137. Practical Ways to Prepare For Marriage

Debbie Ginsberg is an entrepreneur and mentor. She teaches curriculum based on neuroplasticity, helping people change the way they think about themselves so that they can reach their goals. Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman is a marriage coach for women in business. In her LIVE show and the "Connected For Real" Podcast, she interviews amazing women to enhance all the parts of our life: Specifically the four pillars: G-d, Marriage, Business, & You. Join them LIVE as they talk about how to develop a healthy sense of self to prepare for dating and marriage.

 Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I'm Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God's presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let's get started. 

 And we are live  Welcome everyone to the connected for real podcast. I'm Rebbetzin Bat-Chen grossman and today with me is debbie Ginsberg and i'm so excited because today's topic is dating and marriage And boy do we have a lot to talk about so let's get right into it debbie Introduce yourself and tell us why you are the perfect person to be talking about dating and marriage Well, first of all rebbetson.

I want to thank you very much for including me in your podcast. I am so excited so as I just sort of had my own journey, as we all do, and since 2018, I came across working with a very special group of people who are neurodivergent. Neurodivergent is a part of the neurodiverse. Umbrella, and under that umbrella, you'll find people who have ADHD, High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder, anxiety, depression, and so much more.

So what started off as a education just on emotions and all that, it started to develop. What else did I see my clients were missing? And since the majority of my clients are Orthodox Jewish, the biggest factor was parents and My clients were quite fascinated and interested in how to get over their social anxiety, how to go on a date, how to do this, how to do that.

So I realized that most of what I was teaching them was with regards to marriage readiness. And then I started to gear it to that. but there are many steps before it.  So that's how I got into it. And then the dating now, all of a sudden people calling me have any dating, you know, things you want to tell dating advice.

And I said, look, I'm not a dating coach, but let me just tell you. And then I explained to them some of my novel ideas.  I love that you're talking about marriage readiness because, you know, something I tell my kids all the time is if you think you're ready for dating then it has to be very clear to you that you're Ready for marriage and if you think you're ready for marriage it has to be super clear to you that you're you know ready for kids because Things get really really complicated even if you think oh i'm just in this stage, but i'm not there yet So I'll just, you know, sort of fumble across and fall into being ready.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's take it, you know, take a deep breath,  get yourself ready to a place where you are ready, you know, where you're actually capable of seeing the whole journey through.  And I'm not saying you have to be perfect, but I definitely think it's really important to have the tools and the, you know, and the timing, right.

And all these different skills that will allow you for success.  Well, some of what you're speaking about, which is so important, is critical thinking. And there are, unfortunately, we are noticing a big change in young adults. And this goes across the board. This is the atypical and non typical.

And what we're finding is that, Everyone's having a problem because of the situation of, we had the covid, we had the social media has, you know, gone so far that people are getting hooked and those are not real relationships. So the thinking also has been. Decreased in terms of being able to think and visualize and see what could be coming down the road.

And so therefore, I must paint that picture. When I interview people who specifically want my information regarding marriage readiness or dating, I'll say to them, So tell me, what would you envision in marriage? And most of them haven't a clue. Not a clue at all. And just yesterday I had somebody, he was right on the mark.

I said, wow, good for you. That's amazing because most don't get it. So we spoke about communication, negotiation, all the important things. And then we talked about, of course, my famous you know,  I created this concept of three pillars, which is the self esteem, There's self confidence, self compassion, which is self love.

And I always say to them, if you've got these negative, critical thoughts going through your head, we need to address that, because you need to have those three pillars to be successful, because you, foundationally, have to be very much healthy with yourself. Love yourself. The minute you feel that you can have, it's not just marriage readiness, but it's for everything.

Being a friend to people in college, being a friend, you know, being able to know how to work in a company. So all of these experiences we know are very important because of the fact that it teaches you the skill sets of how to be a terrific spouse. And, you know, I, I jotted a few things down, but we'll get to it in terms of what are some ideas in terms of what gives strength to marriage readiness and making you have a very healthy interpersonal relationship. 

