Nothing in life is that complicated if you roll up your sleeves you get in there and you do it everything is figureoutable Marie foro is a leader millions of young women look to Marie as their inspiration so here are the three rules of the figure out aable framework rule number one rule number two rule number three what it does is it actually shifts the activity from your fight ORF flight you're not going to fire off that email you're not going to lose your [ __ ] you calm yourself down and you put yourself in a space of problem solving that wasn't previously available every one of these jobs feels like I'm dying this slow death I had this voice that started coming up in my head that was saying Marie this isn't who you are this isn't what you're meant to do and I was like sh I'm just like next next next some folks listening or watching us right now focusing on one thing feels like you're cutting off a limb and if you're built like that you're not broken this has worked for me for so many years and it's so simple but it's easy for us to forget it and that's this book call episode is sponsored by skin and me and if you follow me anywhere you will definitely have heard me talking about this brand before I really cannot stop recommending them to every single person I know if you haven't heard of skin and me they offer personalized skincare Solutions basically after a short online consultation their expert Dermatology team formulate you a treatment plan based on your skin concerns whether that be acne rosacea fine lines and more I had actually suffered with pretty severe acne for about 5 years and no word of a lie the skin and me daily doser absolutely transform my skin not only that it has completely simplified my skincare routine too every evening what I do is I just cleanse I then use my daily doser and then I Hydrate with my usual moisturizer it is really that easy and I am proof that it actually works as well that is why I will not stop talking about them skin and me are on a mission to demystify skincare with evidence-based active ingredients you can try your first skin andme daily Dosa for £4.99 using my code hardly working head to skin and me.com to complete your [Music] consultation thank you so much for joining me thanks for having this it's so fun well it's fun for me to be in New York every time I'm here it I get this kind of energy based on the fact that people here have such strong energy I feel like I've been like pulled into this Vortex of like success and opportunity it is I mean I think that's one of the most addicting parts of New York City is like there is this Grit in this non-stop current that you just drop into and you're like I have so many ideas and I want to do all the things and I think for people like us and ambitious listeners that you have um it's it's pretty intoxicating no I could imag I could very imagine myself like living here and I don't think I think that'll about a lot of places I think it suits my like that go go go I'm very very go go go as much as I try not to be some of the time um but I feel like that fits with me we first like to ask everyone whether you feel like at the the moment you are more working hard or hardly working ooh at this moment working hard MH I think in the past few years I've struck a much better balance of hardly working but my natural bent my DNA is working hard and that's something that I feel like is going to be almost like my lifelong journey to keep an eye on that and to dance between the both because for me hardly working I get bored and I'm a person who does naturally have a lot of energy and I have ideas I mean they come constantly it's like I almost feel like oh my God another one like where am I going to put this thing uh but I do have to really keep my eye on it because it can go into overdrive and I have to so just finding that balance and that dance of what actually feels good you know it it's not there's no set formula I think that's what's so important it's actually about identifying whether you tend more towards working hard or hardly working and actually knowing that you're probably going to always have to shift yourself in the direction of the other one a little bit so you can get better balance I also think that recently I've had such a my my mom said this thing that like really struck a cord with me she didn't say it struck aord with me she said about herself and I was like oh my God this is where I get it from um but she someone had kind of said to her like you always go go go you're never happy that things are done just finished this now you're onto this thing just take some time and settle and she was like oh no I'm happy because I do this like because I go go go she's like this is my This Is My Drug like this is my thrill I love this and I was like oh my God I spend so much time fighting the fact that I'm go go go and fighting the fact that I'm like constantly thinking about the next thing and all of that and don't get me wrong I need to fight some of that like I need to get better at like checking in with myself and being able to be like okay you've achieved this just sit for one second and be happy about it but also at the same time my thrill comes from building doing new things thinking of new ideas seeing if I can execute them there's a reason why I've done I've done and it's purely because I'm just like next next next like I like that and I think there's also a part of not fighting that too much yes it's an interesting dance of being comfortable in your own skin not listening to external voices that tell you like you're not healthy and you should slow down and you're doing too much and you're going to just hit a wall and I think on balance sometimes there's truth in that and I know for me in my journey um a lot as I look back and often times we only see things in retrospect right it's hard to see things in the moment that's why we have that wonderful saying that hindsight is 2020 I can see now you know starting things and and driving so hard there was a good portion of it that was driven by fear and driven by scarcity and driven by this deep deep drive and desire to have stability and security and so that's super real and at the same time it's also super real that I'm like oh my God I love this like this is amazing and the same thing getting such a genuine charge and a thrill out of the Act of Creation this incredible ability that every human being is born with where you have an ability to have an idea pluck it from the field higher Consciousness your imagination however you want to put that in a container and then actually make it a thing for other people to experience and for other people to enjoy like that is a power that I don't think we can just gloss over Overlook it is m IAL and so to get joy from that and to actually embrace it and flex that muscle to create there is a lot of pleasure there yeah no absolutely and I think for so long I thought I was doing the rest things so wrong just because I was kind of like constantly looking at a lot of self-care stuff and being like self-care is making sure you have X amount of time off it's making sure you had this it's making sure you've had this and I'm like I think for me it's boundaries and it's very strong boundaries and it's knowing where my those boundaries are but it's not necessarily kind of it doesn't look the same for everyone I'd love to know from you for anyone who maybe isn't familiar with your work a little bit of a kind of Whistle Stop tour of your career and how you got to where you are now yeah so as we talked about I have always been a person with a lot of energy and I remember being an undergrad um studying business and just like imagining myself in a job because everyone's like oh what's the job you're going to get and what Corporation you going to work for and that all felt like death to me I could not imagine sitting behind a desk for like 8 10 hours a day