Ken D. Foster on 'The Courage to Change Everything' and How to Transform Your Life

Are you caring for a loved one with dementia? You don't have to figure this out all on your own. Welcome to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's, the show that helps you reimagine a new relationship with your loved one, a relationship a little more free of stress and anxiety. Join host Lisa Skinner and her 30+ years of experience as she guides you on a new path to a better relationship with those you care for. Here's Lisa.

Hello everybody, and welcome to another brand new episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. I am super excited about today's episode because I have a very special guest with us today.. And I'm going to introduce him in just a second. But I asked him, I was just recently a guest on his podcast. And we had such a powerful and dynamic discussion, mostly related to Alzheimer's disease and dementia. But I thought Ken would be such a perfect guest for the Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. Because of what he does and what he offers and the impact that it could have on our caregivers and our family members who are either currently going through this devastating and heartbreaking experience with the people they're caring for living with Alzheimer's and dementia, and also their family members. And as we all know, this is a very long course disease. The average is 8 to 15 years. My grandmother lived with it for 20 years. So it's unpredictable at how long we actually will join somebody in this dementia journey. And for caregivers especially, It is, um, can be very overwhelming. So Ken's going to give us some suggestions today of how we might be able to manage that a little bit better. But let me get right into my introduction of this very special man. His name is Ken D. Foster, and just a little bit about his background. He is a keynote speaker a best-selling author, a business strategist, and a news personality who owns a broadcast and media production company. He is the executive producer and host of the Voices of Courage show, syndicated on TV, podcast, plus radio and broadcast in 185 countries. He specializes in working with people who are committed to leveling up their lives, maximizing their highest potential, and contributing to making the world a better place. Now, Ken has developed a science-based, highly practical solutions for stimulating human potential in either companies or individuals. Who are seeking personal balance, increased profitability, organizational productivity, time management, meditation techniques, systemic solutions, and authentic team building communication. His book is called The Courage to Change Everything, which provides proven wealth strategies and success principles to help people stand in their strength, awaken their inner genius, and fast-track their success. And the foreword for his book was written by the famous Stephen M.R.

Covey.

That's pretty impressive. His book, The Courage to Change Everything, gives readers the exact messages they need daily to instill wisdom and wealth principles deeply into their consciousness. Okay, you ask me, what does this have to do with Alzheimer's disease and dementia? And really, the parallel there between his expertise and what we talk about on this show is finding our courage and our strength to continue to do what we do every single day, which, as we all know, can go on for years and years and years. And I don't think that anybody would argue that this is probably one of the biggest challenges that all of us who have been through this face. How much longer can I do this? How do I find the strength and the courage to keep going? So that's what Ken is here to talk to us about today, and I can't wait to hear what he has to say. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Ken to the show. Thanks for being here, Ken. It is such a pleasure to have you here today. I was just on your show a few weeks ago. It was such a positive experience for me, and I know that this is just going to be a dynamic conversation for us today and for our listeners. So maybe, um, they can find some answers to how they can get through this, uh, experience in their life with maybe a little less stress and more happiness.

Well, I hope so. And thank you so much for having me on your show. And, you know, it's a long journey, as you mentioned, with the dementia or Alzheimer's diseases of the mind. And, you know, there's some science around it these days, kind of getting to cause, you know, I I have a show also called Heal It. And, you know, in that show we try to get to the cause, which you were on there because you know cause and effect. So, yeah, you know, this is a difficult journey and nobody needs me to tell them that. But, you know, with any journey in life, we're all on a journey. We're all on a quest. Some are more difficult than others. But during that journey, you know, the first step that I know is whatever the journey is, we have to honor the journey. You know, we have to acknowledge that this is a sacred process. Every moment matters. You know, we focus on the presence rather than, you know, trying to fix or fade the individuals that are going through this. You know, we're there to In my world, we're there to learn how to love deeper and deeper. And it's— sometimes you go, I don't want to love anybody like this, you know, because it's just— sometimes it gets ugly. But truly, it is love that changes everything.

