The Plus One Theory
The Plus One Theory Podcast explores how small, intentional actions can create big, lasting impacts in our personal and professional lives. Each episode features inspiring guests sharing their experiences with kindness, resilience, and the transformative power of doing just one more—The Plus One Theory in action.
The Plus One Theory
Episode 12: Small Steps, Big Changes: How to Motivate, Maintain, and Move in Your Life
Life isn’t about juggling endless tasks to perfection but rather finding balance through meaningful, small actions. In this episode, we are joined by Charles Coulter, a licensed professional counselor with extensive experience in helping individuals and couples navigate their personal challenges. We delve deeply into the concept of balance in life and why maintaining equilibrium is crucial for well-being.
Charles offers insights into Pam's unique 3M Strategy: Motivate, Maintain, Move, which serves as a roadmap for making significant yet manageable changes in daily life. Discover how motivation can spark initial steps toward growth and how to sustain momentum without hitting burnout. Explore the necessary adaptability that comes with movement, understanding when to pivot and embrace new paths to improve your relationships, career, or personal health.
Throughout our conversation, we tackle vital questions about how deeply entrenched beliefs from childhood can often dictate our current thoughts and feelings, shaping the way we interact with ourselves and others. Charles emphasizes that true balance isn’t about perfection but about creating sustainable habits through intentional choices, recognizing that one small step leads to significant change over time.
Join us for this enlightening discussion that promises not only practical strategies but also profound insights into living a balanced life. We encourage you to reflect on your individual journey and recognize the power of the small actions you take each day. Interested in living a more balanced life? Tune in, subscribe, and let’s embark on this journey together!
Looking for a marriage counselor? Contact Charles Coulter at The Best Marriage!
Check out Half Size Me with Heather Robertson!
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Are you someone who believes in the power of kindness, resilience, and intentional growth? Do you have a story about how small, meaningful steps have made a difference in your life or career?
I’d love to invite you to share your journey on The Plus One Theory Podcast!
This podcast is all about exploring how we can apply the Plus One Theory to create ripples of positivity and purpose in our personal and professional lives. I’m especially excited to feature guests who work in heart-centered careers—nurses, teachers, counselors, nonprofit leaders, caregivers, or anyone who dedicates their energy to helping others.
Your story could inspire listeners who are navigating their own challenges and looking for ways to take that next small step forward. Whether you’ve used kindness to overcome adversity, found strength in vulnerability, or applied intentional action to make an impact in your community, I want to hear from you!
Interested? Here’s How to Reach Out:
- Email me with a brief introduction about yourself and your story.
- Let me know how the Plus One Theory has played a role in your life or career.
Let’s work together to inspire others and create a ripple effect of kindness and resilience. I can’t wait to hear your story!
Share this with someone who inspires you...
Hi, there, it's me, pam, and welcome back to another episode of the Plus One Theory Podcast. I am so excited for today's episode because we have a very special guest, charles Coulter. He is an incredible, faith-based marriage counselor who has helped so many people find balance in their relationships, their careers and their personal lives. Today, we're diving into something every single one of us struggles with Balance. Yes, maintaining balance in our lives, whether it's balancing relationships, career, mental health or personal growth. It can feel so overwhelming, and so I came up with a strategy the 3M strategy. It would help us all remember how to apply these things in our everyday lives. Things in our everyday lives there's motivate, maintain and move. This simple approach can help you create sustainable changes in your relationships, your mindset and your overall well-being. We're also going to talk about why balance isn't about perfection. It's about pacing yourself, setting healthy boundaries and taking intentional small steps forward. And who better to discuss this with than Charles Coulter? He's worked with couples, families and individuals to help them create lasting change, and he's joining us today to share how small, incremental steps can improve our relationships and our overall emotional health. So stay tuned, because we have a lot of powerful insights coming your way. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Before we get started, though, I want to take a second to explain what the plus one theory is. For all those who might be new to this podcast, this theory is not about doing more work, overextending yourself or exhausting yourself to prove something. It's about small, intentional steps that create real, lasting change in your life. Let's think about this in terms of relationships. If your marriage feels strained, it's tempting to think that one grand gesture will fix everything, but the reality is it's the small daily choices an extra kind word, one more moment of patience, one act of gratitude that build a foundation for a stronger relationship. This applies to every area of life your health, your mindset, your career, your faith. One small action layered on top of another compounds into something powerful, and today we're going to use this 3M framework motivate, maintain and move to explore how small shifts in our relationships, communication and emotional well-being can lead to big breakthroughs. And we'll be talking with Charles Coulter to explore how this applies to marriages, partnerships and personal growth. So let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about this 3M strategy. This framework is something I use in my own life and I truly believe it can help anyone struggling with balance and consistency, which is me a lot. Okay, the first one. The first M is motivate. This is about finding what drives you, what excites you and what inspires you to take action. Motivation isn't about waiting for the right moment. It's about taking small, intentional steps to build that momentum, whether in relationships, career or personal growth.
