Ep. 21- Bunny Young: Does Work Life Balance Really Exist?

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

So today's guest is an entrepreneur, growth coach, speaker, retreat facilitator, counselor, author, Bunny Young. She's the founder of A Better Place Consulting, where she empowers businesses and organizations to create empowering environments and to crush their business goals. She's also a proud Army wife, mom of two spunky daughters, and has a passion for service dogs. Bunny, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm excited.

Me too. I know we've been planning this for a while. So the first thing that we should start off with is a little bit of your background story about how did you get to where you are today and why are all these different areas of your life so passionate for you?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a fantastic question because it is kind of an eclectic little toolbox if you look at it. But I'm a third-generation entrepreneur, so my grandparents owned a trucking company or own a trucking company that my uncles run, and then my parents owned their company. And I knew I wanted to be anything but an entrepreneur. So, um, after living in Ecuador for a little bit and, um, moving into Tucson, Arizona, I saw a need for counseling and therapy, and I thought that's really what I wanted to do. So I went to school for that and kind of got burned out pretty quickly in the social service world. And got turned on to animal-assisted therapy, which is counseling individuals using— mainly I work in equine therapy. And then when I moved out to where I live now out on the East Coast, my license didn't transfer. And so it was this conversation of like, okay, what am I going to do now? 'Cause I had so much of my identity wrapped up in my school and my license. And I did a lot of work with entrepreneurs as a therapist on— and I did a lot of work with professionals and military individuals that were transitioning in civilian life. And I had this enormous amount of background in business that I found myself coaching them through as a therapist. And so with encouragement from my own coach and my own mentors, we moved into the space of kind of being a business therapist. And one of these, it's like one day you wake up and you look at the past 40 years of your life, or however long it is, and you look in your toolbox and you're like, "Well, who's going to hire this?" You know, "Where am I going to find a job description that's going to take all of these tools and really help me make the world a better place? And do I want to use all of these tools? Just because I've invested in these tools and I have these tools, does it mean I want to use all these tools? And is a company, am I going to be happy if a company doesn't?" utilize all my tools, and if I don't wake up on a daily basis feeling like I'm fulfilled. And so, I answered that question with, okay, well, let me just do what I think feels natural, which was have these conversations with corporations and teams to say, work-life balance is this concept that's really just BS. We have the ebbs and flows of life, and let's look at work-life alignment. So, this idea of bringing your whole self to work and of not having these 15 hats to transition Through, and that really took off in a way that shocked me because I think it's such a simple human concept to just be yourself and work in a space where people honor being yourself and being in relationships, whether that's marriage, whether that's with your parents, whether that's with your friends, but being in relationships where people honor who you are and allow you to show up in that space. It just seemed so simple and yet so needed and to be in a space where I can hold companies accountable for that and travel and speak on that, it's just been such a blessing.

It's so incredible that you say that because I just had a conversation with a marketing specialist a few minutes ago and we were talking about how kind of people have this, I won't call it a shotgun approach, but like where there's like buckshot, right? And it's just kind of, I want to see as many people as possible and fill my me and my practice without focusing on what are the problems specifically and who we want to work with specifically so we can go to work fulfilled. And it sounds to me that you're doing something I'm a huge fan on, which is drawing your line in the sand of who you are, not only as a person but as a practitioner, and what you do, but then only working with people who are in agreement with that.

Yes, yes. And people who are— embracing it and passionate about it because it's one thing to say, "Oh yeah, you know what? That sounds like a really good idea, Bunny." It's another thing to be like, "I'm not gonna settle for anything less." One of my best friends identifies as a they/them and it's like once they were aware that that was an option to be a they/them in the world, nothing else made sense. And it kind of had every other piece of the puzzle fall into place of their experiences over the past however long in their life of now, now I feel like I'm whole. And so that— we live in this weird dynamic of we've never had more labels and boxes for people in our life. But I think where we're trying to get with all of those boxes is to be able to say, You be who you are, and I need to be okay with that. And more than being okay with that is I will ultimately function better in this world if I can go one step further and embrace that and welcome that.

So it sounds like you're talking about finding a tribe of people to connect to, to align with. And one of the places that I start with my clients to help them make decisions, whether it's my therapeutic clients or my coaching clients, including the business ones, is I can't help you unless I know your core values.

Yes.

Right? And from there we can make decisions and probably most of your problems will go away because you'll see that the decisions you've been making haven't been based on core values, identity, purpose, mission, all those things. So talk to us a little bit about the importance of finding a tribe to do what you're doing, whether it's personally, spiritually, relationships, business.