Can I ask you this question? So with the World Health Organization officially recognizing burnout as a true syndrome. What insight can you share with our audience, my audience, about how to use courage to avoid overwhelm? Because people who care for people living with dementia and family members who are going through this experience, they live in a world that is not short. Of overwhelm. So how can your ideology of finding courage apply to people in the Alzheimer's world?

Well, first of all, let's define courage. Courage is something that is innate. It's in all of us. It shows up when we walk into the unknown. It is an energy. It's a feeling. It's a power within us. Now, I said it shows up when we walk into the unknown. That's accurate. Okay, so if you're doing the same old thing, same old thing, same old thing, you may think you're in the courage, but truly you're just doing the same old thing. So in my world, you know, there's— I think the World Health Organization came out, you know, one of the agencies just said that in the United States anyway, so it wasn't WHO, but yeah, I think it was the one of these psychology associations said that 60% of the people are stressed out in this country. So it's now whether you have, you know, you're going through Alzheimer's or dementia or you're a caregiver in some other capacity, where does stress come from? And what we learned, okay, and a lot of people don't want to hear this, but, you know, we're creating our own stress, right? We're creating our own stress. You can't make— I can't make anybody happy if they choose to be unhappy. And I can't make anybody unhappy if they choose to be happy. I just can't. I've been coaching people for over 30 years, okay, 3 decades, and I can tell you that when people can shift how they use their mind, because the mind is over emotions, emotions over actions, actions over result. So, when you can start to shift what you focus on, you can start to shift your attitude and you can actually start to feel better. Now, some caregivers, and actually it's not some, there's a lot of caregivers that have to set boundaries, right? You just have to have boundaries. And if you don't have those boundaries, if people are testing your boundaries all the time, that's, you know, you saying yes to, you're over-saying yes, okay? Then you have to develop the outside of that, the other side of that. You gotta develop the no power, right? So people have, you know, I want this, I want this, I want you to do this. You go, no, I won't do this. You develop your won't power or no power in that situation. So we got to understand how we use our mind. We have to understand our boundaries. And those are the first two steps to getting out of overwhelm.

So you say here that overwhelm is prevalent in this century. You just said that. It seems like the more we do, the more there is to do. I'm quoting you.

Yeah.

Many people think they will never get caught up, right?

Right.

This is just a symptom of not realizing what our— your soulful self can accomplish, and probably saying yes too much to the whims desires and demands put before you. Unfettered courage can change this around permanently. So I'm going to ask you to kind of go a little deeper into what you mean by that. But I also want to say, because maybe you can address this, too many— too much saying yes to too many whims, desires, and demands are part of what somebody is taking on when they're caring for somebody with living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. It just goes with the territory. And I think a lot of caregivers would not argue that it's just part of their world. And you never know what you can expect. Things just come up out of nowhere, and, you know, different behaviors and different symptomology, and that's why it's overwhelming. So how do you— how would you speak to, to that piece of it, that sometimes it's out of their control, the demands that are put on them? You say unfettered courage can change this around for people, but I think their struggle is, all right, how do you make that happen?