Speaker 1:Motivation starts with one small action. And the second M is maintain. This is where most people struggle. It's not enough to get started. You have to find ways to keep going without burning out. So many people make the mistake of trying to do too much too fast, only to give up when they can't sustain it.
Speaker 1:Maintenance is the key to long-term success. Okay, one of my favorite podcasts that I listen to every single day is Heather Robertson's Half Size Me podcast. She teaches that maintenance is a skill, just like weight loss is a skill. If you can maintain what you have today, then you can tweak and adjust to improve. The plus one theory fits perfectly with this, because it reminds us that we don't need drastic changes. We just need to keep moving forward, one small step at a time. And finally, the third M is for move. This is about adaptability and growth. If something isn't working, we pivot, we adjust and we keep moving forward. Movement can mean different things for different people, whether it's physical movement, emotional growth or stepping into a new opportunity. But the key is you don't stay stuck. These three pillars motivate, maintain and move work together to create lasting change. Motivate, maintain and move work together to create lasting change. When you apply them with the plus one theory, you don't feel overwhelmed because you're just focusing on that.
Speaker 2:One extra step All right, you ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited. Okay, me too. Okay, hey, charles, welcome to the Plus One Theory podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, pam, I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, we're very fortunate to have you and your expertise with us today. I've been looking forward to this so much, because a lot of what we talk about with the plus one theory revolves around a lot of things that I'm sure you deal with on a regular basis with your patients, right? But before we get started, I just wanted to tell the listeners a little bit about you, if that's okay.
Speaker 2:That'd be great.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I know that you are a licensed professional counselor in San. Antonio, Texas, and you earned your bachelor's degree from Texas Tech University.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And a master's degree in community counseling from St Mary's University. Yes, and it says here. You began your career as a youth pastor, which is very impressive, counseling teens and families in a lay position. So since 2003, you've been in private practice, where your clients describe you as both empathetic and straightforward in your approach. You're committed to helping people uncover their root beliefs that drive negative behaviors, empowering them to make meaningful, lasting changes, and your greatest reward as a therapist is seeing people find freedom from their past. I love that. I love that so much so you met what. What on earth it spurred you on into counseling? Why did you want to pursue that?
Speaker 2:well. So I felt called to the ministry youth when I was a junior in high school and I really loved being a youth minister and I know some people get into the ministry because they want to ultimately be the pastor and that was never even in front of me. I just loved being a youth minister and seeing and working with students. My mentor was a youth minister but he was also a licensed professional counselor and so that was inspiring for me and he helped me through all of my trauma growing up and drama and just family stuff and I was inspired by that and so eventually here I am.
Speaker 1:Wow. So I am with you on that, because even in doing this podcast and in writing my book From the Piney Woods, we're basically we've lived it. And then you try to figure out ways how to live life with that inside of you. And so then you begin studying and trying to figure it out. But you went a lot further. You educated yourself in it so that you could help others. You went a lot further you educated yourself in it so that you could help others. I did not go that far, but that's okay. But I still try to help people with what happened to me, the pain. I just want to use what happened to me and turn it into something good.
Speaker 2:For sure To take the road that we've been down and then being able to help people learn from the things that we've learned along the way and maybe they get it sooner and they find the freedom. I want people to find the freedom from the past and from the wounds that happened to them.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk a little more specific. So you are a Christian marriage counselor.