Yeah, and thank you for starting with the core values because I think coming from a military family, because my dad's Army, my grandfathers are Army, and my husband married into an Army family, And then we converted him and he joined the Army after we were married. So it's one of these things that you break down, you spend 13 weeks losing yourself in your words as a tribe of United States Army soldiers. And where gender, color, it all is supposed to melt away into this purpose and purpose higher than self. And the Army gives you core values and you exercise these on a daily basis until they become your DNA. And you see people who do 20 years in the military that they live and breathe, you know, those core values. And I saw that in my family and I'm so thankful to have that ability. And so that's where the tribe kind of starts. But with, there's a saying and one of my work husbands/business partner loves saying this that I know it's a whole nother conversation. Jason Wasser. We have an amazing relationship. But he's a huge nautical fan and he'll say, you know, rising tide raises all boats. My counter to that is not all boats raise the tide or raise the tide. He's gonna laugh now that I effed up his quote. But, you know, and so when we're looking at growing as a person, if we're spending time with boats, that aren't wanting to rise and that are anchored down, it's going to be really difficult to grow. And so I found myself in a growth mode having to reevaluate my tribe. And even, I know you and I had exchanged emails a little bit about what's relevant right now of being in a difficult situation where my family member, like I have a close family member that, you know, I'm doing my best to be there for and be supportive for, but it due to some mental health battles, you know, it's a constant energy drain. And so having to distance myself from that and not allow that to impact my identity and not saying I'm a bad family member because I am distancing myself from this individual and not saying, you know, that whatever their decisions may be, I'm responsible for. It doesn't make me a bad person because I'm ultimately taking care of myself. And it's not selfish to make sure that my cup is full before I can pour for other people. And I have my priorities and I'm really clear on those priorities. And I think that helps a lot with the mind messaging and my perspective on my actions. And it's not that I'm ever putting my company or my business before my family, but you also have to help yourself.

Well, I love the teaching. I think it was from Esther Hicks from the Law of Attraction world, where she says, don't ever use the word selfish, because the suffix -ish is kind of like, eh, right? It's like, how are you feeling? I'm kind of, I'm okay-ish, right? It's not a full investment in it. So language, as you and I know from our training, is very, very powerful. So I always challenge my clients when they use the word selfish to throw that word in the garbage and talk about self. Self-fulfilled. And only from there, right, going back to the rising tide raises all ships paradigm, is that from that place you can be much more of a resource to whoever you need to be a resource to, or make the decision from a healthy place that it isn't healthy for you to do that. And I wonder, and I've experienced this in my practice, and you're an incredible person to have this conversation with, as far as putting it along gender lines of I've seen that moms and wives struggle with that shame and that guilt of not investing, of not helping someone out, even if that person did wrong by them for multiple years of their life. They still feel that shame and guilt.

Yeah.

In order to be compelled to wanting to help, even though they know it might be harmful to them. So what has been your experience with that one now as a mom and, you know, and going through your consulting and your coaching and your therapeutic experiences?

So one of the most common kind of records that I hear played is that it's kind of one end of the spectrum or the other. It's not wanting to repeat the kind of parent that your parent was because it's not perceived by you as a positive experience, or wanting to be the kind of parent that your parent was because you perceived it as a positive experience, right? So depending on if you perceived it as a negative experience or a positive experience, Either way, you're never going to be your parent. You know, it's not like those advertising commercials where they're saying like you become more and more like your parent every single day. Yes. Do you exhibit their tendencies? I mean, that is a consequence of nurture, of being able to have these personality traits that are shared. But to have it in your mind constantly comparing yourself to another human, even twins are not the same person and they share the same DNA and everything. And so I've done a lot of work with my clients, you know, both as a therapist and as a consultant and as a coach to say, well, who is it? Who are you? Like, let's ask that question. Who are you? Because telling me who you don't want to be is extremely valuable. But consistently comparing yourself to this one person is not fair because you're not that one person. And trying to just not be that person, there could be far worse people that you end up being because you've lost sight of who you are. You just are focused on who you want to be or who you don't want to be.

Well, it's a really common thing that I find with my clients when they come in and I say, what's the goal that you want? Why are you really here, but I don't want you to tell me what the problems are. I don't want you to tell me where you're stuck. And inevitably, within 30 seconds or 45 seconds of them answering, they'll go back to a problem-saturated story with the words, "I don't want," "I don't," right? Most typically as part of that pattern. And I constantly challenge them and prod them through that to think about solving a problem, not from a place that you felt really stuck. And because then you're caught in a place of resistance, right? So I think that's one of the things that I want people out there to listen, that if you're solving any type of challenge, I always prefer challenges over problems, especially since I hated math and math problems screwed me up for many years of my life. So the idea of a challenge is something that you can overcome if you look at it not from the place of where you started, but where do you want to be, and then what are the resources you need to get there? Get there, what has been some of those things in your personal experience where you carried some of that stuff as you went into being a counselor, as you went into being a coach, as you went into these businesses, right, being a mom, being a wife, that you had to check, and then once you checked that, you realized that there was something really powerful and beautiful on the other side?

