on us which can be further exhausting and we begin to wonder why why won't this person step up and take care of themselves well because you've been doing it for so long why would they
00:11:38.020why would they so that's basically the first one and then attached to that is also we we always have the ability to respond even in situations that aren't our responsibility this is what we do in in good ways when we make charitable contributions we recognize a problem we volunteer our time and our money to help help correct that problem and that's us being response able
00:12:07.020response able um we get to choose what we're going to be responsible for we can't possibly be responsible for everything in the world there's way too many issues so we choose what we're going to be responsible for but i always ask us to consider two questions when we're making a decision to be responsible and that is do i genuinely want to do this is this the person i want to be in this situation
00:12:36.020if the answer to the answer to the that is yes then that's that's the first step yes go ahead you you can do that the second thing is how is my being response able going to affect the other person if there's another person involved so might this have negative effects for someone else and is that the person that i want to be so those are two things that help people decide if they want to go forward with being responsible sometimes it's better
00:13:06.000not to be so it's better not to be so it's figuring that out for yourself i love this lesson um you know and when i think you know now that you shared that you had initially created the group um or the program for women i when i think about this i immediately think about us women who have so many responsibilities in and outside the home now that you know many years ago
00:13:36.000and when i think about us women who have so many years ago and when we transitioned to be more outside then those responsibilities became even more and more on top and so this lesson for me and i think for the women that i've worked with too has been um is a very powerful one because it allows them to really evaluate all the responsibilities that they've taken on
00:14:06.000and interestingly the guests that i just had um on the show just prior to yours is one in which we were talking about how women tend to do that because you know they have a hard time allocating it to other people or they feel like other people can don't do it right or don't do it the same way and so we end up just like okay i'll just do it i'll just do it and you know i think when my children were younger
00:14:34.000you know they're not you know they're not as able and so you just but now that they're as they're they're older then i was like okay now you can handle this and you can handle that and and you just have to let go and allow them to do it in the way that they're going to do it when they're going to do it for so for me when i would learn this tool with you i was thinking about my son who is never
00:14:58.160on the ball about putting his job is putting the dishwasher the dish is in the dishwasher and emptying
00:15:05.720the dishwasher as well it's his responsibility and that he doesn't do it as often as i would like for him
00:15:11.300that he lets the dishes pile up a little bit and i'm just like no no and so that's where the second part of
00:15:18.220the tool is helpful because you can choose to be response able so then i'm like sometimes i'm like you know
00:15:24.820what i have some extra time today i'm just going to go ahead and do it and other times i don't have the
00:15:29.420extra time so i choose not to be responsible so so it's just like practical application in the home for
00:15:37.060that particular tool which that one i and and for the moms like i said that i've worked with many of them
00:15:43.760are like yes yes i should start to like allocate some of the responsibilities to other able people
00:15:49.540right i had a woman in one of my first sessions who told me she had a 40 year old daughter who had
00:15:59.100an alcohol dependency and that 40 year old lived in her mother's home and her mother would give her
00:16:06.260a weekly allowance and she took the mental freedom experience and learned this first tool and she said
00:16:15.420if i delegate responsibility for my daughter's life to my daughter she would end up homeless and i can't
00:16:23.400let that happen yeah she felt that kind of responsibility so i said you know mental freedom
00:16:31.220is an abstract concept right you want more mental freedom but not at the expense of giving up the
00:16:40.280responsibility you've assumed for your daughter so it's okay you don't have to do anything that we
00:16:47.540talk about in mental freedom it's always a choice so she left that session thinking yeah she wasn't
00:16:54.620gonna release this responsibility she she being a good mother in her definition good mother was more
00:17:01.920important to her than this particular aspect that of mental freedom that she would get but when she came
00:17:08.820back she had given it a lot of thought and she made a compromise so what she did was she didn't ask her
00:17:16.220daughter to leave her house but she told her she wasn't going to give her any more money and so her
00:17:23.200daughter in the time between our first session and our second session chose on her own without any
00:17:29.560pushing from her mother to go into a rehab and her mother was so happy and it came when she said
00:17:38.020your financial uh situation is not my responsibility i'll give you a home to live in but you're