Speaker 2:So this is a good question, because oftentimes people are like well, are you like a Christian counselor or you're a professional counselor? Well, I am a licensed professional counselor and my walk and my relationship with my heavenly father is very important to me, and so it is impossible for a counselor to separate their background and just walk into a room and just I'm just going to be the professional counselor. So instead of trying to separate those things, I'm just very upfront with people and let them know like this is who I am, and so I'm not there to push my Christian or spiritual beliefs down their throat. But most people find me knowing that I am a licensed professional counselor but I'm a Christian, and so they ask questions and, in a way, so they could find out well, how much do you include scripture and your relationship with God in your counseling? And many people that find me or choose me that they want that.
Speaker 1:Wow, I know it's a hard place to be because you don't want to just target the faith community. Hard place to be because you don't want to just target the faith community. I mean, my daughter was one that told me she goes mom, how am I supposed to shine God's light in very well lit places? You know, we need to shine God's light in dark places too, and that means people. Maybe they don't even know Christ. So right.
Speaker 2:Some people want to know okay, I'm a believer, and they just want to know that I go to church and that matters to me. And some people want me to go as far as praying with them and using Scripture, and so I'm comfortable in doing both and I don't want to push that On anyone. Yeah, no, I'm not trying to push it on anyone. Yeah, no, I'm not trying to push it on anyone.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a fine line. It's a boundary that you have to figure out, and I'm sure it's different with every family or every couple that you treat.
Speaker 2:True, everyone's background is different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you see families as well.
Speaker 2:I do see families as well. I don't see children just by themselves. I will see teenagers, as long as that teenager is willing to and is ready to do what we call talk therapy. If I'm asking them 50 questions in a session, that means they're not ready and I just let mom and dad know, hey, like you're going to waste your time and your money because they're not ready for that. So I do a lot of relationship counseling their past wounds and their past family trauma and drama, things that are impacting their relationship and so it helps them grow individually and then, ultimately, their marriage seems to grow as well.
Speaker 1:It fits right in with this little strategy that I have put together for myself, but for our listeners as well, because my goal is to discuss whatever it is we're going to talk about. That involves the plus one theory and how to apply it in your life. But I really want to. I want it to stick Right, I want it to stay with you so that you think about it on a regular basis. So my three in strategy involves motivation and maintenance, which are maintain, and then move or movement. And so if I remind myself in my own life about, okay, am I motivated to do this with the plus one theory in mind? But motivation doesn't happen without inspiration. But you know, inspire is an I, not a letter M.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying I understand what you're saying, like the process when people learn about their wounds and how those wounds and hurts from childhood are affecting them, because I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist and so the theory says that when someone changes their mind or the way that they think about things, then ultimately their behaviors and thoughts will begin to change.
Speaker 1:Okay. So my question to you is once you realize what those behaviors are, you know, how do you, how do you encourage or motivate them to start applying whatever techniques you're teaching them? I mean, how do you inspire them to do that?
Speaker 2:How do I? So? What you're asking me is, how do I inspire them to, to make those behavior changes? Well, the thing that I focus on is a person's beliefs and thoughts that are affecting their behaviors. So kind of basic psychology that I was taught was beliefs. Our beliefs lead to our thoughts. Our thoughts then lead to actions and feelings. Okay, okay, okay. So we have beliefs, which is the engine of the train and is pulling our thoughts and actions, and then feelings tends to always be the caboose Right.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying basically let me make sure I understand is that action occurs before motivation, because they're already implementing what their belief system is. They're already living their lives. But obviously there's some kind of issue going on, either in their relationship or with themselves, because they're acting on their belief system and what their feelings and emotions are. But the motivation has to come with help.
Speaker 2:Yes. So some people will come into my office and say, okay, well, what happened to me at 10 years old I can't change. So all right, let's move on. We don't need to talk about that, right? Therapists never say that we love to talk about childhood, right? We always say let's talk about your childhood.
Speaker 1:Every therapist I've ever had, has asked me that.
