Episode 398: You Can't Get to Better Until You Get to Different

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No need to whine and cry.

The Winey Palooza! Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the Winey Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Winey Palooza podcast, and I am very excited today because I get to talk to the fantastic Diana Kokoska. Diana, how did I do?

I've been practicing your name. You know, the last name is so crazy, and you did fabulous. You did it exactly how it should be done.

I'm so excited. I'm starting out strong. So let me tell you about the fabulous Diana. She is an award-winning entrepreneur, former CEO, and business leader known for her passion in developing leaders and helping individuals unlock their full potential. She's a practitioner of neuro-linguistic Programming, an LP, and a founding member of the John Maxwell Team of certified coaches. Diana has built a successful career around leadership, personal growth, and empowerment. She's widely recognized for her transformative teachings and strategies, which encourage individuals to reframe limiting beliefs and embrace a mindset of abundance, growth, and gratitude. Her latest book, Becoming More: You Can't Get to Better Until You Get to Different, offers actionable insights to help people reshape their lives and leave a lasting legacy. I mean, I don't think I could be more excited to talk to someone. I told Diana, she's speaking my language. I have so many questions. This is gonna be so helpful to people. So let's start with, can you share a defining moment from your journey that inspired you to write this transformative book?

That's very interesting, Rebecca Greene. Boy, you start out with good questions, let me tell you. You just start going deep. I love that. The transformative journey actually started when I was in about 8th grade. Now, I was so fortunate. We had a, a great family, and We did grow up, though, with one bathroom and there were 5 kids, right?

Oh, gosh.

Yeah. And, and so with that happening, well, we all got the bathroom for 15 minutes and we worked at the grocery store before school, so we all left at 5:30 a.m. So the great part is if you were number 5, well, guess what? You got to sleep in a little bit longer. Yeah, you got the tail end, Rebecca. Whatever anybody else left of their 15 minutes. If they went over, you could have 15 or 5, you know, yet you wanted to get in the car because it was over a mile to walk. So you definitely wanted to go with mom and dad. So here we are.

I—

mom and dad were so good. They did a rotation. So everybody got their fair share of unfairness, right? And I was in that number 5 position. Well, my brother Larry was in there and he was taking way too long. And I was pounding on the door going, Larry, it's over your time, Larry. You know, I mean, you can imagine being frustrated and a girl wanting to get ready for school.

Yeah.

And I knew how to unlock that bathroom door, Rebecca. I took a rat tail comb, stuck that in there and popped the lock and threw open the door. And to my surprise, unfortunately, my brother was laying on the floor. He did have a towel wrapped around him, but his eyes were in the back of his head. I thought he was dead. I screamed like crazy. And Mom and Dad, of course, came and came running. And to make a long story short, he ended up going in an ambulance about 4 hours to the big city. It was back in the day, though, when they didn't know much about brain tumors or neuroplasticity or neuroscience at all. And so after many months, they sent him home. There was no rehab centers in that. And we had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he would say a word, I would say a word, we'd play it back. And so he learned how to walk and talk. And so that was a defining moment in my life, learning that no matter what people tell you, because see, they told him he would be in that wheelchair. They, they pretty much said, you'll never walk again. Yet on 4 different times in his life, he learned how to walk and talk. He was absolutely into different. Every time they pushed him down, he would rise up. And it was a defining moment because it taught me that number 1, you're gonna learn things.

Yeah.