00:17:45.820responsible for your own finances and she realized she had a real problem and she went in to rehab and
00:17:53.940she is now in recovery from alcoholism so her mom's really happy and realizes that maybe being a good mom
00:18:02.720sometimes is making the hard decisions yeah that's a good one okay i'd love so i i'm excited to get to
00:18:12.260tool number two and i feel like tool number two is getting a lot of um exposure in the media because
00:18:22.500mel robbins i would say has put her twist on this tool right but it's not but it's this is a tool that
00:18:29.940goes way back much more before her her latest book came out and so whenever people talk about that
00:18:39.980i'm like yeah but mental freedom i already had that tool and it was talked about long long long before
00:18:49.580and so um before we share what that and maybe people have a bit of an idea already or you know what that
00:18:55.680could be but can you can you maybe preface it a little bit about you know why this tool is part of
00:19:02.960the program why is it important for us to like to do the particular challenge that you're going to talk
00:19:08.980about um yeah share that with us well the reason it's so important is because relationships are central
00:19:17.980and core in our life without relationships we're kind of adrift we need we need community we need
00:19:26.160relationships in order for us to be able to have a happy life um so our relationships get challenged
00:19:36.400when we when we subcontract the responsibility for what is ours to other people so some of those things
00:19:45.560we really didn't talk about that but one of the things that i'm responsible for is my own happiness
00:19:50.460if i say to someone in my life i'll be happy when you do blank i'm giving them responsibility for my
00:19:59.880happiness that's crazy i want to be in charge of my happiness right i i don't want my happiness to be
00:20:07.740connected to what other people do or don't do i have no control over that i can ask for what i want
00:20:14.360for sure doesn't mean you can't ask other people to do things that would increase your happiness and
00:20:21.260a lot of times people who care about you who love you are more than happy to help and do a piece that
00:20:28.260you're asking for but this challenge is about trusting that every person in your life and even
00:20:37.040those people on the planet that aren't in your life so for every single person
00:20:40.820they are doing the best that they know to do to get what they want now sometimes what they want
00:20:49.420isn't a good thing sometimes you might not agree with what they want and sometimes you might think
00:20:55.800well there's a thousand better ways to get that than the one you picked but but in that moment
00:21:03.920that was the way the person thought was the best way to get what they wanted now when i think about
00:21:11.020this i think of my my youngest son kyle who joined the army when he was a senior in high school no i
00:21:19.620think he was a junior in high school actually it might have been a senior he was a week before his
00:21:23.32018th birthday so he must have been a senior and he joined the army and he was dating a girl
00:21:33.340that was currently a sophomore so he was a senior she was a sophomore he left when he graduated he left
00:21:41.620went to basic training then he had desert training then he went to iraq so in essence he was basically away
00:21:47.400from home for about a year and then another year when he was deployed to iraq and jesse bless her heart
00:21:55.380was just loyal devoted she was in it for the long haul and i loved this girl well kyle went to iraq and
00:22:05.920he was only he had his 19th birthday while he was there so he was 18 when he went turned 19
00:22:12.620and he and jesse stayed connected all through that time and at that point they had a mid-cycle break
00:22:19.900so kyle came home in october and got engaged to jesse who was just a junior in high school
00:22:26.260so it was way too early i thought for them to get engaged but it's not my life i'm a choice theory
00:22:33.560parent so i left it the uh you know his decision he he bought her a beautiful ring he actually asked me
00:22:40.840to go to the jewelry store with him and they planned a wedding for when he came home he was coming home
00:22:45.880in june they were getting married in august he came home and knew he was not ready to be married he
00:22:52.780had things he had to work through uh i don't know anybody who goes to war and doesn't come back changed
00:22:59.340in some way and he wasn't ready he didn't know how to tell her that so he treated her terribly he was
00:23:08.960mean to her he was pushing her away pushing her away and jesse was so committed she was not going
00:23:14.660to be pushed away she she was in it she just knew she had to love him more and he would come around
00:23:20.900and i kept saying to her i wish you could just give him some space he really needs the space and she
00:23:27.420said no he needs my love and so so kyle in his 19 year old wisdom arranged for her to find him with
00:23:37.940another girl it was horrible in my opinion i was so mad and then i had to remember he was 19 years old
00:23:46.260and he needed to push her away he didn't know how to have the conversation he felt if he had the
00:23:52.460conversation she would stick around he didn't know how to make the the cut clean and so it worked