So one of the biggest things for me, so I was obviously a woman first, and then a therapist, and then a mom, well, I guess a woman, a wife, a therapist, and then a mom. And you know, there's daughter along those lines, there was granddaughter along those lines. And it really wasn't until I got into entrepreneurship that I was able to let go, like truly let go of all of those labels and measure myself by the worth of myself rather than how I was doing as a mom and as a wife. And you know, So the amount of years that I did social services, one of the cruel things that I've played on myself is in difficult times of being a mom, I'll have this conversation with my husband that's like, I've raised 483 kids and how come I'm failing at these two? I have all of this experience, so like, how come I'm failing at these two? Or, you know, my own, one of my children's has anxiety around change, which is perfectly normal in 2019, and we have resources available to help her. And my husband is questioning, well, you're, you're a therapist. I mean, you used to do this for kids all the time. Why can't you do it? And so there goes back to this boundaries and being really clear as here is my role. Like, my role is to be this consistent, positive, presence for my children. And I'm not always positive, but I'm just trying to be the best model of the human being that I can be. And if I happen to be my child's therapist as well, do I have therapeutic conversations? Absolutely. But I want those— that to be really consistent because, as you know, you know, the individual that you are on the couch We rarely say, "This is what you should be doing." And so, but as a parent, you know, those conversations come much more naturally. And I feel like I am my children's coach in some way, shape, or form. But the most important thing I have to do is to model. And so, I can't model putting out all of this energy into all these different roles and not taking care of myself. One of the amazing things, or challenges I guess, that I've solved is A lot. I've solved so many challenges just by taking better care of myself because those around me realize that I'm not going to say yes to everything. One of the best challenges that I solved was email, and I solved it with an autoresponder so that I no longer had to say no or apologize 80 times a day because I don't enjoy checking my email or because too much screen time gives me a headache. My autoresponder did it for me. And so, creating those boundaries to be able to say, "Here's who I am, and here's the spaces that I can show up fully in, and if you can meet me in those spaces, great. I can't wait to have a meaningful interaction, but other than that, I'm not available to you, and that's okay." Well, the joke that I have about that is that I don't have a red carpet, I have red couches.

So, in order for my clients to make it to the red couch, they have to prequalify, and I'm asking very distinct questions and setting up a paradigm, and I'm I'm more likely to turn somebody down now than I am to accept them as a client. But I want to go back to two things that you said that I found are really profound and something that I also strongly believe in is the idea of being a good role model means acknowledging when you mess up and when you screw up and modeling what it's like to fix it from there with ownership and accountability and responsibility. So you don't have to be perfect all the time. What do you do when you're not being perfect, right, in quotes, when you're off your A-game? How do you tinker, right, from there?

Yeah, so let's talk about this morning, because I totally was off my A-game this morning. I actually had to make a call to like my second mom out in California and was just like, "I get an F. Like I failed hard at parenting this morning." You know, the other thing that I identified, and I'm going to share this with you and with your listeners, is that it's really one of the least helpful things to say to another human being. Well, you've got a lot on your plate. That doesn't help me in any way, shape or form. I feel like I'm not going to cuss, but I feel like it's the no shit, Sherlock. Like, that's not helpful right now. And, you know, my second mom was like she had the right amount of butt kicking and the right amount of creating space. But the most important thing that she did was just listen. And as I processed through the things that I was doing, this idea of being a role model, of trying to be a role model— if you're trying to be a role model, you're trying too hard. Like you're forgetting that you just have to be you, or you just have this opportunity to be you. And so you know, my oldest had a field trip today. And so based on the interaction that we had this morning, I was going to not have this field trip take place because this seems like this natural consequence. And then I was struggling with, well, what part did I play in this? Like, how, how high was my stress level and how much did I take that out on my oldest this morning and what could I have done? And so I wanted to live in a space of not taking full ownership because it definitely wasn't us. In an interaction and a relationship. But when I broke it down to the relationship, the most positive thing for the relationship with my oldest is to have an authentic interaction this afternoon and be there and create space to say, how could we have made this morning better? And how would you like to move forward? Because I'm not in the business of punishing you for things in the past, but I do want to learn from them. And I need to learn from some stuff this morning. Like, I think it would probably be better that I woke up maybe 20 minutes earlier and had a little bit longer of a meditation time. And we had a little bit, you know, coming from a military family, I admit, like I have a schedule and I have a plan. And if you throw it off, you can ask my mother-in-law because she's gone on enough family vacations with me that when you mess with my plan, I'm not a happy camper because I've got a plan. And so when that, with kids, try, it's kind of like God. You want to make, you know, God laugh, tell him your plan. You want to make an 8-year-old or a 2-year-old laugh, tell them your plan. And so it got off a little bit this morning, and then it just kind of snowballed from there. And, you know, I really want to help understand— I want to help— I want her to help me understand how we can do better in the future, but also model for her what humility looks like and what a willingness to be better looks like.