Speaker 2:And thus people want to, especially men, are like I don't want to talk about my childhood. However, we can learn a great deal about our belief system because we generally pick that up from between the ages of 6 and 12. Belief system being what you think about yourself, the things that you learn. You learn something about yourself at seven. Your childhood self thought oh I'm, I'm going to be successful or I'm insignificant. I am, I matter or no one cares about me. And those are the belief. When we use the word beliefs, that's what therapists are talking about. What are, what are your beliefs, your internal thoughts about yourself? Because we live out of those things and our actions and our feelings are driven by those things.
Speaker 1:Well, you and I have had conversations before and you have said to me many times Pam, you know, stop believing the lies, don't believe those lies about yourself. You've got to stop believing them and start seeing that you are worthy. So Right.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about, when you say you're worthy, those are things that we learn about from what our heavenly father says about us. We learn about from what our Heavenly Father says about us, okay. And it doesn't mean that this stuff doesn't apply if you're not a believer. It doesn't mean that, but it just means that you would find corrective thoughts from different places. Okay, okay, like your value. Different places Okay Okay, like your value, like I believe I'm valuable because my heavenly father tells me I'm valuable. He has a plan and a purpose for me. But someone who's not a believer, it doesn't mean they don't have value, but they find their value from other places from their spouse, from the people they work with, the people that they live with, the people that are around them. Those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:And I'm a firm believer that value holds a lot of weight with loving someone. Because if you figure out what someone's values are and then love them for those values and support those values, that's when love starts happening. You know, love is at the foundation of everything, is my belief.
Speaker 2:Well, we can't love other people unless we love ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm sure you see that a lot too. So you know, when you do marriage counseling and you get a couple that's, you know, struggling in the relationship and they come in and you already know that you know one person you need to see privately, I mean, is that does that happen frequently, where you start treating them?
Speaker 2:individually first and then move on into the couple relationship, or how does that work? Or how does that work. Lots of times I try to keep them together because it's so helpful for your spouse to see what these hurts, and out of those hurts came beliefs, when they start to see those things. Many times those things that they share may have never been shared with their spouse, even though they've been married 20 or 30 years.
Speaker 1:It's real easy to lose that connection. With no communication, there's no connection and then there's distance. So is that the common thing that's happening with relationships? Do? You see a lot more of the same type of stuff now compared to, say, 10 years ago. I mean, are things different in these couple relationships with how they're connecting, how they're communicating with one another, or is it all pretty much the same?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think it's different. I think that the people's wounds that they have from childhood still affect who they are in their relationship. The thing that has changed is I have a better understanding of it and see it clearer for what it is, and I hope I do a better job of communicating with them how that's affecting them, how they can see their past and how it's affecting their motivation in the relationship.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. There is the motivation. So once you take them there and then they have this realization and they start doing things to to improve themselves individually and also in the relationship, then comes the part where they have to maintain that change. And this brings up my big I couldn't wait to ask you this about coping. So a counselor job you can never really make the trauma or the pain of whatever they're going through from childhood say to whatever's occurred to them. I mean whatever's happened to them, so it never goes away. It's my question Does it ever? Are you ever completely healed, or do you just teach us how to cope with what's going on inside of us?
Speaker 2:It doesn't go away right. Our past is our past and the wounds that happened to us. What changes? Is what we believe about ourselves or don't believe about ourselves. That brings healing and freedom from the past. So we don't change our past, but we can be free from how that past affects us.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, I agree wholeheartedly, because that happened to me personally, you know, and I even learned how to turn the pain into like fuel energy suppose you were discovered, you had a childhood hurt when you were seven years old and things happened to you and you started to believe about yourself that you were not loved or you were not important. And so then, out of that, those things would affect your relationship when you're 40 or 50 years old. Because if you think I'm not important, then you could ultimately start to think that, well, what I say doesn't matter. You might start to think, well, my spouse is ultimately going to leave me because I'm not important, I'm not significant. What I, as simple as I might, have a hard time remembering people's names because I don't think they think I'm important. So if they don't think I'm important, they don't see me as valuable. Then I might not invest enough energy into even learning people's names.
