The Path to Wellness by Navigating Gut-Wrenching Experiences

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W Forcy Radio, it's employees their affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W Forcy Radio or its employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W Forcy Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Release Cortez. Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Great to have you back. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. I've been hosting the show since February of twenty fifteen, and it is a special privilege for meat. I'm happy to have you with us on the truck. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm a management consultant, organizational logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Elise Cortez and Associates help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from

1:32 a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There, people are intrinsically motivated to perform at their best, grown to their full of potential, and are committed to stay and help deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Elise Cortez dot com. Now getting in today's program with us today is doctor Karen Kramer. She's a neuro linguistic program master, coach, divorce in relationship breakthrough coach, speaker, author, and leadership development facilitator. She's the owner and the founder of the Villivision Wellness and Retreat Center. A SPA inspired therapeutic wellness center to help ground women from the inside out, and she's currently working on her forthcoming book, due out in the fall of twenty twenty three, called Healthy Healthy Grief, Normalizing and Navigating Loss in a culture of toxic positivity. She knows today from San Diego, California, Doctor Karen Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Elise. It's such a pleasure of being here, it really is. I'm so happy to have you with me in my studio talking about you and your work, and I want to first celebrate just how we've recently come back together again. So you were good enough when I reached out on LinkedIn telling you about my Purpose and Joy tour that I was coming to San Diego in May of twenty twenty three, and you merely reached out and said, hey, let's talk about that, and here it is. That was almost twenty years after we'd sort of went our separate ways because we did our PhDs at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, but really haven't spoken in between all those years.

2:57 So I just want to start our conversation and get very present to you. You are someone who really leans into the full experience of life and what you do and just have an open heart. And I really appreciate that about you. You're so welcome, Alie. So it was such a pleasure, I know, when we had that conversation, realizing where even after two decades pasts have gone in different ways, from children, marriages, divorce, etc. Just just coming around and really on the topic that both you and I now are focusing on around grief and the roles that that plays not only in our lives but the lives of the people that we touch. Yeah, I knew that was one of the things that you and I were connecting on.

3:42 It's one of the It just happens to be one of the things that I touched onto one of my books. And I don't have near the experience that you do, but we do come about it in a very similar way, which we're going to get to you a little bit later here, But first I just want to also acknowledge that you have really quite an interesting specialty in this whole area of grief recovery and and I really respect that you have an understanding of the human mind and this specialty, and that's quite a very interesting way to delineate your expertise. For me, it's meaning and purpose. So one of the things that I got from doctor sare and Kaplan, who came on my show a few months ago, is he talks about this idea of leveraging our experiential intelligence, and he has a whole book on that's just really really fascinating. And the more I really spent some time with you in that week plus that I was with you, I really got to see how you're being in the world and you're folding in all of these experiences that you've had to really optimally serve your clients from. And I want to if you can just speak a little bit to that. It might be hard because this is the water you swim in. I saw it from the outside, but you lived this every day. So true, so true. And I'll start when you talk about living from the outside. I think if I look back on my educational journey as well as experience career journey, I will start by saying that I've been fascinated with looking at people within systems, and then in the last five years it's been even more about the systems within people themselves, like what makes us tick. So just that whole dynamic has been fascinated and I've

5:18 having worked in the field of leadership development and coaching for the last thirty years, you're right at last, from the education that we had looking at organizational development and an opportunity of looking at people from that perspective. Working with the Center for Creative Leadership for thirty years, I've had an opportunity to see people in various different systems, from teenagers all the way up to retirees and everybody in between. And what I've found is there's a difference between what I call conscious coaching and unconscious or subconscious coaching. The idea that if we have somebody who is working towards a goal you know, likes, let's just take the traditional personal trainer at the gym, just because it's a typical example, right, I want to work out and I want to build muscle and see the numbers on my scale, change whatever it is, and we can set out the perfect plan. And as a coach, an executive coach, and a life coach, that was my field, where do you want to go?