So one of the things that reminds me of is my belief that entrepreneurship is a powerful path to self-awareness and self-growth. And your story, funny enough, that like you said, you ran away from that. My family is also third generation, but in the furniture business.

Oh.

And I'm the only sibling that's not engaged in it, minus when they come and they ask me from this side of the world, what can I do to help them with business development or marketing idea or HR personnel stuff from the psychotherapeutic or the business coaching world that they know that I hang out in. But it's something that I abandoned in myself because I grew up in South Florida and I had this belief that people who had all of this money just turn out to be douchebags, right? And plus there was other family trauma, parents' divorce, all that stuff that was connected to that, that didn't want me to be in that environment when I was younger. Until things were healed later on in life. And now that my brother and sister have pretty much taken over the business, it's a different thing. And I see intergenerational themes playing out with my siblings that, you know, started off with probably way before my grandparents. But I really find it profound that when you talk about allowing your child to be a teacher and a mentor and a therapist to you without you saying those words, really does take a deeper relationship.

Yeah. I mean, she— My children are here to make me a better human. Like, I am here to learn lessons from them. I often joke that even though I have a master's degree, like, my greatest lessons in life have come from surfing and from being a cowgirl, however you want to identify in that space, but from horses and from surfing. And in a herd mentality, there is this amazing fluid concordance through the entire herd that what's better for all is better for me. And so that's one of the things that I told my second mom this morning is I said, I would never have lost my temper with a horse if the horse got a little bit off schedule. I would have figured out what pressure and release, because that's how you handle horse, um, what pressure and release I needed to do to get that horse back on course. No rhyming or Dr. Seuss intended. And then that would have been it. We would have gone on with our morning. But it was like such a predator mentality that I went in at an 8, she went in at a 9, I rose to a 10, we're both at a 10, and now we're both at a 10 and there's no going back. And so other than like mud wrestling in the front yard, how are we going to come down from here? And through— I immediately, you know, it went and I was in a space that I could, you know, text my second mom and God bless her for 5 o'clock in the morning being like, "Hey, you know, I'm here," because that was my space to kind of process. And it's funny as a therapist and even as a coach, sometimes people, I joke that, and there's probably a million comic strips about this, but somebody will walk in my office and sit down and talk nonstop for 25 minutes sign a check to me, put it on my desk and say, "Thanks, that's been the best session ever." And that's kind of what I felt like happened this morning is like I talked through it, I just word vomited everywhere, and then when I had it all in front of me, I was like, I would have never done that with a horse. How would I have done this with a horse? Like I need to sit and make sure that I meet my oldest, you know, this afternoon when she gets back from school and kind of process and say, how can we be a better herd? Like, that's the question, is that it's not how can I be a better mom, right? Because I'm not a bad mom. It's not how can you be a better daughter because you're not a bad daughter. You're not a bad kid. You're not a bad human. Like, how can we just be a better herd, you know? And what would make you feel better in the morning? What would make me feel better in the morning? And make it so that we were better equipped to like go at our day and save the world. If you ask my daughter what I do for a living, she'll tell you that I save the world. And it's not that I have told her that. It's just kind of her perception of how to explain all of the things that, that mom does. And I'm so honored that she believes that. But at the same time, as a human and as a mother and for me, I don't know if it has to do with the fact that I'm a woman or not, it also puts a lot of pressure to be like, okay, what am I going to do today? Because this morning I for sure didn't save the world. Or did I? Because now we're going to be better and stronger because we're going to be able to have this conversation versus if we had a June Cleaver morning, we wouldn't have this authentic interaction this afternoon. Yeah.

Well, I think the idea of like pressure in a scenario when handled like the way that you handled it or other people out there are handling it will bring personal growth. It's the one step backwards, two steps forward. But I think that goes back into the whole conversation about relationships in general, whether it's romantic intimate relationships or business relationships, is that the level of friction that we have is something for us to to be aware of what annoys us or bothers us. And a lot of times we'll do the finger pointing of, if they weren't doing that, I would notice that they weren't doing that. And I would feel better because they're no longer doing that. And therefore I would feel better. But really all it is, is your response to that scenario. And I love when I'm with my couples and I kind of like drop the hammer on them and they're like bitching and moaning about one of their spouses or something else that's going on in their life, whatever it is. But you did go out on day 3 with them and day 10, and you chose to get engaged, and you chose to be right, or whatever it is in their relationship, and then you chose to have a child with them, or 2 or 3. Where were you as far as if you saw that then?