I love it. I love it. Let's pause before we get too practical. I want you to go into the three pillars because I feel like they're so important to talk about and it's going to be so helpful for us to really delve into them so that we can go to the next level of practicality. Sure, so self esteem is just respecting yourself, and also hoping others will respect you.

Being in that situation where naturally people will see you as someone worthy of respect. And then we have the self confidence, which is really just having confidence, but saying it like that is far from getting it. You have to use techniques and tips to be able to figure out  how do you get self confidence?

And then what do you do with it?  The self compassion is huge. Loving yourself. I'll ask clients, could you write down 10 things that you like about yourself? And it comes out to the things that they do for others, which is great. But what do you love about yourself? I mean, what do you see when you look in the mirror?

What do you hear when you're speaking? So, to me, that's huge. Because if you don't really love yourself, can you love another person? Do you have the knowledge, the experience, any of that? So that's my, Take on it my philosophy if you will. So those are the things and that's what has to be taught Those are skill sets.

You may not know how to get there maturity helps It's life experience helps listening to podcasts reading books  Well, I have a book coming out, actually. I have a guidebook coming out hopefully, we keep saying next month, but I think it's going to be closer to June. Hard to get books out.  Yes, yes, but that's very exciting that you have a book coming out.

I'm very excited about that. It's a guidebook. It's a little bit different because it has a lot of worksheets in it, but that's part of the cognitive behavior strategies that I use. I'm not a therapist, I'm a mentor, I teach. And when you use these worksheets, it means that the brain is practicing and that's how we change the brain because my whole business is based on neuroplasticity.

That the brain is Described as if it's plastic and can change. So therefore, if you teach people skill sets, the brain will pick up a new habit. But in order to have that habit, you need to be persistent and you need to keep repeating the things that work  beneficially for you.  I love it. I love it.

Okay. You know, what's amazing is that you are working specifically with neurodivergent individuals,  but these skills are good for everyone,  you know,  and that's what's always so fascinating as we find the skills when we're pushed to really have to teach them. And then we realize how important they are.

I think, unfortunately, that parents and young people don't recognize what's missing because they don't question themselves. They're not necessarily self aware or mindful  when you have those blocks.  You're not going to even think about turning to someone for some help. So that's why in terms of the neurodivergent individual, 20 to 40 year olds, which is what I deal with,  they're more mature and they know I have symptoms That is stopping me from so how can I work with my symptoms and  a person who doesn't have symptoms unfortunately doesn't have a something to signal them you need help,  so, and I really do enjoy working with neurodivergent clients to see the 

goals that they achieve once we open up the obstacle, which is your emotions?  Yeah, it's beautiful to see their progress just beautiful to see that they're not and and the fact is they become non discernible You don't even realize their autism spectrum disorder with ADHD.  I just want to touch on one thing  There isn't a person out there that doesn't have some emotional issue It's just a matter of how you're going to work with it.

We call it coping. I call it empathy Where you do investigation. Why am I feeling this way? Is it something I can control? And if I can control it, what do I need to do?  And you have to keep repeating the good things. And journaling helps because then you make notes of, Oh, this worked, this didn't work.  I love it.

Cool, so let's get a little practical. Let's get into some of the skills and how we can use them in our own experiences. Okay, so, you know, I share with the Rebbetzin you know, a tremendous bitachon, and I'm you know, everything to me, as I mentioned before the podcast, anything I'm going to tell you was already told to us by Torah scholars,  if not current, you know, hundreds of years ago.

So, the neuroscientists are like, oh, aha, we know what this is, and my son, who teaches exact same thing I do, but from Rav Nachman's Concepts and others. And I just go to his share. I'm just to learn the Torah aspect, you know, who's saying,  so the very first thing in interpersonal relationships is value and worth. When you feel that you have a part of you has God in you, which we will many of us believe, then  you need to come to terms with the fact that you have value and worth  too many people knock themselves down.

Well, why would God make you a person that has no value or worth? What's the point? we're here to serve God, so therefore we really want to  think the highest of ourselves and believe in ourselves. The second, which is so important, is language of emotions.  This would be a fantastic course.

from elementary school up, because as children mature, they understand it better. So there is a feeling wheel. We know that there are six basic feelings. Feelings, emotions that we have, but each emotion could be covering up other emotions. For instance,  we are permitted to say in society, it's normative, you know, acceptable to say I'm angry.

