The Journey from Worrier to Warrior

KATHLEEN: Hello everyone and welcome to the journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network. The purpose of the show is to help you realize that you are not alone, you are in control of your life. It does not matter what your lot in life is or where you came from.

KATHLEEN: We have all felt pain, suffering, hurt, abandonment, loneliness and hopelessness. This show helps you to take those dark moments and turn them around to create a whole new you. We were taught to be a certain way, act a certain way.

KATHLEEN: Conform to society, being socialized is not bad, but it puts constraints on us the guests I've been on the show are telling you their story of where they were and where they and the obstacles they overcame and where they are today. They are sharing the tools they use to recreate themselves and their life on podcast dot Kathleen M Flanagan. Com is a list of the guests that have been on the show with their contact information.

KATHLEEN: I'm aware that you may resonate with one or several of them. My desire is that this becomes a community where you have access to the people you wish to align with and utilize the tools that they have as well as the tools being offered on Kathleen and flanagan.com.

KATHLEEN: I am a certified coach who can help you reach your dreams. I help you learn how to rely on and believe in your unlimited potential and power. I already know that you've experienced, experienced flashes of intuitive knowledge and big thinking that has you wondering just how far could I fly?

KATHLEEN: If only I'm here to help you stir up that innate knowing and self trust already instilled deep in your soul. I help you to forge forward when the old you would rather give up and turn back. Awakening. Spirit.com is an aromatherapy based body care line that offers alternative healing remedies that uses natural and organic ingredients.

KATHLEEN: We are offering a 40% discount by entering Brave TV into the coupon code. The products are guaranteed if a product is not working, please contact me and I will reformulate a blend specifically for you. Grandma's natural remedies is a CBD company that uses essential oils and every blend has either broad spectrum or an isolate.

KATHLEEN: Every product is tested and the lab results are on the website. We are offering a 20% discount by entering Brave TV into the coupon code. I start the show every week with sound from the tuning forks. I bring in love happiness and balance. This sets the tone for the show and my guest and it brings out the best in both of us. Let's begin.

KATHLEEN: Martin Salama is known as the Architect of Warriors Life Code. He specializes in helping people frustrated in their life, quickly shift their mindset to uncover their greatness so they can live their true potential and enjoy life. An example of what he's achieved is a client like Roberta who lost her six figure job due to COVID and came to Martin depressed and felt very lost within a short time.

KATHLEEN: She had quote direction, focus and a renewed energy around all the possibilities I could pursue and getting back on track to enjoy life. The key to his success is he's mastered the ability to live incredibly full every day, which he turned into the Akerman Life life and created the Warriors Life Code coaching program. Welcome, Martin.

MARTIN: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here with you, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN: I know I'm so glad to have you too. It's been so long since we've spoken and I know that you got me all rauled up back when we when I first met you. So why don't you tell our audience a little bit about your journey of becoming an awakening spirit?

MARTIN: Wow. Thank you so much. Wow. It really has been a while since we spoke, but I do remember our conversation vividly that day. So I, as you said, I'm Martin Salama. I'm known as the architect of the warrior's life code. And for me, the word life as you said, stands for live incredibly full every day.

MARTIN: But for me, it's encompassing two things, happiness and meaning, right? You could be happy with no meaning, happiness to me is self love, self care, even selfish, meaning is selfless. What are you doing for others? So that's what I try to do every day is I have a happy, meaningful life.

MARTIN: And you know, I can go all the way back in my story to when I was 10 years old cause when you were going over in the beginning and in introducing the program and the feelings that people have in their life, I can pinpoint at 10 years old when something that happened to me, a tragedy that happened to me that affected me for the next 50 years.

MARTIN: So when I was 10, you see this little boy over here on the behind me So that's my brother Michael. When I was 10, he was coming home from school. I was coming home from school with one of my sisters.

MARTIN: And as we got on the block, we saw a school bus stopped in front of our house. As we got closer, we saw the bus driver standing outside on the street. My mother comes running out of the house, carrying my brother Michael in her arms, jumps into the car and drives away.

MARTIN: My sister and I look at each other and my brother Michael is five at this time. And we come to find out that when Michael got off the bus, he dropped something in front of the bus. The bus driver didn't see it and drove. Unfortunately, he hit Michael and three days later he passed away from his injuries.

