Dave Brown is a coach who helps his clients find better balance with themselves, their work, and those closest to them by guiding them to discover the subtle, subconscious behaviors that are holding them back from achieving their goals. At a young age his fascination with psychology shaped his business career, and along the way he discovered the power of emotional bodywork and structural patterning as pioneered by Joseph Heller. Dave’s coaching is a true integration of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects to achieve personal and professional wellbeing.

In this episode we discuss: 

• The effect of physical posture on emotional and professional behavior 
• Healthy ways to release anger, and the dangers of holding it in
• Why it’s important to release the PAST (pain, anger, stress, and tension)
• How to recognize the origins of patterned behaviors, to realign and release them
• If it’s truly possible to achieve success with less stress 
• The impact of agreements in relationships

Find “Breaking the Trance of Stress” on Amazon (while it’s still free on Kindle!) 

And connect with Dave Brown online https://www.linkedin.com/company/breaking-the-trance-of-stre

Susi: Welcome back. I’m so happy to have you with us today on the show for my conversation with Dave Brown, Dave is a personal and professional coach based right down the street from me in Del Mar, California, who helps his clients find better balance with themselves, their work and those closest to them.

His approach involves guiding and discovering the subtle subconscious behaviors that are holding them back from achieving their goals. He coaches them in spotting their own early warning signs so they can recognize realign and release their pattern behaviors as they appear in real time in their daily lives.

And I’m so grateful, Dave, that you reached out to me and we’ve become connected because as I read through your book, “Breaking the Trance of Stress”, I found so many highlights distilled into a really, really short, tight delivery that I think is a really essential reading, especially for high achievers and entrepreneurs.

And those are the kinds of people you’ve worked with over the years. So I’m glad to have you with me on the show. 

Dave: Thank you. Thank you, Susi. 

Susi: I’d love to hear a little bit about your own evolution coming into this space and executive coaching, because I believe you were helping people find paths through this-

Find some sanity in this really high stress, high stakes world that they were carving out their place in before coaching was a widespread entity or even something that a lot of people knew they were seeking. So how did you create that, this space and way to serve? 

Dave: Started in three different parts to my, I had three careers during my lifetime so far.

And then I started in the electrical supply business, working with contractors and industrial accounts in Chicago. And then in that process of learning corporate work business work, how that was, was was being held. And I, actually now that I’m talking about it, I did remember that there was a lot of people that were really tense and I didn’t quite understand that because I just kind of came out of college and, you know, we’re studying and most stress was getting to the test.

And before, you know, studying two hours before, But I noticed in business, they’re all, they’re always like just stress, and eyes wide running around trying to get their job done. And I started to go to night school in and study business, and then I took a course in organizational development and psychotherapy and I’m going, wow, this is so fascinating. Hence, moved into the next level of, of my next career was being in psychology, not a psychologist, just studying it and using it. 

And then I realized in the process that you need, in order to make a change in your mind, or a way of being, you also have to have your body change also, or your body habits change.

And that if you don’t keep yourself fed and loose and focused and centered, you go way off track. And as I was working with my clients, I realized that there was a lot of conversations. So working with them, working on four different levels, four quadrants, I call it the personality, it’s like mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. And that anything we do fits in any of those four. There’s no, I didn’t find any fifth quadrant or square. Or round, whatever it is. 

And so I noticed that, so we were working physically with structural alignment and posture, then I noticed you needed to posture yourself in your business or in your personal life. And posture is both ways of where you are, how you’re being and how you’re physically being.

And then I evolved with going into total coaching, which I’m now about 15 years ago or, or more, and brought my knowledge of structural body work and alignment and being centered and focused in order to get the job done. And first of all, identify: if you’re not feeling well, or you’re stressed, you’re angry, that something is in there. In one of the four quadrants, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. And so the first job is, that I noticed in coaching is identify what’s the problem and what do you want? And what is your block that’s stopping you? And maybe all four, right. And you put it together and then you can get to be happier, if you get rid of that stress. 

If you’ve got one of the blocks, all colored in black, you know, if your, your mental, is a mental block and you’ve got to figure out what that is, where does that come from? How do we get rid of it? I call it letting go of your past, and past, I made an acronym for it. Not necessarily what you’ve done as a kid, but pain, anxiety, stress, or tension, P A S T.