and uh in college I bartended a lot to put myself through school and I was lucky because I was a really good bartender and I made great relationships with the folks that I served and I happened to get an opportunity to get a job on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange so Wall Street now at that time we're talking like the late 90s so we're just putting this into context there was no seats on the floor meaning that you had to stand up and run around like a maniac all day long which I Wasing this was fantastic I was like this is my dream come true and uh so I was thrilled to have this first gig on Wall Street but I remember like pretty soon into it I had this voice that started coming up in my head that was saying Marie this isn't who you are this isn't what you're meant to do this isn't what you're supposed to be and I was like sh you know like I'm the first in my family to go to college uh my parents work their buns off to even get me this education I don't have a trust fund or have any security like how could I possibly think of not doing this thing I have health benefits all the stuff that we are told that we need in order to have stability as a quote unquote adult fast forward six months that voice just kept getting louder and louder until one day I was running tickets on the floor which is what one does and uh I started having what I now know is a little bit of a panic attack like I had trouble breathing I felt dizzy and I said to my boss like hey I need to run out and go grab some coffee so I ran out but I didn't go get coffee I made a beine to the nearest church so I just graduated from a Cath cathic University and I was kind of trained by my upbringing that in a crisis you just look up and get some help and some guidance and I remember sitting on the church steps and I was crying because I felt like such a loser because I wanted to quit this job I didn't know what the hell else I want to do and the first message I got was call your dad so I whipped out my flip phone hello and I called my dad and I'm just like doing the ugly cry and like I'm so sorry I don't want to B shame on the family but I tried so hard to show up and just work it but I just can't stand it here my dad interrupted and he's like Ray hang on a second you've been working since you were 9 years old I have no doubt you're going to figure out how to keep a roof over your head but here's something you need to understand you're going to work for the next 40 if not 50 years if this job is making you this sick you have to find something that you love to do and once you find that thing you're never going to have this feeling again and I remember this experience of just having a huge weight lifted off my shoulders because even though he didn't tell me how to find something that I would quote quote love to do it was the permission slip that I needed to step back and go okay I need to trust that voice that this isn't it and even though I don't have the answer I have to go out and find it my only two Clues were really that I loved business my dad was a small business owner but I was also highly creative and in my mind at that time those two things were completely separate I'm like how do I make them go together I went around and did little odd jobs and then I got myself into a temp agency and I said can you get me into a magazine because I felt like that was this world where there was the ad Sal side so it was Commerce and selling and then it was the editorial side I'm like this is going to be perfect so I got a a job in the ad sales department at Gourmet magazine part of cond Nas big stored publishing company and I was like this is awesome first of all Wall Street was like 99.9% men in the uh magazine it was like the flip it was like 99.9% women and they were all in power I'm like this is cool and you know my desk was near the test kitchen I'm Italian American I love to eat I would get snacks all the time I'm like this is awesome but a few months into that job that voice came back again and it was like Marie this isn't who you are this isn't what you're supposed to do this isn't what you're meant to be and I'm like oh Jesus not this again like I was watching all of my friends that I graduated with they were starting to make real strides and some of them were getting raises and you know looking at houses and here I am like I want to quit my job again and I was like okay let me step back and really think about this analytically Wall Street all money ad sales more money and more Commerce maybe my creative side is just starving so I went to the HR department I said I don't care if I have to take a pay cut get me on the edit side of any magazine I'll take it a couple months later they got me a job as a fashion assistant at madelle and I was like okay this is it I'm going to fashion shows I'm going to help design the layouts photo shoots all kinds of creative stuff this is going to be my dream and for the first few months it was awesome because I love novelty I love to learn I love a new challenge and then what do you know that voice came back again Marie this isn't Who You Are this isn't what you're supposed to do this is me I'm like OMG am I broken because I have this really strong work ethic I want to make money and contribute but if I'm honest every one of these jobs feels like I'm dying this slow death I cannot picture myself here I don't want to climb the corporate ladder and there was this one day um when I was on the internet probably when I shouldn't have been that I stumbled upon this article about a new profession at that time called life coaching and I will be honest with you when I read this article something in me lit up like a fraking Christmas tree it was like the clouds parted and little angels came out and they were like a like this is what you're supposed to do with your life but I was 23 years old so I had the voice in my head and I'm from New Jersey I was like what are you doing this is like the stupidest thing ever who's ever heard of a life coach you're 23 years old no one's going to hire you you haven't even lived life yet you're like tens of thousands of dollars in debt you can't seem to hold down a job you keep quitting it this is one more thing going to fail at as that was going on I couldn't deny how right it felt so I signed up for this three-year coach training program that was all done via quote unquote Tela class again because this was the late 90s early 2000s and I started studying coaching at night and doing all this training and then um few months into the future I got a call from the HR department they had a promotion for me they wanted me to go to Vogue top fashion magazine in the world More Money More Prestige better benefits all the things and that was my Fork do you stay on this path that is understandable that kind of looks shiny and kind of you know impressive from the outside and that everyone understands what you do are you going to quit and do this weird ass life coaching thing that no one has ever heard of that you even think sounds cheesy as all hell but that feels so unbelievably exciting you want to jump out of your skin so I said no to The Vogue job I quit I went back to bartending and waiting tables in New York City and I started trying to figure out how to build a life coaching practice during the day and that was 22 years ago and so amazing story I feel like it's it's so interesting to see the evolution of how everyone gets to where they are now I feel like that being still 22 years ago I want to know what's happened between then and now that's put you to this position oh my gosh so much I think first of all when people often ask me like how did you create this whole thing such a huge part of it is consistency like the consistency of showing up no matter what even though I don't might not know what the hell I'm doing or how I'm going to get there but this conviction that I can figure