KATHLEEN: Wow. I'm so sorry to hear that. What a horrible way to die.

MARTIN: Thank you.

KATHLEEN: I'm sure that bus driver wasn't even full speed. I mean, but a five year old.

MARTIN: He was not full speed. He didn't see him.

KATHLEEN: Yeah.

MARTIN: My mother was devastated. My father, my sisters, my whole family was devastated. The community was. And for me at that moment, I told myself a story, I told myself that it's now my job as the only son left in the family to carry on the legacy to make sure that my parents are never unhappy again.

KATHLEEN: It's a 10 year old. That's a story.

MARTIN: Yeah. I'm a 10 year old. This is the thoughts that are going through my head, right? So I could look back at that moment and say that's when I became a people pleaser. Now for many years, I never recognized that I was a people pleaser. I never called myself that I just called myself somebody that like makes everybody happy.

MARTIN: But you know what, before I go, you mentioned my mom and I just want to talk about her for a minute. She's 92 now. And unfortunately COVID, her being home for that time during COVID really did a number on her and her dementia that she had Alzheimer's and dementia starting.

MARTIN: But I think it got accelerated during that time being home alone, not being able to drive, not being able to play bridge and things like that. But I wanna go back. So right after that, of course, you can imagine how she was like, and we soon afterwards of someone from our community reached out and said there are other women who've lost their children.

MARTIN: We'd like to put together a support bereavement group for you to help you get through this. So my mother joined and quickly my mother and a couple of these other women became the leaders of this group and sought out other mothers who've lost children to help them get through it because nobody would be able to tell them, I know how you feel other than these women.

MARTIN: And she became a leader in my community for women who lost children. And I can tell you, I can't even count how many women have come over to me over the years and said your mother saved my life at my lowest point.

MARTIN: So I just wanted to acknowledge my mom there for a minute because she turned out to be an awesome woman who understood the complexity, the depth of what happened to her and was able to help herself as well as others get through it.

KATHLEEN: That's really good because I lost my sister when she was 21 years old and my mother never got over it. My mother just buried it instead of dealing with it and it was painful to watch for several years.

KATHLEEN: And I think, right, I don't know. 10. Well, let's see, she's been dead about 12 years now, probably 15-16 years ago, one of my siblings gave her a photo album with all the pictures of Kelly in it. And my mother just broke down in hysterical tears.

KATHLEEN: She couldn't even look at the book yet. And this is what 60 years later, and my mother still couldn't get over it. So bless your heart that your mother did something for herself and other women because that is hard work and so vitally important for women.

MARTIN: Right? Actually, this picture of my brother was by her bedside until she moved out of her house a couple of years ago, a year ago and moved into my sister's house and, unfortunately the dementia there and when we were cleaning out the house, I took the picture and kept it with me.

KATHLEEN: Oh, that's good.

MARTIN: Yeah.

KATHLEEN: Ok. So continue. I'm sorry.

MARTIN: Yeah. No, no, it's ok.

MARTIN: So for me that started my own journey of being a people pleaser and I never realized the effects because in my mind, I was always trying to make everybody happy, but it took me pretty much 40 years to finally realize that not only was I not making anybody else happy, I wasn't making myself happy either and it took a lot of ups and downs and being and thinking I was doing the right thing by trying to make everybody happy.

MARTIN: And let me fast forward now to 2008. Remember that year?

KATHLEEN: I do remember that year.

MARTIN: Right. Well, my wife and I were working on a project for five years to build a multimillion dollar health club and tennis center by the Jersey shore in New Jersey. And we had put in millions of dollars of our money of investors, loans and stuff like that as we were trying to get the approvals that we needed to go on the ground from the city and the state, right?

MARTIN: And every time we thought we were ready, the city would say, oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And we wanted, as soon as they said, yes, get into the ground. They were always saying, yeah, we're gonna approve this. But as soon as you get everything done, so we were pouring money into the architecture and the engineering and everything like that.

MARTIN: So finally in the summer of 2008, they said, OK, you got everything we're ready to go, you could start building. I went to the bank who for the years before like, yeah, we can't wait for this project to be ready. We're gonna fund it like it's like crazy.