So remember I said courage shows up when you walk into the unknown. So some of you are go, go, go, go, do, do, do, do, and you don't take any time to slow down to succeed. So isolation is the— is the, uh, I, I want to say isolation and stillness are the prices that we pay to get out of overwhelm. And what I mean by that is that when you're feeling that sense of that's— it's just too much, it's time to stop immediately. It's time to go find a place to quiet your mind, to still yourself, even for 5 minutes. You'd be amazed at what 5 minutes of just stillness— where you take some deep breaths in, Tense up your body, double exhale out. Do that 3 to 5 times. Okay. Tell your body, okay, to relax. Give your body a command. Okay. The mind is over the body. Okay. The body is not over the mind, but the mind can control the body. So you tell your body to relax, take some deep breaths, calm yourself. And there's a realization that we all need to know. Okay. And that is, you know, in my little finger here, I have atoms, right? If you split the atoms in my little finger, there's enough power in there to light up New York City. So we all have to remember that, you know, we have the power. It's in us. What disempowers us is what we really have to look at. What takes away your energy, your vitality, your, your your power, right? Just your power. What takes it away? Well, what takes it away, of course, is thinking that this will never end, thinking that this is too much, thinking that I'm in overwhelm, thinking that this will never end. You know, how do you feel when I even say that to you? You're like, "Oh." Okay. So our mind and what we focus on, we feel. If you're focusing on what you don't have, if you're focusing on what you're lacking, if you're focusing on this is too much, I guarantee you're going to feel it, right? So, if you were to— what if you were to shift the mind and start to affirm, okay, everything is working out. There's a great plan for me for this. I'm evolving. I'm growing. I'm getting better and better every day in every way. And listen, it's kind of silly, isn't it? But you know what? When you start to say those things, you actually start to feel differently. So the mind can— we can do a lot with our mind. Okay, that's first step. But remember, stillness is the price and isolation is the price we pay to get out of overwhelm. We gotta reconnect with that stillness, that peace inside of us. You know, people are always looking to buy peace of mind, right? Well, when I buy a new car, I'll have peace of mind. When I go out and I make more money, I'll have peace of mind. Well, when I get this new relationship, I'll have peace of mind. Oh, you know, I'm a caregiver. When this goes away, I'll have peace of mind. No, you won't. You won't. Okay. You'll just have something more to do. Peace of mind is something that we let go of thinking the pieces I just said, and we start to affirm the greatness that's within us. We live from a place of gratitude. I don't know about you, Lisa Skinner Skinner, But when I wake up in the morning, my eyes open up, first thing I think about is what I'm grateful for. Because I've learned how I start the day is a lot of times how I end the day.

I do the exact same thing. And if I'm hearing what you're saying accurately, are you just kind of to present this in a different way? Because I think this is important for people to to be conscious of? Are you saying that being self-aware plays a role in having the courage to change your life? Because I have had 8 family members who have lived with Alzheimer's disease and related, and I know, you know, I've walked in the shoes of caregivers. I've been a you know, a surrogate caregiver, if you would. I've watched people do this for 30 years now, and I know what they go through. I know what we go through every single day in this world. And you can't help but become negative about the tremendous demands that are put on you. So I think what you're saying here is if you're aware that you're looking at something with negativity versus trying to turn it around and find the positive in it, that can make a huge difference. Am I, am I hearing you hear me correct?

