PP 242: The 5 Pillars to Building Strength with Pamela Gold

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Welcome back to another episode of positive productivity. This is your host KIM SUTTON. Today I am thrilled to introduce our guest Pamela Gold. Pamela is a spiritual strength coach, author and speaker and the author of find more strength five pillars to unlock unlimited power and happiness. Pamela, welcome.

Pamela Gold: Oh, thank you so much for having me here today, Kim, I’m really excited.

Oh, you’re so welcome. And thank you as well. I would love if you would jump right in and give our listeners a little bit more info about you and your journey up till now.

Pamela Gold: Basically, my story in a nutshell, is that I, you know, I grew up in upstate New York on a farm. And it wasn’t a traditional upbringing, and that, you know, I got to kind of get into a lot of innocent trouble around the farm, small town, and I was an overachiever. You know, I did really well in school, I did well in sports. And then I went to Yale, which was a huge culture shock for me, because I just wasn’t, you know, the worldly, sophisticated kind of person that so many of my peers during that period, were.

Pamela Gold: And also I had a bunch of kind of personal challenges. During that period of my life. My mom had been really sick with ovarian cancer. And then I had a boyfriend who I was madly in love with You’re together for about four years, he ended up struggling with drug addiction. So during that period of my life, there were a lot of really big challenges that kind of started me on this path of looking deeper to try to figure out what skills and insights I needed to be able to navigate whatever life throws at me without kind of losing it right losing myself feeling like it was too much the overwhelm the fear, the pain. And so then I graduated Yale and I had an awesome first job right out of school, I actually was the point person on an IPO company called cozy. We’re talking about a little while ago, the coffee and sandwich bar chain took that company public in 2002, which was a huge

listeners, I just want to tell you that you know that I’m positive productivity podcast. I always say that it’s not about perfection. And our recording software is giving a little bit of difficulty today. So please forgive any repeats as we’re going to keep on pushing through and making the best which is what I want each and every one of you to do through all your challenges as well. And I know Pamela feels the same way.

Pamela Gold: Yes, indeed. It is all about kind of the message. Have it and just keep failing forward. Just keep moving forward, right?

Oh, absolutely. So I heard cozy went public in 2002. And then what happened?

Pamela Gold: So then I met my husband and we got married. And we started a family and I decided to leave the workforce to be mom. And that was a huge shift for me since I was very kind of career focused up until that point to then, you know, be mom at home and have a whole new circle of people I founded West Village parents, which supported basically me having a community which was so huge during that time period. But the really the challenges of being a wife and being a mom opened up a whole new chapter of me having to dig deep to figure out what I needed to know and what I needed to practice to be able to navigate those challenges with grace and not not losing it, you know?

Oh, I do know. Absolutely. I know. Yeah. And as a mom of five and starting a business and even going through college, my own college experience myself. I am in awe. Maybe odd, isn’t it? Word, but I do appreciate the fact very much that you started on this discovery long before I did, because it was not for another eight to 10 years after I graduated that I started looking inwardly at how I could surpass any hurdles that were thrown my way.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, I think that, you know, necessity, right? I mean, I, when my mom was sick, I was 16. My grandmother had actually died of ovarian cancer a year before my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. So such an intense period of fear and pain, and I had this great relationship, seemingly great relationship that really helped me get through my mom’s illness that then, you know, spiraled, and in such a dysfunctional way that I had to figure I had to find a way because you know, how it is like your self identity, how you define like who you are and how you’re good enough and how you’re worthy of love. If that’s all wrapped up in a relationship, and the relationship is not healthy, or the person on the other side of the relationship is not healthy. It is a very fragile, fragile time. So it really was a necessity for me when I was younger to figure out some coping. mechanisms, some coping skills and insights or I wouldn’t have made it.

Absolutely. So what you realize that there was a lot going on after you co founded West Village parents.

Pamela Gold: Mm hmm.

Kim Sutton: Then what happened?

