The word “stress” often gets a bad rap as being something that is harmful. Business owners, professionals, parents, even kids, frequently complain about being “stressed out.” My podcast guest Deb Lewis believes and teaches that stress can be used to your advantage. She knows a thing or two about the subject because she is a military veteran who was at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 as a member of the Joint Staff anti-terrorism team, when a plane crashed into the building as part of a coordinated attack on the United States.
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This week on the Live. Love. Engage. Podcast:
- Deb shares some common myths about stress
- Learn how you can use stress more effectively in your life and business
- Deb talks about her program to create Mentally Tough Women
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Rand 0:02
namaste, and welcome to live love engage. I am Gloria Grace Rand. And I am so excited to talk with today’s guest because she is a wonderful, amazing woman with a just wealth of experience who I met several years ago at a conference or training to help us to, I think to have an impact really to make an impact in this world. And Deb Lewis certainly does that. She is a West Point graduate from the first ever class with women. And I remember this because when my sister, my sister’s 10 years older than me, and she got an invitation to attend West Point. It was addressed to her because her name was Michaela, but it was really I think, addressed to Michael because they assumed that she was… because this was back in 1970 and she wasn’t allowed to go to West Point. Yeah.
Deb Lewis 1:03
What a disappointing letter. I wonder how many women got that one?
Gloria Rand 1:06
Yeah, probably a few, I imagine. But, anyway, Deb Not only is she was able to graduate from that class, she went on to become an army colonel. She’s retired now, and a Harvard MBA. She’s commanded three US Army Corps of Engineer districts, including a $2.1 billion reconstruction program in combat. And she was even at the Pentagon during the 9/11 attack as a member of the Joint Staff anti terrorism team.
And then 10 years ago, Deb and her husband, Doug Adams, embarked on the duty honor America tour where Doug bicycled over 18,000 miles to all 50 states in one year, to raise awareness and support of our military veterans and families. And to support her hubby Deb quickly learned how to operate an RV and drive it around. So I have not tackled that myself and that idea just is a little, it’s a little much. I’ve done I’ve done a u haul truck that’s about as big as I’ve got.
Deb Lewis 2:13
Not much different.
Gloria Rand 2:14
Yeah. Well, her positive outlook on life is grounded in her faith and a clear understanding of extreme adversity and tough situations because I’m sure she has faced many of them. And on our show today, this is why you want to tune in because she’s going to be sharing some mentally tough women insights, tools and knowledge to help you and those around you gain skills to see stress and use stress to your advantage. So first off, welcome, Deb. I’m so glad you’re here.
Deb Lewis 2:49
Aloha. Instead of namaste, we say aloha as I’m in Hawaii, I’m greeting you from Hawaii. Hilo, Hawaii. Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. You, you, you do so much and your show is such great live love engaged. I mean, it’s just, that’s what we’re all trying to help each other do. Thank you for the opportunity for being able to talk about a very important subject that I think it’s a perspective we’re going to give them today that’s a little bit different than what they’re used to. So I can’t
Gloria Rand 3:21
Yeah, absolutely. Because I know that I think most people, when they hear the word stress, they think that they’re like, Oh, I, you know, it’s like, I’m stressed out, I’m, you know, work is making me crazy. And I’m stressed and how do I manage it? And so if the end result is really using stress to your advantage, which I like that, what are you actually trying to help people achieve?