Speaker 2:So here's something that I find that's motivating for people when we discover the hurt at seven years old. Well, so we started to believe something about ourselves when we were seven, and so that, and many times the seven right, the seven-year-old, the six-year-old their evaluation of what happened and how it, what it was saying about them, is not accurate, but it's what they believed. It's what they believed their seven-year-old self is not. They're not talking to mom and dad saying, hey, no one thinks I'm significant. That's not what they're saying, but it's an internal thing that they begin to believe. And so the way that's affecting them today, at 40, is that no one's pointed that out to them.
Speaker 2:And the seven-year-old self, the seven-year-old Charles, is following Charles around and saying no one cares about you, no one cares about you. And so one of the things that is motivating for people is you know, pam, if a seven-year-old little boy came in here and told you about your shoes or the way you did your hair, you would go, hey, you're in the wrong room. You would usher them out. But we don't do that. We allow our seven-year-old self to come in and speak to us about core beliefs, about who we are, and it's very motivating when I realize, oh my gosh, I'm letting a seven-year-old speak to me about my value.
Speaker 1:Right. It seems kind of ridiculous if you step away from and look in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't let a seven-year-old come in and tell me how to do right, how to run my household or run my business Right, but I'm letting that seven-year-old speak to the very core of who I am, and so it's motivating to find out. Oh what. I don't want that to happen anymore and I'm going to correct that thought.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes, and you heal the child and the inner child.
Speaker 2:Yes, here's what's true about me. Here's what other people say. Here's what my heavenly father says. Here's what my spouse says. This is what I'm going to live out of.
Speaker 1:Right. I just love that because that's I think it affects a lot of people when they don't realize that it's their inner child that's leading things around. Yes, and they wonder why their life is like living a life like a seven-year-old would.
Speaker 2:And obviously that's going to affect how we operate in our work. It certainly operates, or affects how we operate with our spouse, also with our children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like an endless. It's a vicious cycle. Yeah, it's just like an. It's a vicious cycle, and I guess that's what people mean when they say you've got to break the cycle of either abuse or believing the lies about yourself or whatever it is. But it's usually learned from somewhere.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:So that brings me to the second M in my little strategy Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance is a skill, I believe, and it's so necessary in all aspects of our lives, not just our own inner battles, inner struggles, um, and belief systems, but you know like, and even with our health. But you know, losing weight, for example, let's use that. A lot of people say, oh, I do the yo-yo dieting thing where I gain weight and then I lose it and then I gain it back, and that's not maintaining. And there's a lot of people that do pretty severe things to their bodies, inject stuff, you know, to lose the weight, because they just can't seem to figure out how to lose the weight and keep it off. In reality, we must learn how to maintain our weight first and then apply the special diet or a special medication or whatever it is we want to do. But I'm sure that it's the same way. How do you feel about that in relationships? I mean maintaining what they have started to implement, to improve.
Speaker 2:I suppose I've never used the word maintain, but I see where you're coming from. The way I would apply that in therapy is that, as we talked about the seven-year-old little boy speaking to me about who I am, all of that is so subconscious. We've done it for so long that we don't catch the things that your seven-year-old self is telling you. I have people name their childhood right Like little Bobby, whatever you want to do childhood right Like little Bobby, whatever, whatever you want to do, that right. But little Bobby has been telling them things subconsciously and so maintenance comes from catching the subconscious thoughts that come in from little Bobby.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so I have to be able to recognize those little statements that I make about myself. That's where maintenance starts to happen. If I do not effectively catch those subconscious thoughts, then I won't make long-term change.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and you know how I got to. Maintenance with myself is journaling, because I would journal whatever it was. Maybe the seven-year-old me was telling me something and I would write about it and then a week later review it with my counselor or myself and I would say, gosh, that sounds so seven year old-ish.
Speaker 2:I can't believe I said those things about myself. I can't believe I was thinking that.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people don't even want to, to think about journaling. They think they it's uncomfortable for them or it's just another step that they don't think will be useful. But I'm telling you, if you can look back I'd say a year later, after journaling consistently, you will see a pattern.