6:23 What is the matrix, what's going to get you there? And told you accountable. And what I found is that there were two different types of clients I had who are moving towards success. Either they've moved towards success and they would get it but not sustain it, or they would have all the motivation in the world to go towards it, but they were finding that they were stumbling to actually achieve what they wanted. And the body of work that I'm in now, neural linguistics programming, allows me to unpack what I call the unconscious or subconscious mind that's sitting in the backseat, those beliefs that we have about ourselves and the world that will sabotage any well laid out plan if it's not congruent with our beliefs to begin with. And that's the field that I love to play in. Oh my gosh, I was so incredibly succinct and alluring, Karen, Oh my gosh. Okay, I got to go back to two things. One, I think it's I'm really riveted on the notion that you are situating that you've got systems information and grounding it fielding I have.

7:29 I did too, and I didn't think about it coming from fielding, but it probably did. So. I love being a systems thinker and really understanding how parts play together and influence and impact each other. I'm very interested in that interdependency across all of life. So that's really interesting. Why is systems so gravitating for you? Why? Good question? I think I've always been fascinated with just how things developed. Like if what's coming to mind for me is thinking about my son who when he was like two years old, watching him look at legos and figure out this piece, if it goes with this piece, can I make that? And in my mind it wasn't lego pieces, it was people. Well, if this person is having a bad day and they say or do that, what impact is it going to happen that person? Or if this person is having a good day wants to share an exciting thing or wants to share a grief about something that's happening, how does that impact this person? Just understanding the dynamics. And my dissertation was on emotional intelligence and leadership. As I'm saying that where emotional intelligence in and of itself is the understanding of the thoughts and emotions and how they transpire.

8:52 Yummy is the right word for that. Okay, all right, So the next thing, I want to just share what you're really quick. I think it's really interesting sometimes. Ago, I don't know why I did this, but it struck me to do a search on LinkedIn to see who all was doing work in the purpose space like me, and what I discovered, to my amazement, was about roughly forty five to fifty percent of those people that I identified in LinkedIn went to school at Fielding. I thought that was really really interesting. And so again I don't know, you know where if that was just part of the water that we drank that we didn't know we were drinking. But you know, this notion of doing purposeful work that really is an expression of who we want to be in the world is something I know that I can relate to with you and you identifying me, and who knows how much Fielding contributed to that, but I do want to celebrate that.

9:41 Yes, definitely, definitely this is not just getting an education to check the box to say I've done it. It's not really making a difference in the world. Like you, I honor you went a had and really took your doctoral work and took it forward. For me, I put it on the now. Granted, I also was, like you, we were pregnant during our dissertation time. So this was like I put it aside, but I realized even though I put the work aside, it was still living and breathing inside of me. And I carried that with me with each client I worked with, with each leadership program I did, whether it's in the United States or not, it was it was living and breathing inside of me with every work that I did. Agreed, Agreed, it was, And I would say in many ways for both of us, it was percolating. Yes, right, it was working on us, and we just didn't quite understand the full extent, but it was. It was doing its thing on us.

10:37 It was so. And then to that end, one of the other things back on this whole experiential intelligence thing that I really found so compelling, Karen, was you know, being with you and your villivision on your property, your retreat center and you when you gave that tour, and I really got to better understand just the familial history connected to this property and how your mother contributed to your sense of person, your father, other parts of your family, and so I just really got connected to how much you are an expression of the fullness of your family as well. Yes, yes, I realized that with um. And to give a little background for the listeners here, it's my grandparents, maternal grandparents settled on the land here back in the nineteen forties, and they carried that on. My grandfather had this vision that he wanted the land to sustain not only our family, but to give back in so many ways. And he was a lawyer, so that was part of his and he was district attorney. He was actually standing a California senator district attorney unto Roosevelt. This was back in the thirties, so that's kind of his background. Is like giving to the larger or community, the state, the the United States, but also giving to us as a family. Was turning that around and saying, how can what kind of legacy can we build for the family here. So then my mom carried that on. So it

12:09 was I was raised on well water, fresh vegetables and fruit from the gardens, fresh chicket eggs, milk from the goats, and so that's where I was raised and my mother as actually when I looked back in it, so my mom, as you know, passed away a year and a half ago at ninety seven years young, and she was ready to go and lived a wonderful, wonderful life herself. My father too passed away eleven years ago yesterday actually, so they both lived into their nineties and really were giving back in so many ways. And as I think about my mom, my mom was an entrepreneur, which back in the forties, which was unusual for women around that time. She started her own business, which was a pottery and ceramic studio next or my parents built that back in nineteen fifty two. So that's part of that tour, is it creating a space from my mom's creativity in so many different ways. And that was one of the first satellite facilities for a local adult school in the area, so it empowered many adults coming in.