And here's the thing, you know, I'm not saying there's no problems, there's no problems, there's no problems, and try to be some positive person, you know, like everything's fine, you know, everything's great. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that with, like you said, with mindfulness, um, looking and realizing that you are in charge of your thoughts, okay, nobody else. One of the things that I do with my coaching clients is that, you know, sometimes we live in denial, okay, and some, you know, in other words, well, you know, everything's gonna work out. Well, maybe it won't work out. Okay, but here's what I know is that if you tell yourself, you know what, it's coming. Yeah, it's coming. The next surprise is coming. The next doctor is coming. The next, you know, just prepare yourself. Okay, it's coming, right? And there's a place within us that only we can create peaceful environments within ourselves, right? You know, life demands a lot. Life, you know, life is here to help us to grow, to learn, to evolve. And sometimes it takes a lot. Sometimes it takes more than you've ever imagined. And sometimes you look back and you go, wow, where did I find that? The energy, the courage, the power to move past that. Well, it was already in you. You just stepped into it. Sometimes we play really, really small. Now listen, I don't, you know, I can't imagine walking through what a lot of you walk through. Okay. It hasn't been my path to be able to take care of a mom or a dad or a friend or my wife with Alzheimer's. Hey, it may come. I may have, you know, that may happen to me. Okay. Here's what I know. What I will continue to do because I live my life this way. First of all, be very clear on creating a positive environment, a peaceful environment. Soft music playing in the morning. For me, when I wake up, I put on YouTube now, and they have— I put on high-energy frequency music on YouTube, right? Because there's a lot of science around it. There's certain megahertz that we can listen to that will uplift our minds and help our minds to stay healthy and vital. So, you know, music is a very important piece here. You know, I think journaling your journey sometimes helps to really just, you know, talk to you. Let that journal be your guide. Yeah, you know, journal everything in it. How difficult it is, what's happened, what's not happened, you know, where you found strength, where you didn't find strength. And that helps us. And I think forgiveness on a daily basis, every single day, we have to release and let go of what happened, right? Because otherwise, it builds up. It's like if you go through something that's very difficult and you go, oh my God, I can't believe this happened. And then you start anticipating it's going to happen again and again. You start building that up in your mind. And quite frankly, you're not going to feel good about what you're doing. So release is really important. By the way, on my website, if you For those who'd like this, there's a free release process there. You just go to kendifoster.com, scroll down on the page, and look at the release process. It helps people release shame and guilt, remorse, uh, shoulda, coulda, wouldas, uh, you know, trauma, drama. It's designed that way. It takes most people about 3 hours to do the first, first round of that. Okay, but a lot of people tell me it's like, uh, taking a dark pair of sunglasses off. They've never even knew they had on when they complete that. In other words, you release, you feel lighter, you feel better. That's the formula for success.

So one of the things that I read that you talk about in The Courage to Change Everything is the importance of becoming aware of your inner genius. What does that mean? What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?

I, I absolutely would love to elaborate on that. So we are all born geniuses, and what I mean by that is that we come into this world and of course we're socialized into different systems, into our family systems, into, uh, uh, school systems, into religious systems, and on and on it goes. But, you know, and so we're programmed. We got a lot of programming. You listen to the news, that's programming you. You're listening, you know, on one side of the political argument or the other. Now you're programmed into that. So we're all putting all of this into our mind. Where does it go? Well, it doesn't go away. It's layered in what Carl Jung might call the collective unconscious or the subconscious mind. Okay, and you know, and then we have the conscious mind, everything we see, feel, taste, and touch right in this moment. And then there's something else, it's called the superconscious mind. Okay, some people call it the universal mind, because some people call it the Akashic Records. There's a lot of names for this, superconsciousness, some people call it. But it's that place within us where we can get quiet and still that all of the answers to everything that we've ever wanted to know lie. It's not, it's not in AI. It's not on, you know, you don't need more AI. You don't need more Google. You know, I mean, if you do, you need more information. Of course, you're going to look in those areas. But what people fail to lack or lack is what we would call gut instinct. A lot of people call that, right? They have a gut instinct. Well, what is that? I call it intuition. There's an intuitive side of us that can tap into these higher realms of consciousness. We find that thought is not individual, thought is universal. We're tapping into these higher realms of consciousness. People that are meditators, people that are, uh, I guess, uh, have learned how to use their mind, uh, be in theta waves or gamma waves, because that's where the creativity starts to open up. The sciences, neuroscience has showed us that. So that we have the ability, everybody has the ability, we're all born with this to tap into our inner genius. That's what I call it.

Okay?

