FINE is a 4-Letter Word

When you work in sales, you of course want to build trust with your prospects and make them feel like you have their best interests at heart and aren’t simply selling them something just to earn a commission. Resilience, adaptability, and continuous learning are as important to your success as empathy, patience, and effective communication. Then there’s the question of whether you enjoy sales and...

It’s called “continuous growth” for a reason. When you cut down a tree, or a tree snaps and falls, the rings you’ll see reveal more than the age of the tree based on how many rings there are. Each ring will be a different width, a different color or shade. Each of these rings tells a story about how changes in the environment impacted its growth and development as it grew from a sapling into a ful...

Living through the pandemic changed all of our lives, in one way or another. For some, it was coming to a realization that you didn’t feel like your business or your career was your true calling, in which case it’s possible you may have encountered someone like today’s guest during your journey toward finding something more aligned with your life’s purpose. For others, it’s finding out that althou...

Do you think you’ve got it made? Today’s situation is remarkable for the sheer amount of disruption, rapid change, and even chaos that seems to spin faster and faster with each passing moment. Just in the past few years, the world has been turned upside down, stood back up, spun around, and sent into the rapids by a pandemic that has become endemic, political and social upheaval that might leave y...

Self-reliance. Determination and grit. Treating others the way you want to be treated. These are some of the most noble traits our society says we can possibly have, attributing people who exude them as being the product of a good upbringing and the kind of person we should aspire to be. These are also the traits than can bite you in the ass and f*ck everything up when they come back at you like a...

Imagine going about your day, following your routine, when out of the blue something comes along and knocks you to the ground, ending the life you’ve known up until that moment. In the movies, things can go into slow motion, or you hear the “needle scratch” that ends the background music as everything comes to a shuttering halt and you fall to the ground. This was the moment Dori Staehle (pronounc...

What do Anthony Hopkins, Dan Aykroyd, Courtney Love, Daryl Hannah, Jerry Seinfeld, Albert Einstein, Heather Kuzmich, Elon Musk, Lionel Messi, Eminem, and Satoshi Tajiri have in common? Celebrity? Creativity? Fame? Fortune? Yes, all of them have these things to varying degrees. Each and every one of them also has (or in Einstein’s case, had) autism. So does author, actor, autism advocate, and anima...

In conversations with friends and through my own experiences, I know our animals who’ve crossed the rainbow bridge can still communicate with us. My kitty girls show up in my dreams from time to time. My guest today is Maribeth Decker. And when she started receiving messages from her dogs after they passed away, it led her to her current vocation. Like many of my guests, Maribeth was raised to con...

As a Gen-Xer, I remember when the prevalent view about being gay was that it was something you’d be afraid for people to find out about. It’s also been our generation that started to change that. We’ve come a long way in the past couple decades, but it can still be a frightening prospect if your family and community are predominantly heteronormative. With the stigma surrounding homosexuality that...

While it's difficult to track how many people with cancer do not seek treatment, the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) conducted a study a few years ago that indicated about 9.2% of patients receive no first course of treatment . This could be for many reasons, including fear or disbelief in traditional or corporate medicine, alternative treatments that stay off the statistics, or they just say “fu...

First of all, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate all the work that’s gone into getting to this milestone of 150 episodes of Fine is a 4-Letter Word . In past solos, I’ve talked about courage, doing what others won’t do, energy, and making decisions. If you’re not familiar with what I do outside of this show, I work with business leaders and corporate teams, giving them tools an...

This meditation is designed to clear stress and anxiety so you can feel grounded and safe in this moment. Sometimes anxiety can spin you into a frenzy. Worrisome thoughts get stuck playing on an endless loop through your mind. It doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t serve you in any useful way. Use this one to bring yourself back to tranquility, serenity, and calm. Music credits: ©2017 Rebecca Reads R...