13:22 And yes it was through arts and through the years it was children as well. But I watched my mom not only was she an entrepreneur, she also was somebody who balanced between the work, her family and her love for the arts, through pottery, through gardening, through giving back. She was a top model. My parents were founding members of Starlight Opera, which was here locally in San Diego. I mean, they did multiple different things, but it's one of those things where it's always what positive impact can we have in the community by the work that we're doing, and that then carries down to me. I feel like the legacy that I'm building with the Villivision wellness and retreats and are especially on this land which is so rich energetically rich and in the soil, rich, in the building's rich in history, that it is just such fertile grounds for continuing forward with the Villivision, which I feel is like a legacy that's being passed down from generation to generation. And I've already talked to my son about him carrying on his version of this legacy even after my passing, which will happen. Yeah. Wow, that's so powerful.

14:37 I mean, I'm just really present to just the generations of experience and heart and soul and service and all of what you just rendered there. It's really beautiful. And I got that one. You gave me the two or two by the way, So thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah. So, let's know, I want to delve in just a little bit more to your actual focus and expertise, and so I know that one of your true passions is really in helping individuals navigate what you call heart wrenching experiences. Now These are not just your standard variety. These are the heart wrenching kind things like divorce and loss of a loved one, traumatic events, a loss of identity. So these are really needy matters. And I'm interested in how you got interested in those things. Why did those things grab you?

15:20 M Well, it's interesting as we're reflecting here that eleven years ago yesterday was when my father passed away, and that really sparked it. But let me talk about an event that happened a month after my father's passing. So this was back in in August of twenty twelve, and it's one of those days will be imprinted in my memory for a lifetime. I was and I'm going to backtrack what happened to this, but I'm just going to talk about what happened first. I have one of those days where I was screaming and yelling at my kids. I was casting out my brothers and my mom, which you know me elis, but those who don't, that is not my norm. That is far from my norm. Way out a character, yeah yeah, way out a character for me. But I had just had it and I sat back the aftermath and I saw what I had occurred, and I'm like, Okay, I need help. So I decided, okay, I am going to go to a therapist. And again, as I'm talking about therapist, this is my experience, so I'm sharing that emphasizing this is my experience. I went to a therapist, explained all that had gone on, including the month that led up to that, and I'll come back to that in just a bit. And I walked out of there with being labeled situational anxiety, and she had a smile on her face when she looked at me. She got to check a box, it is still in my files

16:52 that I have situational anxiety. And then she also assigned me to go to anxiety group work, which, again you and I or in this field, it really didn't help because I was going through grief at that time, and again nothing was really helping me on that. It was just she was feeling happy that she labeled me. And then I sat back and I thought, okay, well, I'm in my early forties, maybe I'm going through early menopause. So I went to my doctor and within the first two minutes, seriously, within the first two minutes of explaining all but led up to that day, my doctor said that I thought she thought I needed a hormone replacement. So she was about ready to stick some kind of patch or something in my arm like then and there, and I was I'm the kind of person who barely takes ivyprofen I'm like vitamins, but that's it. And I said no, no, So I walked out of there. I'm like, okay, I've been labeled by a therapist. I've been prescribed drugs by a doctor.

17:52 No. And about two weeks afterwards, my husband's like, you know, you know that fancy datings need dating destination spa that you've always wanted to go to, Like you get away for seven days, you eat healthy, you exercise, you get massages and facials and things. You know, do you want to just go there? I'm like okay, So I did that and it was perfect. Within two hours of coming back, I was bickering with my husband again, and I realize, okay, it's all of it is just dealing with the symptoms and books like you and I share, like the myth of normal and body keeps the score and others are saying that our culture is more about and this is not about the therapists and the doctors.