Well, what does that describe? Are you jealous? Are you hungry?  Do you feel overwhelmed? I mean, there are 21 different emotions under this canopy of anger. Well, we need to dig deep. Which one is it? Because you cannot respond to an emotion that's not known to you. So that's where we go to do deep digging.

The other is boundaries. Huge. It's okay to say no. It's okay to negotiate because you can't be dictating the boundaries in a relationship. You must hear the other person. You must determine if the boundary that you need is being met by the other person for you to know, is this going to work out? Very important.

Stepping out of comfort zone is a hard thing to ask people to do, but we certainly do work on it. And when you do it enough and you hear, the client hears me saying certain things, they start to step outside of their comfort zone. I want to just say that people of ADHD get very bored when they're not interested.

So the curriculum that I created has to repeat itself, but so different each time the person's getting really the same message, but the delivery, the story, the narrative is different. Otherwise I would be losing so many clients interest. Next,  we have a subconscious and the subconscious plays a very important role.

in our body. Our subconscious gives us a physical reaction before we're even consciously aware of what we're going through. Pay attention to your subconscious. If you're having headaches and it's not medical, if you're having stomach aches. So I tell people, I teach them this. I also came up with this where your calm should be at your belly button.

Do a body scan two, three times a day. Is your calm at your belly button? If not, you'll notice it's literally riding up right through your neck. And before you know,  you know, literally people are having anxiety and panic attacks. So if you were to practice deep breathing and the deep breathing with  imagery and visualization, which I'm not going to go into right now, this will help you to keep your calm where it should be.

So you could stay emotionally regulated.  If you go up or down, if you get hyper focused and you're anxiety ridden, or hypo focused, and you just completely dissociate with everything, neither one of those stages are good. So we want to be aware of our subconscious. We also, interestingly enough we need to differentiate between good friends and toxic friends. 

So a good friend is someone who's going to uplift you, support you, encourage you. We call them the front row people. We really need those people. Those are the ones we can be authentic with, let our hair down and just speak our minds and not feel like we'll be criticized. The importance of a friend relationship is huge because a good friend will help you to be more successful.

They'll be honest, but they won't be brutal.  They'll encourage you. They won't pull you down. If you are in a situation where friends are constantly making fun of you, putting you down, there's an imbalance and there's something wrong.  So the next is we have a lot in this society. I see it all over the place, social anxiety, and that does come from the social media. COVID,  but here is something that I researched with my colleague. We found that financial status, the fact that if you are in an industrialized country and your earnings, your family's earnings are low. And you can't participate because you can't afford it. That affects a lot of people.

People don't realize it. I work with clients who  don't make a large income and they are limited and what they can spend in terms of going out with friends and interacting. But the other aspect of social anxiety  really can be treated with CBT strategies or CBT therapy. If you go to a therapist, we address this all the time.

In fact, I'm so excited to announce that I'm working with a company from Israel that has developed a software program for social skills,  using an avatar who is showing emotions and really she has great answers to your questions or your conversation. And it's all about conversing. So I, as a mentor will be in on this group setting, there'll be several people.

And as they are speaking and learning how to speak,  start a conversation, see it through sequentially. Like otherwise, sometimes my clients have a lack of focus. They may not hear everything. And that's when I teach them techniques such as   take a notepad and pen with you to a date.

It's okay, you just simply say, sometimes people speak faster than I can understand. That covers focus, that covers if you've, you know, cochlear implants. It covers so many different things. Stress.  You may not have anything but stress and you're not hearing the person because your brain shuts down.  So don't be worried about that.

We know that direct communication, especially in marriage, now we're going to start moving to marriage, direct communication with open expression is most important because then we reduce misunderstandings.  So I think that that's a big openness being feeling like you can just say what you need to say in terms of your feelings without fear of judgment. 