And that you also might have started this pattern of tension when you were younger. And it’s like that’s- coaching is not psychology and that you don’t- But it’s interesting to find out when you identify it at your age or at this process, is what you can do for yourself to move forward is like tickle that background and find out, well, I did that for this reason, but I don’t have that same reason now, but it’s showing up. 

A lot of times I noticed that some of my clients would be a lot angrier at a situation and really, met them in right in front of them. It was something that was held off from the past where it’d be really mad, right. Disrespect or, or somebody hurting their feelings, so to speak. You’re going to have your emotions, but you can’t let them run your business, is one of the things that I like to say. 

So why don’t you take the emotions and figure out what that is? And then you can be mad at a person or disappointed in a person that doesn’t get a project done, correctly or on time, but not to be like hugely angry at them, and kind of slam them, so to speak. So that’s how I got here. 

Susi: Yeah, well, I think it’s really fascinating to explore that. And I, and I do believe that that’s one of the sweet spots of being able to reflect back to people as you’re working with clients and help them discover the patterns. As you illustrate and your book, you know, some of these, the anger responses, for example, that people have and how it came from their childhood, how they needed to be, to act out that way in order to feel seen or heard.

And and these patterns that we pick up are really hard for ourselves to see. So it always helps to have that reflection or perspective that someone else can offer and ask us questions that matter. So I think that’s really powerful self exploration. When people are recognizing that what’s working, what, what is happening right now, isn’t working for them.

They want a better way forward, or they want better relations with our team, especially as leaders. And how do we stop, start to break that cycle? And I, and I like your discussion about that correlation with physical issues to the holistic space. We like to say it’s all connected, but the more we dig in, the more we really do discover that it’s all connected.

And you talk in the book about that point of pain and it could be emotional pain, or it could be physical pain. And how interrelated, or how do you help people kind of unwind that when maybe the physical arises from emotional pain.

Dave: I come from the frame, thought always precedes form. And so that you have an idea or a memory and your body uses you to protect you. You know, if you’re in danger, it’s the fight or flight it’s the old brain, the limbic system, I believe it is is like when you get attacked or, you know, perceived attack or that you’ll get scared and right away is fight / flight / freeze.

You know, it’s like, wow, what is that fear? You know, it’s “false expectations appearing real”. That’s an old acronym. And then the one is “F everything and run”, you know, like that’s kind of a funnier one. But it’s the same thing, and so to identify, it’s like, it was one of my clients or something came up and he says, 

I don’t need anger management. I need people to stop pissing me off. 

Okay, great, fine. I’m just waiting here to get, right- I’m just here waiting to get mad. And it’s kind of a setup, you know, if you’re set up already, that you’re going to have an upset. 

So you kind of look at like, what is it that initiated that strong response to you? So I think a large part of the the beginning of a coaching program for me is to identify what is it that’s not working for you and where did it come from? Or what is it. Where did it come from, but where it lodged now and what areas of mental, emotional, physical, spiritual? And that’s where I’ll refer to in my sessions that people have asked them to how are they feeling physically?

And I can do that even over the phone. I can actually, over the years I actually can hear their body restrictions in their voice. It’s kind of a funny thing. I think it’s just something that I’ve learned to listen for. If we can’t- and we have to go on the phone for awhile now, zoom has been in and that was like, thank God, okay, I can see it a little bit better- rather than be in person. 

So it’s, it’s pretty interesting. So when a person gets afraid, adrenaline rushes, your heart beats faster, you want it to stop, so you physically squeeze down. So that’s the autonomic nervous system reaction to fear. 

You go well, what are you feeling physically? Well, my heart’s beating fast. Is it? Well, okay, so what is it, where’s it going? Says, I don’t know, it feels like I’m running. I said, okay, so what are you running from? Oh, well he or she did this, you know, kind of thing. Okay. So like let’s identify, it’s like, what did they do? What did they do, did they physically attack you?

No. Well, they said something, that I did something wrong, per se, but anything. So it’s the identification is the big problem with it. It’s like, I put it into a fun category again. Acronyms are something I like to do, so, it’s easy for people to remember. And that’s like when you’re talking about a situation that you want to heal, you want to feel better about.

It’s like the grrr, you know, like you go, rrrr, it’s just not feeling right. 

And I put it in like the four Rs. It’s that you recognize it’s happening. You realize what it is, you release it. And then you realign to what your goal was to begin with so that you can do that. And when you go rrrr, you can kind of dissect it and back it out, and see where it began. 