So it takes, we all have it. It just takes development. We have to develop our intuition. We can develop it through walking in a forest and being mindful. We can develop it through meditation. We can develop it by music, by staying in this beautiful high-frequency music, right? I have a story around that. I have one of my nephews has ADHD, ADD, you know, he's been diagnosed with a bunch of stuff, right? And he was in high school, he got beat up. When he got beat up in high school, he went completely in. Nobody could talk to him again. He stopped talking to everybody and he had to drop out of high school. I had a friend, his name is Mark Romero. Mark Romero was one of the first, uh, this is about 20 years ago, 25 years ago, he's one of the first musicians that they studied his frequency of his music. And the scientists studied this resonance that his music was giving out. And what they found out is this resonance of this music, and they didn't know why at the time, had the ability to help people to reconnect in their brain, heal themselves. So anyway, long story short, I'm driving with my nephew and I said, I thought, I'm going to put on Mark's music. I want to see how it works for him. So I put on his CD at the time. And sure enough, Jordan starts talking to me just as we are right now. I'm like, this is really weird. He's been in for a couple of years at the time, right? Sui. And I went, wow, okay, great. This, you know, this is a science that needs to be studied. Now, there's a lot of studies around music and, and, um, uh, a lot of the, uh, mind diseases right now. And they're finding, findings, you know, that people can, uh, improve, right? They can get better. Their cognitive, uh, can get better with certain frequencies. Does it apply to everybody? No. Okay, why? I'm not a scientist, but I, I do know that there are a lot of studies going on in this area.

Was this particular music that you were playing for your nephew by any chance on the theta frequency? Because I was just reading recently—

I'm guessing it's theta. And, uh, it's, uh, there's also, uh, Rife, uh, Rife, uh, his, uh, they studied Rife, uh, frequencies that, uh 900— I forgot the hertz, but it's like 400-something hertz and 900-something hertz and 1,000-something hertz. They seem to put us into a theta gamma, um, uh, state. So yeah, meditators, long-term meditators go into these states, um, consistently, um, which I happen to be one of those.

Yeah, and I'm reading recently that if you can tap into the theta and some of the other frequencies, it can just really change your paradigm about a lot of things, changing your gut reaction of being a negative one to turning it around and finding the positive in it. So, yeah, I think we need to maybe do a little bit more research on—

I think Nikola Tesla back in the 1920s and Einstein basically repeated the same thing, but he said, if you want to understand the universe, understand energy, frequency, and vibration.

Right.

Right? So, you know, we've got— we've come a long way in the last 10 years. There's a lot of research about energy, frequency, and vibration to heal everything from infrared healing to, you know, sound healing, light healing. There's a lot going on in this field. And you know, it's interesting because I found this in my own life, in the life of a lot of clients, Lisa Skinner Skinner, that is healing is a journey. Okay. And you know, it's a quest, right? We get on this quest. And just because a doctor says, oh, you know what, you're never going to heal. Okay. That— believe the doctor because he doesn't know how to heal that. Okay. I've had several people come on my show that the doctors told them they'd never heal, and they healed and went on to become teachers, right? But you have to get on a quest and start to realize that there are individuals out there that can improve your life, that it can improve what's going on. We're not meant to be on the planet to go through continuous pain and suffering and misery. Those are warning signs that something needs to change, right? We need to change, whether it's in our attitude, whether it's in our physical life, whether it's in our spiritual life, whether it's in our environment, right? You know, some people live in very toxic environments, all right? They have chemicals in their environments. They're under, you know, Wi-Fi towers. They're under power lines. They've got any number of poisons in the environment and they're not aware of it. Okay, and the same thing in our foods, you know. You know, I heard recently that, you know, diabetes is sugar in the liver. You know, Alzheimer's is sugar in the brain. You know, Anyway, it went on and on. I thought, well, that's interesting. I'm sure that there's a cause there. There's probably a cause. It may not be the end-all be-all, but I think we need to look at what are we putting in our mind? What are we putting in our body? What are we living in, in our environments? And when we can start to be open and aware to be mindful of it and, you know, if it's not working, again, based on the premise we're not here to be in misery and suffering and pain all the time, If it's not working, then what is it that we need to do to change? There's a question that I ask myself and I have my clients ask every night. That is, what worked today? What didn't work today? And what can I do to improve tomorrow? If you were to ask that question for the next 365 days, little steps, little improvements, okay? You know, the doctors don't have all the answers. The coaches don't have the answers. The therapists don't have your answers. You have your answers, but it takes a little work to get to them. And here's the thing. If disease— I had a doctor describe this to me. He said people are basically in 4 stages of health, okay, of disease, excuse me. Stage 1, people can pretty much heal themselves in stage 1 of a disease. Stage 2, they may need a little help from a practitioner, possibly an MD that could help them. Stage 3 and 4, when doctors usually get a hold of people, right? Because they did not— they haven't been conscious of Stage 1 or 2. Stage 3, they can still heal. Stage 4, it's highly unlikely they'll heal. And a lot of people don't see a doctor for their pain in their back or their legs or their neck or their gut or their their mind until they get to stage 4 and they go, "Oh my gosh, you know, I'm in stage 4. I didn't know it." Well, it's because somehow you were not paying attention. Hate to say it. You know, health is— and people don't like me to say this, but when we take 100% responsibility for what happens in our world, then things start to change. So no more blame, no more shame, no more guilting yourself or anybody else. You just take responsibility. Okay, this isn't working. If you're in overwhelm, that's not working. Okay, if you're overgiving, that's not working. Okay, it's like we feel trapped because, wow, who else is going to help me? I don't know, but I do know this. I wrote a book. My first best-selling book was called Ask and You Will Succeed. You can get it on Amazon and it's filled with specific questions to empower people to ask the right questions in 35 different areas of life, whether it's in health or in business or in having quantum breakthroughs in your world. If we ask and we keep asking, we stick at it, it's a quest, we will get the answers and we can break out of overwhelm and stress and worry and concern as a permanent fixture in our lives.