it out that everything is figureoutable that I'll learn things I can train I can ask questions and I can just keep putting myself out there that Relentless commitment to moving forward is just the Big Arc of it we can talk about the underpinnings but I think one of the best things I learned in my coach training and I would recommend this for any entrepreneur this was really pial for me they told me they said look you can become the best coach in the world meaning that you understand how to listen how to ask the right questions how to support people to create like really meaningful results in their lives but if you don't also learn the business side of a coaching business if you don't learn how to Market your services so that other people want to hire you you will change no one's life at ever and I just sat there Grace and I was like that makes so much sense so it was early on in my career that I got that message and realized I have to master my craft and I have to master the business and the marketing side of this if I want everything to thrive if I want to have the financial Freedom the lifestyle freedom and most importantly the impact in the world that I believe I can make I need to juggle those two and really make those my lifelong commitments and that was I think one of the things that really set me on a path to keep going and to keep growing and you know here was the thing that really struck me because you know people would ask me especially when I was bartending because just to set the stage I think it was seven full years that I had part-time what I like to call bridge jobs before I felt confident enough both emotionally and financially to go all in on my online business and the other truth was this you know I would bartend and people would always ask me like oh so what else do you do are you an actor and I was like no I'm a coach but I recognized often times when I would just say that it didn't feel true enough and here's what I mean there were all these other interests that I had I loved Fitness I loved dance I love spirituality I love the the new world of digital business all those things that kind of fell outside the Spectre of just quote unquote life coaching and I did something that I'm so proud of my younger self for doing you know all of the success books that I read at that time they all talked about focusing down and becoming an expert in one thing and if you can just focus and be so good at something then that is the path to success but for me I first of all I have an ADHD brain so I am never able to focus on just one thing and I'm just not built that way and when I threw out that conventional wisdom I remember one day I was at the bar and someone asked me what I did and I didn't think to create this Grace but it just came to me it felt like it was a gift from the career gods or my higher self and they were like so what else do you do and out of my mouth popped this phrase I'm a multi-passionate entrepreneur was like I don't even know what the hell means but it felt so good and they're like oh what is that I was like well I'm starting teaching dance classes which I was starting to do but I felt almost insecure about it because it didn't match a particular criteria of being a professional coach and then I started talking about my newsletter and I started talking about multiple things that I was both passionate about interested in and activated on and it gave me this whole new context with which to see myself no longer was I this like flaky you know dilatant running around doing all these different things all of sudden I was a multi-passionate entrepreneur who had a coaching practice I was starting to teach these Fitness workshops which eventually led to me becoming one of the world's first Nike Elite Dance athletes and I got to train people all over the world despite the fact that I have no formal dance training whatsoever so it was this really cool context that I wanted to share with people because I would bet there's some folks listening or watching us right now who might be built like us you know focusing on one thing feels like you're cutting off a limb and if you're built like that you're not broken you just need a different context through which to see your gifts and your talents and a way to find convergence so you can share your gifts in a way that makes sense I think that's really valuable and I think that the what I think a lot about is the fact that you know 20 years ago 30 years ago the expectation definitely was and the expectation still is in kind of I think the majority of people's minds that you should be good at one thing and focus on one thing and especially in terms of like corporate like you should spend 30 years doing something you should get really good at it you should keep getting promoted you should just do that and that's what you should use to pay your bills to you know provide for your family etc etc over the past obviously like 20 years or so this idea of the multier has come up and prior to that point it was kind of looked at as this like gig economy of people who couldn't make ends meet based on one thing right so had to do multiple different things obviously there are these like societal narratives around that type of thing and I can imagine even stronger when you were starting out doing this absolutely how did you look at that and think okay I'm a high achiever I you know I'm the first in my family to go to college and yet I am going to basically refute or refuse to act in accordance with this idea that makes me successful in other people's eyes yeah it was really hard I remember so many journals filled with like these angry crying pleas that I was making essentially to God or the universe or whoever was listening like why can't I just focus why can't you just help me pick one thing because I would have friends and mentors say well where do you want to be in five years I'm like I don't freaking not like I can't you my I'm not even built that way and so it was really tough and you know my parents they are awesome people they didn't know what the hell was going on and I just felt so much shame for so many years because again friends were um who were amazing friends but like rising up as an attorney rising up as an accountant rising up as a teacher they had more traditional kind of focused paths and so I just felt like a freak I felt like a freak in nature and it nothing made sense and it was um it wasn't until like things really started to gel together and I just kept having to give myself permission to not be like everyone else and to just have this feeling of Faith within me that I'm like look this little voice inside of me keeps directing me in ways that when I listen I find myself having more fun more joy and little successes are starting to build so rather than following what everyone else has told me I'm going to keep listening to that little inner voice and then I think once as I was saying it hit around like the seven-year Mark and stuff started to work and I was like how am I one of the world's first Nike athletes ever and I have not a stitch of formal dance training I'm making more money than I ever thought I could make I'm out of debt I'm changing People I was like this [ __ ] works so but it took a while it took years of self-doubt and years of honestly feeling terrible about myself but clearly this like underlying self-confidence to keep pushing forward probably because I kept falling on my face so many times so the failure led me there if that makes any kind of sense you know what I mean like it was so painful being on Wall Street that it was one of the gifts that I have and that I'm really grateful for is that my body starts shutting down when I'm am not in alignment with my truth so remember I was telling about that little panic attack when I'm in a situation you know I I had this I remember I was engaged to be married um not to my partner who I've