And that way, once you acknowledge something, it has a good way of releasing. It’s a lot easier, but if you can’t identify it, you don’t know what it is. Tell that guy to stop making you mad. 

Susi: So you don’t feel like you’re running. So it’s recognized realize realign and release.

I’m going to keep up on all the acronyms, but that’s a tricky one since they’re all the same letter, but I love it. That’s exact- I think everybody can relate to that feeling- 

Dave: I just put it in for the rrr kind of thing. . 

Susi: The way that we feel when we can’t speak our mind, and that can be hard at work. Some people just let it fly. And some people are always biting their tongue, going home, feeling a little bloodied because they’re biting it back, gnashing their teeth. So, yeah, releasing is- 

Dave: I had one client executive woman that she said that she, in her experience, she had to numb herself in side of meetings when people were making her angry and upset or that they were attacking or something, and that she didn’t want to lash out or, and she didn’t want to cry and that she would numb it.

And I said, numb it, and I said, numb your emotions? She said, no, I numb it like, Mmm. I numb with my mouth, like, mmm. Keep your mouth zipped. Mmm. So that was a, that was an interesting one. 

And so then in that particular situation, we worked on the outside of her office, or outside the situation and she realized that she needed to get rid of that emotion somehow- that anger emotion, the one that doesn’t feel good- outside, so she can go be more present. And then when the attack was happening, the perceived attack, that she could allow that to pass by her rather than hit her. So that was, that was, that was good. 

Susi: Yeah. That’s a powerful recognition because I can feel that when you, as she described it, numb yourself and just kind of like, you know, zip the lip, you’re not really able to deflect things.

They’re definitely kind of, sticking. There’s some velcro there. She’ll chew on that a little bit later. Right? 

Dave: Right. You’re like those on the movie sets where they put all the electrical dots on, when they’re going to put an image on top of you, that’s how it is. Like you can add this anywhere and people can see it. Yeah. 

Susi: I like the Illustration or advice that you share in the book too, about finding ways to release anger. I think that people don’t recognize that, you know, those emotions, you know, we can’t just, “oh, that’s not appropriate. I’m not feeling that right now. And therefore, it’s not something I need to deal with.”

How did you find that effecting people are throwing up roadblocks in their path? 

Dave: I’ve tried to create some simple ways of doing that or simple ways of identifying it and then to realign, right. Identify, recognize that it’s happening. And once it’s you’re engaged in it, you need to release it physically, a couple, what you can do in the moment is you can tap with your fingers, or tap on your hand at the table. And it’s just like a calming effect, like a metronome or a little beat, and that you can pace yourself a little better. I call it efficient pacing. 

And it’s like when you’re not efficient at the pace that you’re at it’s like, you’re, you’re headed down the wrong path. So let’s like, you’re the white rabbit. You’re chasing, you’re running, you’re bouncing from here to there. And then this will allow you to calm down in the moment. If you leave- A couple of the things is wear a rubber band. And if you’re upset, you just snap it.

Not to hurt yourself. Just be aware. Some people, some of the clients would say that really hurts. I said, well, it’s not hurt you. It’s just to wake you up. And he said, well, I guess I was angry. I go, oh, okay. So you’re punishing yourself. 

Why don’t you just like tap it nicely and see what you’ve learned, and what you need to do to relax or change your way of being in the situation. And this can be personal and professional. Just like calm it down. Another thing is screaming into the pillow. Yeah, I think that’s the almost highly effective way of cathartic release, safe, nobody around. Make sure that the kids aren’t in the next room or anything, or tell your partner you’re going to go. 

I’m going to scream cause I’m like filled with upset, and go in there and then scream and yell. And you can say anything you want that you’re not supposed to as a good lil kid. And, as hard as you can and get to the emotion, then you’re gonna, you’ll kind of collapse if you really go after it. 

Then you take a few breaths and if you feel better, then you can let yourself out of time out. I call it timeout. You can let yourself out of timeout and, or if it’s not there, go after it again. Start screaming again, just yell, yell, yell. 

So that’s one of my favorites and some people, I don’t know how many can do it, but I don’t think everybody can, they can’t get it. They said, I’m too embarrassed.

I go, who’s around? You want to do it? You want to, you want to dump, you want to explode in front of some other people? I had one interesting client who was a, is a big time real estate broker, and he was big himself. He was big and he would come in and be ferocious at the meetings and with his agents and stuff.

