Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: The podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Duraney and I'm your host. Today's guest is Mitch Weisberg. Mitch's goal is to grow a critical mass of people who live happy, productive lives who are resilient and resourceful in the face of obstacles, adversaries and unintended outcomes. From 1981 through 2000, Mitch founded and ran Personal Computer Learning Centers of America, training adults in the use of computers, growing the company to over 130 employees. Mitch Weisberg Co founded Academic Business Advisors in 2005 which helped organizations make a difference reach more than more students in US schools. Has started various nonprofit organizations in education such as Games4ed and Edchat Interactive. Mitch's book Stop youp Brain from Sabotaging youg Happiness and Success came out in December 2024 and focuses on techniques to change from mindsets that hold us back to to ones that propel us forward. Since 2018, Mitch has been creating content and teaching, mind shifting and sense making and has started a mind shifting community for educators. Mitch writes a newspaper newsletter at Mind Shifting Educators about ways to inspire the mind to learn. Enjoy the show Mitch. Pleasure to see you my friend.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you so much Drew, for having me on.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: No, it's my pleasure. And you know, it's. It's fine. I was always like to thank the person who introduced us and more often than not it's straightforward. This one was kind of interesting. So. So you saw on LinkedIn when Steve Ramona replayed the podcast episode that I was on his show doing business with the Servant's heart and you had asked to meet. So we had a great zoom call and you were, I think you were supposed to like record the next day with Steve and it got right. Move to May and so now I'm going to laugh at Steve. Steve Ramona, I'm going to give you the credit for introducing me to Mitch Weisberg indirectly. So I thank you. And, and haha. I have mom before you do.
Yeah, that was very professional to me. But you know what, we're human. So anyway, thanks Steve.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: And Steve, eat your heart out that I'm on here first.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: All right, so here we go. So why are you on Mitch? There's a reason.
So you know, my first criteria is you have to be a good human being and anybody Steve Ramona knows, I know that's already check that off the list. But you know, I often talk. How about when we're growing up, we're taught that life is linear. It's a straight line. You know, our family, our friends, and they don't do it maliciously. They say, if you do A plus B plus, C in that order, D is going to happen. And we listen and inevitably, you know, life is linear until it's not. That external circumstance comes in front of us and we're like, okay, now what do I do? I also believe there's three types of men. You have man number one, that when that adversity comes in front of him, he's got a ton of blind spots. He doesn't see it. He just goes about his life the way people are directing him. He's on autopilot. And on his deathbed, he doesn't really have regrets because he doesn't realize what the heck happened. He was just going with the flow, good or bad. And there's man number two. Man number two's got a heightened self awareness. He sees that adversity, yet he's the victim.
This is life doing it to him. He blames everybody, believes he doesn't control anything and can't change anything. So he changes nothing, goes through his life the way it is, and on his deathbed, he's got a ton of regrets because he realizes he saw this and he could have done something about it and he didn't.
Man number three is who I have on the show. That's you, that's me. Man number three has an even more heightened self awareness. And after all this adversity, he says, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. This adversity is not a barrier, it's an opportunity. Opportunity to live my life differently. I'm going to take this on and I'm going to become a better person and a stronger man at the end. So with all of that, Mitch, I want you to reach back as far as you need to for that defining moment in your life. Whether it was a whisper in the ear, a tap on the shoulder, like what I needed, the two by four upside my head that moved you from man one to two, two to three, one to three, whatever it is, tell us why you're man number three now. What was your defining moment and how that carried you through in your personal, professional life to make you the man you are now.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Well, that's a really interesting question. And I was thinking about it, and I'm going to go back to the fact that I was really, really lucky growing up with my parents, my grandparents. I knew my father's mother and father and I knew my mother's father, and pretty much every one of them was first of all very spiritual. We all believed in a higher power that was connecting all of us.
And they were all, they, they all had this internal compass. So it could be that somebody said, you know, you have to do this or there were rules to do that, but they would always kind of figure out what was the right thing to do and they, they would do that. So not necessarily following the rules, but following that higher power. And so I kind of watched that and I get over time, kind of assimilated that it wasn't just that they were violating what people said. It was like they knew what was right. And I think one of the times that I really recognized this was I was 14 and I was a swimmer and all state, you know, pretty good, not the best person. And it was Connecticut, so it's a tiny state. So, you know, it's not like it's California. Okay, but, but still, you know, all state. And I was training for the national four mile.