Okay.  What's another big obstacle? Judgment.  People compare themselves to other people. They're afraid they're gonna judge me, but they don't know the secret. The secret is that something called common humanity.  We all have some sense of  can I live up to everyone else's expectations or am I fitting in?

Everyone has it. It's a matter of how you deal with it. And because of common humanity, we've learned the people who might look at you fleetingly and have a negative thought about how you're performing or speaking, they forget about it because they're worried about themselves.  Okay. Listening skills, huge.

And I tell clients, listen more, listen to podcasts, take notes because you need to train your brain. Okay. I also find across the board This is something that I grew up on, which was vocabulary.  If you aren't taught vocabulary, you don't take it upon yourself to learn vocabulary and its meaning, you're limited in what you can say. 

And I find that to be a big problem with today's young people. They can't  talk, they can't say anything because they are so limited.  So that's something that people have to take upon themselves. I only have a few more, but emotional support.  You want to be with someone who validates your feelings.

Somebody who can be present. The worst is when you're with a spouse and they're like on the phone, or they're cooking, or the guy's watching sports, or whatever it is. We need the emotional support, we need them to be present because then we felt like, we feel like we're being abandoned. we feel like we're being abandoned. And that's not healthy. So what I speak of is negotiation. Oh, you want to watch a sports show? No problem. Let's make a date. This is the time I need to speak with you.  Make sure that the other person is agreeable and that that works for them too. And again, it sets up a precedence for the fact that you will be able to always make sure each of you get the balance you need to make you feel good in your heart. 

I think  Almost as important as everything else I've mentioned are recognizing the warning signs of a relationship that's not going well. And those are things like lack of respect someone who can't control their behavior. There's no empathy, the person doesn't show empathy to your feelings. 

There's isolation where they don't want you to have friends, they want to keep you all to themselves. Instability, the person doesn't always go to work, or they don't budget well, or they don't keep up to what their responsibilities are, whatever, however you've decided who handles what. And, of course, violence is pretty, pretty  obvious that, you know, you, dealing with someone who's violent.

They may apologize and say, I won't do it. I won't do it. But unless they go through therapy and unless it's really handled.  It's not going to change.

  Hey, before we continue the episode, I want to ask you something. Are you ready to get answers from God directly? Feel more in love with your husband and more supported than ever? Run the business of your dreams without having to sacrifice any other part of your life? That is exactly what my one on one private coaching is for and I want to invite you, just you and me, For a free deep dive discovery call.

This is a 60 minute free call where I ask you lots of questions And we extract the three main things that are holding you back I then put together a personalized plan for you where I create a roadmap of recommendations With practical steps  the call is free and so valuable in itself. So go book yours today Now back to the show  

right.  I love what you're saying. I think we should talk about the, the last part, which is so important. These are the red flags that you should look at when you are dating, because You can save yourself from so much so much if you just stay Open and aware and a lot of people, you know in the dating scene We're so excited and we fall in love and we're all so like blinded by all the like, you know Gushy and mushy and oh, he's so cute and like all these things are just gonna work themselves out And sometimes people will come and tell you, Hey, I see some things going on, or you'll notice something and you'll just  dismiss it because you don't want to believe it. 

And the most important skill out of all the skills that are so important that you mentioned is being able to trust that God has a plan and he's got you and you are not going to lose out quote unquote If you stand up for yourself and make sure that you're safe and that you're taken care of right? so  That fear of like yeah, but if I say something now, then i'm going to mess up my future It's like no no No, if you say something now, you're going to set yourself up for an amazing future right a lot of people who don't say something because they feel like You Oh, it's not nice.

I don't want to judge or whatever. One more. There's such pressure in terms of you know, a young woman finding a husband.  You're not acceptable in your community.  You're an outcast in a sense. You feel like an outcast. So I think that the pressure is causing part of the problems of not looking at or avoiding war, just saying, it's okay, I get it, he has this,  I'll work with it. 

Right, and you know, honestly, listen, if you, if you do want to work with it, if you're totally cool about working with it, that's fine. The problem comes when you're not ready to work with it and you're just going with it because you feel the pressure And I agree with you. There is a lot of pressure And the pressure gets worse when you don't lean on god when you think it's all in your hands And you're in control and you need to make it work because if not, then you are a failure No, my friends, chill out.