MARTIN: And if you remember in 2005, 2006, 2007 money lending was like going to Costco and getting samples from the old ladies at the end of each one of the aisles, they would hand them out like they were nothing and that's what the banks were doing. They were lending money like crazy. So I go to the bank, I'm like, OK, we're ready and they're like, no, we're not lending right now.

MARTIN: I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got everything in here over $3 million. Well, things are slowing down. It's not that simple anymore. A month later in September of 2008, Bernie Madoff, subprime loans. The world falls apart like a house of cards. And where am I? I'm on the bottom of the car deck. I'm the joker and I'm not laughing.

MARTIN: I might have even been the jack with the knife coming into the head, you know. But thank God I didn't commit suicide but I was depressed for about a year.

MARTIN: All right. So, it's 2008, the world falls apart. I'm into depression and I have no money. I stopped paying my car, I stopped paying my mortgage and you know, things happen when you're not paying that stuff, right. Eventually they foreclosed on my house, but I lived in New Jersey and there were so many foreclosures in 2008 that it took them years until they finally moved on.

MARTIN: But the car, a couple of months later, all of a sudden my son looks out the window and the time he's 17-18 years old and he looks out the car outside and he says, dad, they're towing away your car. My car was repossessed.

MARTIN: And I was like, oh my God, that never happened to me before. So I kind of went into a depression for about a year and I was going through coaching, I was going through therapy. And about a year later I decided, you know what, it's time for me to get out of this depression and figure out what am I gonna do with the rest of my life?

MARTIN: So I looked at my life and I thought about what are the things I liked to do now that I'm reinventing myself, I don't necessarily have to be the businessman that I always thought my parents wanted me to be because that's what I was doing all my life trying to make sure that I was making my parents happy.

MARTIN: So I looked around and I thought about it and I realized I always loved being in community organizations. I was always a leader and I was always somebody that was like of service. I wanted to help others and be of service to them. So I thought about it and I realized I really enjoyed coaching.

MARTIN: So I decided to become a life coach and I looked into it and I found a great school and I went to the school and I said, look, I really wanna come here and this is how much it costs. And you'd say I'm go get funding if you, if you can't go in financing, I know I can't get financing because my, because of everything, I just went through the last year or so.

MARTIN: My credit score is almost non existent. So I said, let's come up with a number that I'll pay you every month and I promise I'll pay you every month. And the CFO turned to me and he said, ok, we'll do that.

MARTIN: But you won't get certified until you pay off all your debt. I said that's fair. Well, all the money I owe the school once I pay them off, then my certification will come look great. So now it's about two months before the school's training is gonna start. It's my 24th wedding anniversary and my wife says I want a divorce.

KATHLEEN: Oh my God.

MARTIN: I'm like, what the heck is going on? Why does everything keep happening to me?

MARTIN: I'm like, couldn't you come up with a better day of the year to do this?

KATHLEEN: Oh my God. Wow, that's a blow.

MARTIN: Yep. Yep. But you know, I look back now at, at me saying, why does everything keep happening to me? And I realized that was the side of me that didn't like to take responsibility and blame everybody else. When you say things, everything's happening to me, you're looking to blame everybody, right?

MARTIN: Instead. Now I say, I don't say everything happens for me. I said everything happens through me because I'm taking responsibility for what goes on in my life. Good, bad and indifferent. At the end of the day, the buck stops with me, right?

MARTIN: So I'm deciding now, what am I gonna do? I gotta figure out where I'm gonna live, who's gonna move out, who's gonna do what? I have four children, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And I say, you know what, I made this deal to go to coaching, I'm gonna do it anyway.

MARTIN: And it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made because right before I went, they sent an email with a bunch of books. They said read one or two of these books before you come. And one of them was this book by Don Miguel Ruiz the four Agreements. You know that book? You're nodding your head.

KATHLEEN: Oh, I do. I know that book.

MARTIN: Yeah. And when I read the second agreement, don't take anything personally. I felt like he was talking to me. He was telling me a secret that everybody had been telling me my whole life. But until that minute, I just wasn't ready to hear it.