My, it was in Connecticut that year and so, and it was open water and there's a lot of training that you have to do to be in a four mile swim race. And we were doing the training and about two weeks before the event, my parents had planned that we were going to go on vacation for two weeks in the Caribbean.
And I pretty, I said to my parents, you know something, I can't go. You know, I have to train for this, for this event. And my dad especially put a lot of pressure on me. It's like, you know, the Caribbean is on the ocean. You'll be able to swim. It's not like you can't train for it. You'll just have to do it on your own. And you should go with us. If you insist, we'll arrange for you to stay with somebody else to go to practice. But I have to tell you that I think that you're wrong. And I knew that that was the wrong decision to go with them, but it was like, you know something, I don't want to let down the family. I'm just going to go and you know, and sure enough, I went. And you know, training and swimming is a lot easier when you have a coach and when you have other people who are telling you what to do than waking up in the morning and going out on your own. And you have no, nobody timing you. You have nobody telling you how well you're doing or anything and just going out in the ocean and and swimming. And so I, I kind of half heartedly did that for the two weeks I came back and I, and I was in the four and there were five of us on our team in the race and I was really the third best.
And a team was basically your top three people. And our team came in second.
Not that, you know, not that our swimmer won or anything, but the three of them, of all the different teams, that team came in second. But I was fifth on our team because once I got to about a mile and a half and two miles, it's like I don't, I don't have the endurance, I don't have the, the muscle tone.
And so I knew I missed out on being a team winner because I didn't do what I felt was right. And it's like, you know something I'm, I have to, I have to trust my, my inner person.
And, and pretty much that's, that's what I've done the, the, the rest of my life.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Wow. How impact at 14 years old. And I get it, the being self disciplined, especially at 14 in the Caribbean, it's very challenging. So, so what a lesson. And, and did you ever talk to dad about that?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: No.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: No. So. And is he still with us?
[00:09:17] Speaker A: My dad passed away last July.
And it's funny because there are many, many times in my life where, because we worked together for. Okay, let's see. So from 1975 until 1999 we worked together.
So there are many, many times in my life where my dad cross though, you know, give me advice that I then went internally and it's like, no, this isn't right. And so most of the times I just did what I felt was internally. Right. But some of the times I followed him and you know, sometimes it didn't work. Most of the time, you know, it's.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Challenging too because most of us, when, and I, my dad was a great role model is we want to make them proud.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: We're not always going to have the same ideas or opinions or, or advice. And it's really challenging to go against what your parents are suggesting.
As we get older, we know our parents suggest that because that was their experience.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: That's right. That's right.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Experience is different. I remember telling my dad, dad, I need to make my own mistakes. And boy, did he mimic that on me back so many times because I remember saying that probably around 14.
And my point at that time I wasn't able to articulate it was that every experience is different for everybody unless it was, you know, don't jump off the bridge. You'll die.
That's different.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: But, you know, I have a funny story related to that if you want to hear it. So. So. So, you know, my kids are adults, and this took place probably around 10 years ago where my kids were. My son was still an adult. He had been through law school. He had decided to go to independent practice. And in law, he was living by himself. He was single. He was, let's say, 27, 28 old. And my son. My dad and I are sitting in our living room, and my dad is giving my son the third degree. Are you meeting women? Are you going out? Are you. Are you in any civic organizations where you can meet women? Are you finding new clients? Are you doing this to new clients? Are you advertising? Are you networking with. I mean, just one question after another. Finally, after, I don't know, 15 minutes of these questions, he turns to my son, whose name is Herbie, and he says, herbie, doesn't your dad ever ask you these questions? And Herbie turned to me, and he says, no, Poppy. My dad believes that I'm an adult and that I should make my own decisions. And if. If I need his advice, he believes I will ask for his advice. So he lets me make my own decisions. So my dad says, well, then I guess I have to ask the questions. He went right back in asking him the questions.