00:23:59.920she took off the ring threw it adam stormed out she was devastated i was devastated and then kyle
00:24:06.980was home for a little while then he went back to iraq he came back the second time and she was engaged
00:24:12.520to someone else and he called her up and said jesse please don't marry him i still love you
00:24:18.100and that girl to her credit did not go running into his arms but she did give him a second chance
00:24:25.280told her fiance that kyle wanted another chance and she felt like she needed to give it to him
00:24:30.560and he hung in there with her until she made her decision that she was gonna marry kyle and she is
00:24:36.380now my daughter-in-law so wow yeah this was a great great story but i had to unconditionally trust
00:24:45.580my son kyle that he was doing the best he knew to do to deal with that situation and while i could
00:24:52.420have thought of a million other ways to do it he he couldn't he did the best he knew to do to get the
00:24:58.120result that he wanted and he got it but then you know he had to he had to do some new behaviors to
00:25:05.400win her back so it was i and i think so the point is i got a little sidetracked there teresa but the point
00:25:15.160is that we often have expectations of other people and how they're going to behave and we expect that
00:25:24.840if they tell us they're going to love us forever then they have to love us forever because they said
00:25:29.160they would or if they said they were going to stop at the store and pick up something you needed for
00:25:34.280dinner that they would do that so that you could cook dinner but then you find out they come home
00:25:39.160without it because they had a rough day at work and they were processing everything that happened at work
00:25:43.400and completely forgot to get you what you asked for so then we get angry with people and we feel like
00:25:50.040we can't trust them but it's the wrong kind of trust because we want to trust people to be who we want
00:25:57.640them to be instead of who they really are so when we trust that everybody's doing their best to get
00:26:04.200what they want in that moment with the information available to them now we don't have to judge them
00:26:09.960anymore we don't have to um be angry we can find some compassion and maybe eventually some forgiveness
00:26:20.920not for the other person's sake but for our sake because when we hold on to bitterness and resentment
00:26:26.920and frustration you've heard that expression holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the
00:26:33.320other person to die that's not good for us or for the other person so i find this particular tool
00:26:42.760i learned it the hard way i was unconditionally trusting someone to to do what i thought they
00:26:48.520should do and they didn't because what they wanted was something completely different than what i wanted
00:26:54.360them to want and that caused me to create this thing called the unconditional trust challenge because
00:27:00.760we take it so personally somebody breaks a commitment to us we think it's because of us that
00:27:06.360they don't care about us or we're not important to them or we tell ourselves all these stories
00:27:11.800that have nothing to do with the reality the reality is the person wanted something in that moment
00:27:18.760and they did the thing that was best for them in that moment to get what they wanted and that's it
00:27:24.280and if you care about them you want them to have what they wanted even if it makes life harder for you
00:27:29.880so that can help hold relationships together that should be held together but it can also help you
00:27:36.920gain the clarity on a person that may have you say you know you're not who i thought you were
00:27:42.760and that means i need to change the nature of our relationship either i'm going to end it i'm going to
00:27:49.640dive head first i'm going to create some boundaries i'm going to care about you but from a distance
00:27:55.160whatever it is you decide to do it's it's a good decision because now you're seeing them clearly
00:28:02.040you're not seeing them the way you want them to be you're actually seeing who they are and deciding
00:28:07.320is this a relationship i want to have or is it a relationship i want to end or is it a relationship i need to adjust
00:28:13.800mm-hmm i think there's two parts that make this lesson powerful number one acknowledging that the
00:28:22.440person is doing what they need to do to get their needs met and so in the program we talk about what
00:28:28.760those needs are but the needs are always the driving force behind the behavior so when you
00:28:35.800when you look at the behavior so now what i i try to do is like analyze a bit to say okay
00:28:42.680what need were they trying to fill why that's powerful is that it's not as you said a reflection of
00:28:50.520of yourself right so you know what is it about me that made this person do x y and z or what you know
00:28:58.120what's lacking in me or why maybe i'm too much and that's why they went in and they did what they did
00:29:04.280but it has nothing to do with you you can remove yourself from that situation to say okay what is it
00:29:11.560about the needs in that individual that maybe i'm contributing to why why you know they have that
00:29:18.680particular need for you know some freedom because maybe i'm like too nagging or something who knows
00:29:24.600but to say you can think about what need might they be trying to fill and by stepping out of the