18:37 It's about the way in which they have trained to just focus on the symptoms and numb out the symptoms. Like how many people women are not like women in my situation, but men as well, who walk into a good therapist or a doctor and it's easy to say, here's your label which goes with this medication, and it just numbs out without dealing with what's on herne right, Oh my gosh, that was so much to take in. Now, I want to let our listeners and viewers give m a chance to think about that while we grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor Elise Quartez. We went on on air with doctor Karen Kramer. She's a neuro linguistic program master coach. She's a divorcing relationship breakthrough coach, speaker, author, and a leadership development facilitator. We've been talking a bit about where all this information, where her expertise came from and helps cultivated. After the break, we're going to start the rest of our conversation talking a little bit about her work in linguistic programming. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose an inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infuse cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization,

20:10 please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with a lease, send an email to a lease a l I se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for stating with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. Before we get back into the program, I do want to share with you what we began this conversation with an is the Purpose Enjoy Tour that I started in March with Joilie. That's an organization that teaches mindful practices to build a happy, healthy, resilient world. And of course, my firm at Least Cortez and Associates that activates meaning and purpose, income, culture and leadership to increase fulfillment, performance and retention. Together.

21:03 We've been going on the road since March and traveling across various cities, and we're out to find our tribe and build a community of people who seek to elevate their lives and businesses by cultivating meaning, purpose and joy. If you go to Gusto dashnow dot com and look at the tour tab, you can see the cities. Our next stop is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August eighteenth and nineteenth. Hope you can join us there now if you're just joining the program. My guest is doctor Karen Kramer. She's the owner and founder of the Villivision Wellness and Retreat Center, a sponsepired therapeutic wellness center to help ground women and from the outside from the inside out. She's currently working on her forthcoming book, which is due out in fall of twenty twenty three. The working title is Healthy Grief, Normalizing and Navigating Loss in a culture of toxic positivity. I'm your host, doctor Lee's Quartez, So for this next bit here, Karen, as I mentioned, I always like to be able to do this program so that people are both learn something, they're inspired, they see new possibilities, and you have something that most of us have many of us have heard about NLP, so maybe you don't know much about So can you share with us your expertise. Where did you learn about neural linguistic programming, what is it? And how does it help a great I love talking about this so well, I'm going to start with where and how I got into it. So, being in the field of leadership development coaching for the last thirty years, I've been focusing, as I talked earlier about just on the conscious mind and in other words, the conscious mind, focusing on the here and now. It's the part of your mind that hears us now, that sees us in the now. It's the concrete and it allowed me that

22:37 it didn't allow me to go into the subconscious or unconscious mind, which is all those things that we're not aware of, which are our triggers, our experiences, our emotions. It is what gets us to immediately get up and run when we see it bear versus thinking bear scary could eat me, should run. So I it all started when five years ago the of my life walked out of my life. So I've already mentioned that the passing of my father which led into this experience eleven years ago of going through the grief. So when my husband at that time walked out for Valentine's Day, I'm like, Okay, I've already been through. I'm not going to go to therapy. I'm not going to go to seek out so medical support. Been there, done that, That's not helpful. What other things are available to me?

23:23 So I did what any good coach would do, and I thought I could d I win myself through my own divorce. I can do that, right, But the thing is, at least you know this too. It's one of those where we're seeing the world from the inside of our own pickle jar. We don't know. It's not that quote about we can't solve from the same level of thinking that created created the problems in the first place. So I did that for about a year until I found stumbled upon NLP. I'd never heard of it before. I'd been around people who had debbled in it, but never heard of it before. So NLP, by definition, stands for neuro linguistics programming. So if we think about the words themselves neuro linguistics, it's around the words that we say, which gives an idea about what's settled in the neurology of the body and our programming. So what all does that mean? It gives us an idea about the programming that we have in our mind based upon the words that we say. So for example, this morning, I had an inquiry call from a woman who called me because she was isolated in a rural part of Colorado and she wanted to seek me out to help her move to another location and interact with more people and change your job. Again, that was assistant the symptom of what she was dealing with. In a quick ten minute conversation, I asked a number of questions

24:55 and by the way, this gets into the questions, help inspire and understand that unconscious or subconscious mind, that part that's in the backseat, and to understand what is it then that was holding her back. I wasn't just going to say like, hey, as coach, let's come along, where do you want to move and what kind of job do you want to do, and let's you inspire that LinkedIn profile and let's get those jobs and let's look for those houses. No, I knew that there was something that was underneath. Well, what came about in a ten minute conversation was around her fear associated with doing anything risky that came out of her recent divorce that she had because it was so tumultuous that she had to feel like she had to protect herself from the world, to which I said, you did a great job, because you're protecting yourself from the world and everybody because you're now living in a role part of Colorado away from everybody else. So there's a part of her that wanted that connection with other people, and there's a part of her that is out of fear. It was isolating her this protection. So that's an idea about neuro linguistics program and getting her to say throughout the questioning what was sitting in the neurology of her body. Her programming so so important.