Right. But to me, that was like, such a moment that says, you know, this is the bond I have with my son. This is what I think that it's right. Is right. He understands that, and we're good.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: I love that. I love that. That is a great. That's a great story. And I'm sure a lot of people that resonates with some people, and some people it won't because they had a different relationship.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Well, screw. I'm sorry, can I say that on the.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I commend you for that. Okay, so. So that's a big turn right there. And so how did that. How does that. Thinking that. Believe your inner compass thinking. How did that change you as a person and some of the bigger decisions in your life moving forward?
[00:12:46] Speaker A: So there's so many times where. And I think you've. You've brought this up on. On so many of your podcasts. There are times where there seems to be an easier way to go, and there's a harder way to go, or there's times where it seems like there's no good way, and which is the lesser way. And it's like by going internal and Saying, you know, what is it that I want, what is it that I need, what is right, that you can come to that decision and feel at ease with it. And like, I guess one of those decisions was the whole thing that got me into mind shifting. Okay, which was I received an email from a university in Niger, not Nigeria, you know, Niger, which is probably the poorest country in the world.
And this was from a university. And it was, we would like education technology entrepreneurs in the US to talk to our undergraduates about education technology. Would you be willing to talk to them? And I'm like, you know, our technology in our school system is going to be really different. But at the same time I'm thinking, you know, kids today aren't growing up with an environment that allows them to understand how they should be looking at situations in order to be successful. And so just kind of on that whim, it's like, you know, I'm certainly willing to talk to people, but the right thing to do is to explain to them why I'm, why that would be wrong. But offer to teach, to teach these kids how to make good decisions.
So I wrote back an email to say, you know, blah, blah, blah, this doesn't make sense, but if you want, I could do a workshop for these undergraduates about how successful people make sense of the world and how they make decisions and carry through on their decisions. And so the response comes back and it's like, well, could you come out here for a semester? And I'm like, no, I don't think I would like to go to Niche Air and live for a semester, but why don't I teach a two day workshop? And they're like, well, what could you teach two of them? Because we have more students. So what we settled on, and this is like July of 2017, is that in February I would go out to Niger, to Niami and I would teach two day workshops each with 60, 70, I'll call them kids, but they're 18 to 25 years old, so they're, you know, young adults.
And so reach that agreement. And then it's like, Mitch, you don't know how to do this. You've never taught any of this. You know, I taken courses, you know, I've taken, I, I studied neuro linguistic programming for a while. I took the landmark education series of courses, the, the curriculum. I'd read a lot of books, but it's like, you've never taught this before. So it's like, but you know something, you got five months, you can figure out how to do it. So I read books on a lot of different subjects about decision making. Because if you think about it like economics is a decision making, military strategy, psychology, teaching, sales, coaching, all these different areas. And what I try to do is pull out the perspectives of all these different fields and put them into one coherent course on how do you take a look at a situation to adversity, challenges, opportunities, figure out what to do and then stick with it, put it into a two day course, flew out to Niger, taught the course, and at the end of the two days those, I'm like, okay, and that's sense making. And the, and 60 kids stand up and cheer and it's like, got it. Because nobody is teaching these skills to the kids. They don't. They just think, and we all think, as you know at one point, that if we think something, it's right, that's the truth. And anybody who thinks differently is wrong. Any facts that anything that comes out is because these people are biased. Any results that don't come out, it's because we're a victim. We can blame these people or blame these events or whatever. And understanding that you have this flexibility that what you're telling yourself is merely one story, there are other stories and we can learn from every story that's out there. It's like, wow, and the kids got it. And so the same thing happened in the second one. And I've been transitioning from advising, I was transitioning from advising education technology firms into this whole area of sense making which I now call mind shifting rather than sense making. And, and now basically mind shifting is, is what I do.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Tell me more about the structure of what you do and who your clients are and what. Let's start with what is mind shifting in the, in the layperson's, you know, just.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. So it's, it's, it's pretty much a made up term, right? So I don't know that that's the best term. It's just what I'm using. But it's really the ability to switch from mindsets that hold you back to mindsets that allow you to be successful and move forward.
And I look at it as having really three different parts.