00:29:32.040situation this is the second half why i think this this lesson is powerful is that by allowing people
00:29:39.560to show you who they are right so you know if we go back to you know the let them theory um when you
00:29:46.280allow people to show you who they are you can make now a decision based on you know what's best for you
00:29:54.520now that you have allowed them to fully show you you know their truth whether in what and however they
00:30:03.480might be exhibiting you know that truth through whatever behavior they're doing um but then i can now
00:30:10.920and i've and i i since have to do this when you live in a home with other people and we all have
00:30:17.400different people in their lives even at work that we are able to make a choice for ourselves it is so
00:30:24.280empowering because we are no longer a victim to other people's actions otherwise that's how you feel
00:30:31.160as you said if only you were different if only this was different if only then i'd be happy but
00:30:37.560you know in in some of my previous shows we've talked about how we are creating the life we are
00:30:44.600living with every moment and in every choice that we make and that that particular when that person has
00:30:53.640made their choice you are now in the position to make a choice for yourself yeah and that you're not
00:30:59.480a victim to to the choice you can now decide what you're going to do with that information which i i
00:31:07.400find it so powerful for all the things that are happening outside of our lives that we have no
00:31:13.960control over right and and mel robbins actually talks about that she says let them and then let me
00:31:21.960and let me is usually about a boundary that she wants to draw based on what the other person is doing
00:31:29.080which is beautiful it completely embraces the unconditional trust challenge so yeah yeah love that lesson
00:31:37.320and that one i find uh so empowering because every everything outside of yourself is really
00:31:44.920outside of your control you can't control your kids you can't control your pets you can't control
00:31:49.160the weather you can't control it's all outside your boss this is yeah yeah all of it right and all you
00:31:55.560can do is can is control yourself and so when you can look at it though from that angle which i don't know
00:32:02.120if she dives into necessarily understanding the needs component which is very powerful right is that
00:32:09.160when you know what those needs are then you can think okay well you know which need was it that they
00:32:15.160were maybe filling and i i really enjoy that part because that i didn't know either um so i i think that
00:32:22.920that lesson's really great um so if you if you had to choose one of the other ones in the lesson not number
00:32:30.040five right that's too complicated but one of the other ones that you think are quite are is quite popular
00:32:41.880in the sense that many of us kind of fall into inside of that situation um and then like and how we would
00:32:49.640get out of it what do you think i i would like to talk about um the last one so i love that one yeah
00:32:57.560appreciating the glow and the glow is an acronym and it's developed to help people understand that
00:33:06.600every painful thing we experience has obviously pain that's what makes it painful but it also has equal
00:33:16.120amounts of glow which is positivity and this is a lesson this coupled with the unconditional trust
00:33:24.520challenge challenge that actually helps people who have experienced trauma um and so glow stands for
00:33:34.280gifts lessons opportunities and wisdom so when you've been through something painful
00:33:43.480you're going to feel the pain because our brains are hardwired with a negativity bias
00:33:48.520and we tend to notice what's really wrong with our lives before we take the time to look at what's
00:33:54.600right with our lives which is another thing that contributes to unhappiness is our focus what are
00:34:00.360we focusing on because if you want to find what's wrong with your life you'll find it and if you want
00:34:05.720to find what's great about your life you can find that too but you have to you have to be motivated to
00:34:11.560look for it so that's the same as with the glow we have painful experiences and there's this man named
00:34:18.200john demartini who wrote a book called the breakthrough experience that i read 20 years ago and in the
00:34:24.680breakthrough experience he talks about the periodic table of elements and how every element in our natural
00:34:31.400world has equal positive and negative charges it has the same number of protons as it does electrons
00:34:39.400and he said that's also true of the events in our life so if you have a painful event that you would
00:34:47.080give on a scale of 1 to 100 say in 83 in pain that means there's 83 positivity associated with it
00:34:57.320all you have to do is look for it now this is a tricky one because i'm not saying don't think about
00:35:04.600your pain just get over it and think about what the benefits are that that's crazy i mean the pain
00:35:11.880doesn't go away but you can neutralize it with positivity when you're ready and that's the important
00:35:20.520part you have to be ready you have to say to yourself you know i'm tired of feeling like this i'm
00:35:26.440tired of being disengaged with my life i'm tired of being not present with the people in my life
00:35:33.240i i want to get back engaged so then you think okay let's look at what glow could be happening here