been with for 21 years but this is previous to that Grace I started getting physically ill and he wasn't a bad guy he was just not my guy right wasn't the partner for me but my body starts breaking down so to your point that confidence was almost like an escape hatch for the pain of something not being right so it was less about me going like I know at all I was like I can't deal with that pain I have to go in this other direction there's two pieces to this and their nuance and I'm really happy that we're digging in one I think that level of being honest with yourself about what's working and what's not so for me I realized very early like sitting at a desk pushing papers around not happy even though I didn't necessarily quote unquote love bartending what I did love was that I was standing all day and I was interacting with people you know what I mean and I was moving there was physical movement same thing that showed up in dance like oh gosh every time I'm moving my aliveness comes through Fitness the same thing Wall Street even though I didn't like being on Wall Street I loved the fact that I was moving so you can start to look for Clues like what are the kinds of things that when I'm doing them I seem to have more energy I seem to be alive I seem to be attracted to X Y or Z and that takes a lot of self-awareness and it takes slowing down and being able to step back and start to see some patterns within yourself so that's one piece of it I also want to talk about a big mistake that I made in this time period that um once I got this lesson this is really helped me especially Thrive as an entrepreneur because as you know there's parts of our business where you do need to stick it out you may not like it it's super not fun but you got to get that grit you got to strap yourself in and be like I'm in this for the Long Haul I'm going to fight through to get to the other side and I have that piece of me too here's what it looked like in bartending so when I knew I wanted my coaching business to thrive and I knew that that that was like a piece of my path I remember every time I would go to the bar I freakin hate my job I was like G I can't wait to get the shift done you know I was just like a cranky little pain in the ass didn't really want to talk with my customers was like writing things down about my ideas of what I would do when my shift was over and I realized that then once I got home from my shifts because I was complaining for the last six hours hating what I was doing I had no energy when I came home to then work on my business and I realized and had this Epiphany I was like oh my God you know practice makes permanent what I was practicing was being whiny complaining and dissatisfied and I was like I need to shift this from the inside out and I need to shift it right now because the way I'm going I'm not going to have the energy to build this business that I know can be something great and so I started showing up with a new ad I'm like I'm going to be the best band bartender that New York City has ever seen and like I'm making dirty martinis like nobody's business I'm putting everything perfect I'm doing my orange twist do you know I'm like making this an art form and I'm making people feel like I am literally so happy to serve them they don't want to do anything else they want to hang out at the bar and Grace that one practice of training myself to show up even though I knew it wasn't going to be my career for long but to practice bringing this joy and this presence and this Excellence that helped me break that pattern of being almost like a whiny little brat and it started to open up my creative channels my stamina and my ability to really work on my business outside of my bar shifts and it changed everything and it's the just the simple notion that we have these incredible brains and this fact of neuroplasticity that we can actually rewire our brains like that is a scientific fact and one of the most beautiful aspects of it is that it's underpinned by something simple that we all know how to do which is repetition repetition is really how we rewire right so neurons that fire together wire together so by you saying that every single morning these neural Pathways which are more like neural highways especially for those of us and again I have like my cranky side you the frustrated side where it's like oh no it's going to take some effort like going to the gym every day and doing those incredible bicep curls or your push-ups or your squats or your burpees or whatever the hell that you do but it actually works I have a version of that that I do where I have a vision that I've written out and I say it out loud how grateful I am for all of these things that may not yet be true and same thing when I'm saying it out loud there's a part of me who like this is [ __ ] crazy and then I'm like but this is awesome and I wind up just closing my little book and I'm like dude we got this and when the shitake hits the fan because it does every day someone gets sick someone's quitting XYZ goes wrong and you're the boss and you've got to deal with it you got to keep your head on straight and your energy as you know infects everyone and so your ritual that you do in the morning that you you're like I feel like a lunatic doing it same thing to me I'm walking around with my journal like marching around my house with my coffee saying these things but I end up feeling fantastic and it works and this has worked for me for so many years and it's so simple but it's easy for us to forget it I'm like oh I'm actually the Creator here I'm the one that whipped up this whole little business I'm the one that whipped up all of these projects I'm the one who orchestrated this whole thing so if I created this mishos I can uncreate it if I want it's like I'm actually the boss of this and that gets me in a really good humble position and I think you can do that on all different levels as well because you know not everyone who's listening to this will be an entrepreneur not everyone who's listening to this will be self-employed or even have control over how they spend their day what we say at in my personal team at work is we are the type of team we we take on a lot of things we like to take on a lot of things we see opportunities we go for them we're really bad at not doing that so what we have to say to ourselves over and over and over is like everything can be deleted like it can literally be deleted like we don't have to do any of this and obviously we do like obviously we've got it like we know we tend towards that direction so we know we're going to have a business here we know we're going to make some money or whatever we're going to have some opportunities and it's going to be good this is so fun though and we I talk about this we have a program that's called time genius that's specifically for people um like me um and possibly like you and some other people where we take on a lot right we're like oh [ __ ] what did I create how do I uncreate this in a way where it's sustainable and there's this one teaching bit about the power of owning your choices you were mentioning how everyone listening is not necessarily an entrepreneur or self-employed or freelancer but I remember I pulled this on myself and it worked such wond so my partner Josh I've always known that I never wanted to be married or have my own biological kid so that was just a clear thing from when I popped out of the womb I'm like look this thing is different she's just she is what she is and I remember at this early point when my business was still a baby business and myself and Josh were together and he has a son and this was great because he already had a child I didn't want to have a child but I became a stepmom with a 9-year-old and there was like this certain period that we went through where you know they're guys and there's like dirty towels on the floor and the toilet