Yeah.

What accountability and responsibility do you take? It's not— they're there to show you a mirror to what you need to work on, because if you walk around, that's not going to bother somebody else.

Yeah.

It's why it's bothering you in a very specific way, to show you the work that you need to do as the mirror to your own soul and your own potential. I know that there's some things that you've kind of worked through, right, influencing your husband to go to the military. And I know there's something else where, you know, from your perspective as an entrepreneur, that there was something that you mentioned to me about, you know, something to do with lighting him on fire. So let's talk about that.

Yeah. Okay, so let's break down the breaking or influencing him to go into the military. So I think my Dad probably had more to do with that from a modeling perspective, and also his grandfather's in the military. And so in full transparency, we separated, and in the state that we live in, it's an interesting situation where if we lived anywhere other than where we live, we'd be divorced. But where we live, you have to be separated for 12 months before you can get a divorce. So we were separated for about 11 months and 23 days. And he came to me and asked, and this goes back to the herd thing, he asked, you know, "Is there anything I can do to save our family?" And I gave him a list because I'm a brat. I gave him a list. And one of the things on the list was join the military. And remember, he didn't ask me how to save our marriage. He didn't ask me how to win me back. I don't even know if he really did want me back, but he knew that there was this higher commitment to family and to our— we only had one daughter at the time. And so that was, you know, he came to me and said, I enlisted. And it was just like a— when you talk about pressure, you have no idea what you're capable of. You know, when, when you get there, you can still push further. And to look at our relationship and look at the fact that That's where we got pushed to. And just like we talked about this morning, that we are bigger, better, stronger. There is nothing that our marriage cannot survive now. And him and I will be the first one to tell you that marriage sucks. It's one of the hardest things to get through on a daily basis. You know, at least in a business partnership, I can get a lawyer to dissolve that. You know, in a marriage, you're going to have these amazing, brilliant kids and you have these families that come together and to untangle that. You know, on our wedding day, we did the sand pouring ceremony. And I remember one night I was so angry and I wanted to take the sand and like separate it and then just realized how illogical this was going to be. And so I talked about lighting him on fire. Well, we spent our first year in China working as stunt— on a stunt team. So I was a stuntwoman when we met. He was a stuntman. And so we joke that there's nothing more therapeutic for a couple, a newlywed couple, than to spend your first year of marriage— I lit my husband on fire, shot him, threw him off a building, hit him with a car, and kissed another man. And I got paid for it. And so that's kind of our joke. But if we really break it down, When you're a husband and a wife or when you are in a committed relationship, whether it's a wife and a wife, a husband and a husband, however you identify, looking at two individuals, even if you're not married, and seeing how committed you are to each other and to this we is really the question. And I mean that from how committed are you to yourself? And we've talked a lot about that. And then how committed are you to the we part of it? And one of the biggest and greatest lessons from our separation was, you know, he did everything on the list, like he checked all of the boxes. And I still felt the exact same way that I did when I threw him out of the house. And what does that tell you? It doesn't tell you that he's an awful man because he's not. I mean, he's an incredible human being. It meant that I had to take a harder look at the other person in this relationship. And I had not created space for us to have a relationship. I am an independent woman, and he'll be the first one to tell you that, and I'm a planner, and I just planned everything, and not micromanaged, but I had this life that was going to be achieved through an outcome, and he could either show up and be a part of the outcome, or I was just going to move on without him and leave him behind. And that I remember that day where he basically, I mean, he didn't hand me this checklist back all checked off, but I remember that realization to be like, my gosh, here's this amazing, incredible human being who's giving it his 100%. And how much have you been giving, Bunny? Like, what percentage would you say you've been giving this relationship at all? And if I had not been able, if I could not say, okay, I've given it 100%. Then I couldn't really get divorced because as you said, you don't like math, but that math doesn't add up. Well, if your marriage isn't working at 100% and you have one person giving 100% and one person giving 40%, the math isn't going to add up. So if you're both not willing to give 100%, you will never know if it's going to work or not.

Completely agree. And I always talk to my clients about this whole 50/50 relationship dynamic and how that's a sham. And it has to be 100/100, and that it has to be your first job, your first priority over everything else, forget your business. I mean, you have to engage in those things, but if you're not putting this we-ness as a— right? Of course, we're always gonna laugh at those type of jokes no matter how old we are. So, right? If we don't put the we of our relationship in as a forefront, then it's going to be something that's gonna challenge us later on, because like you said, and you're gonna always end up blaming the other person. So as you're now going out into the business world, and you're working with companies and corporations, and doing retreats and all that, how much of this philosophy are you seeing is 100% applicable? From my perspective, it sounds 100% applicable. But how much from your experience is it pretty much, it's just a wash and repeat for, you know, not saying that you're doing a wash and repeat and just showing up without doing the effort. But it's that mindset, it's that lens that you're seeing things through that is actually allowing you to be as profound. With changes in the corporate world that you want to be.