00:35:41.960so i'd like to share the example of my husband when he passed away in 1999 that was my first experience
00:35:49.000of being exposed to this information and my first time of using it so my husband had leukemia and he
00:35:56.680he passed away and so that was pretty painful if i had to give it a number i would say 83 um that's why
00:36:04.200i picked that number right i i could say 100 but i know that there must be more painful things i just
00:36:09.240haven't experienced them yet so i'm saying 83 so i i thought what could possibly be good about this
00:36:18.200and that felt really wrong to even think about but i thought i have two sons who were teenagers at the
00:36:26.200time and i knew i was going to have to help them through it so i thought let me at least entertain the
00:36:31.560question and in that moment i thought of two things the first thing was we were going to have the
00:36:37.960opportunity to say goodbye it wasn't going to be this sudden my husband had a massive heart attack
00:36:44.040and the last thing i said to him was i hate you or the last thing i said to him was would you pick
00:36:49.800up some milk on your way home from work today you don't want that to be the last thing you say to
00:36:54.440someone that you love so i knew we would have our relationships in order we'd have said all the
00:37:00.440things that we wanted to say the second thing was and this was a true gift my husband learned that
00:37:06.920the type of leukemia he had was associated with the chemical benzene which is present in car engines
00:37:14.360and he was an auto mechanic so he stopped working as soon as he learned that because he thought why
00:37:20.440should i keep working with cars if this is actually killing me so when he stopped working he was still
00:37:27.320relatively healthy had a lot of energy and so in those four years he spent a lot of time with my
00:37:35.080children he coached their little league team he coached their soccer team and he never played
00:37:40.680baseball or soccer he helped them with wrestling he was quite the wrestler so he passed on a lot of
00:37:47.080wisdom there he taught them about working on cars he took them hunting he took them fishing and we had
00:37:52.680a family vacation to disney world none of that would have happened if he had been healthy and lived to
00:37:59.640100 because my husband was a bit of a workaholic he didn't have time to do those kinds of things
00:38:05.880so that was a true gift now did those two things equal 83 no not even close but over time you get to
00:38:16.040collect other things like his the best man in our wedding his best friend was a gay man that never came out
00:38:26.680of the closet until after dave died because he knew that my husband would have a hard time with it they
00:38:31.880had been wrestling partners rolling around on wrestling mats together showering together even double
00:38:37.880dated together and he knew that my my husband would not be able to accept that and he didn't want to deal
00:38:43.960with that so my husband died this man could live another thing that happened was we were working on
00:38:51.480finding him a bone marrow donor because none of his family was a match for him so we raised a lot of
00:38:58.600money and were able to put 350 new people on the bone marrow registry at that time it cost a hundred
00:39:06.680dollars to be tested to get on the bone marrow registry which is why not very many people were on
00:39:12.200it so none of them matched my husband which was really devastating but they went on to match other
00:39:18.760people and save other people's lives so i could keep going on and on and on but since i've left
00:39:25.160pennsylvania i live in chicago i have my own business i was the director of william glasser i wrote many
00:39:31.880books i've traveled the world none of those things would have happened i would have i would still be
00:39:38.280living on a dirt road in northeast pennsylvania working at a foster care agency it was the life i had with
00:39:44.200my husband a life i liked but it's not the expansive life that i live now so my husband died and and i've
00:39:53.480blossomed and i think that that was another uh opportunity and a gift so when you have had painful
00:40:03.800situations and you're ready you can look for the glow and every time you find something it frees you
00:40:10.360a little bit more from the pain the pain doesn't go away but it gets transformed into neutrality yes
00:40:18.040there was pain and there was glow and when the balance is reached you won't feel trapped by the
00:40:26.200pain anymore and it's a beautiful place to get to and i've felt so privileged to be able to help lots of
00:40:34.040people find that that space so that's why i chose that last that last session because i think that
00:40:42.440brings all of mental freedom full circle no it's a beautiful lesson now i want this is what came to
00:40:50.760mind as i was listening to you speak and i'm just wondering how you think that this falls in so there's
00:40:56.040this expression when bad things happen to us that some people will use which is everything happens for a
00:41:03.400reason now that that that expression feels like so
00:41:11.240say it bluntly when when you know depending on what's happened to you you know you let's say you
00:41:18.840find out you get cancer well that doesn't feel like a good reason right now everything happens for a
00:41:23.960reason so where does where does that statement fall into that last lesson well it's placating right it it