Speaker 2:People do have a difficult time starting to journal for sure it saved me, it saved my life. But it very much is helpful because you'll start to catch some of the subconscious things that you're telling yourself, because you're writing them down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because you said, sometimes we don't even recognize it, we don't even realize how that's impacting us.
Speaker 2:And also, didn't you find? When you wrote it down, you may have been feeling it on a scale of one to 10. You might've been feeling it at eight or nine, but after you wrote it down and read over it once or twice, maybe now you're only feeling it at a four or five. It has a way of pulling some of the emotion, the emotional energy that we have, out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we use the motivation to start something we really don't want to do, but we're going to see if it works. Right, that's what I always ask myself. Okay, I don't think this is really useful for me, but I'm going to try it anyway, because someone is telling me that it will be useful. So I'll give it a try and then I'll realize, wow, this is working. And then I'll realize, wow, this is working.
Speaker 2:This is helping me.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is helping, and so I continue. I maintain that. So what happens after maintenance is move, and I don't mean physically move your body. What do you think?
Speaker 2:movement would mean in the counseling world? Well, movement means that it is speaking to me about improvement. Improvement about how I see myself, the way excuse me, the way I live, because my thoughts about myself have changed.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, the movement is just moving. Now you can move the needle, so to speak. Now you're maintaining. You can move the needle, so to speak. Now you're maintaining you're no longer getting worse and making your whole life just miserable, or your marriage or your whatever relationship you're in with your significant other. You know it's not getting worse anymore, it's staying the same, but there's still some brokenness inside of you, and so you must now make effort or take movement to improve.
Speaker 2:Exactly the way I would illustrate that is from my own life. When I graduated from I was about to graduate from St Mary's with my master's I was being offered a job in the panhandle which would mean we would move away from San Antonio, which my in-laws who live in San Antonio did not want, my wife did not want. But I internally, was struggling with. I can't start my own practice. I can't do this. I can't compete with all of these other people that have counseling degrees. This is not going to work for me. I have a job offer in the panhandle, back where I was a minister, and I can just go back there and take this safe job. And I shared it with a professor and he very kindly and very bluntly asked me the question Charles, when are you going to quit, being so small? And he and I had a really wonderful relationship. And he and I had a really wonderful relationship and so it started this 3M process.
Speaker 1:for me, the first M is motivation. I didn't want to speak wrong, so it's motivation.
Speaker 2:So the conversation motivated me because I was like I think he's right, I think I always think small, and so I began to ask myself a question every day, several times a day, about is this a small decision? Is this a small decision? And when you're getting a counseling practice going, you see a couple of people a week and then you go home and you wonder how you're going to pay your bills.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so I would have numerous days that I wanted to go home and sit in my chair and pout because I don't know how I'm going to get this going. And I would ask myself is this a small decision? Yes, going home and sitting on my chair and pouting is a small decision. So what can I do differently? And so I knew I had been a youth minister for 20 years, so I started contacting churches. These people need a counselor who's been down my path, and I started building relationships with those people. It came out of the Charles. Why are you being so small, being motivated and then beginning to the next? M is Is maintenance.
Speaker 2:Maintenance. So I began to maintain that in my life by asking daily, almost hourly, sometimes is this a small decision? Is this a small decision so that I could evaluate it and do something different?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:After doing that for, I think, 12 to 18 months, it then started to become natural to me where I wasn't making the small decision. I wasn't wanting to go home and sit in the chair and pout, but I saw the fruit of my efforts talking with churches and so I kept those things up.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know what this reminds me of Visualization, because there's a oh I'll give her a shout out but a podcast that I listen to every single day. It's Heather Robertson and she has a podcast called Half Size Me. You should look it up. It is so useful. But she talks a lot about the brain and how the brain functions the lower brain versus the frontal cortex brain yes, versus the frontal cortex brain yes, but she talks about visualization, which is, you need to think about what you want to do more than anything in the world, and then just start visualizing that, because then that's going to train your brain, it's going to convince your brain that that is possible, and then it will start to happen, because your brain is going to activate.
Speaker 2:You start finding ways to accomplish what you want to do, but you've got to visualize first.