Pamela Gold: So, there was about seven years to be completely honest. And that’s why we’re here, right authenticity, about seven years of my marriage, that was really, really tough when you know, the dynamic with my husband and I was so dysfunctional, and that we kind of would always go to our separate corners, you know, that kind of like, every time there’s a conflict anytime there’s anything that’s not, not right. Both of us would kind of put on the gloves and not have really functional communication, functional collaboration, functional trust and respect. And it was just it was a really long kind of period of darkness that finally at the end of it, I started to kind of wake up and there was this huge kind of shift, which part of it was going to yoga school where it kind of reignited and reminded me about the inner power that I’m Have I might not be able to change him, but through my own light and love and wisdom and skillfulness, I can shift the relationship. So it was really kind of this awakening, if you will, that enabled me to start to get my marriage into a healthy place, get myself in a healthy place first, right? Because until until we are have our own ducks in a row, we really can’t expect anything that we’re collaborating on like to be to be healthy, right? So first, I had to focus on my own health, and then I could start to say, okay, you know, how can I shift this relationship to kind of create some space for him to grow and change if that’s something that he wants to do? You know, and so that that really was was the big shift. And then during that time, I also went back to work, I was running a company that was a behavioral therapy based food and weight program that shine a lot of light on things too, because you can’t just focus on the inner you also have to focus as you know, on the behavior, right. So there were a lot of things that that really just synchronous, synchronous synchronistically Yeah, there we go. Oh, I know. synchronistically happened to two Allow me to kind of have this have this awakening and blossoming and shift into doing the work now that I’m doing which is this kind of spiritual strength coaching. I love that.

Now I’m very curious, what are the five pillars that you speak of, to finding more strength?

Pamela Gold: Sure, well, it’s funny, they’re not none of them are earth shattering. You know, they’re very simple. And I think, you know, I start with gratitude, because I think we all recognize in our own lives, how powerful gratitude is. And I start with gratitude, because it’s kind of like the roots, it kind of grounds us where we need to be to receive as much positivity as possible. So gratitude is the first pillar and practice that all day long as much as you can, it changes everything. And there’s been so much research on gratitude as actually listening to an author, I think his name is Shawn anchor. And he’s written a lot about happiness. And he’s a researcher and so they do tons of research on how much gratitude changes us even just in 21 days. If you commit to a daily gratitude practice for 21 days. There’s huge huge changes in our in our levels of happiness and positivity. So gratitude is the first and you know, right. I mean gratitude is I’m sure there’s a million examples you have for how powerful it is. And I’ve actually been listening to a number of podcasts lately that even talk about going beyond like pushing yourself when you’re expressing gratitude to go beyond the obvious three to five that might first come to mind and really stretch it so that you’re even getting gratitude for yourself to yourself for yourself.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the thing about it too, a lot of people miss in practicing gratitude is that you want to connect with the feeling of gratitude. If you just think about what you’re grateful for, you’re actually not getting the deep connection, if you feel what you’re grateful for. And that may be kind of connecting with a physical sensation or an emotional sensation, but really feel what you’re grateful for not just think, and that is when you get profound, profound changes to absolutely,

I feel like the Grinch not saying that I feel like the Grinch normally but when his heart gets really big When I’m really going through my gratitude practices at the end of the day, I feel like my heart is just expanding and getting really warm.

Yeah, yeah, it’s powerful.

I’m sure it feels different for everybody

well, you know the thing about it it’s like it’s there’s a real power to gratitude and we can’t see it right in our society is so focus on what you can see what you can measure what you can touch and it you know, it’s a lot easier to connect with, obviously, things that are very scientific. And so I love when they’re doing research around gratitude. You can’t see it, but you can measure changes afterwards. Because it’s we all know this stuff is real, just because you can’t see what’s going on inside of ourselves. And our inner energy is extremely real. We can feel it. We all know it’s real.

Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Pamela Gold: So yeah, so that’s, that’s the first pillar the second pillar is compassion. Again, talking about your heart expanding. You know, there’s this feeling of of love, right? This this feeling of caring and I you know, in our society today, I feel like we have this crisis of caring where you know, you see it all the time, how social acceptable, it seems to be to not care about certain people, you know, if there’s like a qualification a judgement, if this person isn’t like me, then I don’t need to care about them. Or if they did this, then I don’t need to care about them. And we’re really missing this intrinsic power that compassion gives us it’s actually not necessarily about anyone else or doing anything for anyone else. It’s actually empowering us to be and have as energized and powerful as possible. And compassion kind of opens our heart and allows this flow of energy and it keeps us high and keeps us empowered. So compassion is is the second and in the book, I go into a lot of different kind of deep examples about how people kind of get stuck. You know, that Oh, compassion is a weakness. That’s something that people commonly you know, in the field that like, if you if you’re caring about someone, you know, it’s leaving you more vulnerable to be hurt or to be taken advantage of. And actually, it’s not true because when we’re compassionate, we’re open in a way that makes us much more sensitive and intuitive. To kind of sense when something is actually a threat and to be able to pull back then, but to sense when when something isn’t a threat. So compassion really does empower us, regardless of what’s going on on the outside. and compassion doesn’t mean that you always take action, because sometimes the compassionate thing is to not enable a certain behavior. So it’s not, it’s not just simply kind of being kind. It’s much more of a feeling as opposed to doing that makes sense.

Oh, it absolutely makes sense. I love that you brought that up, because sometimes I realized that the best thing I can do is just leave my mouth shut and not type the email that I really want to type. And just let it be.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, and that kind of takes us well, it skips one but the the fourth pillar surrender. So we’ll skip the third pillar for a second because surrender. It’s such a good segue, that sense of acceptance around that there’s gonna be a lot of things in our life that are not fair. Not what we wanted, painful, kind of like something that we feel like we can’t approve of Right, like something already happened, and we’re just like, this is not okay. Like that’s something that as a younger person I used to always kind of get stuck on and fight. But the thing is, if something already happened, it happened. Like there’s there’s nothing that we can do to undo something that happened. So this practice of like radical acceptance of like, Okay, did it already happen? All right, then I need to just accept it and see how I can make the most of it. And if it’s something that hasn’t happened yet, there’s always going to be a piece of something that’s, that’s out of our control, right? Like we can do our best given 150%. And then we have to kind of surrender because just because we give 150% doesn’t mean that things are going to turn out how we really kind of hope and dream and intend them to turn out. So that’s the other piece of surrender around the things as they’re happening. But this is such a powerful practice because it allows for there to be a flow of life through us and so often we cut it off because we aren’t surrendering, we’re fighting and we’re kind of like you know, clenching our fists around the flow of life and we’re not allowing you Things to flow and blossom in ways sometimes that are different than what our mind thinks it should be. You know,

I do know, I can think of so many examples of that in my own life, even just surrendering to the fact that I need to sleep. And, you know, I can keep on pushing and pushing and pushing overnight and try to get it done. But when my body is just saying sleep, sometimes I just have my head and my heart surrender to that. And I know that’s not exactly what you were talking about. But

no, but it is, it is it very much is. And that’s the thing, like it’s literally infused in every part of our life. And when you look at it, there’s always some fear, you know, at the root of it, which takes us back to the third pillar, because the third pillar is courage. And you can’t surrender without courage, right? Like if you’re afraid, then you’re going to be holding on you. They’re going to be attaching or resisting and you’re not going to allow yourself to sleep or whatever the multitude of other examples are, and there’s always some level of gosh, you know, for me, most At the time, like when I’m struggling with going to sleep, and not to say that this is, this is why you, you know, don’t want to go to sleep because, you know, lots of times I’m super inspired about the work that I’m doing. And I want to, you know, be all that I can be and be of service and the highest level that I can be of service. And so sometimes, you know, I feel like I need to do more, right, that I haven’t, you know, done all that I can do, and I know you talk about perfection so much, but like that’s, that’s kind of for me when I’m like, oh, but I just want to get that last chapter done or do one more, you know, iteration on this program or something. And underneath that is always on some deeper subconscious level, some fear of not being good enough, or a fear of not being of service and my highest level my highest potential, right. I don’t know if that resonates all but that’s my, that’s one of my tricks that I definitely am still struggling with.

Oh, absolutely. That definitely resonates. I’m usually afraid that if I go to sleep, I’m just going to go back to that example. But I will lose the idea that I had in my head that I was working so hard to complete, but I don’t know about you, but I’ve told my husband’s So many times, just give me three more minutes and I’ll have this completed and then three hours later, finally done, if it’s done, and he’s like, are you actually coming to bed tonight? Or were you just saying that so it would leave you alone? It’s like, No, I’m actually I know, I just been so inspired. But I need that courage to know that either the idea will be there the next day. I mean, I could just write it down or that right now sometimes

we just don’t do the obvious because we just don’t because we’re human.