God has got you. He's right here right now with you in this and he has a plan. So sometimes it's really important to trust all the time. It's really important to trust God, to trust the people who you who you trust to tell you. Hey, I don't think this is a good idea. And as annoying as that sounds, you have to go with it and you have to trust it. 

Now, of course, you know, I think that  at every stage  there is a chance for you to be, Oh, okay. I see something that I need to work on. I see something that's going on.  Turn to someone, get help. You're not alone. You're never alone. Get proper help. I want to tell you, I repeat a story I just heard from a young woman.

She was living in the big metropolitan area and so her problem there was that she was isolated because  in big metropolitan areas it's harder to find a group of friends. And in her situation, she moved to a small town and she's probably about 26, 27.  The powers that be there, the rebe'em or the teachers or whomever know her.

started to put pressure on her. So there's internal pressure and there's external pressure. So she called me because I could hear she is so affected by the external pressure it has caused chaos. emotionally for her. So I explained to her that one must be authentic and true to themselves, no matter what.

And like you said, you know, God will definitely help us with that. But that's huge. If you can be authentic and know yourself well, you'll make less mistakes.  Okay? So you'll have that self confidence to know, okay, so if this guy doesn't work, Someone else will come along.  Okay. And we talked before about the belief in God to the point where we say that  he rules the world.

He handles everything. We are responsible to do our part. But in the end, We have to look at everything and say,  God meant it to be this way, whether it really works for us or not. There's a reason we may not know the reason, but we have to trust in God enough to say that it's his doing and I have to go with the flow. 

It is what it is.  Radical acceptance is what we call it.  Yes. Yes.  And sometimes we mistakenly think that we know. Right. So I have a friend who tells the story about going to the doctor's office and she got her daughter, she got in the car, she brought all the paperwork, she needs this one piece of paper from him to be signed for, you know, for the process to continue.

And she goes and she waits online and you know, blah, blah, blah. She wastes all her time till he finally lets her in and says, no, I can't give you this paper.  It's not my department or whatever. And she walks out of there going. What?  I came for this paper. This was the goal. What's going on?

And on the way home, she says, I'm thinking to myself, here I am. I think I came for the paper, but God really knows I came to learn patience. You know, I came to sit down for a whole hour with my daughter and wait and wait and wait  just to find out that it was for nothing, quote unquote. But I think I didn't get the goal.

God got the exact thing I needed. Right? So, knowing, knowing that we are not always, you know, exact to what is happening. We don't understand behind the scenes what's going on.  I agree. 100%. I've been on a journey myself, both professionally, as well as my own individual sense of belief where I went from, you know, Growing up in a very  mixed home, a modern orthodox and reform.

Go figure that one. That was a tough one. And that means that my father was not he wasn't a Sabbath observer. He was not an observant man at all. And I came from there, and you see that  I'm covering my hair. I went from there slowly, slowly, slowly growing.  And these things, as I went along, I recognized more and more, Oh, right, it's not going the way I had planned.

Oh, God must have a much better plan for me, or He's helping me avert something that's not going to be good for me. That takes What does that take? Is that belief or is that just recognizing? I think it's growth. I think it comes with maturity and growth and realizing  that, you know, as children, we needed that instant gratification.

As adults, we're looking for it, but then we have to look under the layers.  What sits there and what's helping me and when you feel really good about yourself when you come to that self discovery that really was about patients and then you implement, you don't just think about it. You say, okay, I got to start implementing the concept and using patients.

That's huge.  That's what it's all about. You know, it's similar to having those negative, basically she had a negative thought. Oh, my gosh, I went all this way. And we talk about those negative thoughts. How do we stop and turn them into a neutral thought? Because I believe everyone is into positive psychology.

My philosophy is you can't go from negative, snap your finger and go to positive. There's got to be a gradual change. And I teach my clients  little baby steps. Every little baby step is a fulfillment. She made a giant leap with that one. And that's, that's great.  Now the other is to be self aware and mindful.