In almost all of my episodes on Fine is a 4-Letter Word , I deal in varying degrees with the circles of life. In two of the themes I explore with my guests – the values and beliefs they were raised with, and the moment in their life when they realized or found out that everything wasn’t “fine” – we see how these themes come together. And see where some of the conscious as well as the subconscious...

Your life is a collage of all the experiences you have, people you meet, and what you learn along the way. Like many collages, even if they begin with a concept or a plan, as you bring them together they may take directions you hadn’t anticipated and show you things even more interesting than what you originally expected. This was the case for Noemi Beres, whose professional work owning and managi...

Having compassion for people is generally considered a good thing and a sign that you’re a decent and kind person who makes an effort to make the world a better place by being part of it. Raised in a religious household, Tara LaFon Gooch learned the value of love and kindness towards others. However, she struggled to extend that same love and compassion to herself. She came from a home with an abu...

Picture yourself living what seems like a regular life as a parent and entrepreneur, where everything seems uneventful and you have every reason to expect the rest of your life to follow a pretty straightforward path. You know, everything’s FINE. Then, one day you go to pick up your kids from school and all of a sudden you’re seeing double. Next thing you know, your life has been turned completely...

Here’s a challenge for you: ask your social media followers if they believe money can buy happiness or bring it up at your next social gathering and watch people fight it out. Some say you can; some say you can’t; others say that money cannot buy happiness like getting a box of happiness at the store, but it solves problems and greases the wheels that make happiness possible and attainable. But wh...

When you hear the word “perfectionist”, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of yourself? Typically, it’s someone who holds themselves to impossibly and unachievably high standards, driven by fear of real or imagined consequences if they don’t get it (whatever “it” is) exactly right. Because perfect is rarely possible, they never “measure up,” and they get discouraged and burn out. They’ve given aw...

Building your family and your life is like planting, nurturing, and harvesting crops on a farm. You put a lot of effort, a lot of heart, and a lot of energy into it, hoping your knowledge, wisdom, and patience deliver a bumper crop that fills your pantry and allows you a life of comfort, security, and happiness. You may have heard the expression “Man plans, God laughs.” My version of that, of cour...

Today’s solo episode is about ENERGY! When you look it up, Energy is defined as the capacity or ability to do work. I’d expand it to include the capacity or ability to have fun too. If you have no energy, you’re not going to be getting any work done or having any fun. “Fine” is not fun – it’s a 4-Letter Word! Tune in now as we cover three key areas: 1) Figuring out your values and why they matter...

From the very first episode of Fine is a 4-Letter Word, where my guest revealed that she did not even know what emotions were until she was in middle age because she was punished as a child for having them, I’ve been sharing stories of what happens from the inside out. My mission and drive for this podcast is to give you hope, help you find your passion and purpose, and dare you to see the life th...

Children who are told to be “seen, but not heard” learn early on that their thoughts, feelings, and words don’t matter. Then as adults, they continue to silence themselves even when they do speak by hiding and suppressing their true thoughts and feelings. Growing up in a small Welsh village, P.J. Roscoe learned early on to know her place, don’t have an opinion, don’t question or challenge anything...

Family trauma and drama flow through generations and can take on a form of fiction around “family unity,” “handed down traditions,” and “that’s the way it is” that sweep the suffering under the rug. But two things can happen. Either you’ll find yourself in pain from stepping on the lumps of dirt under the rug, or the rug will slip and slide due to the dirt making it less sticky to the floor – eith...

In the United States, more than 64 million men identify themselves as fathers. Yet, 7 million American dads are absent from the lives of their minor children, and 17.4 million children live in fatherless homes! Philip Lower, technically, grew up as one of these statistics. His biological father took his own life when Phil was five years old, leaving him with the question: "Why did Daddy have to le...

Imagine you start with a sense of purpose, aligned with your goals, accustomed to your family supporting you in living your authentic life, and successfully practicing the art of the possible. Then, all of a sudden, it gets taken away. Stephany Ann was raised in a supportive family environment that embraced individuality and encouraged her to pursue her passions. When she was 18, her mother releas...