Deb Lewis 3:48
I think we’re trying to really change that look on stress. We’re going to talk about some myths, but it’s really the difference between going Oh, no, no, you know, the panic or the struggle, and it’s not to minimize. People are facing some horrible things today they always will they always have. Yeah. in their lives. And in the attitude is, is how do you quickly like a light switch? How do you quickly turn that on and you turn it on a different someone’s trying some event or some person is trying to turn your light off. What you want to think about is how do you flick that switch back on? And it goes from the Oh, no. And maybe you still get Sucker Punched like that. But very quickly, you’re going, Oh, right. You know, I can, you know, I can do something in I’m an engineer for the Corps of Engineers. It’s the leadership jobs that I had some significant ones like reconstruction, and engineers say essayons. And when they say let us try, because that’s French and French have been our allies in a number of times in our country, especially at the very beginning, and essayons is not about well, let us try. That’s not what we’re talking about. So let me try. Let me at it. So that’s the difference with stress. And stress is about. We know it in other aspects of our life. But somehow, and I’ll just talk about the first myth, stress gets a bad rap. We wouldn’t get anything done if we didn’t work if we weren’t stressed. And if I hadn’t been massively stressed at West Point, you and I may not be talking today because of the lessons that I learned. And the things then starting off at a point where they didn’t expect women to do anything. They didn’t they, they didn’t even have statistics on us. Physically, thing. They didn’t know what we could do. They had the men statistics since 1802. It had been around, but but when we entered, they didn’t have any data on us. And so we were just beginning now they had some athletes in the Olympics that women were showing some things, but as a group, we didn’t have that. And so when we went there for me, some of your people I think of struggle is good, even if it feels bad. You know, initially you just have to turn that perspective and then see it as something that is going to be a benefit to you. And that’s really a huge shift for people, huge shift because they everything they’ve been told, everything they hear stress is bad de-stress, de-stress. What if you can’t? That’s one. Like you can’t because you’re a caregiver, are you going to give that up or you’re a parent or you some of the people today may be saying, you know, this was a lot more than I bargained for and they really appreciate teachers who were with their kids a lot. Like I appreciated having a nanny. I was able to at one point have a nanny when I had my daughter and you know, just just had her birthday, but you know, it’s like, you you the stress, you’re not gonna want to offload that I’m not gonna off I want to spend two months with my parents recently to help them. You want those tasks but you don’t want to lose It, you have to be prepared to be able to handle that added stress because that’s a choice we make. And a lot of people are just talking about, oh, you need to de-stress. Oh, just chill. I heard that that’s a fighting word.
No, I mean, chill… it’s got a lot of negative connotations when someone tells me to do that. Or when someone like at West Point tells me I can’t do something when I was there, you can’t do this, or women shouldn’t be here or whatever. For some of us, it gets that, you know, where is that inside fortitude, we’re going to just figure out figure out what we need to do. So I think that’s really what we’re trying to help people do and it’s you have to go with the emotion if you’re sad or you’re upset, or disappointed or even angry. Those are all human emotions. The problem is is not sharing those if they’re negative. It’s like a cold or like, I would say like COVID-19 I mean, you have no clue how your negativity and that energy that you’re conveying in that space. It doesn’t just make you sick. And there’s plenty of statistics on that. If you’re in that space, but it’s and that’s not just Stress, Stress gets a bad rap because it’s not good or bad. It just is.
Gloria Rand 8:17
Yeah.
Deb Lewis 8:18
And it’s how you choose to use that stress. So that’s what this is the taste of some of the things that we’re trying to help people move through. You can move through obstacles quickly. At West Point, I had the obstacle course. Yeah. All you have to do is tell your audience to go online and go west point indoor obstacle course. And you can see it’s life is filled with what are potentially obstacles. And then you’ll see there’s a young woman and there’s a young man both of them broke records. I mean, unbelievable. For me. I’m I struggled. It wasn’t until my fourth year that I got an A on that event today, I wouldn’t get an A I’m sure. For years and a couple of the obstacles here. One is an eight foot ledge, you have to leap up, grab it. Now you may do it differently than other people, like the guys a lot of them can leap up and they can shove themselves up and they’re over the ledge. We women, we need some flexibility. I had to get my foot up higher than my head, looking on the ledge and then roll over. Yeah, that took a skill. And the one that really, I’ll tell you, the one that really inspired me was the 10 foot wall, when you’re running flat out at to hit a 10 foot vertical wall. And when you hit that with your foot in the middle, and you’re able to get enough velocity and height, you can flip over the wall. But if you’re standing at the bottom of that wall, you’re not thinking right, you’re like there’s just No way I’m gonna get up that wall, right? And, and in my case, you can hit it. And then the rope, you always have something in your life that’s going to tackle you and I had to change some ways that I did the obstacle course. Because the first time I actually first time I didn’t get up it second time I got up it and I and I fell down it. I mean, I actually my hands cramped at the top, because if you’re not prepared well enough, and I had all those other obstacles before you may cramp up or your body’s not ready or your mind isn’t ready. And and I fell I didn’t hurt myself, but got me angry and determined next time. This isn’t going to happen. I got penalized. You penalize time and then and then you go and then my fourth year. I got that A. And you know, feels like when you’ve struggled and you figure it out. You can figure out anything in life. You can figure out and you just have to, I need help sometimes. It’s not just me, I would get experts and they would, they would come over to me and they would advise me and coach me and say, Well, have you thought about this? Is this gonna work? Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t. But that’s what I love to bring to people in that coaching. There’s some very general basics that we’ll talk about later. But there’s some very basic things about stress that you must know, two conditions. One is when you’re under extreme stress. And the other one is just stress understanding in general. And if you start with that foundation, then just like my obstacle course, you’re going to be able to navigate every obstacle at some point, maybe not as fast or as well as you want, but you’re going to be able to navigate.