MARTIN: And I was like, wait a minute, are you saying that the world is not on my shoulders? And that when someone says something to me, it's not necessarily about me. So I went into that first weekend, ready and open to what they are, whatever they gonna say. And they said to me, you don't have to be who you think you have to be. You could be whoever you want to be. And that started my journey.

KATHLEEN: I know. Isn't that amazing when somebody gives you permission to be who you wanna be instead of what you think you're supposed to be? I remember a lot of mine started when my business partner, he wasn't my partner then.

KATHLEEN: But he asked me, what do you want? And I was I don't know, I mean, I was dumbfounded because you're thinking that when you're in your thirties and forties, you should know what you want. And I had no clue what I wanted.

KATHLEEN: And then it was, and then you sit there and it's like, well, you talk like a victim. I'm like, well, I'm not a victim, but I didn't realize the words, like what you said the words, why does God hate me? God doesn't hate you. Why are you saying that?

MARTIN: Right. Right. And it's so funny what people tell me, you know, I prayed to God and he didn't answer me. So the problem is he did answer, you just weren't listening. He said no.

KATHLEEN: That is so true. And it's true.

MARTIN: No, he's saying no, because this is not what's right for you.

MARTIN: Right. And that's a hard concept to understand what do you mean? I can't just ask for whatever I want and it just comes, that's a little bit of the law of attraction but it's just not enough of it.

KATHLEEN: Exactly.

KATHLEEN: That's exactly right. And, sometimes when I was younger I just remember at times wanting something so badly and then like a year or two later it was like, thank God he didn't give it to me. You know, because, I mean, as a teenager, what do you know? Right.

KATHLEEN: And you still want a boyfriend because everybody has boyfriends or you wanna have a date to the prom or whatever the weird things are that teenagers go through and that's what I realized at times it was like, thank God that he didn't give me everything I wanted because what I was picking and choosing was not in my highest or best. Good.

MARTIN: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. So that's what happened to me. I went through this transformation by going to coach training and I went to one of these coach training schools that were, it wasn't like you went for a weekend and you were done, it was an almost a full year program.

MARTIN: Yeah, where we had at the time we didn't have zoom yet. We were doing conference calls. And stuff like that. And, every week and we were doing peer coaching with different coach, students in our class and every three or four months we would get together on a weekend and do more work on the next level.

MARTIN: It was an intense one and it changed my life and like I said, it was a trans slow transformation. And when I finished, I was like, ok, what kind of coach do I wanna be? And I realized with the help of some friends that I had really come through this while I was going through my divorce and I was better because I was going through my coaching at the same time.

MARTIN: So I originally became a divorce recovery coach because I was gonna help people recover from the emotional pains of divorce because they're on a roller coaster and they just never know what's gonna hit them and when's gonna hit them. I can remember times with my mom, nothing was going on and she'd break out crying because she was remembering about her son or my brother or whatever.

MARTIN: And it's that same type of ptsd that people have. You never know what will hit you. You know, when we say PTSD, we immediately think of heavy duty trauma, you know, war and things like that. But people suffer from PTSD on many different levels.

KATHLEEN: Well, our world is a prime example of it. I mean, just watching the evening news can traumatize people, seeing an animal be abused is traumatizing. At least to me it's traumatizing.

MARTIN: Right. Absolutely. 100%. Me too.

KATHLEEN: I understand that.

MARTIN: Right. So, it's about understanding number one, how it's affecting you and how you're gonna move forward when you're going through a divorce.

MARTIN: So I did that for a few years and as I developed myself and I was helping clients, I got to the point where I was so happy with my life, I was liking myself and I was loving myself because I understood why some of the things that I was doing when I was married or from that came as me being a people pleaser which were as a people pleaser. I wanted to make everybody happy.

MARTIN: That's obvious I took everything personally. I was a control freak. I needed the recognition. I need everybody to tell me. Oh, what a great job you are. You're the greatest guy in the world. And when all those things weren't happening, I had a very, very short temper to the point.

MARTIN: I would react to everything like a nuclear reactor and I would leave fall out all over the place and my go to would be, I'm really sorry. I did that. But you know, Kathleen, you did this and you did that. That's not apologizing. That's just another way of passing off the buck.