seat's always up and shit's all over the place and I'm like trying to run a business out of this tiny apartment in New York City and I remember just how cranky and complainy I was and then I had to stop myself and I had to check myself before I wrecked myself I was like who chose this man who chose this man with a child who's in this Rel who chose to live in New York City in a small ass apartment because it's really it was like oh this is actually on me this is on me and this is on me and it was so awesome because it got me out of that complaining mode it got me out of that almost vicy mindset with myself and made me realize like oh I chose this do you want to unchoose it or do you want to fix your attitude and I was like I'll fix my attitude I actually really do love them so you know it was good like obviously for everyone it will be different degrees of possible but actually being able to be like okay if I'm complaining about this so much like do I want to change it for so long I think we're hitting upon something here is it chronic you know and what do I need to do how do I see need to see my part in this because in any circumstance you can either change the circumstance and if you can't change that for whatever reason or for whatever time frame then you got to change yourself those are the only two options and coming back to this notion which hopefully we'll talk more about everything is figure aable it's like you can either change this circumstance because honestly you don't have to do anything like you could refuse to eat you could there's there's a million like you don't have to do anything and when people like wait a minute yeah of course there's consequences of course other things will happen but if you really break it down you don't have to and I think that's what you're think what you were kind of talking about and then if you're like okay well no I do want the job and it is shitty it's like okay well then let's make a game plan to get you out of it in 6 months it might not happen tomorrow right but there are always steps that we can take to either change the circumstance or change our own attitude so let's talk about the everything is figureoutable um saying I know that's something that you you talk about a lot and I love it as a saying could you tell us a little bit more about how that came about and what your kind of philosophy is yes so um this beautiful phrase is probably one of the best gifts that I've ever received in my life and uh in order to tell you where it came from I have to tell you about uh the very special person who created it which is is my mom and so she's about 56 she looks like June Cleaver she's got the tenacity of a bulldog and she cusses like a like a truck driver so that's where my saltiness comes from if you if you haven't guessed um she grew up the daughter of two alcoholic parents in the projects of Nork New Jersey and she really learned by necessity how to stretch a dollar bill around the block like five times and she would always tell me that uh when she was little she rarely felt beautiful or valued but she made a promise to herself that when she grew up she would find a way to a better life one of my favorite memories ever growing up as a kid in New Jersey was sitting around the kitchen table on Sundays with my mom and we would clip coupons together because she loved teaching me all the different ways that we could save money and she also loved showing me that especially back in those days if you saved up what were known as proofs of purchase that Brands would send you these really cool things like maybe a cookbook or a set of cooking utensils and my mom saved up these proofs of purch and got this tiny little amfm transistor radio that looked exactly like an orange it was orange in shape it had the little dimples it had a red and white straw sticking out of the side and it was from Tropicana orange juice and she got this thing for free oh my god did she love it so when I was little I never knew where I would find my mom around the house like or what she'd be doing but she's I think like both of our moms they're constantly doing stuff but you could always hear this little tiny radio and it was like disco playing or whatever so one day I was coming home from school schol and uh I heard music off in the distance and as I got closer to my house it was coming from a weird orientation like way up high and I looked up and I see my mom perched on the top of our twostory house I didn't see a ladder I just saw her with this little orange next door butt and I was like oh I was like Mom are you okay what's going on and she's like re I'm fine the roof had had a leak I called the roofer he said it was going to be at least 500 bucks I said screw that I could do it myself this is my mom another I come home and uh I push open the door and I hear like music jamming from the background I was like I'm Every Woman and I go and my mom's in the bathroom and I push open the door and there's like pipes sticking out of the wall there's dust particle it looked like a bomb went off I was like Mom what's going on are you okay she's like I'm fine she's like uh some of the tiles had cracks in it I don't want the bathroom to get moldy so I'm retiling the bathroom now Grace you have to understand she's High School educated this is the 80s this is pre- internet this is preg Google pre- Tik Tock you you couldn't find out stuff like this one day in the fall I come home and it's dark out so it's already spooky and I approach my house and it's pitch black and it's silent for an Italian-American home this is not good news and I walk in and I had that pit in my stomach I was like something is wrong here like where's my mom where's the radio this is all freaky all of a sudden I hear these little clicks and Clacks and it was coming from the kitchen and I walk over and I see my mom hunched over the kitchen table which looked like an operating table and it had electrical tape and screwdrivers and drills and then in like 15 pieces was a completely dismantled Tropicana orange radio and I was like Mom what I was like are you okay it's like your favorite thing in the world what the hell happened and she's like R I'm fine she's like the antenna was off the dial was a little funky and she's like so I'm fixing it I stood back and I folded my arms and I said hey Mom how do you know how to do so many different things that you've never done before but nobody's showing you how to do it and she puts her screwdriver down and and she looks at me and she says ra what are you talking about nothing in life is that complicated if you roll up your sleeves you get in there and you do it everything is figureoutable and I was like everything is figure out and I just kept repeating this little phrase I was like dude this is the yes everything is figureoutable and I'm not kidding you from that moment on it was like it got implanted in my soul and became my operating system for like every single little thing that I have ever experienced in my life from having this freaking awful abusive relationship my kind of First Love was like a physically or abusive relationship in high school helped me get myself out of that get myself into the best classes in college figure out how to get work study programs finding the job in the New York Stock Exchange getting weird gigs at like Club selling glow sticks like every single thing that I've ever wanted to do including starting the business including to this day whenever [ __ ] hits the fan and it does often for most of us in life that phrase gets me off the floor and gets me in motion and gets me asking questions it gives me a sense of hope it gives me a sense of possibility and it keeps me in a place of creation and connection and knowing that something else is possible I feel like it's this simple belief that can help you do everything from the mundane from like if your washing machine breaks