So one of my favorite things about not being a therapist right now is that I can bring my whole self without looking at crossing boundaries or is it— like I have told my clients who are going through a divorce or going through a marital stress pressure, that exact same thing that I just shared with you and my husband is extremely supportive of if somebody, if one couple, if one person can learn from what we've been through, then he doesn't care if hundreds of thousands or millions of people know what our marriage has been through because at the end of the day, it's still here. And we call it fireproof now. And that's a reference to the movie, but also because we're both stunt people, or he's a stuntman now, I guess I'm retired, but it's fireproof. And it's not fire-resistant, it's fireproof. And we'll say that with 100% certainty, but that's one of the things that I love is that whether I'm talking or whether I'm coaching or whether I'm consulting is that I can bring all of my experiences without kind of— as a therapist, you're taught, "Well, it's not about you, it's about them." Well, I agree with that, but then you're limiting my tools in my toolbox. To reduce your learning curve, because I can't tell you about a situation that's an experience share where I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'm going to tell you what I've been through, and that maybe it helps you look at yourself. Maybe you're the CEO of your family the way that I was, and you need to take a step back and realize that you are the visionary and that you shouldn't be the visionary and the implementer at the same time. And that, you know, you're blessed to have this person showing up and supporting you. So when I go into a company, I feel like having those experiences gives me even more confidence and space to be able to share authentically. And like, I went to a company in Dallas and I remember I walked into the room, the manager's like, here's my team, go ahead and fix them. I'll be in my office. Let me know if you need them. And I paralleled that exactly with my marriage of like, we went to marital counseling and I remember sitting on the couch being like, go ahead and talk to him because, you know, he's the one that is the reason this marriage is falling apart. And, you know, let me know when you're done, I'll write the check. And you can't do that in a company. You have to be a willing participant in the change. The most impactful, meaningful part of the change is the participation. It's not the outcome. It's the journey. And like, I facilitate these equine retreats, and there's an activity or an exercise where they're given 3 questions. And the group inevitably, most groups will stop, and one of their questions will be, "Well, can you lead us? Can you take us there? Can you do it for us?" And my response is always the same. We can keep you safe and guide you on your journey, but we cannot do it for you and we will not do it for you. Because then, and the reason we say cannot is because if I do it, it's my journey, not yours. And will not is that I'm making a choice to not stick my finger in your spinning world when I have my own spinning world that I'm dealing with. And I don't need to get wrapped up in somebody else's orbit. And that's really important with companies to be able to focus their energy on what's going to make the most impact, but also be willing to go through the journey together. Because similar to a marriage or similar to a committed relationship, when you go through hell together, if you're made of the right stuff, you're going to be sharper, harder iron.

Yeah. And that concept of triangulation where they try to bring someone else in to alleviate the stress pattern, I see it day in and day out. And there are two scenarios that I've worked with in the past where the kid was the presenting— it's actually multiple scenarios, but two that I can think of off the top of my head where the parents brought their kid in and like, well, you know, we'll drop him off and pick him up. I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's not happening, right? You're coming in for the session. Oh, but is my kid going to get private sessions alone? I'm like, I don't know, maybe we'll see. And I found that consistently, as you know from your training, is that the structural challenges, everything starts right from the top down. And the kid became the scapegoat for the relationship or the family's challenges. And they also became the distractor. Because if that's so much over there needs to be handled, and it's so big to be handled, and the adults aren't handling it, let me give them something to at least put their attention to, because they're not going to get on that. And at least I can become the scapegoat, you know, and at least get attention or whatever it may be. And I see that all the time in businesses, whether it's hiring or whether it's, you know, again, like you said, I'm going to go to my office, you fix them. It's so common where the lack of engagement in problem solving is missing. So I want to challenge people out there that if— I heard it from, I can't remember which one of the speakers it was on YouTube, but it's a 14-year-old kid who became a public speaker. And he said that if anybody ever comes to him with a problem about what's going on in the business without potential solutions, the entire team has to do push-ups.