Gloria Rand 11:46
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, stress is just the body’s response to whatever is going on. So it really is it’s just it’s a normal thing is how then you choose to react to the stress because like for instance, when I used to work in television. Our stress was the fact that we had to be on the air at the end of the day. And so we had to get all of our stories had to be done. Everything had to be, you know, ready to go. And so it was it was in a way a good stress because it it forced forced me certainly to be able to work on, under deadline, because I had to do that. But then we would do is on Friday nights. This was when I used to work, I originally first started working I worked in the control room. On Friday nights, we would do a shoot, I don’t know, it was sort of a primal scream. That’s what it was we would do a primal scream. Our director would go all right. 1,2,3 and then we would all just scream top of our lungs to just let out the stress of all of that. So maybe Yeah, yeah. Have you found like and maybe in even in with coaching people that, are there are some, you know, maybe the little tricks that you play with people to help them and coming up with some ways to be able to manage stress.
Deb Lewis 13:05
I do and one of them, for example, it’s a lot about taking what they’re already doing, and shining a different light on it. For example, the thing you gave reminds me of the show “Broadcast News.” Yeah. And remember when she would come in in the morning crying to relieve all the stress that she knew that she was going to face that day? That’s one of the misconceptions. The trick is, is maybe that’s a release you need to have. And crying is not a source of what do you call it? It’s not a weakness. It’s a strength. Yeah. And Wendy, Wendy Lipton Dibner was the conference we were at. Yeah, she was the one that taught us that you every time you attempt to hold something in artificially, it just builds
Gloria Rand 13:53
Oh, yeah.
Deb Lewis 13:54
And we I was at a different conference. It was at an author conference. So I’m now in six books but at that time I had not been in anything. And, and, and now and and I was at an event where someone, someone yelled at me or was yelling at everybody else Actually, that’s really what prompts me. I care some of your audience probably and you do too. You care about people so much that when another person is treating them badly, you will stand up. And I thought I was tough. So I stood up, I stood up and I said, Wow, you’re pretty abrasive, but I’m a combat veteran. I think I could take it and, and she shot me down and when I sat down, I felt like such a failure. You know, no matter what you’ve achieved in life, there’s there’s situations that can make you feel like a failure. And I sat down, I started hyperventilating. That’s the extreme stress that you feel, which is I have five steps to help stop that. But I wasn’t doing very well at that moment. And there was a gal who was an EMS Technician sitting next to me, and she leaned over and she said, breathe through your diaphragm breathe through your diaphragm, you know, and I’m like, I can’t, I’m trying. I’m trying I try. And you know, she goes not in your chest, your diaphragm, you know. So she ordered me and I and I got control of it. Right. And then and then Wendy, throughout that day, I was crying at that point, because someone came up to me said, Oh, I was at probably at the same Wendy conference with us said, I haven’t seen you in a month. I’m so happy to see you. And you know, those times when you’re stressed, and someone you care about and validates you comes over, for some of us we are releases the tears.
Gloria Rand 15:47
Yes.
Deb Lewis 15:48
And so I started crying. And that was the first of five times that day it was it was, yeah, five times. So by the fifth one, and it’s always prompted with this one interaction with this woman who was just vicious, turns out, he was going through a divorce. You can explain why people do it. But I would just say, if you’re mentally tough, you’re never going to share that with people. You’re going to always treat people with love. You’re going to be authentic, you’re going to help them. And Wendy took one look at me. And she said, You know what happened in there? That wasn’t cool. And I’m thinking, Why didn’t anybody else speak up? I felt like that. I felt like the lone soldier standing up against this woman. And it was, you know, she made millions too, that was the irony. She this woman was very successful in her coaching profession by treating people like kids, you know, and yelling and screaming and stuff. Even worse than kids. I would never do that to kids. But the the other thing is, is then Wendy goes, have you been crying? And I’m like, Yes. And she turned to me and you remember this when she said it. Give yourself permission, and just do it. That’s right. And she ordered me and then I went, and I and I probably cried. How long? What do you think?
Gloria Rand 17:09
I’m guessing five seconds maybe?