One part is being resourceful, second is being resilient, and the third is being collaborative. So resourceful is the ability to tap into the parts of your brain that do critical thinking, creative thinking, executive function, the higher level parts of your brain, rather than be stuck in your survival brain, which defaults to fight flight and, you know, and a few other Modes that you don't really have to think about. So how do you recognize when you're in those modes that tend to, tend to be necessary in order to survive, but not really to thrive, to be able to then tap into your superpowers that are in your higher level parts of the brain. So that's the first part of being resourceful.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: I love the. And I'll let you get to the other two things. I love the mind shifting piece. The way I think about it is, is fixed versus growth mind.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Exactly. Carol Dweck. Right.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Fixed mindsets following the amygdala, the fight and flight without thinking and thinking, your opinions, the only opinion. And then the growth is where you open yourself up to understanding other people's views and looking at the world in the way you're talking about.
And the other two. So tell me about resilience and okay.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: And I'll just say that, you know, it also includes a bunch of neuroscience and why that happens, how the brain actually works. So then resilience is to be able to basically come back from situations that we would normally think of failure.
And part of that is in advance learning how to think about situations so that we're looking for information to come to come back to us as feedback so that we can reevaluate and adjust rather than thinking we've got the answer, we're going to do something and it's going to work. And then when it doesn't work, because inevitably, if it's a big problem, whatever we do, the first thing isn't going to solve the problem. Okay. So to be able to look at that as information that we can use to adjust so that we can do the next thing and eventually succeed. And so a lot of that comes from military strategy. A lot of that comes from systems analysis, understanding the difference between simple problems and say, complex problems and urgent problems and how people manipulate us to think about them so that we can always be resilient. And actually, if you, if you, if you think about situations in the sense that it's going to take me a number of times to actually iterations in order to get this right, then the first thing that you do when it doesn't work out, you don't have to draw on your, on your grit or persistence anymore because you're not expecting it to be successful. You're expecting that it's just going to give you information. You're going to take the information and then you're going to try the next thing. If we're climbing up a mountain and we take one step up the mountain, we don't think, oh, my God, I failed. I took my step. I didn't reach the top of the mountain. I might as well give up. No, we know it's going to take 100 steps or a thousand steps or, you know, to reach the top. That's the way we need to approach many situations. And so that's the resilience part.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Love it. Love it. So then we got resourceful, resourcefulness, the resilience and collaboration. Collaboration. Tell me about collaboration. I love that term.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: So the collaboration part of it is that no matter how good our ideas are and no matter how good our plans are, there are going to be people who get in our way, who disagree with us, who try to stop us, who try to hurt us, or. And people that we just don't like. And our standard ways of getting through that tended not to work. Many of them don't work at all. And the ones that we gravitate to, like rewards and punishments, they may work in the very short term, but they don't work over the long term. But over the last 50 or 60 years, there's been a lot of research about what does work. And so it's understanding why the things that we're inclined to do don't work, how to recognize them, how to recognize that other people doing it to you, how to have flexibility in the way we approach those situations so that we can then work with people who oppose us, work with people that maybe we don't like, work with people who disagree with us and find ways of working together so that we both accomplish what we can accomplish.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: I love it. And so I'm going to ask you a question. We'll dive. Dive a little deeper in this many people in relationships compromise. And there's a big difference between compromise and collaborate. When we compromise, each person loses something and each person wins something. But you are losing something with collaboration.
You have a common goal, and there's really no loss in that that I can find. So tell me about what you believe your distinction between compromise and collaboration is.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: So I'm going to actually take one more step back. Okay. And there's a instrument now that we're talking. I forgot the name of it, but it, you know, where you take what you're. What your style of handling conflict are. And there's really five different methods that they use. You can be aggressive or compete, which is like my way of the highway. You can be accommodating, which is like, whatever you say. That's what I'm going to do. You can be avoiding, which is kind of hiding what you're doing from other people. You can be compromising and you can be collaborating. Now you can use any of those five styles if you're resourceful and resilient and there's times to use each one.