Life's gonna give you some lessons. Number 2, you're gonna implement what you learned and you're gonna fail. At what you learned the first time you implement it, and then you're going to relearn a better way. And so as he would speak into the tape recorder, you could hardly understand him until he could actually speak to where you could understand him. That was that rotation of learn, implement, fail, relearn, implement, fail. And it's just a constant that every one of us go through in our life. Sometimes we just don't recognize that we're into that model and going forward. Forward. Later, my sister was diagnosed with her own brain tumor and in and out of surgeries many times. And so I started studying the brain to figure out what is it that we can do because we train our brains to think a certain way. Most people think our brains think for us. We're actually teaching our brains how to think. And I thought, is there a way? Because his brain was this way. And then it was that way. Her brain was this way, then it was that way. Well, why can't we have our brains one way and make them into another? And I found out we could. And so I've been on this quest to find out more and more and meeting with doctors and looking at brain scans and truly understanding what people go through. And I developed a model. I started using some of this in the real estate career that I was in as a CEO over coaching and training for Williams Realty International. And I found that even in the deepest, darkest moments, in the worst business conditions, people were thriving at a high level. And they were thriving because we were teaching them how to retrain their brain, retrain their perspective, retrain their mindset so they could accomplish whatever they desire. People started asking me, when are you going to write your book, Diana? I go, uh, no. And then I was down on the dock one evening, Rebecca Greene Greene, and I was reading a book, and I got another text thanking me for helping them. And we all know they made the changes in their life. You don't change anybody else's life. They have to change their own. Sometimes you can give them the direction and the words and the encouragement to change, yet They do it. And so I sent it back saying, thank you very much. You're the one that actually changed your life. Thanks for making that decision. And, uh, I'll think about the book. Went back to the book I was reading and here's what it said. If not now, when? And if not us, who? It was John F. Kennedy's quote, right? When we were going into space. I looked at that and I went, okay, I think I got it. I'm gonna write the book. And so I put a model into the book that allows each and every person— it's more of a workbook than an actual book. It gives you exercises, it gives you, uh, examples. It actually even lets you write in the book cuz it asks you some questions. The biggest thing though is whatever your story is, You can write a new story. You get to design your life instead of having this life by default that everybody else wants you to have or desires for you to have or make certain that you have, right? You've got to pick up the pen because you're the author of your own story. You create it. You are the creator, the crusader, and the champion of your story. So, well, that's why book. That's a long answer to a short question.

Oh, I mean, it's such a beautiful question and I— such a beautiful answer, and I have so much I want to say about it, but I want to talk about what you just said because people get stuck. And, you know, I want to give my Aunt Judy credit, and I'm, and I'm hoping she's going to listen to this because at a very young age she told me that I write my own story. And I took that to heart because she's like, you can write a love story, you can write a comedy, you can write a tragedy. So like, write your story well, she told me. So I took that to heart. Agree with you. I've been working on a good, good love story my whole life. But I hear people get so stuck and I want them to be a crusader and a champion. I want them to do that for themselves and I want them to write themselves a better story. So can you help them?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is right now, I mean, Halloween's upon us. The podcast may be later, yet we're recording here and we're getting ready to wear costumes. We're getting ready to put on a mask. And what I think we sometimes forget is some masks, they never come off. I mean, there are people out there right now that are wearing a mask of anxiety, mask of disguising their depression. And yet they have a story, and every single person has a story, and we don't know that story. We don't know what they're thinking. We only get to see the outside of them. We don't know what's happening on the inside. And yet I do know that every story— I mean, look at Hollywood, look at any story, for heaven's sakes. It has a victim, it has a villain, it has a hero. Some of them have coaches and mentors. And we get to decide what character we're going to play in our story. The sad part is some people really, they don't look at their life as a story that they're in charge of, that they get to determine who takes the stage. They're the ones that hold the megaphone and the, and the filming apparatus, right? They get to design it. Like you said, your aunt said, you hold the pen. When people get caught in that villain, sometimes they get caught in the victim. Yet when my grandmother read the story of David Copperfield, it had a statement in there about whether I am to be the hero of my own life is yet to be told. And I know it's not said exactly that way in David Copperfield, yet it caught my attention. Like, wait, the heroes I knew were heroes for other people. I had never heard about being the hero for yourself. It was a new concept to me. And I thought, how do you become the hero of your own life? And I thought, who is a hero? They're an overcomer. They're an achiever. They're a warrior. They're a champion. And I thought Superman is a hero, right? Yeah. But then I Wonder Woman because she's was a woman and she was in the comics and she was a superhero, right? And her name was Diana, just like mine. So I thought, oh shoot, I'm gonna play like I'm Wonder Woman.

Yes.

And I started realizing that it wasn't playtime. I was actually crafting my story through the thoughts that I had. And just like your aunt speaking to you, I truly believe people grow into the conversations we create around them. And so I wanna ask all of our listeners, what kind of conversations are you having with other people around who they are? Are you an encourager or are you someone that is in judgment? And either way, it's your choice. Yet more importantly, what do you say to yourself? Are you a champion for yourself? Are you an encourager to yourself? Or do you allow the storytellers in your mind to control who you are? And see, I, I believe there's 4 storytellers, Rebecca Greene. Number 1, the storyteller that's the deceiver. It's the deceptive storyteller. It's, it's the one that just wants to eat us up, the one that says you should have done this and you should have done that and you should do this. And oh my goodness, I can't believe you said that, and you'll never amount to anything. And who do you think you are? You're too old, you're too young, you're too short, you're too tall. It's just constantly talking to us, and it's devious. And then we have the flattering storyteller. That's the one that says, ah, been there, done that, I don't need to listen to anybody, I already know it all, that's okay. Or it may be so flattering that, oh, why would I ever do that? I don't think they look very good doing that. Right? So I'm not gonna do that cuz we all would wanna look good and be right. Then there's the one that really frightens me, and I see this one over and over again. A CEO I saw many times, and that is the reasonable storyteller. It's the one that allows us to give reasons or excuses as to why something happened. And I have a statement that you can either have results or you can have reasons. That you can't have both. Mm.