Deb Lewis 17:11
Exactly. It was like seconds. Yeah. And once she said that, it did it. I’d never cried again. And I I’ve used that with other people. That’s one tip because I think many of us feel shame. In the military it was definitely not, it was frowned upon. But if you really look at the major leaders, those leaders are vulnerable. And when you’re allow yourself that’s another one with stress. It’s okay to be vulnerable. Yes. What’s something you really need to look hard for is if you some some people believe that just because your family or friend you can take it, you can take me unvarnished, but the whole problem is it’s like okay, do you want to share COVID and it might kill that person and it might, you know, make sick in that person and I might do it, you can share it. It’s true. But do you want to? Do you really want to share that with other people? And I think when you think deep down, you don’t, you don’t, but you don’t know, you don’t have the skill to understand that. So these are in the big picture. That’s just one technique. But that’s the big picture of how all the tips and tricks and I mean, I like the obstacle course I would go under, I’ll go over, I’ll go around it, I’ll blow it up. You know, I’m an engineer, you know, you blow it up, or, or you pile a whole bunch on and you go over, there’s so many ways to get at it just have to work for you. And so I give you those basics.
Gloria Rand 18:35
That’s awesome.Are there any other myths about stress that people have that that you you can debunk for us, and especially when…
Deb Lewis 18:47
love to. We already talked about two actually.
Gloria Rand 18:50
Right.
Deb Lewis 18:50
One that it has a bad rap. Yeah. And the second one is that you’re always told to eliminate it. And we already talked about trying to get rid of it. okay. Another one is, you probably heard this. People think they’re really good at handling stress. Okay, yeah, I remember talking to a woman. And she said, Oh, and this is just an image. I’m really I’m really a positive person. I’m really a positive person. And it wasn’t less than five minutes in the conversation. She said, Oh, my husband and I, we argue all the time. We just had an argument today. I’m like, huh? I’m thinking, you know, the real test for if you can handle stress.
Gloria Rand 19:36
What is it?
Deb Lewis 19:38
You project it, you project it, you project the calm, you treat people with respect. It’s when you can be your best, no matter what’s happening. It’s like it’s just like in combat. You know, if the mortars are coming in, why would you yell and be angry, you may yell at someone to get their attention, but you’re not yelling. them to demean them like You idiot, you need to do this, you know, under stress, even a tiny bit of stress, it has to stay in the positive. And and, and if you cannot do that, I go back to the sharing, it’s going to permeate. I have when we get to it, I want to talk about two things that I highlight when people go massively negative. But I think that covers, you know, people think they’re really good. And in fact, their skills are even sometimes worse than a beginner because they believe that they’re great. But yet, ask anyone around them if you can, if they can feel safe to talk about it. Because people like that. People around them won’t even share. They won’t engage, you know, and you have that’s a real key. Will they feel safe enough to to share any crazy idea they have or shares, kind of how they’re feeling when they can’t articulate it well. If you’re Paying attention to them. You can my husband can always do this with me, I may not be able to articulate it. Like sometimes I can’t even ask for help. But he’s such an expert at watching me. He’s going, okay, honey, would you like me to go do this? And then if I haven’t, if I say no right away, then he won’t do it. But if I don’t say no, I’m thinking about it in one minute. If I haven’t responded back, no, then he’ll go and do it. Okay, because he knows that sometimes for us, we’re constrained by maybe something we grew up with, we don’t even know. And it’s a matter of if you’re really good at handling stress, that when someone behaves in a way you don’t expect you give them the benefit of the doubt. And you’re going to help them, encourage them, treat them well. And make them if they’re not smiling, find a way even indirectly, how can not making fun of them, but how do you do that authentically? Yeah, that’s that’s the third one. Let’s see do we cover all of them told to reduce? Oh, what do you see that the other one I had that I wanted to mention what you see is often not what you’re going to get. It’s definitely not what you think it’s kind of the iceberg theory. It and I had another one I had like a someone packing me and I’m sorry for the vegetarians but but when you package something, you know, you always are putting the best side on top. And then when you lift up, it’s not what you thought.
Gloria Rand 22:34
Yeah, sometimes I’ve I’ve opened pieces of meat and discover that and went, Ahh.