to starting a company to transforming a relationship to Healing your health to tackling any big thing that you're really really passionate about now there are a few things that I want to mention there's a few caveats because there's Nuance to this and hopefully there's some people listening that could be skeptical and that would be like no you know everything is not figureoutable and I love that I remember when I was um first working on the book and I shared this with a really dear friend of mine who does a lot of work in the addiction space and he's like Marie I love you I respect you I I your work is amazing but like no everything is not like how do you how do you tell someone who's dealing with uh a life-threatening diagnosis or some of these horrific circumstances that we human beings find oursel in h like how does this square off and I told him this so the first time I shared this philosophy outside of my own audience was actually on the stage for OA so she had this event called Super Soul sessions and I was like okay if I'm going to test drive this with larger audience before putting it in the book this is the best one after I did that talk they put that on their podcast and so it got wide exposure beyond my own folks and I got an email one day that really made me feel I was like yes I knew this works no matter what it was from a woman named Jen from New Zealand and she said to me that her mom had been trying to get her to have the same kind of philosophy and they had watched my talk or listened to my talk together and it really made a difference to them and then she said and then everything changed because my mom got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and my first thought was like nothing is figureoutable she said but then when I slowed down and step back and really look deeper here's what I discovered I could break the small things down one I could find foods that my mom actually tolerated I could figure that out two I could figure out how to get medical equipment to her home and three I could figure out how to set it up so that she was comfortable and that she could spend her last five weeks on this Earth exactly where she wanted to be which was in her own home and it it brings me the tears because that letter when she said thank you for sharing this philosophy because it made an enormous difference to two women who you've never met on the other side of the world and yes everything is figureoutable and I've gotten so many letters like that from people who were dealing with abuse who were finding themselves in the midst of Unthinkable loss and grief but who found this phrase helpful for themselves in unleashing some power of possibility and their their ability to reach Rec contextualize their ability to reach for something different their ability to reach out for help and so I think in that sense that part is really important and then there's the last bit there's three rules that I always like to share with people they're very fast that helps give you a mental container because our minds at least my mind can go nuts with possibilities so here are the three rules at the figureoutable framework rule number one all problems or dreams are figureoutable rule number two if a problem isn't figureoutable it may not be a problem at all it's either a fact of life or law of uh a law of nature like gravity or death rule number three you may not care enough to solve a particular problem or reach a particular dream and that's okay find something that you do care deeply about and you go back to rule number one so I think what that little container does is it keeps us from going off onto Fantastical like hypotheticals and it keeps our energy focused on something that we really do want to figure out for the long term and it might not happen in a day a week a month maybe not even years some things are lifetimes to figure out I mean you know think about the fact that at one point in human history we didn't know how to fly now we do right at one point in human history I was watching um a show on Netflix last night it was about Ripley uh I don't know if you've seen that show yet it's really really fun but it takes place at least a few scenes in the 60s in Italy and they were looking in a phone book and I was like oh my God the world before cell phone phon and computers so in our contextual Collective history there may be things that aren't figure out a quite yet but they're on the way right so it's less about when you come to a problem as you say there are certain problems that you're right they can't be fixed in you if you're thinking that being fixed is turn returning back to the way they were correct or only being fixed in One Direction correct it's about understanding okay there are certain things that are out of my control here but the control I can get back is working out in which direction this is figureoutable and whether that is an acceptable outcome for me and therefore whether I should you know push forward in that direction whether I should just throw this thing in the bin totally or whether I should you know whatever it might be it's about regaining control over what you can control and being able to understand that it might not be figureoutable in the way you originally thought it would be but that doesn't mean that it's not valid that's exactly right it's no matter what circumstance you find find yourself in you have an ability to unlock your intrinsic innate wisdom and power to move forward in a productive way and that productive way may not look the way that your mind wants it to look in this moment but you have the ability in my opinion to transform or transcend any challenge that you face which makes you Unstoppable not Unstoppable in the sense that everything will always go your way because we know it won't not Unstoppable in the sense that you'll never have disappointment or Devastation or grief or loss because we all will but Unstoppable in the most powerful way meaning that no circumstance no person no limitation ever has to hold you back again I think that's I think that's just like a great framework to have it's a it's just a one that when you get intrinsically in your mind that you can return to again and again it's the type of thing where you can just calm yourself down a little bit well I want to talk about that for a second because for all of us we know this right so when things go wrong and again they do for everyone I find myself on my knees I find myself up against a corner in the back going and like you know like just feeling like do the hits keep coming nobody escapes from this I don't care who the hell you are I don't care what your training is that's life when those things happen most of our amydala gets fired up that fight ORF flight center right and that's when we get tense that's when we can get emotional that's when we lose our ability to emotionally regulate and have our executive functions on board and from a neuroscientific perspective everything is figureoutable if you say it out loud even three times what it does is it actually shifts the activity from your fight ORF flight the amydala back into your free prefrontal cortex so you get back your executive functioning which brings you back into a place of you're not going to fire off that email and create even more problems right you're not going to lose your [ __ ] and have a meltdown and start raging or doing things that again you're going to create even more problems you calm yourself down and you put yourself in a space of problem solving that wasn't previously available when you're locked in a nervous system fight or flight function so it's extremely practical I often teach people put your hand on your heart you breathe five times you say everything is figureoutable and all of a sudden you're like okay I can look at this differently I might need to take a nap I might need to call my friend I might need to have a