Collaboration can only be done if you're resourceful and you're resilient because in collaboration you have to work with the other person or the other parties so that you all figure out what your main goals are and then work with them to figure out what can we do so that all of our main goals get met. And in order to do that, that takes a lot of time. Now there are some times where, you know, you don't have the time, so maybe you just reach, you decide, I'm going to reach a compromise because it doesn't really make that much difference. We have other things that are more important. You know, I'll give you this, you give me that, and let's just move on. But there are also times where you're dealing with another person and that person is very aggressive.
And if that person wants as much as they can possibly get.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Got it. Yeah.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: And you try to collaborate, you lose. Okay? So you have to understand, you know, if another person is being aggressive to a certain extent, you can avoid, you know, do what you want and hide it from them, or you can be aggressive back and say, and you don't have to do it in a mean way, but you can be aggressive back and say, you know something, this is what I think is right and this, and I'm not moving from this. And you can't make me, and I can't make you. So word an impasse and, or you're gonna bend to me or whatever it is that you have to say. Like if you're, if your kids, if you have a bedtime for your kids, okay, you can't treat every bedtime as a collaboration. It's like you set the bedtime at, I don't know, 8:30pm and it's like, you know, I understand, I understand you're upset, okay? I would be very upset. Also, you're doing something that you really love. It's my responsibility to make sure that you're safe, you receive a good night's sleep, and it's your bedtime. And even though you're angry with at me, I still love you and I understand you still love me, but it's your bedtime.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Love it. Love it. What was the other one you had? Avoidance. You had Accommodate. Accommodate, yeah. And because if someone's aggressive with you and you accommodate and then you may regret it because you may compromise, that's compromising your self respect.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: And that's what. Sir. And that's what they want. An aggressive person expects you to accommodate.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: They want you to back down. This is, this is fascinating because it is that whole mind shift, whether it's the fixed or growth, but it's all decision making, like you said.
And sometimes it's a split second decision we have to make. So it behooves us to study this, practice this, know what the choices are. Because when push comes to shove, when you're, when you're forced to make a decision like that, if you're not prepared, you're going to fall back on bad habit, on old bad habits.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, you got to work at this.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: It just doesn't.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: So. So my favorite framework for doing that is something called OODA loops, okay. OODA loops comes from the military, from the Air Force, actually. A person named John Boyd and UDA ODA is observe, orient, decide and act. Okay. And it kind of mirrors the way our brain works when we're really making good decisions because we're looking at what's around us. Orient means figuring out what our possibilities are and, and what the likelihood of success is, what the results are going to be from each one.
Then, then you pick one or two, one or more of them that you're going to do and then you act and then you loop back to observe what you're, what, what happened so that you can take that information and orient and the decide and act and you, and you keep on going. There's, you know, John Boyd had really two different OODA loops, okay? OODA loop. One is what I call the slow OODA loop, which is, which is when you have time.
So when you have time, when you're thinking about an interaction that you're going to have with people with somebody and you think, well, you know, I could do, I could say this to them or I could say that to them and you think about their, what their responses are and then you may come up with some responses that you think are better. Or when you have time is you did have the interaction with somebody and maybe it didn't go so well, but that's over, but you're going to have another interaction with them tomorrow. So you're thinking about, geez, what did I do? What did I say? What did they say? What did they do? Okay, so maybe I can try this. That's the Slow one.
You have to, when you come up with the things that you're going to do, you have to practice them so that they become internal to you, so you become fluent in them. Once you're fluent in them, they become part of your toolbox. And so you no longer have to think about them anymore. They're embedded in your limbic mind and your muscle memory. And so when the situation comes up and they say and do something, you're like, here's the tool and you can go right in and use that tool. So you so use your slow OODA to come up with things that you might do. You practice them so that they're internal, so that when you, you're in the moment and the person who's fastest with their OODA loops is the person who's going to end up winning. So you can be faster and you can make your points and you can, you can progress.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: What's the acronym again?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Ooda. OODA Loops. John Boyd.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Yeah, what does it stand for again?
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: So the observe pace is your self awareness. So if you're a clueless person who's got the blind spots, you got to work on your.
Yeah, right.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: So, well, so, so you know, so you're right.
The you're. The way he would have phrased it is that your self awareness is part of your orient. Okay, and so what. But whatever your beliefs and values are, they also determine. They move back the other way in the loop to determine what you see.