00:41:32.120doesn't have a lot of substance to it and i've also heard people say well don't think about that think
00:41:37.640about all the good things in your life um and again it's like think positive okay great but is that
00:41:44.600really something that's that that will serve you and will help you because when somebody's dealing with
00:41:51.080pain that's not what they want to hear and so i like to introduce this lesson as there's an opportunity
00:41:59.640for you when you're ready to look at the glow in this situation if you're not ready now there is no push
00:42:08.680for you to do this um sometimes we need to sit with our new reality and let ourselves adjust to that
00:42:16.840but what i don't want people to do is feel like they've been forever altered and changed by this
00:42:24.200whatever the painful event was that they're broken and there's they'll never be the same again it's true
00:42:30.360you won't be the same as you were but you can build back even better um when you find the glow the glow is
00:42:38.600different from just cheer up or yeah this happened for a reason um we may not know what that is until
00:42:47.320we're gone from here you know that just that doesn't feel like helpful in any way um you can
00:42:53.960have faith that yes this happened for a reason and maybe when i'm gone it'll be revealed to me
00:42:59.480but that doesn't help you now and i want people to know that there's help available right now if you're
00:43:06.920ready for it when i had my hot air balloon accident which is a whole nother story i won't go into
00:43:13.160but um we we had a very bad landing and i broke both of my legs and in the balloon while i was waiting
00:43:22.040for people to come and get me out of the balloon i remember having the thought in real time well kim
00:43:29.320now you get a chance to practice weight preach so i was able to find glow in the moment but that was
00:43:36.920after at least 15 years of looking for glow in my pain and in my clients pain so i was quite practiced
00:43:46.040at it so i don't don't expect that you'll be able to do that right away but that is something that can
00:43:53.000happen if you keep practicing this over time it's going to get easier and easier and easier and it it
00:44:01.720it's a game changer it really is it's not everything happens for a reason think positive you'll what
00:44:08.520doesn't kill you makes you stronger you know all those platitudes that are said when we don't know
00:44:14.520what to say yes exactly yeah this is real something you can sink your teeth into when you're ready if
00:44:24.120you want to and that's everything about mental freedom it's never prescriptive it's always
00:44:30.520invitational so if you're feeling a need for more mental freedom you can you know you can try some of
00:44:37.720these tools that teresa and i have talked about um and and you'll see that you'll become a little more
00:44:45.960mentally free a little more mentally free if you want to try some other tools you can become even
00:44:50.920more mentally free so it's all about increments i think um even though some people dive in and do
00:44:57.160it all all at once that's fine you can do that too but you might find that you know one really speaks to
00:45:03.080you so start with that one and then you know go forward from there it's a lifetime journey oh yeah
00:45:10.120because life keeps throwing new things at you all the time and so now at least i have a checklist
00:45:15.560right i have my six tools and i look at those six tools and i think which one can i apply and often
00:45:23.240we might have to apply more than one um because it just works to get me over that to bring me back
00:45:30.600to my place of peace back to my place of freedom and where i didn't have that before and in the moment
00:45:38.840you need something like that you need this toolkit that you now know for yourself right not that
00:45:44.360you're dependent on when your next therapy appointment is right you can't get in right
00:45:50.120it's like you have something immediate as you said that you can that you can turn to and the more that
00:45:55.880you practice them then you get to the point as you said that in the moment you you were able just to
00:46:02.280to start doing it without having to reflect on it later right right and so i i think um that that's
00:46:09.320what makes it so helpful the other part of that i want to let people know about it is that when
00:46:15.960working with with us is that you don't even need to technically divulge all of the skeletons and and
00:46:24.520hardship and and issues that you may be going through because when we talk about the tool and give
00:46:31.560all the attendance of it you know and how you could apply it and and whatnot that technically somebody
00:46:37.000wouldn't even really need to reveal what unless they wanted to talk through it they can of course but
00:46:43.080if they didn't want to because for me part of my own personal story is that i didn't i didn't feel
00:46:48.840comfortable talking about it and a lot of the healing i did was all on my own in the privacy of of like
00:46:56.200my own spaces um because i just i just didn't i just didn't feel like i could for various reasons and
00:47:04.760what i love about this is that somebody can can come to us wanting to know the toolkit but not having
00:47:12.840to share any of the the you know the struggles and hardships that they're looking to overcome
00:47:19.880yeah i think that makes it very special also because in counseling you're expected of course