Speaker 1:You can't think small.
Speaker 2:You have to dream, you have to have a vision.
Speaker 1:And sometimes people don't even know what that is. I'm sure do you ever get that when you're treating your patients, you ask them what do you want to do? Don't tell me everything you don't want. What do you want? And maybe people can't tell you that?
Speaker 2:They can't even tell me, well, what's good about you? They listen so much to right little Johnny, right the seven-year-old yes, that they have lost sight of their gifting. They've lost sight of their right, the special things about them. They don't even see them.
Speaker 1:That makes me so sad.
Speaker 2:But the beauty of it is that when we start to talk about it and then they realize I don't even know what's good about me and their spouse sees that they can speak into their life about what they love about them.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's the values. That's what I was talking about loving someone. If you love someone, truly, love them. You will see their value and you will remind them of it every day. Sure, in different ways, not just words.
Speaker 2:You will see their value and you will remind them of it every day. Sure, In different ways. Not just words Right, but in the actions, the way you yeah.
Speaker 1:In the movement in the third M in my strategy, but this reminds me of something. I think it's something you said once when I was listening. I don't know. It's about the sliver, a sliver of God in all of us. Was that you I?
Speaker 2:can't remember. I don't think that was me.
Speaker 1:But we talked about how all people we cannot be all that God is, of course, but each of us has a sliver- oh, I know what you're talking about, right?
Speaker 2:So you see certain things in someone. For example, your kindness reflects the character of my heavenly father. He reflects the character of Christ. That is who Pam Dwyer is. Kindness comes out of her and doing things for people, and in that way Pam Dwyer reflects the character of Christ.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. Yes, it was you, because I remember you stating that you know I wish I could. You need to write a book. That's what I think. I think everyone has a book in them.
Speaker 2:Well, you certainly had a book in you and it was fabulous. I couldn't put it down. I really, really. It was over the Christmas break and I picked it up and all my family was there and I found myself getting up early in the morning, before my kids would get up, so I could read the book.
Speaker 1:What happens next?
Speaker 2:Yes, I loved it. My daughter read it, she loved it, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:That means a lot coming from you. I just think the world of you. I just, I just watch you sometimes and think I want to do that, I want to be like that, I want to help people like that. So I'm trying to through my book and through my message which, my goodness, you are a firm believer in past. You know, making you. The past is making you who you are today. But my mantra I don't know if you remember it is your past doesn't define you, it prepares you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I love that. Yeah, it does not define us, our mistakes, our falling on our face, our doing dumb things, which we all do Does not define us.
Speaker 1:Right, that's such a good reminder. And well, charles, I think we're going to try to close this. I don't want to. I want to just keep picking your brain for all these valuable things. Well, I can come back.
Speaker 2:I really enjoy this. This is fun because I want you to remember me when you get big, right the small people right in your life, right, as you keep on writing and reaching people and helping change their life, that will be great, that's the goal.
Speaker 1:I remember someone asking me, someone that was considering helping me publish my book, and they said we just ask one question, and that is why. What is your why? Why are you writing this book? If you're writing it to make money, then good luck, but if you're writing it to get famous, then we don't. We don't want to help you. They wanted a book. They could believe in a story and that's what I said. I said I'm really a storyteller.
Speaker 2:And you did a fabulous job of that.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Charles, and you do fabulous things for people every day, helping them improve their lives helping them realize they're valued and they're worthy. I mean all these things. That's all I ever wanted when I was so broken was for someone to see me, because I felt alone and I felt invisible in my brokenness and you really help people eliminate that. You help them see and you see them and then they feel value. So it's a wonderful gift you have.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:And any closing words for our listeners.
Speaker 2:If you haven't read the book, you should read the book.
Speaker 1:I promise you, I did not pay him to say that. Thank you so much, charles.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Pam. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Charles. Thank you so much, charles. Thank you, Pam. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Charles, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom with us today. I know that a lot of people will take away something very valuable from all of it and for those of you listening, remember you don't have to change everything overnight. Just take one step, one action. That's how we stay motivated, maintain progress and move toward the life we want. Let's do this together. Talk to you next week. I'm out.