26:17 And I know this too is in the coaching that I do with leaders right really getting present to what's running us. You know, all those programs in the background that you weren't just not aware of, and then bringing them to our consciousness, we can do something about them. Really really interesting. Okay, So the next thing I want to talk about is I know that in your dissertation you focused on emotional intelligence and leadership, and then you trot it off and spent years at the Center for Creative Leadership guiding managers to see suite executives. So I'm interested in what you learned from those experiences, that the research and those years at the Center for Creative Leadership. Oh, there's so much a lease that I learned. So working with individuals gave me an opportunity than to think about what questions best inspired their own thinking. It wasn't about me standing up there and saying, here is a list where if you follow step one, two, three, four and five, you're going to be a better boss, a better leader, this and that. And honestly, there were because there were standard programs that I was leading and facilitating. There were some formats that did half step one, two, three, and four and five. But it was more about how did those individuals work through step one, two, three, four and five, Like what were those resistance?

27:37 What did they enjoy? What did they do well? So in asking that question, I think back to a gentleman who was he was an executive. I'm trying to remember down it's a couple of years ago, who was an executive who had gotten some feedback on some of the instruments we took through the court that he was a very harsh and direct manager, very harsh and direct manager, and he was struggling with how do I work through that? And again we had like here's the five steps about how to be a better manager type. Again I'm using general terms here, but in talking with him one on one, I found out that he had twin daughters who were eight years old. And when I asked him about that, his eyes just lit up his whole face, and so I got him talking about how he interacted with him, what he loved to do, and one of the things he enjoyed doing was reading them stories when they were younger. Up until the age of eight, which they were at that time, he would still love reading them stories or engaging in stories within And he was a completely different man than how he was described in the executive world. And so the kind of conversation I had with him was how to nap across those behaviors into the corporate world.

29:03 He could do that, he had that ability when his heart was there in his home environment with his girls. So we talked about how can you bring stories, which is interesting talking about stories. How can you bring stories? How can you relate to people? How did you relate to your daughters when they were struggling, when they were scared, when they were doing her things. What kind of questions did you ask them? And it was really it was a matter of mapping across getting him to realize that he could do it. It's just how do you do it in this context, and then asking the right questions to get him to then tell me how he could do it. And I think that's important as really we all know inside of us, to be honest, we all know inside of us how to do this.

29:48 It's just shining the light on that part of us. It says, yeah, I know how to tell stories, I know how to ask these questions. I know exactly how what I'm going to do With Bob Smith, Sue and Sally, it was just it was exciting to see the light bulbs go on for him. I'm just loving watching you walk down memory lane to to capture that experience. And this is why why you and I both did this work. Right, When we get to literally witness somebody's molecules change as they grow, there is something about that that is the most it's the most compelling thing that I've ever experienced, Right, and then to be led into that intimate space in people's lives. I mean, to me, it's the most beautiful work to get to do. I am so grateful I get to live in that world of intimacy, in the space of what people want from their lives. Literally they wish to become what they're fretting about and worried about, et cetera. I mean, it's just it's such an honor. And I loved how you shared that story. M Thank you, Alice, thank you. Yes. And I too loved reading to my daughter, to the point that when I would be out in public and you know, I was at her with me into and such, if we were going to have any kind of a weight, I always had a book with me and I'd whip it out in public and I'd start reading, and then I would notice that all the eyes and the room that we were in were suddenly gravitated to us.