Or that a bigger and better idea is going to be there tomorrow, which is so often what happens because I don’t know why even up until just saying that so often. I don’t just do the obvious of even just using my phone and speaking my idea in quickly. Mm hmm. Yeah. Hello, Kim.

was a thing like, you know, trusting I talked about all the time First of all, trusting ourselves and trusting life and again, like it doesn’t matter. All to me what someone, you know, thinks life is, you know, doesn’t have to do with God as I just watched Star Wars. So we’re just I’m all about the force, right? Trust the force Luke. But there’s, there’s something really important about that like trusting that the flow will be there that we’re not going to wake up tomorrow and the sun’s not gonna rise right like the end, it’s the same thing like the sun always rises. And we always have more ideas unless we’re blocking them. And it’s fear that is really at the root of what blocks our genius and our ideas. So the courage and the trust and the surrender, kind of obviously all five pillars, they it all goes hand in hand. And that’s what’s cool about it, because if you ever stuck on one, you can just kind of circle back around like, wait, I’m really having struggled with surrender. I’m struggling right now with surrender. Let me focus on my courage. Like, is there something that I’m afraid of right now? And how can I know make friends with that get close to that skillfully navigate my fear, so I can surrender and allow life to give me that next big idea, right.

Oh, absolutely. paramilitary Talking about the sun always coming out. I just had to share. I had to not argue. But I had to convince my daughters this morning that it was actually morning because it was so cloudy out here that it was dark outside at about seven 730 there’s like it’s not morning and they’re only like three and four years old. Like it’s not. Oh, where’s the sun? I was like,

Where’s the sun? It’s hiding behind the

clouds. Just trust me. Like, there you go. Just trust me. It’s morning. It’s time to get ready for school.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, I mean that trust. that trust is huge. And teaching that to our kids. I’m actually making a parenting program right now because it’s it’s so near and dear to my heart to empower parents to instill in our kids. You know, this is healthy trust right now. Put your head in the sand and trust everybody and then be taken advantage of I mean, there’s a fine line, right? Like there’s kind of trust and then it’s actually I think the fifth agreement. The done was Miguel, I know I got that all wrong. But the book The Four Agreements, and then there’s the fifth agreement. Like be a deep listener and be skeptical like, because we really want to teach our kids the skills that will empower them to live their best life and teaching them to trust in life is a huge part of that. Because if we don’t teach them to trust, then they’re going to have that kind of struggle with fear that’s going to block their big ideas and then trusting themselves and their creativity and their inspiration and their joy.

Oh, absolutely. And look at I mean, you grew up on a farm and you went to Yale. I mean, I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen. But that’s not a common story that I hear. Right?

Anything is possible. Yeah,

anything’s possible. Sure. That’s, yeah, I love that. I love that. And that’s the fifth pillar right there. Because the fifth pillar is openness and curiosity. So staying open to the seemingly impossible, right, the things that you’re like, gosh, that seems incredibly unlikely, but yet, it may just be possible and staying open to that and keep that open curiosity and and just kind of that that will That wonder more shall be revealed because often as humans, you know, we judge we close our minds, we close ourselves off to miracles because we’re like, now that’s really unlikely that’s not going to happen. Well, it may, you know, not saying to put all your eggs in that basket. But I believe in miracles. And I believe in having these huge visionary kind of inspired pie in the sky dreams that we absolutely can make happen. We can manifest.

What is one way in your life that you have seen thing open and optimistic is curious.

Yeah. Curious.

You mean that really work for you in the last couple of years?