glass of water I might need to take a walk around the block but you get yourself back into enough of a strong position where the best of you comes back online and you can sidestep um a lot of the problems that at least I I don't know if you've ever done this but created for yourself if you react emotionally oh 100% And it's about knowing what your Regulators are as well because like I think it's really easy for everyone to let themselves stew it's almost like it's like the self flag relating kind of like you know I'm so annoyed about this and this didn't go the way it needed to and that person's stupid for doing that or whatever it might be and you literally allow yourself to Stew and don't get me wrong it's important to be able to rant to be able to be heard to be able to like vent yeah exactly like that's so important but at the same time you need to understand what you can do to pull yourself out of that what things return you to a more kind of level emotional state yeah a more mature perspective and a perspective I think that allows you to tap into the best of who you are not the worst of who you are absolutely so you obviously spend a lot of your time helping other people out with their challenges I'd really love to know with this in mind what your current challeng is that you're facing yes I feel like this is maybe one of my lessons in this Incarnation on Earth but probably one of my biggest struggles is around we talked about this earlier having so many ideas and so many things that I want to create and it's almost like there's two of me inside where there's like the beasty Marie who's like I can do it you know what I mean and and when Josh goes out of town like I tell my team I tell my friends it's like okay you know my team is distributed so they're on the west coast and they're on the East Coast so I'm like I'm having meetings sometimes at like s or 8 o'clock not because I'm punishing myself because I'm like oh my God I'm Unleashed does that you know what I mean I know exactly what you do you don't need to tell me like this is crazy and I'm like you know new Google Docs everything's coming out and they're like oh Josh must be away because she is just forget about it and then there's this other really real side of me that like right now I'm working on um I have a little side project uh my lineage I can likely get um Italian citizenship just based on my ancestral line and so there's also the fantasy part of like gosh do I just want to move away and live in Italy for a few months of year do so there's these two very real parts of me where it's like I'm just want to take dance class all day and cook meals like I'm a really good cook and I love creating like healthy meals for people I love creating Adventures like my friends come over and I'll like host people for the weekend I'm taking us to like roller skating parks I'm doing scary movie nights like I have all of these things planned and so there there's a very real part of me that like dude that could be my whole life if I want to so I think the thing that I battle with internally is those two sides of me and trying to be as honest as I can about which side needs to come out and play more and being really honest about how much to take on how much to say yes to and not beat myself up when I'm in one position or the other if that makes any kind of sense that makes a lot of sense and I think as someone who very much relates I am the yeah mymo is taking on too much saying yes to Too Much the inability to say no to a good opportunity no matter whether it's going to make me on the verge of death or like whatever it might be and it also at the same time that's something that makes me feel alive and that it makes me feel fulfilled and it makes me feel challenged and it makes me feel incredibly excited like you won't see me more excited than when I'm taking on a new opportunity as long as I also give myself the grace to be like and just because you've done this you can throw that in the bin and never think about it again and that has scratched an itch that doesn't necessarily need to be scratched anymore totally and giving myself that like opportunity to back out yeah as someone who is very stubborn and very much does not want to back out of anything that they've said they're going to do I think that's what's really changed my mindset because it's like okay but but clearly some of the joy you get out of this is literally just the brainstorming building stage and that's a very classic ADHD thing as well like the amount of people who will try and start a new business and go all in and then be like two days later like H like maybe not so much yeah exactly like I actually don't even like it and allowing myself to almost play like it's a it's a version of play and like there are some good ideas and opportunities and there are some new things are doing at the moment that I'm so excited about and I have enough Frameworks in my brain and enough like yes no things and talk to the right people to know that they're the right opportunities and that it's not going to distract from what else I'm doing but it's allowing myself not to necessarily take away the joy I get from that from exploring those new things whilst at the same time knowing that that doesn't necessarily mean that I need to start up a new [ __ ] business yeah oh 110% if like my Google Docs like oh gosh shameful like this morning I was working on creating a little brief for someone that I'm exploring working with and it you know it surfaced all was like holy [ __ ] there's a whole other book there I forgot about this and I was like damn you know so it's it's a struggle cuz sometimes when I lay down at night you know I'm asking myself and this is the God's honest truth too it's uh last year was probably was probably the worst year of my life I went through a lot of really hard things with my family both my parents I thought we were going to lose them and I almost lost my mom twice she was very very um on the edge of being on the other side and so that always puts things into perspective too and for me that particular additional layer of reality check and oh my God the preciousness of life with which I I try and retain that as much as possible but we all know we are caught up and we're alive and we're heing right now and so that layer on top of it of going like I don't want to look back and regret having my face in a screen too much or like Josh who we've been together 21 years and we're we I just I love him so much we have so much fun together he's also a creative he's an actor and so we're constantly trying to find that dance of like Adventure Time where we're both offline and we both love making stuff you know so it's that I think for us is is and it's a dance hopefully that we'll get to keep doing together you know I definitely don't think I'm going to get it perfect or right um but uh but I'm grateful for it I'm grateful for it I'm grateful to have the passion and the energy to do it and um yeah and I want to just be aware and stay aware of the cultural conditioning especially for me and I know it might be different for yall but like here in America like we have some screwed up effed up I like we're so like work work work and you know that's my familial conditioning too because we don't come from money so it's like you work your buns off seven days a week you don't rest so that's kind of in my system as well and so I'm always challenging myself to see like okay what is my programming versus what is natural Joy what is my natural drive and and how do I keep finding that balance how do you generally differentiate between that programming and natural Joy I think when I find myself at the computer and if I'm if it's rooted in a sense of like I have to do this oh God I got to get this done and it feels like it's almost as though it feels like there's an energetic overlay of punishment versus you know like if you're