31:03 I loved it. So the power of stories, and how beautiful though that you helped him pour over that love into his leadership. I don't know that I've heard of story like that before. Karen. That is very powerful. Thank you, Elise. Yeah, You're welcome. Love it. Well, let us do this. Let's go ahead and grab our final break here because before when we get when we come back, I want to talk about your book that's about to come out. So let's grab our last break. I'm your host, Doctor Elie's Cortez. We've been on the air with doctor Karen Kramer. She's a neuro linguistic programming master, coach, divorce and relationship breakthrough coach, speaker, author, and the leadership development facilitator. We've been talking a bit about some of the things that she knows really well that have really situated how she serves in her work. After the break, we're going to start by talking about the new book she has coming out. To stay with us, We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired, leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on Purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To

32:40 reach our program today or to open a conversation with a lease, send an email to elease a l I se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to Working on Purpose. Thanks for danying well us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I mentioned in the first break about the Purpose and Enjoyed Tour. Two of my latest books that are featured in that tour are. One is The Great Revitalization How Meaning, How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. This is for leaders to help them understand how to build elevating and high performing leadership and culture, and it's for today's times. It really situates just what has happened here in the last few years and what you need to do to be able to keep and attract today's workforce. The other recently book is called Coloring Life, How Loss Advises to live more vibrant lives, which helps people to navigate loss and transform to growth and vitality. You can find them both on Amazon or other bookseller platforms. If you're just now joining the program today. My guest is doctor Karen Kramer. She's the owner and founder of the Villivision Wellness and Retreat Center, a sponse bired therapeutic wellness center to help ground women from the insight out. She's currently working on her forthcoming book to out in fallow twenty twenty three, with a working title of Healthy Grief, Normalizing and Navigating Loss and a Culture of Toxic Positivity. I'm your host, doctor Leis Cortez. Have to dive into that. And of course you know that this book or you're working on here. You know this is part of the reason that we each found each other again and so gravitated and you know, wrapped around each other and said, you're not going anywhere,

34:10 you stay right here. So I have to hear a little bit about this. We talked a little bit about it when I was with you in San Diego. But let's hear where the book came from. What are you What kind of message are you trying to put forth? Yes, And I remember that first call that we had at least about you coming and connecting, and I had to say, I'm not stealing your identity. Idea idea going on right now? It's so funny. So with I've shared about the passing my father leading to really a grief breakdown at that time that I wasn't helped through by professionals five years ago, then going through divorce and realizing there's another way to do this. And so when I was going through working with my clients in the last four years specifically and I've worked with I counted back.

35:02 I worked with close to twelve hundred individuals because not only one on one, but I was traveling with these individuals, helping to train them, traveling with the organization to help train them in NLP practitioner and Master practitioner level. And I realized that there aren't different kinds of grief. So let me step back. When I first got into this body of work four years ago, I always said, Okay, what's my ideal client. Who's the one person that I really want to focus on, And that my target audience was the woman that I was a year or more before that, the woman going through and after divorce. But I didn't want to be known as the divorce coach or anything like that, because I'm also about about, you know, honing in on relationships. I just didn't like to focus about only about divorce and then having gone through the grief with the loss of my mother and my brother back to back. All this and also some of the traumas that even my clients were going through, childhood traumas and even recently going through health issues such as cancers, and I realized that I wanted to focus on when I looked at the theme of all of that, look back at systems like really once all the theme was grief. Whether it was the death of a loved one, whether it was a divorce, whether it was going through a health diagnosis, those were all griefs and I had experienced those as well. And then reading

36:34 books like The Body Keeps a Score and The Myth of Normal having read those at the same time, I said, yes, yes, yes, this is about how do I help people. I identify the grief, release the grief before it starts settling into the body. So another part of both NLP as well as their psychosomatic, which means mind body is another popular word that's out there around things that are going on in the mind, the conscious or unconscious mind, unresolved, stuck energy can settle in the body somatic. There's another big word out there that's called psycho neuroimmunology, which is around the yeah it's around again. Those things that are going on in our mind, usually at the subconscious or unconscious level, unresolved such as griefs or trauma, are impacting the neurology of our body and breaking down the immune system that is then opening ourselves up to be able. Are opening selves up to various different ailments, whether it is more susceptible to things like colds and COVID flues and things like that, or actually more susceptible to fighting off things like the heart attacks and the cancers and things. Even In the myth of Normal to Go, Bormante talks about how as a physician he was finding a number of women were