Deb Lewis 22:40
I have a whole model on that future alternatives and today, the fat, cut away the fat, but the but the idea is you you really, it’s okay if you’re going to give him the benefit of doubt. But if you’re not going to give him the benefit of the doubt, give them the benefit of the doubt. Ask your questions accordingly and chances are they will open up and you’re going to find out something either you had a way you thought it should be done, and you told them to do it that way. And then all of a sudden, they’re doing it a different way. Well, maybe you need to ask, why does that make sense? I might have done it differently. Tell me why did you do it that way? And then you’re open to always learning. But people when things don’t happen, and I think we do it to ourselves too a lot of times, don’t you think? We assume the worst isn’t like me. Well, he didn’t call me because of this. You know, you’re I heard it’s like 22,000 negative thoughts we have in our head. Someone was talking about this. How many times we’re not giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt, man, we have to look deeper. We have to look and say that okay, what we see kind of looks terrible. However, what if it is the best thing ever? I some of your audience may have been through a divorce. I’ve been divorced before, twice, and and by the second time, I just thought, you know, this is this is the worst thing ever. And then it wasn’t. But a short time later about a year, year and a half later I met my husband who I’ve been married to going on 20 going on 21 years. Right? And that will never be enough time for me over time, but I would never appreciate what I have today if I hadn’t gone through that. So rather than blaming the spouse because they made it they they were the cause for it maybe just didn’t work out why we need to take that language out. If you’re if you’re going to understand that what you see may not be what it is. You need to maybe wipe out good bad, right wrong. Never don’t, can’t, won’t ever happen. You know all those kind of words. And you might find out what’s beneath this surface, there may be a buried treasure.
Gloria Rand 25:04
Absolutely,
Deb Lewis 25:05
You think it’s awful. So those are kind of those are a few of the myths that people have that I’ve observed in my career and testing. I’m an engineer. So I’m the one who wants to seek the truth. And I just want to see it from every single angle. If I pick something up, I don’t want to just see it on the front because that might be what someone wants me to see what and also how else can I use it something designed for one thing could be used amazingly well for something else maybe maybe you do that too. I’m always looking and you know what? I don’t have that but what I do have is this and how about we try that. And if you’re always focused on what you want, which is the key with these myths, you focus on what you want, not what you’re not getting, and the myths are really all about what you’re not getting.
Gloria Rand 25:53
Hmm, yeah, absolutely. And and I’ve definitely have learned over the years that especially when you are faced with something that it didn’t turn out the way you expected it, or something like that is that a lot of times it’s maybe it’s just wasn’t meant to be right now. And you’re probably a lesson that you can learn from it. And then the next time around, you’ll know to do something different. But it’s Yeah, to not fall apart at things like that. But to look for the opportunities, look for the lessons, and it definitely makes life a lot easier to manage and, and well to manage stress, but definitely to be able to react better and to make different choices when you’re faced with things.
Deb Lewis 26:38
And every time you do that, it’s it’s focusing on what you want. I think a great example is keys. How many of you have lost your keys? What do you say to yourself when you lost your keys? If you’re saying I always do I hate it when I do I lost my you know, if you’re doing that your affirmations are actually reinforcing. You’re never going to find those keys. And when I learned that, it’s it’s like, oh, I tell myself, I’m going to find my keys. I know exactly where they are. I know exactly where they are. And I’m going to, instead of getting agitated, what I didn’t say was the studies tell you, if you stay in that agitate, let someone shut your light off and you get agitated, if you do nothing, that adrenaline, that nasties, adrenaline, which is pushing you to act and limit your options, rather than looking at the whole spectrum of what’s ahead of you, that will stay in your system at least 48 hours. And do you have that kind of time? I don’t have that kind of time. So I was, I was going to say, you know, you if you really care about saving time getting more of what you want. Then you’ll think of some of these points that we talked about.