And, and I said, well, you know, go in the car and yell at the top of your lungs. And he goes, okay. He comes back in. He says, well, he said that kind of worked. He says, I went in and I sat at a stop sign and had the window rolled the window down. And I started yelling and screaming squaring at the top of my lungs. He says it scared the heck out of the woman next to me at the stoplight. I’m going, oh, you’re not supposed to do that. It’s like, be present. He goes, ha ha ha. So he enjoyed that. He was a big powerful guy. It did help him a lot. 

Susi: Yeah, I think giving ourselves permission to find that, to recognize how we can kind of let that steam off, but also the power of presence in the moment.

I really appreciate what you were talking about with the tapping to change our pace. I’m a big fan of EFT tapping, but you know, it’s a little conspicuous in a meeting to start tapping and working on those tapping points, but yeah, in your lap or under the table, 

Dave: I do it. I’ve done it. Fingertips tapping 

Susi: and just slowing the pace down. So powerful.

Dave: Yeah, I was trained in the EFT with gosh, I forget his name now. The guy that created it. Gary Craig, a few years back. It was great. Yeah, that’s good. I still do it. Yeah. The kids sometimes want to say, Hey, can we do a tapping session. It’s called the emotional freedom technique. 

Susi: So powerful. The best body buzz you can give yourself with no, no substances required. It just lights me up energetically when I do it. Terrific. Yeah. So recognizing that we can cultivate these tools. Try it on, not every tool works for every person. But if it’s giving yourself a timeout, I love that too. And I think it’s really empowering for younger generations to see that we adults can say, I’m going to take a time out and I’m going to come back to this conversation in a few minutes when I can be present.

Awesome tools to be teaching our kids. 

Dave: I kind of got that time out when I was, when my kids were young and that, I’ve been married, I have two sets of kids. And that my second kids, I was like a little more wise. It was a little bit older. I was understanding and I said, putting kids on timeout, they go into the bedroom.

Because they’ve done something and they’re on it, you know, just being, talking back, you know. I always respect the kids being able to talk to me, but when they’re being the smart aleck or whatever, I said, well, go take a time out. Go out of the room. You’re not being respectful to us. And that, realizing that you can’t put them in there forever because after two minutes, they’re just looking around the room and see what they can play with, you know, like whatever.

And then once in a while it’s can I come out yet? And so I noticed that I was, what I could do for them. And then that I ask my clients just like, don’t let yourself out of time out until you’re off it. And so I would go in after the five minutes or the kids would come out and I said, are you off it now? Are you being civil? Are you being here? Present, rather than angry? 

They’re going, yeah, I am. I go back in there, go. Ahhh, and they go back. And sometimes they work it three, four times. But eventually it was, got down to almost nothing, where they took the time out, they were able to work through whatever it was, upsetting them. And then they would come back out and be present in you know, in relationship with others and they, they understood it.

So I suggest that, a simple thing. Suggest it for my adult clients who are mostly children, or no, they behave like children sometimes. 

Susi: We all have that in us. 

Dave: Oh, absolutely. That’s the deal with that. And that’s the fun part and that’s the tough part too, or the challenging part. So yeah, it’s like, and go in there and scream in the pillow. Go ooh, then come walking out. I said, okay, I’m done with that, now let’s get back to work. Yeah. Center, focused, present and balanced. 

There’s four words. I didn’t put an acronym for it. Yeah. It’s how do you get one? 

Susi: I’ll send it back to you. 

Dave: Just like hit it, you know, just be here. Different forms of being here. Focused is different than centered, focused is you’re directed at something, or some person. Balanced is between you and me or me and the environment, something like that.

Me and the boardroom. That’s another thing, it’s working on posturing yourself for success. When you’re in a meeting, when you’re in a boardroom, when you’re at home or family situation and you use it all, all the above is like, are you in your chair sitting there? Or are you somewhere else? It’s what’s your physical doing, it’s how do you posture yourself in a conversation?

An executive conversation or decisions, leadership decision-making situation. Are you there? Or are you making up the next sentence as the person’s talking to you. It’s like, well, no, you can’t be really centered if you’re trying to figure out how you’re gonna come back, with a negative retort to this.

Susi: Right. Letting your emotions try to write the script. And yeah, everybody knows when they’re in conversation with someone else who is waiting for that pause so that they can make their next point. Right. But how often do we recognize when we’re the ones guilty of that? So, yeah, being present to that is definitely a powerful exercise.