So she keeps being mindful of her behavior, she will become more patient. Because that's what the brain will do for her.  Right. It's, it's beautiful. You know, first of all, she did have help. She was speaking with Rabbi David Aaron when he told her, you know, that you think that you went for one thing, but really you're going for something else.

So it's always good to have good mentors and good people around you. Like you said, they bring you up and help you, you know, sort of step up your own thinking, which is something I believe in very much. Make sure you surround yourself with the right people. And even if you have to. Pay for that.

It's worth it because it will shortcut the way to getting  where you want to be an investment in yourself, you invest in yourself. You are the most important  part of, you know, who you are. So, so you need to make sure that you take care of yourself because. in a few, maybe in a year, you'll  be able to improve so much that you've saved yourself 30, 40 years of pain and suffering, which isn't necessary.

And today's newest, you know, ideologies of CBT strategy, DBT, dialectical behavioral strategy, which is, you know, the synthesis  of the opposing thoughts. That's basically what I call neutral. So these are phenomenal. This is, you know, this is great. And I think today what we did was we took what the Torah scholars said and we just basically organized it and put it in out in a practical way.

So therefore we were able to give them the credit, but definitely give credit to today's, scholars who are, who are figuring this out. So it's effective. Yeah. I think, you know, what's beautiful is that Everything is recycled, but everything is brought to you by  someone who is trying to make it more palatable because each generation needs to hear it a different way.

And you know, where we are now is not where we used to be,  society wise and just culturally. So it's very helpful to have the people who are speaking your language, repeat the things that you know are based on. You know, your sources, but are being said in a way that you can swallow, right?  I point to the fact that every single person is unique.

We are all individuals. So fascinatingly enough, my curriculum is literally, there's a, you know, like an overriding arch of what my curriculum is. Every single client  gets different information from me based on their particular needs. If I were to just keep throwing out the same thing for everybody, it wouldn't work.

So I have to take into consideration, get to know them, and, you know, after so many years, you do size people up and recognize what is going on, even if they don't know it themselves. And let's go back to the, I really want to talk about this and direct it to parents. I do two consultations for free.

One for the parent, one for the actual client.  Often the parent will say to me, Oh no, he's wonderful. High, high functioning. And he doesn't speak to himself negatively. I said, okay.  And explain to them that that's not really the case, but okay. You know, I'll speak to your son, daughter, whatever. And I'll figure it out. 

Every time  I criticize myself, yeah, I'm my own worst enemy, and they don't do it. Why don't they show the parents they're masking? They're masking because they want to fit in.  They want to feel like, you know, they don't want to disappoint the parents. They want to feel like they're like everyone else. Some of them went through a lot of bullying. 

Difficulty in social relationships. So they didn't have those fundamental the education in how to be social. So when you start to be 20 to 40, and you are trying to learn the methods, so therefore, you You're really saying a lot of negative things, and those negative things can come from  when you're a child and you didn't do so great on a test that the teacher might have just rolled her eyes very softly, but the child sees it.

Or the parents might say, I wish you were just like your older sibling. Okay. I myself went through that experience. I don't know. I guess I had a strong character because my father, but teachers would say to me, my sister was is amazing. She's just extremely intelligent. She's very knowledgeable, and she's so capable.

So the teachers would say to me in elementary school. What your Rachel sister. Really? Like, and I would look at them and say, Yeah, she's my sister. Like, because I thought I had a cool, I do have a cool sister. And then the other thing was, I didn't take it personally, because I had a sense of me from the time as a child.

That's, I look back and I said, That's amazing.  I had quite a few knocks because of situational circumstances in my life from the time I was a child, even with I have a brother who has mental illness and he was in the same grade as me from K to 12.  So his mental illness was very noticeable.

We were in co ed schools and so we were never put in the same class, but I did get labeled, Oh, you're a crazy Harold sister.  And I would look at them, and I mean this, I would look at the other student and say, what are you crazy? He's a runner. He's so handsome. He can outdo all of you. Like, I only saw the good in my brother because to me, he was terrific.