And so the stagnant loop is Observe, Orient. Observe, orient. Observe orient. Because you're really not observing things that are going outside.
You're stuck observing the same things and ignoring the feedback that you should be using.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay, so. All right, I have a question for you. So in the beginning we talked about, I mentioned man number one, the one with the blind spots. Let's say what your client, your new client has that fixed mindset and blind spots, Right? Where do you start with somebody who just seems to be on autopilot, not noticing things? I mean, there could be a reason. It could be avoiding all those things we talked about. You have somebody in front of you, you're assessing whether they can be a client of yours, and they are man number one. How do you start with that?
[00:30:30] Speaker A: I start with what they want. You know, we're all, we, we all have these ambiguities and we all have these values that are. That that nest don't necessarily mesh. So as. So I would. So I generally start trying to figure out what is that they. What is it that they want? What is it they're out that they're unhappy with, then based on what they want, what they're unhappy with, the things that they want to change, do they really want to change? And if they don't want to change, yeah, that's fine. Okay. I'll put my time in with somebody who, Who I can make a difference with. And, and they're. They can. They can go on. And I hope that they're successful with whatever they're doing. But it starts with understanding that you're not getting the results that you want and something has to change.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's a great way to start. And I'm thinking that I.
Probably the chances of some man, number one, with all the blind spots coming to you voluntarily for help probably won't happen.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Right. Because, you know, I could be looking at somebody and I can be saying, you know, you're doing this and it didn't work. And you blame this person. You did this, and you blame that event. You did this. Do you want some help? And they're like, no, no, I'm doing everything right. It's all these jerks that are out there that aren't following what I know is right.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: They have to be ready. They have to be aware that there's something missing in their life that they want to change. For them to want to approach you and come to you. This is fascinating stuff, my friend.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: It is. And none of it's mine. I just have to say, I'm not anybody special, you know, I'm not a genius. I've just had the luxury of being able to do all this research and try to put. Put the. The. All this together. But it's not like, oh, Mitch has found the secret. No, I. I didn't find it. I. Other people have found it.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: And, and you took what. All the different stuff and put it all together. I love how you. You took the best of the best and put it into one. So tell me about the. Let's start with. I know you have a newsletter. I know you have a book. I know you speak and you have courses.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Of the four, would you want to start talking about?
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Well, I think for most people. The most.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: One.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Okay. For most people, the most accessible thing is the book. The first book is out. It's called, you know, mind shifting, stop your brain from sabotaging your happiness and your success. It's really based on the resourcefulness part.
And the next book will be based on the collaboration part. That book should be out In October. Okay.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Resilience in those, though, since you don't have.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: Well, Resilience will actually be the third book. The reason I chose the collaboration is the second book is everybody just seems to be so fearful and angry about the conflicts that we're having as a society with other people. When I gave that course twice over the last three months and I saw the light bulbs go off in people's heads about, oh my gosh, I'm saying this, no wonder why people are disagreeing with me. Oh, this is. Now I understand why I'm so upset when this happens. It's like, okay, I have to do conflict as the next one makes sense. So that's why conflict.
So the book would be the, you know, just go to Amazon and look for stop your brain from sabotaging your happiness and success and you'll find it. Or go to the website.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: All right, so that's the book. So you mentioned courses. Roll into the courses. Tell me you've done.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: So the courses I primarily teach educators.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: And so my goal is to, is to work with organizations that have large numbers of educators as part of them and where those educators need credit hours. And then through those organizations, I offer the courses free to the educators.
Now somebody who is not an educator can sign up for the courses. It's not a lot of money. It's. I think it's $150 or $125. It's six two hour sessions.