Yeah, yeah. What have you let— like, what have you done to attempt to fix this already? You know, like you said with the family situation, and we talked about just creating space for the conversation. I've participated and facilitated so many conversations that that was all that was needed, was the conversation. Was to be heard, was to— if somebody had sat me down and said, why is your marriage failing? And had me expand beyond just, it's my husband's fault. We might not have gone through all of that because I may or may not have realized my own kind of role in that. And that's both a humbling experience, but it's also a learning experience to be able to when you're brought a challenge, when you're brought a problem in business, the default, especially as a CEO or as an entrepreneur, should be, what am I doing that's leading to or contributing to this? And even this morning, you know, like that was kind of my default that I didn't let myself go too far down into that blaming. Right? Like, because there was a difference, but there was assigning an accountability role. And then there was also like self-awareness, which I think is just so— it's such a rarity these days to have this true self-awareness and self-management and then kind of go from there. But when, if it's an organization, if it's a family, if it's a marriage, being able to just create the space to hear the perspective of the other person because we really don't do well at communicating. We just really don't say what it is that we actually mean or that we need. And sometimes that's because we don't know what we need and we need the space to figure out what it is that we really need and not feel guilty that we're taking that space.

Well, I think that's where we come in, right, as consultants, coaches, therapists, healing arts practitioners. To help them get out of their own way because they're so stuck in the picture frame that they can't see the landscape around them. And I think that I always try to impress and empower with the joke that, you know, in the 1980s and the early '90s, the line was, "Oh, you have a therapist? What's wrong with you?" And now I think it's, "You don't have a therapist? What's wrong with you?" Right? Which is thankfully a massive shift in our culture, but I still see in so many different cultural backgrounds the resistance or the hesitancy, whether it is in corporate environment or it's in families or couples or even with children that they don't and are not willing to get the outside hope and help. And I had this conversation with a teenager recently and we were talking about him getting tutoring for a certain subject. And he's like, "Oh, I don't want a tutor. I don't want a tutor." I'm like, "Well, you were telling me how passionate you are about sports and how you want to go off and eventually play professional arena. But how many people are on the team outside of the players and what are they called? He goes, well, there's the first base coach and the third base coach and the dugout coach and the manager and all that. Okay. So at the level of ball you're playing at, those are called tutors. And when you graduate from tutors, you go to coaches. And when you go, right? So once we had a reframe of that, it was kind of like, oh, Okay, well, why don't we just call your tutor a coach, right? And then all of a sudden, right, it's a different mindset about it. And we limit ourselves to those successful things. And I know that one of the resources that you're most passionate about is with puppies.

Yes. Yeah. So I have a service animal. His name is Guinness. It's my fourth service dog. Any kind of link that you click on, whether it's my website or social media, you'll probably see a picture of him. So I have a heart condition, and I was diagnosed with a heart condition when I was 14, and when I was 17 is when I kind of got my first service animal. We've already talked a lot about tribes and being able to look at reframing my disability into being differently abled. So I, I can do most everything that anyone else can do, I just take some sick legs. And being able to kind of honor that space and not look at me as— because when we, when we say dis, you talked about ish, like dis, like disrupt, discount. And so it's like, okay, well, can I be differently abled? And so what I did was I founded a service animal organization called Pawsible, and it's to create space for companies to be able to learn about service animals and then also learn about how to have positive interactions with individuals who benefit from partnering with a service animal. And also to educate individuals on what a service animal is because we're in this age of emotional support animals and all of this kind of stuff. And so a service animal is a highly trained animal specifically to mitigate an individual with a disability's disability. And an emotional support animal, you know, doesn't even come close to that kind of— I don't want to say validity or importance, but just to kind of put it into perspective for individuals who are listening, an emotional support animal, a therapist or a doctor writes a note that says that this this animal helps my patient feel better. Well, for those of you listening, Jason and I didn't go to school to judge animal behavior or obedience or anything like that. And so with each one of these— and a medical doctor didn't either, or most medical doctors, there's probably exceptions— but being able to write a letter putting our license on the line so that you can take your animal for free on an airline because you don't want to pay the fee or because, you know, whatever the reason is, if you truly do benefit from having this animal's assistance and you truly do identify as having a disability, then I strongly encourage you to train your dog for the tasks to perform to be a service dog and have the protections that are afforded to you under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disabilities Act and through the Department of Justice. But by having these emotional support animals in housing, the only two places that they're legal are in housing and on airplanes. And people just don't understand. And the public is widely confused. And, you know, so because I have a service animal and because I'm an international speaker, people kept coming and asking questions. And so PAWSABLE was formed to kind of be a commonplace for mainly companies, hospitality companies, airlines, to even governments to kind of get these answers and have a conversation with a subject matter expert on it. We have a lot of work to do in service animal law, and that, that's super true. We have a lot of work in undoing emotional support animal law and being able to say, look, like It was a really well-intentioned law, but it was already covered by service animal law. And if you have a service animal, your service animal can live with you. If you have a service animal, your service animal can fly with you. And so we really just created this giant gray area where— and this is how I feel personally. When I was a therapist, I'd have somebody that would ask me to write this letter, and I would say plainly, like, I understand your feelings on this and I understand that you need this letter, but at the same time, I didn't go to school for this and I've never met— it's like over 86% of these letters, the practitioner, whether it's a doctor or whether it's a therapist, has never even met the animal. And they're putting their license on the line when they're writing these letters. You know, I had a colleague of mine who's a psychologist in Texas call me and say, "Well, how do I write the letter?" And I said, "Why are you writing the letter?" And he was shocked. He's like, "Well, you have a service dog, so I thought you'd be pro, you know, this." And I said, "Well, I am pro supporting individuals receiving accommodations that they need and that they're entitled to under the ADA, but what did you go to school for? And are you willing to put your license on the line? Because your liability insurance, your professional liability insurance is not going to cover you." if you went outside of your scope of practice and said, "This dog can fly on a plane." Right.