Dave: And that’s the other thing with the posturing, is also aware- the things that I’ve, over the years I’ve learned in my three different careers. It’s like body has a lot of part to do with it. 

You know, mental, emotional, physical is like, how are you holding yourself? Or, you know, it’s like, am I seated upright? No, you can’t be too stiff, but you just be right centered, you know, Keep your butt on the chair, and your shoes in the room, and then you’re going to be there. It’s an easy thing. If you’re going off, if your heart’s beating and you’ve got pressure in your chest, your head, whatever, it’s like, just tap your feet a little bit and make sure that you’re here and breathing.

And if you’re breathing, you can’t be somewhere else. It’s hard to do that. So that’s, that’s the positioning and you can position yourself on the team. What is my position and who am I, who is my alliance? Who am I aligned with? Same with your body, is your body aligned, your mental, is your emotion aligned with these other people, these other two people.

So back to M E P S: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. And like, how do you connect it? And what are you going to, how are you going to put yourself in the room? What position? Okay. 

Susi: One of the other topics that you share in your book, which I already told you, it was definitely short and to the point, not so sweet. But I don’t think it should be to land with high achievers and highly driven people.

And these are the kinds that really thrive on, sometimes thrive on stress, almost become adrenaline junkies. And I love how you illustrate that and point out that while it might seem like that has its advantages, it’s got its downfalls too. So I’d love to explore that a little bit with you. 

Dave: Okay. Let’s see the easiest way that people- Stress, we need stress.

We need stress as support. And in my background here, that is a stressful structure, the San Francisco bridge. So those lines, they have to be there. Those cables are, I used to live over there in Marin and those cables are like, I don’t know, eight, 10 inches and you need to have that to hold the bridge up.

If you hold it too, if it’s held too loose, it’ll collapse. If it’s held too tight it might break. So it’s like, it has to be the right amount of tension and you have it, have eu stress. EU-stress means just the right amount to pull you forward. It allows you to pull you forward rather than keep you stuck.

There’s enough where you can and you create great strength. Buckminster Fuller. I studied with him personally and also through his books and he talks about a tensegrity. And it’s pure tension, and he doesn’t have to have any support on the inside. It’s a circle that’s all around. And that you need to have that. And once you have that, if it breaks down, you have distress. 

You’d rather de-stress. De-stress. So, when you relieve the tension enough, then you don’t collapse, but you’re not under stress where you’re like so tight and that you’re you’re, it feels like your head’s expanding, right. Exploding. People like to say, gosh. And then it’s like, calm down.

So just if you’re centered, you don’t need to worry. If you’re distressed, you do, Or if you are in stress, even that’s not good for you. 

Susi: Why do you think it is that some powerful people feel like that’s the right fuel to run on that cultivating stress or generating extra stress like that adrenaline becomes kind of an extra fuel source for them?

Is it just the pattern that’s getting hold. Is it an addiction to that tempo? Kind of a false, like caffeination? 

Dave: Right. Yes. To, when you don’t have energy, you have to make it up. And so the big challenge is, like being from kind of a body centered therapy from the past and aware of that, it’s like is how do you start your day?

What do you feed it? Go, oh, I don’t eat breakfast, like that’s a good thing, but I do have to have two or three cups of coffee, blah, blah. But then this is kind of a common thing around and said, so why don’t you do that? And said, well, otherwise I’ll fall asleep if I go in there. Or if people go on to diets, per se and they’ll cut off the caffeine. They think there’s a thing behind it, the high driver, the person that wants to accomplish things and go, he thinks that, he/she thinks that they need to have that extra strength to go power because they have the thought in their mind, if they’re not driving forward, they’re falling back. They’ll fall asleep. Most of them would love to be sitting in the backyard with a beach chair and a glass of tea or a beer or something and reading a book. That’s the greatest fear. I will be nothing. 

So it’s kind of find that medium where you have to be hard charging rather than being, just keep continuing, continually focused, coming back to focus. If you, you know, the term is like, if you go if you go like this with your head, I’ll see if I can do this – and if you get ahead of yourself,. Guess what happens? It physically, you get ahead of yourself. And then your, your head weighs a lot of weight. And you know that, you being a Reiki master about that, that structure in the way that you can posture yourself.

So like, bring it back, be inside, be centered. Get ahead of yourself, that’s where all the back problems, from dropping out here, trying to hold a bowling ball up. So that’s like getting aware of that. It’s like, okay, don’t go out here, come back here, sit in the chair. 