Pamela Gold: That’s a great question. So I think what what comes to mind first has been really how the last year and a half has unfolded for me, because a year and a half ago, if you and I spoke, I was running as president of a company. I was running a program called the beacon program, a behavioral therapy based food and weight program and even getting that job. I hadn’t been in the workforce for Eight years. And so if someone said you’re going to, you know, get a job as president of a company, when you’ve been out of the workforce for eight years, that would have been like highly unlikely. So even getting that job was like I was just staying open and meeting people and knowing that I could be a value. And so that unfolded in a way that I could never have anticipated. It was like a part time was perfect, absolutely perfect. And then I started feeling about a year and a half ago that I needed to write a book about what I was starting to experience and no and just around kind of inner peace being the ultimate key to our greatest evolution. And I really had no idea how that was going to happen. I had never written a book before. And I didn’t have any, you know, real clarity around what the book was going to be like. I’d written a couple chapters, but it didn’t really feel like what was meant to be. And then last December, literally a year ago, this weekend, there was this big kind of crisis in my husband’s job, and we were supposed to be on vacation. He actually manages a pop artist, this really delightful young woman named Camila kibeho. She has that Havana song if you listen to the radio ever But basically, she, she ended up in this, you know, weird turn of events like leaving her band. And it was all this really negative social media and really upset people. And it was like this really big kind of crisis. And while I was sitting there on the floor of the hotel room, we were supposed to be by the beach, and we didn’t leave the hotel room. It just became really crystal clear to me how to write this book and how to explain it. And so literally, I wrote this book in two weeks, like literally, and I had no, like, that made no sense, right? Like, if you’d said, okay, you’re suddenly gonna be inspired. You’re gonna write a book in two weeks, if I had any kind of like closed mindedness around what made sense that wouldn’t have flowed through me, right? Like that wouldn’t have happened. And then I ended up leaving the company and launching my new business, but none of that made any sense. Right. So I think that’s, that’s a good example of just things unfolding and blossoming that really made no sense. And if I was listening to my mind more and being kind of stuck in, in, you know, the typical rules of how things happen, I wouldn’t have been open to that.

Can you send that flow to me?

Pamela Gold: I can teach. That’s the cool thing. That’s what I teach now because there are absolute practices. Like there are there are things and that’s what the book the five pillars. It’s sounds so simple and silly. But if you practice these things all the time, when it’s easy, you’re literally starting to open imagine, okay, so my analogy is imagine you’re at the beach with your kids and your kids are like, Mom, let’s dig a tunnel through the sand. And you’re like, Okay, you know, there’s a million ways to dig a tunnel. You could do it with your hands. You could do it with a plastic cup or a plastic spoon. You could get like a good shovel and pail, or you could get like a you know, like a heavy piece of equipment and like drill a tunnel like a mother tunnel mother effin is what I would normally say. But there’s a family show. Like drill a tunnel, right? There are ways to make a tunnel faster and it’s a tunnel that kind of opens up the flow of all this unique you know, purpose and unique genius and unique gifts. unique talents that if we can kind of hold space for it and allow it to come, like that’s what we’re talking about here. And in the book, I talk about meditation a little bit. But really, ultimately meditation is, is what I have experienced to be the fastest way to dig a tunnel, like not with a plastic spoon, like with a heavy piece of equipment digging a tunnel, so you can really be open to you know, receiving that flow and allowing that flow to flow. Does that make sense?

You are speaking my language because coincidentally the books that I’m trying to get out of my head, but maybe I just need to stop trying and just read your book and then let it flow is actually chronic idea disorder. And we talk about a lot and there’s about how we’re actually digging hundreds of shallow holes with plastic spoons instead of just getting out. Yeah, and instead of just digging in and you know, seeing one idea through to fruition, but instead we’re starting all these random ideas and chances are we’re never finishing any of them. So we’re winding up broke and depressed because we haven’t finished anything, including this book, which I’ve been talking to listeners about for a year. listeners, it’s still in my head.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, well, I mean, I think about it I, what I know to be true is that we’re all blocked in various ways. Some of us are conscious and aware of what our blocks are. And then most of us, you know, people, I would think most of your people like, I know, you, me, most of the people that are like, into this stuff, anything that we’re aware of, we’re working on, like we’re doing it. So it’s really the subconscious stuff that is messing us up and having a coach, like, I know you’re a coach, which is awesome, you know, having coaches that help us kind of stand shoulder to shoulder with us and catch us and shine a light on the times when we’re believing something that isn’t true. Or we have contradictory beliefs around something. And it’s that the stuff that really really is blocking us from just boom, making it happen like we’re slowing ourselves down because we’re Oh, you know, like you talk about all the time. The perfection I want it to be good enough. I know if there’s so many other things Is this right? Like all our fears and our doubts that we’re not really clear on, it’s clearing that stuff out like going in the garden and rototilling and getting the weeds out, right and then watering the big beautiful plants, like you say, to really make these projects, sprout and blossom and bear fruit.