MARTIN: So now that I started understanding this and becoming a better me, I was ready to move forward and I was doing things like I was eating better. I was reading better. I was getting coached cause for a while I was like, well, I can't afford to be coached. Now. I realize I can't afford not to be coached any day of my life, you know, and one day I'm ADHD so you can imagine this next statement I was meditating.

MARTIN: It's a little hard for a guy with ADHD to meditate.

KATHLEEN: I can see that, New Jersey guy. I get it.

MARTIN: Yeah. My mind is like, when is this gonna be over? You know, I don't know how, I don't know how people meditate. I just don't get it. But, kudos to them. But one day I was meditating and I had this download of information that I loved my life and everything in it. And after this 10 minute guided meditation, I wrote for two hours and out of that came live incredibly full every day life.

KATHLEEN: I love that. That's those stories are always so amazing to me. I know they're real. So I don't doubt it, but it's always amazing because we don't think meditation does that. But yet meditation is one of the most transformational experiences you can go through because you have to shut this off to hear what God wants you to do, you know?

MARTIN: And I was.

KATHLEEN: About who, what about this? And what about this? And you sit there and you're like, oh my God, get off the roller coaster. But that was where I found my foundation at 18-19 years old was meditation. I started realizing I wasn't this God awful creature that everybody told me I was and I started to find peace and tranquility. Now it took a lifetime to get here.

KATHLEEN: But it was still the beginning stages because if I didn't do that at that age, I probably wouldn't be here today because I was also very suicidal. And that allowed me to continue on with my life because I felt like God is or somebody loved me more than I did and I was worth saving. But we're gonna go ahead and take a quick commercial break and we'll be right back.

KATHLEEN: Welcome back, everyone to the journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network and I have Martin Salama in the room with us and he was just telling us about his, first, well, one of his meditations where he got a download for the first time. So I'm gonna turn this over to you, Martin.

MARTIN: So, you know, I didn't know I was ADHD until I was in my fifties right before that, when I was a kid, they labeled me as lazy and immature and, basically you kind of live down or live up to the words that people use around you.

KATHLEEN: That's very true.

MARTIN: So I always thought I was lazy, immature, since then I've become fun loving. And I found that I am the least procrastinating people, the person that people know I was like, I always thought I was a procrastinator. So that was great to learn. But yeah, so here I am I put my coaching together, my coach program.

MARTIN: Now I'm switching it from the the the divorce recovery to this new live incredibly full every day. And I start dating because I did get divorced, right? And as I go out on these dates, I realize that I wanna make sure that I don't marry the same person I was married to in a different body, right?

MARTIN: Because very often, very often 50% of second marriages end up in divorce. And a lot of the times is because the people don't do the work on themselves to recognize that there are certain innate things that they have that if they don't change, they're gonna attract the same person, right?

MARTIN: And I'll give you a perfect example. As I was going through my divorce, my ex would call me up and say I don't wanna fight. But now she had been using that line for years and I'm not gonna blame her, ok? Because it's more of how I reacted to it than her saying it.

MARTIN: But to me when she said I'm not gonna fight to me, that meant let's get ready to rumble.

KATHLEEN: Oh that's what it sounds like to me. I'm ready.

MARTIN: You turn up to Mike Tyson.

MARTIN: Nice. I would buy within minutes. I was hot, yelling, screaming, doing everything wrong.

MARTIN: And then she said, but I told you I didn't want to fight. So not only did she set me up, she also had the reason to blame me for starting the fight. So as I was going through coaching, I realized that I needed to change that. Now I sometimes have this way of going from one extreme to the other. So I went from, she'd call me up and go, I don't wanna fight. I would say, ok, and I hang up the phone.

KATHLEEN: Oh, I'm sure that went over.

MARTIN: Well, real well, she called me back. She go, what the hell? And I was like, well, you said you didn't want to fight. So I figured I better hang up.

KATHLEEN: Oh, I love that. That's so funny. I'm sure she was pretty irate when she got back on the phone.

MARTIN: Oh yeah, she was, she was. But, and then I started to take in my coaching that I'd learned and that I was learning and started to understand that I had to find the middle ground. So I had to condition myself and her to get rid of the line. I don't wanna fight because it was a trigger for me. And there are other triggers as well, but that was a big one.