Susi: Come back to your center. 

Dave: Right. Center, focused, present, balanced.

Yeah. So that that’s one thing I like to make it fun. I like to have fun. I know that you do and that’s cool. And even your podcast, Happified. Yeah. 

Susi: I try to keep it light. 

Dave: Why can’t we have fun? It’s like, make this easy. Well, you don’t know how much tension we have on here. Right?

Susi: So I would love to, too. I’m familiar just a little bit, just a little bit familiar with one of the types of body work that you’ve practiced in your past, as, as you said, you know, in the different iterations that you’ve had professionally and I’ve reinvented myself a number of times too, but I’m fascinated with Heller work and what kind of issues can be addressed with that? If they’re ready to embark on that kind of journey?

Dave: Almost anybody, well, almost anybody that’s not happy. With their business, with themselves with their mates, with their family, when they’re unhappy, they’re not being present. And they’re being hurt, they’re hurting. And so finding the pain and the identification with doing the Heller Work it’s Joseph Heller was my mentor and he developed that and he used to be the president of the Rolf Institute and that followed the pattern of the Rolfing.

And we put in different sequences where you work with different parts of mental and emotional, how it related to your body. And how you could move forward. And if you change, like one of the first sessions is your upper body. What inspires you? So working on expanding and letting your chest just breathe. Rather, don’t, not puffing.

I call it the puffer pigeon. That’s not expanding, that’s strengthening a rock or something like that. It’s like, here I am, I’m look at this, I have good posture. Yeah. You should see your back. Your chest looks great. And your back, you know, it’s a little bit curved back there. So it’s like, Again, it’s not relaxed.

It’s not excellence with ease. It’s like, how do you get there? And what is about releasing that chest and shoulders that you can breathe easier and be in the present moment. And how do you move forward inside of that? So, so that’s like, it’s very, very helpful. I did a number of sessions over the years. I did that work.

I also incorporated in the holistic center that we put together a while ago. And it incorporated all different types of modalities Eastern and Western. So that was, that was interesting. Again, that was right up my alley. Look at the four quadrants, you know, look at whatever the possibility and what works.

And how do you relieve, how do you release or relieve your pain? Whatever it is. 

Susi: Whatever it takes to get to it, to the root of it. 

Dave: Right. And be successful and happy. Wow. Okay. 

You know, how do you define the future if you’re not using the past and the present to do it?

Susi: Hmm. Think of the possibilities.

And getting clarity on, as we said at the beginning, what’s the problem. What’s the, the source of the pain, but what have we, what do we want? What are we moving towards? 

Dave: So what the big question is- Bungay Stanier the coach, boy, he wrote the best coaching book. And Michael Bungay Stanier, do you know him? 

Anyway, he talks about the coaching is, the question is what. I said okay, cool. What do you want? What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Well, what are you going to do when you get there? What did you do when you used to be not there? So that, that easy question is that that is, you know, what’s causing your pain?

And sometimes when I’ve asked my clients that or something in the beginning when we’re talking, so it’s like, so where’s your pain? What’s your pain? I don’t have any pain. Okay. Are you successful in your business? Absolutely. How are you feeling? I’m great. Oh, okay, cool. And you feel good every day. Do you have any body-?

Oh, he says, my back’s killing me sometimes. I can’t even stand up. I get so much distress at home. You know, my husband or wife is just, I can’t stand it. I don’t want to go. Oh, okay. So you have no pain. Oh, so that’s what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. So what is it, what is your pain? Pain, anxiety, stress, or tension, you know, let’s just start with pain and you can work down from there.

So it’s interesting that, that you can do that. And I think I just, what I’ve done forever is I love to solve problems. Since I was a kid, I think I was helping my mom be happy. Or something, I was trying to see how to make her happy. You know, I remember when she was upset or get in a fight with my dad, or something that I would try to see, see what I could do for her.