Well, you've already given us some, uh, really valuable insight and tips on taking some baby steps to change this situation. And as we all know, and this is actually a fact, a lot of caregivers for people of who live with Alzheimer's disease and dementia become so overwhelmed and so stressed out, they die before the people they're caring for do because they don't know how to release. They don't know how to let go. You've already given us some good advice on how to do that. But, and, you know, we talk a lot about this on this show to try to provide caregivers with tools to kind of retrain how they're going to respond to a lot of the behaviors and things that we see that accompany these diseases. And I'll give you an example because I want to break this down for our listeners so they actually can related to what this might look like in an everyday situation. So let's say you're caring for somebody with Alzheimer's disease, and we know that one of the behaviors and symptoms that is very common is that they can display signs of paranoia and suspiciousness. So it's not uncommon for a caregiver to be accused of stealing the person they're caring for's jewelry or something, one of their possessions, that maybe the person that they're caring for actually put it someplace and can't remember. But because of the changing brain and the damage that the brain disease has done to the brain, they become suspicious, they become paranoid, and their first gut reaction when they can't find what they're looking for is to blame their caregiver. Now, our gut reaction to that as a caregiver is usually defensiveness and arguing and saying, "How can you possibly blame me for this? I care for you every single day," or, "I'm your daughter. I would never do that to you." And what we teach here is a different approach to that same scenario to turn the whole situation around in just the words you say and how you handle it. But that takes changing your way of thinking, and it's going back to that self-awareness. And not just reacting on gut instinct. We have to recondition ourselves because the gut instinct reaction is only going to further exacerbate the situation. Yeah, create more anxiety, create more anger to the person that is accusing you. So we have a whole formula for um, you know, a best practice approach versus the gut instinct approach. Yeah. So if that situation arises— because I want to break this down so people out there can actually relate it to something that commonly happens, um, and I think what I'm taking away from this entire discussion and conversation is the awareness is the self-awareness. And you have to stop yourself from, I don't like being accused of stealing her jewelry. I would never do something like that. How could she possibly accuse me of that? That's the gut reaction, but it's not the right approach to trying to de-escalate the situation. It's turning it around by validating and acknowledging and the words you choose and This is all part of that self-awareness that you're talking about, stopping yourself and go, oh no, if I get angry because I'm being accused of something that I clearly know I would never do, which is the gut reaction because you feel hurt, uh, that this person could possibly accuse you of stealing But you have to stop yourself until it becomes second nature and tell yourself, don't react that way, I have the tools to turn this situation around. And then you pull that tool out of your tool belt. And but it takes a very, very— the point I'm trying to make here, it takes a very strong conscious effort. To do that until it does become second nature. And that's not easy for any of us. And I think this is one of the things that caregivers and family members struggle with the most.