MARTIN: So I had to learn that I had to slowly explain to her in ways that were not being threatening that doesn't work. And it's all it does is set me off and I had to learn to change. And I've taken the things that I've learned between coaching and all myself and then applied them to my clients that would come along with similar issues. So for example, I had to understand what was going on and what to do about it.

MARTIN: So first thing I did was when that would happen, I'd have to say I have to change the way it is. So I created something in my mind and then I started to utilize it. Remember when our kids, my kids, when they went to school and they came home one day and the firefighter was there that day teaching them fire safety.

MARTIN: And they tell the kids, children, there are three words you have to remember in a fire stop drop and roll if you're in a fire, stop what you're doing, drop to the ground below the smoke and the fire and roll away from danger. So I took those three words and created my own for when I am in an emergency situation or gonna see myself freak out and react instead of respond. So I said, ok, I'm gonna go stop think and respond.

MARTIN: Ok, so stop. She called me up. I don't wanna fight but stop, don't freak out think is what she's gonna tell me gonna trigger me? Am I gonna let it trigger me? Is it about me? Is it about her is about whatever or somebody else? It might not necessarily be about me with my ex. Somebody's coming to me and they are used to me being in a confrontation and I've got to change it now to a conversation.

MARTIN: So I'll say sometimes I might say they'll tell me what's going on and I'll say, you know, that's interesting. I need to think about it.

MARTIN: Now, I'm diffusing the situation and I'm giving myself an opportunity to figure out what's going on before I shoot first and ask questions later? Cause you know what happens, Kathleen when you shoot first, everybody's dead, even if they're not dead physically, literally, metaphorically, they don't want to talk to you. They shut themselves off.

MARTIN: So there you go. I go. Yeah. You like that one,? So then you go to am I taking it personally. What's this all about? And then because you've taken a moment now you can respond instead of react and then it could turn into a conversation. Now, does it happen overnight? No freaking way.

MARTIN: But with enough practice, it could make a big difference.

MARTIN: So yeah, that was one of the techniques I teach my clients now.

KATHLEEN: That's good because when I was in Chicago, there was a point where I had, this man I was seeing at the time would come in from, you know, Chicago is like three hours to get home from work. Ok?

KATHLEEN: And he's grumpy and then his ex-wife or girlfriend, whatever she was, if he was late, she would growl at him and he came in one day and he was already on the defensive thinking, I'm gonna sit there and say something like, well, you're late, which I wouldn't have thought to say that. I mean, he's here, right. So he comes in and I said something, I don't know what it was, hello or something.

KATHLEEN: And he was ready to start on the attack and it was like, whoa, ok, you need to go take a minute because I knew that I was already triggered because I knew I was triggered because just by that and I hadn't even said anything other than hello.

KATHLEEN: And so sometimes we, as the other person has to take control when somebody else is doing it So it's not just like you having to take control when she starts it, but sometimes it's the other way around too or if I wanted to respond to something, he said it was like, no, sit back, think about what he's saying and breathe through it and logically say something in response rather than react like you. I was very much the same way.

KATHLEEN: Everything triggered me because I was always defensive. I thought everybody thought I wasn't doing anything. Right. So I had to defend myself 24 7. So I love your technique because that's exactly what I did in 2008. And I had to figure that one out on my own because I didn't have a coach then.

MARTIN: Right. Right. Right.

MARTIN: Yeah. So, yeah. So that's one of the things that I created as a way of, I love using acronyms. I love using wordplay because it's a way of people remembering things. And about a year, recently I wrote a book and it's called Worrier to Warrior, right?

MARTIN: Just for all the guys people out there that couldn't understand my Brooklyn accent, worrier with an O to warrior with an A and also along the way, I created a card deck, where am I?

MARTIN: We'll figure out how to turn the camera the right way this way.

KATHLEEN: Here we go. Now we can see it.

MARTIN: Cause it's mirror guys that I gets me all screwed up. So Worrier to warrior and in there I break down, stop think and respond. And I also have put in there a scorecard, right? And it's interesting how this came about. So I mentioned to you that when I got that figured myself out, I started dating.

MARTIN: Well, I'm very proud to say a couple of years after I got through myself and started dating and I found a woman fell in love and we got married and we've been married for about 5-6 years. Actually, yesterday was our sixth anniversary. Thank you so much. And the beauty about it is when we were dating.