And she said, oh, you’re such a good boy. You’re going to take care of me when I’m old, right. And I’d go, wow. And so I was in a psychology course, a class at Northwestern one time, and I just opened my eyes and realized that she made me have agreement that I was going to take care of her forever. I’m going, I’m not going to take care of you. You know, I’ll make sure you’re healthy and, and things like that, but you’re- 

You have to take care of yourself with your mental health. That’s what I mean, you know, and, and I told her that. She didn’t exactly like it. She goes, well, who’s gonna take care of me, then? I’m going, hold on. Let’s talk, I’ll talk with you, but you have to be in agreement that you will take care of yourself and you’ll do what it takes. And then that was interesting. It was interesting. We got to be, to form an adult life. Really nice. We got to be more friends. She didn’t get to mother me and I didn’t get to be her father or husband, or we’re going have somebody taking care of her, she was going to do it. And did a good job. She did a good job. So interesting. It’s my, 

Susi: Yeah, those are the kinds of agreements, 

Dave: Yeah, I just really, yeah. Thank you. That’s, made this agreement with her. I’m going. No, I I’m. I’m not going to do that. 

Susi: We’re going to clean this up right now. I don’t need to carry that. We don’t need any expectations there. Let’s just- Yeah. Yeah. Really being present to those things that we pick up along the way and those things that weigh us down. 

Dave: So actually to help her, I helped her with it. It was not that I was not looking in that direction. It was just going, wait, this doesn’t, this doesn’t feel right. What, what is this agreement that we made? And that, after a while my dad passed away everybody thought, oh my God, she can’t do anything with – she’s always telling him to do this and that, and “I got to do this”. She got to be real clean and take care of herself, and be present and have fun with herself, rather than having, being, relying on the dad and making him-

so she lived a long time after him and quite satisfactorily, you know, she missed him and all that, but, but she, she took it over. She grew up. It was like growing up. It’s like, wow. 

Susi: Okay. And that confidence like, look it, I can take care of myself. 

Dave: She loved it. She loved it. She had no confidence from her childhood. She couldn’t even drive a car because she was so nervous about it. So anyway, this is all that’s, the long story short is like, she got to identify where she was looking to everybody else to help take care of her and that she wasn’t a good person, and she needed help. I’m not, “I’m helpless”, you know, kind of thing.

I didn’t even know that I was doing this kind of thing as I was doing it and then looking at it and I got to the point of going, okay, cool. So it worked, it was good. And so where people help them identify where their pain is, where, where they’re thinking they’re helpless or hopeful, you know, let’s go, let’s go from there. Helpless to hopeful.

Let’s go. 

Susi: Yeah. Let’s let’s consider the possibilities. Yeah. Please share with folks how they can connect with you where they can find your fantastic book. It’s not even 30 pages. It’s the best short read you can do for yourself. I love the book and how they can connect with you and, and reap the rewards of your support. 

Dave: Look up on, it’s on Amazon and you can get it Kindle, or you can get paperback. And it’s a fun size book, it’s eight and a half by 11. So the illustrations, are big and loud. Some people have used it as a coloring book as they were reading. And especially in the stress page, that’s the illustration that I’ve done is like, oh, you can just like- and you know what they’re doing with coloring books now in corporations and companies for stress on break time, they have piles of coloring books.

People like doing that. So what you’re doing is you’re paying attention. You’re doing, you know, you’re doing a mental, emotional, physical connection by doing coloring books, and you’re not worrying about the stat sheet or the strategic alliances that need to be done. And you’re like this year you’re coloring a little rabbit or something.

So anyway, that’s, that’s how you can get “Breaking the Trance of Stress” at Amazon and you can buy it or you can do Kindle, can do I think it’s free on Kindle. Oh, how did I get that deal? 

Susi: Oh, I’m going to check that out! Everybody run, before they fix the rate. 

Terrific. 

Dave: Excellent. And that, interesting though, what we were talking about before is like I’ve written forever during my career, my professional careers, let’s put them that way and that I’ve seen them, I’ve got you know, two or three 200 page books in me and I’ve tried to do it. And the fun thing was my daughter, so a copywriter lives in Gothenburg, Sweden right now with CDC. She, I said, Hey, I want to finish this book. She said, Dad, you have to cut this down.

Let’s get real succinct with it. I go, okay. Okay. And we got to do it. So it was great. And it was fun. And she’s a super super person. And I got to put it out. Amazon said sure, we’ll do it. I’m going, really? 

Susi: It’s just that easy, pays to ask. 

Dave: Yeah. 

Susi: It’s well, well worth it. I hope everybody will check it out. We’ll have the links in the show notes.

So if you’re catching it on the website on YouTube, we’ll make sure you can access all the goods here and connect with Dave and stay plugged in to what he’s creating in the future.

Dave: Thank you. Real great being with you, Susi. Thank you. 

Susi: Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Happy to be connected and appreciate your insights. Have a terrific day. 

Dave: Thanks. Bye.