Yeah, they get, you know, we all get caught up in the moment and, um, you know, and can react. But here, here's the thing, um, we have to shift it at a kind of a global level of our consciousness. And this, hopefully, if you're listening to this, you may want to replay this show a couple times because I'm giving a lot of tips here and so is Lisa Skinner. So we have to shift from, first of all, you're not a victim here. Okay? Now, you might feel like a victim, okay? But you're at choice. All right? If you don't feel like you're at choice, I would stop and write out 10 different choices that you could make in this moment today.

That's a great idea.

10 different choices you could make today. So, you know, you're at choice. You are not a victim. Okay? And you know, there's, you know, you're volunteering for this, you're choosing this at some level. Okay? And you go, "Well, I'm stuck. I can't do this. I don't have enough money to hire somebody." Well, you know, there's a lot of service organizations. There's a lot of people out there that are there to help. Have you reached out to them? I don't know. I'm not here to criticize you. I'm here to open your mind and open your thinking so that you can have more choice.

Right?

So, we get out of victimhood because we feel like a victim, we get angry. People react. Okay? We just do. Second of all, once you realize you're at choice, then you choose not to personalize it. Okay? It's not— it's impersonal. Somebody says something to you, okay? Quite frankly, you know, when people say stuff to me all the time, I've been coaching forever. Okay. But you know, I don't— if I personalized it all, if I took on that energy, right? Then man, I'd be reacting all day long. So, it's an impersonal conversation. You may be dealing, you know, if somebody's accusing you and you're reacting, that's something going on inside of you. It looks like they're causing you to react, but it's inside of you. Your reaction is there. So I'd ask myself, "All right, what has to happen for me?" And replay it in your mind. Okay, somebody accusing you is taking something. Replay it. Well, how could I replay that differently next time? How can I do that a little different? And maybe there's some deep work inside of you, which I gave you the release process on my website for free. Okay, maybe you need to release some of your old ways of maybe somebody else accusing you or you not feeling like you were enough or what have you. Okay, I'm just saying. Okay, so the other part of this is if you want to, if you want to take control of your mind, okay, you have to put a pause in. You have to put a pause between your reaction and what you say, your response, right? It has to be a pause. So somebody says, hey, you know what, you stole my, you stole my watch. I can't believe you did that. Now, what I would say to myself is, "Interesting point of view. Okay. Interesting point of view. Oh, okay. You're accusing me. Interesting." Because I need a pause there. I need a pause inside of me. So, and not go to defensiveness, right? So, I might just stop and, you know, and I know Lisa Skinner Skinner has a lot of compassionate tools that she gives you also. To deal with these situations like this. But I pause. Interesting point of view. Take some breaths. And you don't have to respond, by the way. Nobody says you have to respond or say anything. You're at choice again, right? You know, you might say, well, you know, let— I'm not prepared to talk to you about this right now. We'll have to talk about it a little later. Is that okay? Or you can, Lisa, you can give her some of them, some of your tools that you use with compassion. But pause reaction. Okay, somebody says something to you, you don't want to react, you want to pause, take some breaths, and then you want to tune into a response coming from love as opposed to anger, upsetness, anything else, your ego, right? So you either come from your soul or you come from your ego. Your choice. But it takes practice. That's what I want to say.