And I've had a lot of people from outside education who have taken the courses. But the, you know, 80% of the examples are related to schools, 20% are related to either personal or professional. And what, what happens in the courses is that, you know, the teachers come in because they're thinking, you know something. This course says it gets creative thinking, it gets critical thinking, it gets executive function. These are the things I want for my students. If this gives me the tools, I'll do it. And then within 15, 20 minutes, they're saying, oh my gosh, you know something, I could be more creative, I could be thinking more critically. And sometime by this second or third session, I start getting feedback. It's like, you know something, I've been having this fight with my spouse for 12 years, or I've been having this argument with my parents about me being an adult. And you know something, I just realized that's just my survival brain and it's their survival brain. And as soon as I realized it's just my survival brain making me do this, the whole problem went away. And it's just so. So many things come into the personal life and other parts of the professional.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Life, and you also raise awareness for these people.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Well, I want to reach 7 million people. Not me personally, but I want 7 million people on this planet to be able to access this resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration, and we could change the whole course of where we're going in this planet.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Love it, love it, love it. All right, let's switch to the newsletter. Tell me about the newsletter.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: The newsletter is basically free. I'm. I publish on substack and I publish once or twice a week articles relating to situations that come up and how being able to switch to a more resourceful mode or a more resilient mode or a more collaborative mode either helped solve the problem or not switching to one really tended to exacerbate the problem. And then I invite people to. To comment, tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me how it applies to them. And we get into a conversation in the. In the comments.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Beautiful. All right, finally, fourth speaking. Tell me about your speaking. Public speaking.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Well, I'm doing it here.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: All right.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
Yeah. I'm very happy to speak on podcasts in front of organizations, because my goal is to enroll other people to want to do this for themselves and to also transfer these skills to as many people as possible, because it's just. That's my mission now.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: I love the mission. And, you know, more often than not, what's happening in our personal life blends into what's happening in our professional life.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Accordingly. Right. And so you may think the problems in your professional life, and it may have started in personal and moves over both.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: All blended, you know, separating our work and life. That balance, to let it blend. We got 20.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: Yeah. We're people, you know, like. And I've been looking at your websites like you do that really well. You know, you pull. You pull it all together, and you help others pull it all together.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: It's a very important. Thank you, Mitch. You know, certainly the audience has captured the essence of. Of Mitch Weisberg. And audience, you're going to want to get in touch with Mitch, and this is the best way to do it. Write this down and I'll be in the show notes, too, but Mitch's website, mind shifting with Mitch.com you'll get to learn more about the courses, the book, the newsletters, and his speaking. More importantly, be able to reach out to him. His contact information is on that website.
Mitch, you and I could talk about this topic for forever, and we don't have forever right now. So I'm going to get down to two final questions. All right?
You use your imagination.
You're sitting down with young 7 to 10 year old Mitch and you want to give him advice about life. What are you going to tell him?
[00:38:31] Speaker A: I'm going to tell him that you really know what's right and what's wrong and you have it within yourself to choose what direction to go to. So trust yourself. And at the same time, you need to know that you never do anything completely on your own. And so it's really important to connect with other people and to understand where they're coming from and make a connection so that you can learn from them, they can learn from you, and you can move forward.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Love that. All right, switch gears. New hat. You're sitting down with young Mitch, the young businessman, entrepreneur, and you want to give him advice about business. What are you going to tell him?
[00:39:17] Speaker A: I'm going to tell him. You know, Mitch, 10 years ago, I told you the same advice and you didn't listen to me. And I'm going to come back and I'm going to tell you the same thing because I think you're mature enough to get it now. And that is trust yourself and connect with other people.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Love it, guys. Adhere to that. Your inner compass helps you connect with the right people. Yeah. Trust yourself. That's so important. Well, Mitch, I want to thank you for coming on.
Thank you for coming into my life again. Thanks, Steve, Ramona, for throwing it out to the universe that Mitch is around for me to get to meet. Keep doing what you're doing, Mitch. You're a great man.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: You're helping a lot of people and.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: You keep on doing what you're doing. I see the work that you're doing around with people with autism and the counseling that you do with men who were lost. And thank you so much for doing what you do and for this conversation.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. Mitch. Everybody out there, please take care of yourselves.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review. To help others find it, I'd like you to answer this question. Are you living the life you want to live or are you living the life others want you to live? I'd like you to think about that for a second because I strongly suggest you live the life you want to live. If you want to learn more about what I stand for and my services and how I'm able to help many men get out of their own way, please go to my website at www.prophetcompassion.com.
feel free to also email me at drewrophetcompassion.com I'd love to have a conversation with you. Take care of yourself and choose to write your own story instead of letting others write it. For.