in the gym and I love working out and I love lifting weights and sometimes if I'm going for like a whole heavy set I'm like oo this is going to be hard but is good like it just it it's exciting I want to see if I can do it and I don't give a [ __ ] if I do a drop set like I'm just like how many times can I get this 45 pound weight up when if I'm in that place with creation where it feels like dirty and gritty and exciting I'm like this isn't programming this is an act of birthing do you know like this is me like creating something new and joyful I also find that I can distinguish it between how the project itself feels so actually right now before I came to have this conversation with you which I'm so loving by the way uh we're working on a new program that it's one of those things that I've had this idea literally Grace for years I was looking back in journals I was like holy [ __ ] I've been talking about this for years and now it's finally being born and when I'm writing copy and the images are coming together I am exploding with energy and excitement versus when there's other things it's almost like the version of eating your broccoli in your business where you're like got to do this again I can feel when it's like the H got to do this again I have to keep an eye on where I'm being dutiful out of that programming that obligation that I need to be a good businesswoman and I need to show up and never disappoint or you know what I mean I know exactly what you mean and I'm interested as well as someone who's so passionate about a number of different things and gives that kind of energy to you know different projects or whatever new business is whatever it might be how do you also make sure that you're doing the things that you don't necessarily want to do but are incredibly important for your life for your progression for like because I think that especially if you're wired this way yes so I have a little rule we play games I love playing games play is a really important aspect of my life so um a little saying that I say to myself only say yes to things that you're willing to do joyfully and that gives me a nice little framework and a container to go okay if you said yes to this Marie do you know what I mean like are you going to be Cranky Pants and show up and do it or you actually going to turn on some music and like even if it's almost a little manic weird like okay I'm going to have fun even though it's a little bit sarcastic it's kind of like what we were talking about before even me playing that role somehow gets me to crack a smile into oh screw it I got to do all this stupid Insurance paperwork nobody else going to do it I have all my numbers you know what I mean like I need to do this thing music is a great Avenue for play for me and then again kind kind of making fun of myself is another great Avenue for like dude you're either going to do this and endure it or enjoy it you choose yeah like every moment of your life Marie is a moment of your life and I go back to the old bartending days like am I training myself to be miserable and mediocre or like this joyful ball of life that's having a damn good time even if I'm like stuck in traffic which I can do like now and it doesn't always happen you know what I mean sometimes I'm cranky pants USA and that's just dude that is what it is but when I can catch it and go is this really the choice you want to make girl like is this really how you want to be spending your energy right now those are the few things that that can get me out of my funk yeah no I think that's really important and it's understanding like where those like understanding that you have the full right to do everything in a terrible mood yes and you're going to choose not to or you're going to choose to and that's fine and that's today and tomorrow might be different but like you are going to choose to do that chore and you are going to be seething and like Breathing heavily and like hating it and then usually like but I'll tell you one of the things that has helped me tremendously I'd say probably in the past five six years was a number of just tests in terms of understanding more what was happening under the hood of my health and so let me put context to that so I've always been a really fairly healthy resilient AF kind of person where it's like I don't really get sick do you know what I mean always feel strong um physically energetically and in I'd say yeah five or six years just started digging under the hood and going what's happening underneath there like what do my numbers look like what do my hormones look like what do my stress numbers look like and I started uncovering some pretty good data that told me stress for me and it is for most people but I have to personalize this in order for my mind to get on board is basically Kryptonite throws all of my hormones off makes my microbiome go in the [ __ ] which makes everything terrible from the moods the mind everything goes offline so I associate now being Cranky Pants with stress and I know that that destroys my health and I am vain I don't want to make myself look older or have more gray do you know what I'm saying like who needs that we put on all this makeup we make our hair look cute you're going out to get the clothes like why am I going to destroy all this work and money that I'm putting in to trying to keep it cute with stress from the inside out does that make sense it makes complet sense just like dude girl what you doing why are you gonna if you're going to do that it's like all that money you're spending at the Derm is going away it's like giving yourself different motivations like sometimes the motivation is just because I don't want to do this in a bad mood sometimes the motivation is because I don't want to make myself prematurely age for no reason at all the inside too like the stress destroys your internal systems and for me one of the other things I learned is like when it comes to so my brain I love my brain and I love my ability to think and create and I have a particular genetic set where I'm at the moderate risk Genetically speaking for Alzheimer so not the one who's got like the lowest and definitely not the one who has the highest but I'm right in the middle so that woke me up and it was like stress is one of the things that contributes to among other things of course your nutrition and what you eat and sugar and alcohol and processed food and carbohydrates and all those things but stress is a contributor when it comes to how your brain health is and how your brain functions and that keeps me out of stressy Cranky Pants USA when I'm doing my insurance forms because I'm like nope want to preserve this thing I like that I'm going to think that that's that's enough to motivate me in the right direction vanity and brain will put them together so important um before we end I'd love to know other than everything is figureoutable yes what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given the best piece of advice was that my heart is the strongest part of me like the strongest and the wisest I can tend to be headstrong my mind/ ego can want to be like oh you know it's all here and it's all the Brilliance and and really the heart every time in my life whether it's for my business or for my creativity or for my relationships it's like dude that's the money right there I love that and how do you know when you're it's your heart speaking rather than like your head or your stubbornness or your it feels so different like like my body feels really for a lack of a better word and not trying to get too woo woo but it feels really alive and connected and open and vibrant and buoyant and just like this experience of a of an unconditional love and playfulness and lightness that I don't always experience if I'm all up here no I get that I completely get that well thank you so much for joining me you be amazing [Music] [Music]