38:07 coming to him with autoimmune related diseases, everything from rumor toward arthritis to ms, and he then decided to play the researcher and start asking him about their home life. And he actually says a phrase in there about the loss of identity leading to pathology, meaning that these women were losing their sense of identity, whether it was a death of a loved one I'm not quite sure who I am now, or a divorce, or something happens, the loss of a child, something happens in their life where they lost their sense about who they are and what they want in the world, breaks down their immune system to be able to fight off these things, and then they were finding that the ailment their body was starting to break down. Flip side of that is also you can build up your immune system right by bringing in more joy, more happiness into your life. So there's the flip side of it is how can you prevent ailments from happening in the body, and also how can you build up your immune system to prevent it in the first place. But this is all the basis for my book where it gets into both the work that I'm doing in the book to talk about healthy grief, which seems like an oxymoron, but it's the idea of everybody is in you and I. Everybody's going to experience some form of grief, and usually when we think grief, we think about dying. So in my book, I start off by talking about death and dying, which all of us will experience one way or the

39:38 other, and how good, meaning that it gives us an idea about how can we use that as an opportunity to understand more about ourselves and explore what's in the backseat of our car, the unconscious or subconscious mind and clean it out so it doesn't get in body. So I created a model. I call it healthy grief. But I was looking for a model. I said, isn't there a model that's out there, something that is easy, something simple for people to know, and created Oh yeah, grief. Grief is a five letter word, and so in my book, I created a model around those four letters that is used to help people, whether it is I'm going through if I'm going through the death of a loved one or the loss a divorce, I could use it. I could use it if I have a friend who's going through it. I can also use it to help a child or somebody else. Really using it as a framework to understand the grief process, as well as normalizing and raising that conversation around grief versus us.

40:44 Like the typical response and you and I talked about it, it's like, hey, you know, so, oh your mom and dad passed away. Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. Yeah yeah, so about that sports team. You know, it's sorry for your loss, But then we don't know where to go from there. So really it's normalizing the conversation and it's giving people. How can I helpfully engage in support somebody who's going through something rather than just avoiding it because it's uncomfortable, as well as understanding the whole process that one may go through. What is so beautiful about what you just narrated, Karen, is that you know, as you know by now, my approach to manage and grief is profoundly different than yours because it's based on local therapy. Yes, And what I want to say about this is this really speaks to again our experiential intelligence and how we can distinguish our very unique contribution to the world by really paying attention to everything that we've gone through, everything that we have uniquely learned to be able to teach others how they can move through we can help them from what we've experienced. So again, as you know, I mean my work, my book Coloring Life, is really about the loss of my parents twenty eight days apart, and what I learned about living vibrant from those losses. And it's what I do when I have my sessions, as you know, is help people get present to their emotions around loss because it's expansive, right though that emotional set is expansive.

42:12 It's beyond what most of us usually experience in our day to day and so there's an opening to that, to your point, if we can move through it before it settles into us, and then be able to start to talk about it in a way that normalizes loss, as you just said, but also then helps us recognize that there's where there's resilience in us to be had to be reached for when we recognize just how strong, powerful and beautiful we really are and whatever that person meant to us, to be able to stand in the place of what did I learn from them? What beauty did I get in that connection? What will I hold in my heart for that person that deposited it across my life, and really just be able to declare the vibrancy that's on the other side of that. So such a I think it's a very nice compliment to the work that you've been doing. Yes, In fact, I took a page from your book the other day, so I would love to share that it was whether it came from the book or our conversations, because it kind of all melted together, even a wonderful around the fire pit conversations we had during your book tour I had. I believe it was yesterday. There was a client of mine who mentioned I saw something post.

43:22 She posted something on Facebook about associate of her, somebody she knew that had just tragically passed away. And so I made a brief comment about sorry for your loss, and then reached out to her directly by text message and said, hey, I just saw your post, sorry for your loss. How are you doing? So I started off there. She said, okay, you know, thanks, You're the first who reached out, and I said, tell me about her. Yes, there you go, that's it. Yes, what did you love about her? All this? And she just sent me this long text message of everything that that person meant in her life, and she said, thank you for asking. So that was one big thing. Thank you alas for that. It's just reaching out and such a way that just allows that other person to honor where they were in their own hearts. That just makes my whole day to know that, because that's one of the best things that I want to be sure and leave in the book or to get across in the book is instead of I think we can do so much better than I'm sorry for your loss, and how about that?