MARTIN: I understood that I didn't want to have the same type of person. I understood what my values were and I would go out on these dates and I would interview the women as to what their values were. They didn't know that I was interviewing. I was just having a conversation with them, but I was learning on a deeper level who they were.

MARTIN: And this woman just hit the numbers in a great way. And we've been married for six years. So in the middle of COVID, we're all home, everybody's in different places. So one day, her son who was at the time 13-14 years old and her decide, let's go outside and play basketball.

MARTIN: And we used to have this game called 531 in basketball. When you're playing two people, you take the ball from the free throw, you shoot it. If you hit it, you get five points, then wherever the ball lands, you take a rebound, you throw it up, you get three points and then you go for a layup, which is right under the basket, you get one point.

MARTIN: If you hit all three of them, that's nine points. And because you hit all three, you get an extra point. So they go outside and they play 531. You come in a little while later, I go, who won? And Ralph, her son says she beat me 100 to nothing.

MARTIN: How is that possible? Because, well, I kept on shooting the fives, hopefully to catch up. I go, but the game isn't played that way, but whatever.

MARTIN: But it got me thinking and I said, you know, what, what if I take 531 and flip it to 135 and put it as a game for people to learn how to create, how to build their emotional, intelligence when they're getting into a situation where they're gonna have a confrontation so that eventually they can turn it into a conversation.

MARTIN: So I said, ok, you get one point if you stop, you get three points. If you think, how can I do this differently than I've usually done it? And you get five points if you do something different this time. So now people say, well, why it's in the heat of the moment? I can't do it.

MARTIN: Great. So tomorrow you have, today you have a fight with somebody and tomorrow you wake up and you go, you stop and you're thinking about the fight you had yesterday with Kathleen. So give yourself one point for stopping and reflecting.

MARTIN: Give yourself 3 points to think about. How can I do this differently? What could I have done differently than I did? And then give yourself five points. If you call up Kathleen and you say, you know what this is what happened yesterday, I overreacted and I wanna apologize because I felt this.

MARTIN: I made you feel this and it's not about getting an apology back. You don't want anything back. So in my card deck, stop thinking, respond and then I said make sure I do this right. There is a score card.

KATHLEEN: Oh, that's cool.

MARTIN: Yeah. So it's a great way. And the idea is, are you gonna score a 10 every time? Definitely not. But if you build your muscle memory to stop reacting by understanding, stop thinking and respond, you'll get to the point where 90% of the time you may be able to respond instead of react.

MARTIN: All right, cool. Well, I hope you feel that I've been awakening some spirits as we go along here.

KATHLEEN: Oh, you've been, you've been enlightening mine, it's very enjoyable. I've enjoyed your perspective.

MARTIN: Oh, thank you. So, you know, talking about that, we talked a little earlier about the law of attraction and there's something that I have in my course and in my card deck that addresses the law of attraction. So most people out there think the law of attraction means, think about what you want and it'll come true.

MARTIN: Now, the problem is, is when it doesn't happen that way, people say it doesn't work. And the problem is you're right, it doesn't work because it's not just about thinking that could happen, but it's really a small percentage of the time. So I have another set, another technique I have in my bag of tricks as it were like Felix the cat for those older people out there.

MARTIN: And it's called the cycle of As and it's in a cycle for a reason. Ok? Because it's the first part is ask, ask the universe for what you want. That's the basic foundation for the law of attraction. The next one is act, start doing the work for what you want. So, it could be something as simple as I have a great idea.

MARTIN: Something came in my mind. Right. So, are you gonna let that idea go or are you gonna do something about it? How many times do people say? Oh, I just saw, somebody made something on television. I thought about that idea. Yeah. But you didn't do anything about it. They're a billionaire. You're not.

MARTIN: So act start doing the work to get it. And then the last one is attitude, have a mindset and have a belief that you're not emotionally attached to the outcome.

MARTIN: And that's where the rubber hits the road and that's where things are different. If you can get into this ask act and attitude cycle, it's a perpetual motion because it's so easy that when we still doing the ask and the act that when things aren't going our way, no, no, it's not working.