The fact that he did some things, okay.  You know, that was him. That was his uniqueness. When it came to be after 12th grade and we realized just  how ill he was you know, things did  progress in terms of getting him help. But fascinatingly enough, at my 40th reunion of high school,  the adult students, now students who became adults, came over to me and said, we want to apologize. 

They had it in their head for all those years. They recognized what they did that wasn't so appropriate. And I would say, it's fine. And I told my brothers, he felt good, but I simply remember myself just feeling I'm a strong person. I'm going to deal with all these things. And it did come from lessons my father taught me.

You know, he really did. My father was very, we grew up military. So  we really, really, he was Marine, but I guess  he just kept that going. So we really were trained to be strong, you know, like things were told to us.  Right. I think that's one of the skills that is just so important is that self, like you said, the three pillars, right?

The way that you can stand up for yourself. Self confidence is really, to me, very important. Yeah, not let it in, you know? One of the things that we learned in high school is like, be the rubber ducky and just let it slide. Oh, I said that in my book.  Yeah, my book talks about not the rubber ducky. It talks about Teflon.

Yeah. Wrap your body in Teflon, Teflon. Let's go the egg in the pan. If you get strong enough and you feel like you're wrapped in that, you know, super cape of, you know, Teflon, then you can withstand a lot. So just to jump in there a little bit, there's something called the windows of tolerance. Look at it like a rectangular box.

The window of tolerance is a certain size, that box. So. The more you train yourself, the more you're trained and you can widen that window of tolerance, the less outside external things bother you and the less internal things bother you. It's huge. But that takes well self awareness and mindfulness understanding What do I have to do to maintain my window of tolerance?

Yes Yes, you know what spray yourself with teflon spray before walking into a social not literally not literally No But you know, I just imagine it. Can you do that? Can you take a pause and just be intentional? You know that i'm going into You wherever place, and I know people are going to say X, Y, and Z.

And I have a choice. Do I let it in or do I let it slide? And one of the things that I teach is, you know, get yourself a punch card, like a mental punch card. And just keep track of how many people ask the same dumb question.  Oh, you're not married yet. Oh, Oh, you haven't, you know, moved to Israel yet.

What are you waiting for? What's wrong with you or whatever. You know,  when my niece broke  her ankle  or twisted it really badly. And she had  a cast and she was in crutches and a wheelchair or whatever, trying to get through. I said, get yourself a punch card. Everybody's going to say, how did it happen?

Or even worse, how did you do that? As if it's her fault, right? As if she did something to do it.  And you just say, Oh, there's another one. And come home to your mom and say, you know, today I got four punches in my punch card, you know, and the next day you're going to get seven and it's going to be fine because.

You know what? People are asking because they have nothing else to say, you know, it's a lack of exactly lack of communication. They don't, they speak small stuff because that's what, you know, we had a famous quote I believe it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, you know, people who speak like, you know, gossiping and all that, they have small minds.

 The big mind is the person who speaks on an intelligent level. But I wanted to just address that with regards to the thought that You know, the punch card and pausing. Pausing is huge. We talk about pausing all the time. And I add to that, during a pause, take deep breaths. Imagine what you're about to go through.

Imagine the steps that are going to occur. So, if you're mentally more prepared, and I'm going to bring up a very good story about that.  When you're mentally prepared, you're not as stressed, You might come up with a better answer, not just take it, but come up with something snappy, which will help people to realize without insulting anyone, but be assertive, not aggressive, be assertive where you're putting yourself first.

Say, you know, Oh, so nice of you to want me to be married. I happen to be concentrating on my career right now. I'll get there. Something just to, you know, to numb them a little because they're, they're really asking outrageous questions. But what I wanted to say is that it's been proven, sports teams specifically do a lot of visualization.

So they did a test. They took one team and put them out in the field for five days. The other one was out in the field two days and did visualization for three days. Which one won?  Of course the visualization. Of course the visualization because you can see things. that you're not prepared for when you're in the field.

You can start to because if you have experience. So visualization is huge. So I also last, I forgot to mention in terms of just everything, people find life overwhelming and then they don't want to do anything.  I add two to that. Two, two suggestions. One,  whatever you're doing, if you can put on headphones and listen to music or a podcast while you're doing it, you're teaching the brain that what I think is tough, what I'm telling my brain is tough, I can't do it.