Absolutely. Yeah. And you’re right about coaches, even just in the past few months in my business, my coaches have made the biggest difference in my life. And they were in there were blocks that I’d never even realized I had.

Pamela Gold: Yeah, yeah, it’s so cool. It’s exciting, because that’s the thing we all have so much more potential. And if there’s anyone listening, that doesn’t work with a coach, obviously, I highly recommend you and like find your person, like find the person that helps like, make you feel safe enough because you know, you got to kind of go into the caves, right to like do this work to really get the blocks like some of the stuff that I know I’ve been blocked on like when I was like Three and like something really scary happened. There’s stuff that like, you don’t necessarily want to relive. And it’s that stuff that is blocking us. So finding a coach that you trust to kind of go shoulder to shoulder with you as you go into the cave of the scary painful stuff that your brain really doesn’t want you to go to write like the loop going in the cave with Yoda. See, I’m a big star wars person. But it’s I’m having a coach here. I love Star Wars. But yeah, having a coach is huge. I have coaches. I have so many different coaches and literally every area of my life because I know that I have blind spots. We all have blind spots and having a coach kind of say, hey, well, how do you look at that? Wait, tell me that again. Wait, what do you think about that? And I’m like, Oh my gosh, you’re so right. I can’t believe I used to think that five seconds ago and it’s sometimes just having someone shine a light on it. You realize how dysfunctional your thinking is around that one thing, and then boom, the block is gone. And then there’s more oil. Absolutely. I’m going to link coaches to compassion when your pillars, I realized

that I was actually having more compassion for other people than I was for myself. Does that make sense? Like I was listening to excuses or reasoning why I couldn’t be paid on time for so long in my business, you know, even though this invoice was out and had a due date, well, here’s why it can’t be paid. And I would be having compassion and they would find it seven months later, it’s still not paid. Well.

Well, boundaries, though, can write the other side of that boundary.

Boundaries are really important.

Yeah, I don’t do that anymore. No, you don’t pay. You don’t get but on the flip side, I’ve also seen you are not too far from New York City. And I know from when I was living in in Westchester County and going in and out of New York City or in and out of Connecticut every day, compassion could often just not be seen. You know, forget holding the door open for another second, you know, because I have to get to my train. But when you do hold that space, I mean there is that the boundaries, but when you do allow that space to yourself, just hold it open for one more second or hold the door open for somebody else for one more second. There’s so much good to begin with that. And, yeah,

yeah, it’s priming the pump too. Because, you know, compassion is one of the five pillars. So the more compassion you have flowing for yourself, the more it’s going to empower you to practice the other four pillars. You know, being brave, having gratitude, surrendering and being open and curious. So random acts of kindness is one of the techniques that is really transformative because you’re like priming the pump, and I’m sure you’ve had days too, but I’ve I know, I’ve had days where I was low, because, you know, we’re human. So some days, you know, you’ve had a bunch of things happen that are heavier, and we’re human, and so you’re kind of in a lower place. And then I remember one day in particular, walking through grants Central. I mean, like, Oh, I need to practice a bunch of random acts of kindness, because that’ll make me feel better. And I stopped and took a picture of this family from Italy. And I’ll never forget the look on this little boy’s face. He was probably about my son’s age at the time about eight and I took his picture. And then I handed the camera back to the family. And this little boy’s face was just lit up with gratitude and joy, and that infused so much positivity back into me. So, you know, doing for others doing for ourselves, anything, any act of kindness starts it flowing. And we always have the opportunity to take action, right? Like this is a thing like sometimes you’re just not going to feel good, you’re going to have a day where you’re just not feeling great. And there are just literally a multitude of ways that we can take action, even just smiling. There’s so much research on how just smiling changes your brain chemistry, smiling, random acts of kindness that just naturally will override whatever else is going on on you and zap you with some positivity. So this is all stuff that like is super easy to practice, if we remember to do it because

it’s real, it really works. What systems have you set up to really make sure that you remember? Or is it just now a habit in your life that you remember without fail?