MARTIN: And that goes back to God saying no, he's telling you you need to make a course correction. So that's something I felt like I could share based on what we talked about earlier. So that's the cycle of a.

KATHLEEN: I love it. And you know, and when you think about it, this all started from a simple meditation and look at how it progressed.

KATHLEEN: You get into coaching and then it's like, oh, well, look at what happened with the drop, whatever it was, drop something and stop, drop and roll and then the 531, and when you think about it, every time you took a step, something else came up and said, oh, well, we can elaborate on this just a little bit more and it's just such a beautiful, this is what happens when you listen people, when you listen little nuggets come in and you're kind of going like, well, what does that mean?

KATHLEEN: Well? That's up you to figure out what that little nugget is. And once you figure it out, look where you go. So I love it. I absolutely love what a beautiful way to show what a simple meditation download did for you. And of course, it all didn't happen overnight. It's taken years, but it doesn't matter. It's you, you're evolving as we constantly evolve.

KATHLEEN: So, Martin, what is one piece of advice that you would offer the audience to help them move into a different direction to achieve their dreams or become a better person?

MARTIN: Ok. That's a great question. So I would say the first thing you need to do is, you need to start to work on shifting your mindset from lack to abundance, lack to me is complaining and negativity and everything that goes with it. Like, one of my mentors, her name is Genevieve Davis says the world is as you see it. So if you see it as bad and negative, that's how you're gonna see it.

MARTIN: If you see it as good and positive and full of opportunities, that's how you're gonna see it. So you wake up every morning, you take out a notebook and I don't mean just like a thing. Get a good moleskin notebook like this. This was a gift from someone and write three things. You're grateful for every morning and even maybe do it at night, three things you're grateful for.

MARTIN: It could be. I'm so grateful that the sun is shining today. I'm so grateful that I woke up feeling refreshed, whatever it is, whatever you're thinking about that day, then come up with a mantra. You know, Tom Brady who's won seven, super bowls. His mantra is to wake up every morning and say the four agreements.

MARTIN: My mantra is, I live incredibly full every day. Whatever that is, it could be an affirmation, whatever it is, use that. And then you go out with the mindset of everything's gonna work out.

MARTIN: I'm gonna find opportunities and I'm not gonna look to complain and I'm not gonna look for the negative and then do this, go out and make somebody laugh and when you do, thank them for helping them to fill your quota to make somebody laugh every day. Now you've connected with them.

KATHLEEN: I love that. Oh God, I love that one extra step of trying to make somebody laugh. Oh my God, I'm gonna have to try to, I'm gonna have to work on it.

MARTIN: But it's more than that go out and tell them. Thank you for making me helping me fulfill my goal because now they're like, what are you talking about? And then you tell them and you get them in on it.

KATHLEEN: No, I love that. What a great piece of advice. So Martin, I want to thank you so much for being here today. I really enjoyed our time together. I mean, you're a hoot to be on the show with. You're funny.

KATHLEEN: Yes, you've had some tragedies, but look at you made lemonade out of the tragedies like every single one of us do, we're not a victim to whatever happened to us. We are ultimately always in control and you demonstrated that beautifully. So I want to thank you so much for your time today. I really do appreciate it.

MARTIN: My pleasure.

KATHLEEN: Well, everyone, if I want to thank all of you for joining us today and if you found some value here, I would love it if you would like or subscribe to the show or even send the link to a friend or family. If you found some value, if you thought it was funny and you just want to uplift somebody's spirit, please do that.

KATHLEEN: And if you're struggling with whatever we talked about today, feel free to reach out to me at BraveTV, at Kathleen M Flanagan. Com. And let's start a dialogue and have some conversation because I have a lot of tools in my tool belt as well that I would be able to help you with.

KATHLEEN: And then go ahead and check out Kathleen M Flanagan for the list of services and products that are offered there. And I do have a three minute distress meditation that is absolutely free for you to download and then be sure to visit awakening spirit and grandma's natural remedies and enter the coupon code.

KATHLEEN: Brave TV. To receive the discounts that are being offered there. And I want to thank you all again, all of you for being here. And I will see you next week, Tuesday at 4 p. m. Eastern Standard Time. And from my heart to yours, I hope you have a fabulous week.