Well, the music is going to off balance it. It's going to say, I can't, I don't like doing it, but now I'm having fun doing it. I've taught my clients to dance while they're, I'm very much into dancing, very much while they're doing their organization of their room. Only 15 minutes.  10 minutes, whatever you can tolerate, then set your timer for two minutes for a break, then make the decision.

Can I go back to that or do I want to move on to something else? You know what I did this morning?  I put on a song. I said, I'm doing a one song cleanup. As soon as the song is done, I am done cleaning up. You don't know how fast I worked.  I got so much done in one  song because you wanted to make sure you heard the whole song.

Because I knew  that I'm not going to be there forever. So I just had to sprint through it and I started getting things out of the way and moving things around and putting things in their place and just making. I had a goal. I had to make sure that, you know, the couch was clear. The floor was clear, whatever it was.

I took one area I knew was doable and I put on the song and I just did it. And then my daughter came in the middle of the song and wanted to pause the song. I'm like, no, don't pause the song. I think, I think that's major. What you just talked about is really important because of the fact that you are smiling.

You feel energetic because you finished. You, you accomplish something and then the brain says, Wow, that wasn't bad at all. I can do it again.  So that's an important thing. The structuring of time, chunking it,  like you said, just don't make it so overwhelming. You're only harming yourself and you're not going to do it anyway.

So then turn it into that kind of a project where it's fun. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah.  Our time is up, but I just want to keep talking because you're so awesome. You know, I'm looking forward for your book because I do think it's full of amazing skills. Let me tell you the name so you know what it is.

Where is it? Okay, I don't even know where I have it anymore. It's Navigating Adulthood.  A Neurodivergent's Guide to Financial Literacy, Higher Educational Life Skills. And again because my colleague and I are both dealing with neurodivergent individuals, that's why it says neurodivergent in there. But the truth is, when you read it, it's for everybody.

It really is for everybody. I'm very excited about it. And hopefully it's very little compared to what we could discuss. So we can wait for feedback, what people want to hear. I mean, while you were going through the skills, I was saying each one of these could become a book, right?

Each one of these can become a whole podcast episode or even a whole season, because there's so much to say. And there really is so much to delve into when you go deep into it. But I think that overall, it's just, you know, really good to see that there are skills out there that you can get yourself to a different situation.

If you're willing to put in the, you know, slight work and the consistency, but it doesn't have to be hard. Cause like you said, you make it into different games and different approaches and Worksheets and whatever it can be just doable, right? It's something that may be slightly hard, but it doesn't have to break you.

And  that's the point I want to bring is that when you, sign up for something. You're signing up for growth. And as long as you have someone who is going to chunk it down for you and walk you through it and hold your hand, you're going to succeed.  Well, we actually have a podcast, Julie Dorsinkfeld and myself we have a get it done, a guideline for the neurodivergent individual.

And just like you said, step by step we are discussing all these different elements and how the techniques and all that. Very interesting about her.  She has this program called My Life Tutor. It's her company, and in My Life Tutor, she helps the college student to succeed through college because she's very much into higher education for everybody.

So that's her thing. I'm into, you know,  the three pillars and making sure people are emotionally regulated. So we, we bounce off each other very, very well. I love that. Okay. So Debbie, how can people get in touch with you? How can they turn to you and get help for themselves or their children or people they know?

The best is to contact me through my website. So I'm going to actually spell it out. It's organize, O R G A N I Z E, the letter U and the number for life. com. organizeuf4life.com  I love it. I love it. I'm very excited. This is great. I love talking to you. It's great.  Thank you for being here. Thank you for being such a wealth of information and giving us all of your knowledge and your skills.

I'm looking forward to seeing the repeats inside the book, because I think it's fascinating to watch how with very little steps, you know, just trying to teach your brain. To do things differently. Thank awareness. Think  I love it. I love it. And thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. You guys are awesome.

Make sure you come back next week for another amazing episode with more amazing guests. And don't forget to be connected for real. 

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