Gloria Rand 27:53
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because what you focus on expands so if you are focusing on you know, the negative thing that’s going on, then you’re just going to continue to do that. I know I’ll be in like conversations with someone and they’ll be like, Oh, I can never do that. I’m like, No, no, no, no, don’t say that. Flip that around, you know,
Deb Lewis 28:11
I have a friend Doug Krug, he’s written several books and he’s a master at this. He says, you get more of what you focus on. It’s like, you know, if you in the mind doesn’t recognize the negative words, okay? Have you ever seen that when, when you say don’t do that, like I was talking about earlier, you can’t do that women can’t do this. It’s like, Okay. You know, at the end of graduation, they said women should never be in combat. Well, 17 years later, I’m commanding in the heat of battle with, you know, $2.1 billion. And the things that I learned before, that was my life test, because I’ve been told so many times, it’s not going to work. It can’t you know, that’s stupid. Why are you doing it this way why are you doing it this way, but it gets back to what you talked about in the engaging and you live fully and you love deeply and you and you engage authentically with people. They respond. Because that’s your, your energy of being, your energy of being. When by that time I had a very after being tossed about so much in question about who you are, what’s your place you don’t belong all that stuff. You have to dig deep and you become stronger and that’s really what the West Point experience got me started that was my kickstart, which was a very intense I never had people treat me that badly before. I’d never been pushed physically like the obstacle course you know, well past anything I’d ever done and intellectually, even academically, and and warfighting is understanding things. And that can cause stress, every one of those. You get it together, then you’re going to be calm, thoughtful. They’re doing a wonderful they’ve created a wonderful series about Grant. It’s about in the heat of battle, how calm he got. And in assessing and why after learning some hard lessons early is by the time when it mattered most he could bring it together not by by impulsiveness. So impulsiveness. We’ll get to that. But impulsiveness reminds me of the god Aries, the god of War, but we’ll talk about that in a bit. But you know, posting this just when you get angry. I’m just like, people tell you, you should be angry. And I’m like, No, that’s my only negative word there. You have a better option. You What if you What if you got really excited and transform that toxic energy that will hurt you? and use that for something amazing? Because you already got the rocket fuel. Now let’s go in a direction we want instead of destroying. Let’s build let’s make something
Gloria Rand 30:58
well speaking about building So you have, are building a whole program now and and you’ve come up with this concept of the mentally tough women so how did that all come about and explain explain it because I know and for those of you who are listening you’re not able to see but she’s got a Deb has a shirt with with her logo on there with it with an M, T and a W on there with it with a shield in the middle of it. So,
Deb Lewis 31:26
yes, but the mentally tough women it came along, it evolved. Initially it started off with positivity, but people in a negative place cannot relate to positivity and the 5, 10 percent who those of us who’ve learned to live there, we forget the trials and tribulations that brought us there. I’d say the happiest people are not the ones who’ve had the easiest life. The happiest people have been through the war and back and they have figured out how to live and enjoy every moment as if it were their last. And so I finally went around. I said Who do I relate to I said, I actually can talk about women now. Men can benefit by everything I’m doing. And the men I want are the ones that aren’t afraid to sit in a room of women. And talk. Yeah, you know, aren’t afraid because they’re going to feel safe. See, the women won’t necessarily feel safe if there’s one woman in a group of 20 men, because chances are, men will give her a hard time or say something that she’ll feel badly and the energy, just the energy might be negative. But there’s some very special men out there and I’m in so many of them are my friends or family, whatever. They can sit in a room of women and they want women to succeed. They I met at another event, I met the gentleman who helped us go to West Point. You know, he came up to me later and and told me that he had helped write the legislation and he was treated barbaricly by his peers. Four out of five people quit on his board when he said that I’m going to support this. You know, the men are going through it. So it’s not about bashing men go about it. But I then I went back to my roots. Do you know Okay, so Athena is actually a symbol. Some of you have heard about Athena, just Google, Athena. There’s all kinds of Athena words. Athena is the goddess of war, but she’s also the goddess of wisdom. And at West Point, our symbol was the helmet from Athena. Okay. And I, I really, at the time didn’t put that together. It was years later that I put that together. And only recently when I gave a keynote speech at an Athena award ceremony, that it all came together. But there are three symbols that I think embody what I do in my business, because when you’re teaching people how to handle stress, it is like, like the goddess of Athena had to work with, you would love to