And I just had this conversation. Someone called me this week and they were calling about an anxiety disorder that was apparently previously diagnosed from another therapist. And they're like, "Well, and also, do you write letters?" And I said, "Number one, I don't write any letters for any clients that I don't see for less than 6 months. And two, what would happen for you and what would it be like for you if within that timeframe, you no longer have the same experiences around stress and anxiety that you're having, are you okay no longer needing? Would you be okay wrapping your brain around that? And they couldn't fathom that question because the tools that I have using neuro-emotional technique and my other therapeutic modalities will solve that problem way faster with the right nutrition and functional medicine and chiropractic and everything that my practice stands on. And they couldn't fathom the question that like, what do you mean? So you can tell that they just wanted the letter for the sake of having the letter versus, "I'm okay actually feeling better and solving my challenge," right?

And there are people who you can pay to write the letter. 100%, right. A family member just recently had major surgery and I was in the hospital with my service animal sitting there and the surgeon walked in and said, "Is that a real service animal or service dog?" And I said, Well, he's not stuffed. I was a little sleep deprived as well. And he's, "No, well, my wife and I, we vacation down at the beach and we bought a vest online because they don't allow dogs at the house that we— our favorite house to vacation in, and we don't want to leave our dog at home." This is a surgeon that has gone to school for how many years and is a highly intelligent being that is just admitted to fraud.

Right. And has to take continuing education in ethics and risk management, right? And I think this is a big issue. And again, there are people out there, and I want to make sure that everybody's hearing us correctly, there are so many people out there who will qualify for that level of a therapeutic service animal versus an emotional support animal. But really to know the difference and also say, are you doing the work? Are you going to a therapist? Are you going to work with someone to solve the things that are making you ask to get this with your animal in the first place. And if you're not, you're not solving the problem. You're just putting a Band-Aid on the scenario. Now, it's great. We all love pets. But there's a level of investment that I want to challenge people out there to make and go find a really good professional to help you handle your stuff once and for all. Because if you're not taking that animal to work, if you're not taking them in your car with you, not because you feel bad leaving them alone in front of the Nature Channel or whether channel all day, that's more out of guilt, not out of the therapy issue, then you got to check yourself before you wreck yourself. So find out, you know, out there, please find out from the right professionals, including by reaching out to Bonnie, if you have— I'm sure if you have any questions, how to do that. So I know that our time is short. So I'll ask you one final question. And it's my on one foot question that if you knew you were only being able to spend 2 minutes with a person, and you were never ever going to see them again, and you wanted to impart your wealth of wisdom upon them. In those 2 minutes, what would you say?

I would ask them how they make the world a better place or how they save the world. And I think then I would spend the rest of the 1 minute and 50 seconds listening because I think that that's how we save the world, and that's how I impart my wisdom, is through creating space for people to learn more about themselves, who they are, and how they can change this world just by being them.

Awesome. So everybody out there who's listening, ask yourself that question. Reach out to us on our social media. Hit us up with your answer. We would love— I know I would love to hear it, and I'm sure you're open to hearing what people say. To anybody who's listening to this episode, and how can people track you down? How can they reach out to you?

Yes, so we have a Facebook page, Better Place Consulting. Of course, you can always Instagram, it's Bunny Has Six Legs and A Better Place Consulting. That's always entertaining. I have fun on Instagram. So if you like entertainment, that's probably the most entertaining place to get me. And then for PAWSsible, it's paawsible.org, P-A-W-S-S-I-B-L-E.org. And our board does amazing stuff, so that website looks incredible. And then abetterplaceconsulting.com has over 300 hours worth of resources for the business owner and professional that's looking for work-life alignment, and those are completely free. So that's really it. If you just want nonsensical humor, then follow me on Instagram. If you want the good content, go to the websites.

Well, it sounds like both of them are good content with all the stressors that we're dealing with on a daily basis, but I wanted to thank you again for spending this time with us. I know that I'm really excited for this to be going out to our listeners, and there's so much really good resources for everybody that you shared with us today. And again, I want to thank you.

Oh, thank you. I think you help make the world a better place, so it's an honor and pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️