44:23 Carpet, right. I think you can do better than that. And one way to do better about that is to really get present to the person and I love what you said, are you? How are you? And then, as I like to do, tell me about this person, what were they like? What did you just love about them? And each time that I have done that, it's generally a cathartic experience for the people that are involved there. They cycle through laughter and tears and they go into these great stories and it's wonderful. And I you and I are both and the same boat that we want to normalize talking about loss and how we move through loss. So I just I'm thrilled the way the you just shared that thank you? Melting, isn't it melting? There's two bad We're almost already through this conversation read it goes by so fast. So before we go, I want to make sure that you talk about the work that you do and breakthrough with clients. And first, how do you define breakthrough? Because I've done breakthrough work as well. How do you define breakthrough? I define breakthrough as identifying what's in the backseat of your car. So again, the subconscious or unconscious mind once underneath there. So the first thing is to identify it and then quickly and easily release it. So that's the breakthrough a part, and then coming to installing quick and easy techniques to be able to move forward in your life. So, for example, I have a client actually who's coming in tonight. So when I start off doing breakthrough work, I follow my clients over a three month period of time, but the first three days are

45:54 when ninety nine percent of the work is done, and so I gather some brief information and then go dive deep, dive quick because when you're working with the unconscious mind, you can actually get results instantaneously and long lasting. Hence the reads and let's just breakthrough now instantaneous and long lasting. And then the next three months I'm just following them and celebrating all the change that's happening in their life. Such important stuff and breakthrough we all everybody listening to this, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to think about that when you've had a breakthrough, you know you've had a breakthrough. It's unmistakable, right, it's really profound. So one other thing that I want you to talk about, just briefly, is I know that you've had the experience of wearing five children in a blended family, and I know that that has been a very enriching experience for you, But maybe in a minute, what did you get from that experience? Every single one of them is difference. You can't do you think I've come from a world of fairness. I was the youngest of three, two older boys, and my parents always came from and I always wanted to be fair to every single one of them. But I've learned that every single one of them is different. And even one of the recent things that has come is looking at, for example, that you have to go to college like you and I went for a doctoral work. It's very I have to go to college. And I realized for every single one of my kids, they learn and they experience things much differently. We're living in a different world. So even for my twenty year old who said, Mom, I

47:25 just want a gap here, I'm not quite sure whether i want to go to trade school or college. And I'm in a different place now where I'm not triggered about what has to happen, and I'm sitting back and I said, Okay, just let me know where you're going. In your life and how you want me to support you. It's a whole different ball game than the place I was for the older kids. Oh I love that. Just seeing your children for the unique special beings they are and helping them find a way to make that work in the world sounds good to me. Okay, So you know the show's listen to it by people across the world, and they are We're really out to create a workplace people can actually try. They grown to their best when they're led by inspirational leaders. We do business at Betters the world. What would you like to leave them with? M Okay, Attention to your intuition is what's coming to me. Probably that is paying to the intuition. If there's a gut that's there, whether it's following your passion, whether it's telling you this may not be the right door to go through. A door closes, look for the other opportunities and try to figure out, not try it, but do what is the next right step to keep going towards your goal. Beautiful finish, Doctor Karen Kramer. I'm so grateful to have you in my heart as a friend, to know you as an inspiring colleague, and to share if my listeners and viewers across the world, thank you for being on Working on Purpose. Thank you Lease, You're welcome listeners, viewers. You'll learn more about doctor Karen Kramer, the Villa Vision and her work. Start by visiting the Villa Vision dot com, so Vila Vision dot com, do Villavision dot com. Last week given us the life show You Always Get to Be a recorded podcast, We're on air with

48:58 doctor pelle A Delight oh Man talking about his new book called Profitable Happiness The Key the five key habits of a high performance Organization. He's really laid out some very powerful structure and built some software to support it. It's pretty pretty fabulous. Next week we'll be on the air with Jennifer Pstikus and Hope Mueller talking about their new book Great Women at Work, Stories and Resilience. See you there, and remember that work as an integral and important part of our lives and it can be one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's Work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host doctor Elise Cortez each week on W FOURCY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on purpose.