stay in the wisdom state. There’s a myth there. You cannot stay in the wisdom’s place unless you have strengths because the rest of the world is going to attack you. And I’m sure that there are women I bet you’ve been attacked by people. I’ve bet people yelled at you and people would look at you say Why would you yell at her? Why would you do that right? But a lot of women who have very sweet faces, men feel safe to dump on and and even women will dump on you know, they feel that they can be a target. And the idea is, so you have to have the wisdom but to be able to project the wisdom and share the wisdom you have to have some tools so in mentally tough women when I finally got it to mentally tough women that was created a little while ago, the words and I finally owned it, finally say, Okay, I’ve got it. I’m gonna narrow it to women because that I can talk all day, right? As a woman in a man’s world and a woman in a woman’s world because oh, by the way, some women will not try to help you succeed, they will figure they have to be like the guys, the normal guy, not all guys, I don’t want to be too generalize, but the but the trait where you have to, like we have a crab that if you’re all in the same container, the crabs will not let you get out of the crab pot. But if the one crab is in the pot alone, it can climb out. Right. So that’s a that’s a dynamic out there. So you have to have some some tools. So the tools of Athena were one you have to have the sword. Okay, the sword is something that if someone’s coming at you, in order to hurt you, you have to at least be able to deflect and you’ve seen many a time where you have to deflect or parry and then you may have to use it to help them keep their distance, right. You’re not about you don’t want to get last thing you want to do is have to take them out of the battle but you but you have to know that you have to have tools that are that are powerful enough to allow you to do that. The one I love the most We see it in Wonder Woman all the time is that shield. Okay? That shield. And here I’ve got the heart. You see, the T is the toughness. And then you’ve got the heart, but it’s a shield. And the shield is not just to protect you when when flak is coming in ,you want to have the shield protecting you, but you also have to be able to use the shield to protect other people until they’re ready. Right. That’s why all the military formations are to bring the shields together to close those gaps so people don’t get hurt. So you have to have some tools that are going to not just protect you, but protect the people you’re with. And then And then the final one, when you think about wisdom, is you have to protect this is the helmet. You have to protect your brain. Because if you allow yourself to go insert and stay in survival mode, if you’re feeling like garbage, and you’re going to sleep feeling that way and waking up feeling that way, you are not just destroying your body, you are shutting off. It’s like a shunt. You’re shutting off your wisdom, which means everything in your life like I use everything I’ve ever learned in my life in every situation. And if you’re in that stress mode, where you’re shutting off it because you’re negative, then you’re not going to be able to protect yourself. And you don’t want to be smashed by incoming things. You want to protect your head for everything that could possibly happen to you. And so there are certain tools that will help you do that, because trust me, whether they’re yelling at you or trying to put a concrete thing on your head to knock you out of action. People think that way that the only way they can succeed is by taking someone out. And so mentally tough women live with grace, they lead with grace and compassion. Love that because it’s in your name. But I do have that on my website. Yes, Grace and compassion. And you’re strong women know that that’s what you use. But to be tough, you don’t know. It’s just like the martial arts. You’re not there to hurt people. But you do have to be flexible, adaptable. So I think that it’s so desperately needed because of the myth that people think that they can handle it, but it’s not their fault. Whoever taught them and I had to learn the hard way. And you did too. And most of us and I’m like, let’s not learn the basics the hard way. Let’s try using what we know. And applying that. And a great example that I hope to bring people to is that and I do is people who are, you know, in a tough spot, and you can, you can sense it. You know, at the conference that we were at, there was a young lady who was just adorable. She but she had been yelled at by the speaker and humiliated by the speaker and and that and I saw her later. And I knew it was just like what Wendy did for me. She said, Have you have you been crying? Yeah. Are you first I said, Are you okay? And she then said, well, I’ve been feeling so sad. I cry all the time. I went up to my room, I cried there, came back down. And I and I went into the story that Wendy had taught. And, and, and I, but mainly, I let her know, this is strength. You know, the mentally a mentally tough woman is one who doesn’t react and get angry. Yeah, a mentally tough woman knows that. If I have to go somewhere. I will go against myself rather than harm any other person around me. But you have to guard against that.
Gloria Rand 39:44
Well, we’re gonna have to wrap up here shortly. But I want to have you talk about a powerful way that you have to help people to develop her to help women especially develop this mental toughness. You’ve got a program I think that you’re putting together, right?