00:47:25.960to talk about your pain and there's a place for that i believe i am a counselor after all
00:47:33.400but i also think that sometimes we counselors are a bit like the rubberneckers at a car accident tell me
00:47:41.960how horrible your life is because then i can go home and feel good that my life isn't as bad as sure
00:47:48.040that's that's a bit of an exaggeration and i'm trying to be funny here but i don't need to know
00:47:56.360your struggles to help you fix them i trust that you have the intuition that when you hear the the
00:48:04.840tools and you get all the information you will intuitively know where you most need to apply that
00:48:11.880and i've had people come to me for one issue um there was one woman in particular she came to me
00:48:18.280because her job was killing her literally and she wanted out but her husband wasn't happy about her
00:48:27.240getting out because it put them in a whole different financial situation and his high need was safety and
00:48:33.880security and hers by the way was freedom so they were opposites on that on that particular area so
00:48:42.440she came to me thinking that it was about the job but as we talked it became increasingly clear to her
00:48:49.480that the problem was the relationship with her husband not the job although the job was crap i mean
00:48:55.000she needed to leave the job but it was really that she wanted to know that her husband was in her corner
00:49:01.160all the time and could see how horrible this job was for her and he wasn't seeing it and so we did a
00:49:07.720full pivot but she came to that on her own i didn't have to tell her there was another uh person i think
00:49:15.240you know scott he was working with a woman who was talking about you know workplace issues she she was a
00:49:22.840newly um promoted manager and she was struggling with some growing pains but as she worked through the this
00:49:31.160information she got to the unconditional trust challenge and it took her back to when she was
00:49:35.960a little girl and her sister passed away and she realized she had unresolved issues with that so the
00:49:42.280unconditional trust challenge really helped her work through that but she knew where to go and so i trust
00:49:49.320that the people that come to me that go through mental freedom the people that go to you theresa
00:49:54.120they know where they need to to use this and i'll also say that i've come to understand that sometimes
00:50:00.200people need to go through a mental freedom experience more than once so they go through
00:50:04.760it once as who they are now they grow they learn they live their life and then maybe they hit an
00:50:10.120obstacle that they're not sure how to negotiate so they come back and they do a new mental freedom
00:50:15.880experience and they find that they're going deeper into some areas that they thought maybe were okay but
00:50:22.520now they'll get more growth out of that so it can be that you do more than one mental freedom experience
00:50:29.160if you run into something that's bigger than the tools you have at your disposal right then
00:50:34.840so that's been fun to watch that happen yeah wow so um kim if people want to find out more
00:50:43.640about it um about you and uh all the offerings where can they go for that well i would refer them to my
00:50:51.480website over it's o l v as in victor e r over international dot com where pretty much everything
00:51:00.360i do is there there's a mental freedom tab you'll find out all about the mental freedom offerings and
00:51:05.720there's other things there too but that's the most important for what we're talking about in this
00:51:10.840conversation okay awesome and then we have an event upcoming too if you want to talk about that
00:51:16.440people curious yes it is our very first mental freedom conference that's designed for people
00:51:23.400who are mental freedom curious so you may not be ready for a mental freedom experience it's a big
00:51:29.480investment and this is just a one day nine to four on zoom so you don't have to leave your home you
00:51:38.440don't have to leave your bedroom if you have a computer you can do it right from your bed if you want
00:51:43.000um and theresa is going to do a presentation in there that i'm really looking forward to called
00:51:50.600mental freedom and spirituality and that will be a really great application for mental freedom and
00:51:57.480there's also a woman doing a presentation on uh using mental freedom in parenting and with uh their
00:52:05.320partner their life partner and then we're going to have three other people who are facilitating
00:52:10.920conversations around each of the six tools and we'll be doing some exercises and some interactive
00:52:17.880learning throughout the day so i'm really looking forward to it and uh you'll find that also at
00:52:23.640oliver international um it is uh one of the events uh mental freedom conference it's in the banner on
00:52:30.520the home page so you'll find it there yay that sounds exciting yeah yeah yeah so if anybody's curious
00:52:37.160after our conversation today definitely go in and check that out sign up we'd love to have you there
00:52:42.360for the day and so kim i wanted to thank you so much for for sharing more about your program and you
00:52:49.880know in offering tools that people can take away from our conversation right away which is amazing so
00:52:56.520thank you so much for being with us today oh theresa it's been my pleasure and thank you for the invitation