Pamela Gold: Yeah, so I mean, there’s now now it’s all habitual. But there’s a really beautiful timeline of practices that when it was not I used to joke that like, I wanted to get temporary tattoos. You know, like every three months, there was something else that I was working on, but there’s so many different practices and one of the ways that as a woman I found helpful to keep myself in this positive mindset and remembering the tools is that I went through a bunch of different really kind of big pieces of jewelry that were like clunky and annoying and as soon as they stopped being annoying, because you know, our brains get, you know, desensitized to things. I would switch it up and get get a different big ring or like a big necklace or a big bracelet and it was like remembering jewelry to me. It helped me Remember to be mindful to remember my tool In my toolbox and do remember to check in with myself and see how I was feeling. And if I started to feel my spirits drop because find more strength is all about keeping your spirits high and your spirits high is that positivity is that power in it is joy. So we want to keep ourselves up there. And there’s been lots of times when you know, we’re not going to be there because something happened or some days you just wake up like that. This is brain chemistry and whatever is about your, your feeling. And inside, we need to just love that. And we need to be aware of it first and foremost, because most of us go about our day on autopilot, not even aware of how we’re feeling. Then we look back on the day and we’re like, wow, I was kind of not my best today. I wasn’t as nice to people I didn’t do my best work. So the first step is being aware that mindfulness of how I’m feeling and that’s the remembering jewelry was like big and clunky. So I kept kind of checking in with myself. And then if I started to feel myself drop, like losing my power, losing my joy, I would practice random acts of kindness or I would practice being brave or just check in and say, am I not surrendering on something? Am I like fighting on something by being closed minded and judgmental? You know, am I resisting or attaching? Am I not being kind to myself, you know, the positive self talk, I’m sure you’re with me that most of my life, I was wired to be my biggest harshest horriblest critic. So the way that I talked to myself the way that I treated myself, it’s not kind and I needed to rewire that. So I needed to be aware of it and not feed those thoughts. So they would stop and they’re still pletely plenty of thoughts that I have that are not constructive and of service. But now, I know how to not pay attention to them. I know how to just kind of brush them away and like a fly and be like, No, I’m not going to feed that thought. I’m going to choose a positive thought. So that’s, you know, that’s kind of in a nutshell, the progression of staying aware and practicing. I love that.

And I’ve shared this on previous episodes, but I I’ve actually created a a dizzy Iam list for myself. So every letter of the alphabet, I have at least one word, so I’ll go and loving it. Especially you usually gets me when my kids are screaming on the way home from daycare because they’re hungry and tired and they just want to know what we’re having for dinner and we go by McDonald’s and that’s what they wanted. And just to make it sanely home, I’ll start rehearsing, etc. I am list to myself. I love it.

Pamela Gold: I love it. That’s it. That is it’s just a beautiful practice and it’s powerful it works.

What I find is funny is that my four year old unavailable say, Are you talking to yourself? Yes, yes, yes.

Pamela Gold: Exactly.

Shameless brag. Exactly. Oh, Pamela, this has been amazing. I’ve loved every moment of chatting with you. Where can listeners connect with you online and get to know more about you?

Pamela Gold: Sure. Well, my website is called evolution.com. So if you go to that website, there’s a bunch of, you know, free stuff on there. There’s a morning meditation for free the first chapter of my book for free. And there’s also there’s like a brief Guide we didn’t really talk much about it. But breathing is another really, really awesome tool that we always have with us that can kind of hack and override whatever’s going on in our brain when our brains not cooperating.

Oh, I love that listeners. I forgot to mention that all the links and a link to Pamela’s book and everything that we’ve talked about, including the other books that we’ve mentioned will be in the show notes which you can find that KIM SUTTON comm forward slash pp. 242. Pamela again, thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure. Do you have a last piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Pamela Gold: Sure. Well, I know we’ve talked about it a little bit. But if you’re someone that has not yet established a meditation practice, maybe this will be the moment that inspires you to do it because meditation is absolutely a game changer. And I can tell you, when I first tried it, I thought for certain it was not for me, it was basically torture. And I was like, maybe some of this might work for some people like some people are swimmers and other people are not swimmers. That’s kind of how I thought about meditation that like it’s just not for me, and then I I really started making myself do it and my life changed in ways that I can’t even begin to explain. So just planting that seed, I’m sure I’m not the only person that said it. Meditation really, really, really, really is a life changing practice and there’s so many ways to get started.