Okay. Wow, you've given us some really, really great tools, ideas, resources. I'm gonna ask you one more question because we are running out of time. What do you believe, or what do you that you are most aware of that people are not, that could help them generate courageous success? And I— you've probably already mentioned it, but to wrap things up, can you just really whittle it down to maybe one main point that you, you know, that maybe you've learned through your path down the yellow brick road to where you are today that maybe you wished you had known in the very beginning that could help our audience today?

Well, I'd say this. I woke up and I came out of the delusions of life in 1992, and I heard this little voice inside me saying, you got to feel the pain to make the change. And I took it to my therapist at the time. I'd seen him for a year. And I said, Doc, what's this voice I'm hearing? You gotta feel the pain to make the change. And he looked at me and he said, Ken, I can't help you anymore. He said, you have to go follow that voice. And as I walked out of his office wondering, didn't he like me anymore? Or why would he say this? You know, I realized that that was the voice of courage. That was the voice of truth. And I needed to start to listen to those symptoms of what was not working in my life, the areas that I was suffering in, in relationship at the time, in physical health at the time, and financially at the time. I needed to look at what I didn't want to look at. And then I needed to create a plan around that. Okay, to not stay stuck. You know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. And I was doing that. So I needed to go there. I needed to learn that. What that taught me, the most important thing that I shared with you earlier, is I learned to meditate. I learned to find out what was that voice, feel the pain, make the change. What is that little inner voice that I called intuition today, many people call it, but that intuitive, that understanding, that little silent voice that speaks to me. So I figured that out, but then the hardest part was to have to start to listen to that voice and trust that voice and have faith in that voice and have an understanding, a real understanding of that voice. That voice is learned, is, is the voice of wisdom. So it's the voice of truth. And when you can hear it within you, when you stop going 90 miles an hour and you take breaks throughout the day, 5-minute, 10-minute, connect to yourself, longer periods of stillness and contemplation in the morning and the evening. When you can do that, life changes and it gets better. It'll get better for you. It's a universal principle that I'm teaching you here.

So if you sure have given us probably the most powerful takeaway of, of, uh, for all of us. I don't think there's a whole lot more to say. That was a very, very powerful takeaway for all of us to, you know, just really digest and try to implement into our daily lives. Thank you so much. Um, did you want to—

no, I think, I think, I think that that's right. Come, um, I hope people will come and visit me. Visit my website, kendiefoster.com. Um, on that home page too, if you'd like to connect with me, you'd like to talk, uh, to me a little bit about, um, uh, how I might be able to support you, I'd love, uh, love to invite you to do that.

And, uh, where can they find the, um the release resources?

Yeah, they can find the release process right at kendefoster.com. kendefoster.com. You can find that and you can get in touch with me there too.

Awesome. Wow, this has been just an incredible discussion. I appreciate you being here so much, and I really hope that it resonated with a lot of people who will be listening to this, um, because it's such a just important part of the world, of their world, when they're caring or have a family member who's living with Alzheimer's and dementia. So every little bit helps that we can, you know, help relieve some of the overwhelm that we've been talking about during this episode and hopefully make their worlds a little easier to cope.

With as I would just— my final thought on that would just be, you know, uh, trust the process. Uh, you know, dying is part of living. Um, you know, though it's painful, um, you know, it can also be a time of deep love, uh, reflection, forgiveness, and, and even beauty if we, you know, if we put on the eyes to see that beauty.

All right, thanks again for being here, Ken. Appreciate it very, very much. You're an amazing human being. That'll conclude this episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host, and we, of course, will be back with another new episode next week. And I hope everybody out there listening to this today enjoys a very happy and healthy rest of your week. Thanks again for being here and spending part of your day with us. And we'll be back next week. So hope to see you then. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's. We hope you found something in today's episode that helps. We understand that caring for a loved one with dementia can be the challenge of a lifetime, but you don't have to do it alone. If you're ready for exclusive access to even more great content to and resources. Head on over to Facebook and join Lisa Skinner's Minding Dementia support group. We're a community of like-minded caregivers, and we're here to help.