Deb Lewis
Yes. I am. So excited. This is years and years in the making. And some people might think it’s oh I know that. But unless you understand it’s it’s a lot like being in a car that you’re going to have to go off road and do some crazy things with. If you don’t have the fuel in the tank to be able to do that or the ability to use it. Then you will run dry and you will harm yourself or harm somebody else. So I have created two courses now with the help of dear friends who helped me get this. I’ve identified for extreme stress five steps in order that if you plan or you like some of us go in the military, we’re on the front line with medical care, if you know somebody who is constantly under stress and they use it and you want them to handle it better. You must make sure they’re doing these five steps and they have to be doing them all the time and it when you get to be a master of it, it’s just easy to recognize. I need to go sing a happy song right now because I am not feeling good. I have a massive playlist of things to get me, to pull me back out of the depths. And so these courses are now on a place called Udemy, which is a udemy.com but for your active listeners for the first 20 people that go to this link and it’s got your name in it. So they go to your link. I in a week I will send them the link for a coupon that’s good for 3 days that they can get the course for free. That’s what I want to provide because I think that everybody needs to be practicing the steps that I have the five steps and I’ve been in combat trust me. If I didn’t do those things the tank would have run empty long ago. And so they’ll go to the link. It’s it’s my website mentally, Mentally tough women.com and then the forward slash and your name, Gloria Rand. I thought we’d go with the shorter one, Gloria Rand. If they do that right now they can sign up and get on the list and the first 20 people will get that the other people will be put in for a free course and other freebies that I’ll send out to them but other content agrees to get some of the content of mentally tough women if this resonates with people who want to be stronger because I will tell you it’s not going to get easier. Life doesn’t get easier and and that’s why the second course I created is called stress and stress Basics and that is how to build your life, you know with that understanding and if you do these if you understand the ten lessons, like number one, you can go on there now and you can see it. It’s about negativity. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself is wipe it out of your system going negative. You can feel angry, but you can’t… with going negative, you have to, there’s things to do in order to address it. But if you can keep yelling stop from yelling yourself, stop yelling at someone. People or as in today’s world, just your tone may convey. You don’t like oh so again, I want to go from. Oh no, ‘cause that every time my husband hears me say, oh no, he comes running in like what’s happened honey, but if I’m going. Oh, yeah, you know, you know you want to be able to do that. So the Stress Basics is 10 lessons that are so impactful that if you understand them it’s like a pyramid. The bottom corner that corner is the negativity piece, and the top one is the making the better choices. It’ll lead to you making better life choices so that you can wake up in the morning and be joyful, you can be blessed like today blessed to be with you Gloria and to have you at that conference that I was at which I was unsettled at. It was first time I rolled out my mentally tough women and I will always be grateful for you you were you were the just such a spirit of being an energy of being that helps and and you have to have people like that in your life. You have to be able to I could just stay I just could hang out with you and and I would, but your presence of being, you understand that. We don’t have to use words. People only listen to 7% of what we say. So it’s like okay is everything else that we need to do and so they can go to that same site when they when they sign into the thing they’ll have that available. They will get a very steep discount at a minimum and some people will be getting it for free. So it’s mentallytoughwomen.com/gloriarand and that’ll be where they can get signed up.
Gloria Rand
Perfect. That is so awesome. You are very generous and I so appreciate you and yes, I am so glad that we met I just. It’s interesting, we just clicked in and I love it when that happens when I meet people and there are certain people that you do. It’s like you just need just kind of know and you resonate with right away and there’s others that can be a little bit more challenging. So that will be why they’re going to need to come and take your core so they can learn how to do with those situations when people you know push your buttons. I have my my lovely daughter when she was young used to push my buttons and I find…
Deb Lewis
Family is a whole other level of.. But the other thing I just wanted to say is imagine a life. People… I call it the synchronicity of life. We met at exactly the right moment the first time and that you were there just like an angel over there when I was I was stressed at that conference because of like what happened to that young lady. And then here and now as I sent out my first email you responded right back and I imagine a life where if you if you get this if you understand how to handle stress people will come into your life. Right before I talked to you, somebody called me and I had I worked with him in Iraq. He’s the kind of guy. He was my executive officer. He went to he wouldn’t let me go to a project site. He said ma’am, you’re not going until I go and then promptly got blown up in evacuate. He said I had to go so you wouldn’t this wouldn’t happen to you and I’ve been trying to get back in touch with him and because of this mentally tough women project, I’ve been going through my contact list and reached out I said, I don’t know if this number’s still good but I’d love to get back. He called right before we’re on the show and told me he’s going to take his wife to Hawaii when things clear up again. So, you know if you understand how to handle stress and you always give what you have the loving and the engaging and living the life and the way you will attract that into your life and in when you most need it, they’ll be there for you. Makes me kind of teary because it’s like you want people to understand what that feels like and I know you know what that feels like because you live it every day. If if any of your audience isn’t living it right now come see both of us listen to your podcast come listen in and get what I can provide for you. There’s a lot on the internet already, but you can become strong enough that you can understand that life’s not going to get easier. It just gets better.
Gloria Rand
Absolutely. Thank you so much Deb and and also for those of you who are listening and I will have that information in the show notes. The link will be there, so don’t worry about And you’ll be able to sign up and get the course and take advantage of all Deb’s wonderful wisdom and that she has to provide so I am so grateful that you were here today. And for those of you watching, I hope you got tremendous benefit out of learning how to even just a couple steps that Deb shared today about how to be able to you know, I appreciate stress that it shouldn’t get the bad wrap.
Deb Lewis
Take on more. Take on more. We can do it.
Gloria Rand
So until next time I am Gloria Grace Rand and again, encouraging you all to live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