Oh, I love that line.

Yeah, we get to choose. And then the fourth storyteller, well, that's the one I want everyone on this podcast to absolutely talk to, listen to, and to actually feed this storyteller. It's the encouraging storyteller. It's the empowering storyteller. It's the one that allows us to say, you know what? Maybe I'm not gonna be the best at that the first time, yet I'm gonna go for it. It's the one that allows us to get outside of our comfort zone and stop being this hostage being held by the thoughts that we have. I mean, we are in a prison and the bars are those thoughts that we continually have about ourselves. And the prison itself is our comfort zone that we're so afraid to get out of. And so which storyteller are you listening to? And let it be the empowering one.

Well, and I think that everyone's capable of that, as you know yourself. And I think that they're believing their brain telling them they can't do something or they're not good enough to do something. And it's so hard for me to see my friends do this, to see people around me do this. It's so hard. They're believing themselves.

You know, it, it's so interesting, especially with our kids. And a lot of times you say something and they go, oh, well, of course you're gonna say that. You're my mother.

Yes.

Yes. And so one of the things that I would highly recommend is do some affirmations with your children. Mm-hmm. Even if you're doing them for yourself, let them listen. And then you can have some fun with it and say, you know, like, I am a person with high energy. Oh, you are a person with high energy. And our brain takes in the you are so well. It's like listening to somebody else and yet have them say it back. You are only make certain they're in, in a mirror, right? And when they point, they think they're pointing like you're doing it to each other, only they're doing it to themselves in their brain. It's taking it in. And the more they say it, the more it will embed in there. And you may say, well, it's not even true. I am somebody that is always early. No, I'm always late. Well, don't say the latter part. Just keep saying, I am somebody that loves getting there early. And as you say it over and over again, because what's happening in our brain, Rebecca Greene, you already know this, is as we have a thought, it goes from one neuron to another neuron. And yes, there's lots of things that happen. I don't want I don't want to get into the details yet. It's like it makes a path, and along that axon that it travels, it's like a patch of grass. You're walking across the grass, and as you walk, well, the first time it doesn't make anything at all. You don't even notice it. Yet if I go back and forth across that same spot in the grass, eventually the grass goes away and there's a big rut. That's what happens in our brain. And because our brain likes to go fast, it likes easy, it's gonna go in the path of least resistance. So if you have a thought over and over and over again, and it's an I am, and it's something negative, well, that's the path that is embedded in your brain. And neuroscience says nerve cells that fire together, wire together. Now, let's say you start saying, I am someone that enjoys being there early. I enjoy arriving early. I am somebody that people go, wow, they are now early all the time. And we're saying things like that to ourselves. Now we're literally reframing, retraining our brain, making a new pathway. And the greatest thing I've ever learned about neuroscience is that nerve cells that no longer fire together no longer wire together. And so just like if we stop going across the grass in that area, eventually the grass will grow back. That's what happens in our brain. And now the easy way to go, the way that we've trained our brain and our body follows, is we're gonna be there early because we've told ourselves that so many times, and now it has become a belief.

Such a good explanation. Gosh, I hope everybody heard that. I hope everybody takes this in and starts practicing because it works, people. It works. I'm telling you. You have an approach. It's a be, do, have, give approach to help us to have lasting changes in our life. Can you explain that to us? Because that sounds fascinating.

Well, first of all, I'm so glad you asked about this because it is an approach to life. See, most people believe that— well, let's just say their neighbors have a lot, right? They have a beautiful home. Or maybe it's a friend. They have a great car. They just seem to have their whole life together. And a lot of times we've been taught to think like a victim, like, well, if I had what they had, I could do what they do and then I could be like them and I could eventually give what they give. That's the wrong approach. Now, the villain has been taught, no, you got to work hard. You got to do it. You got to do more and more and more. And the more you do, the more you'll have. And the more you have, the better you'll be. And the better you are being, then the more you can give. And you go, are you kidding? No, because see, you got to think like them. You got to be like them in order to do what they do. And once you're being like them and doing what they're doing, now you can have what they have. And once you have what they have, you can give what they give. And so it's all a matter of it starts on the inside and shows up on the outside. And when we start believing that our external world is more important than our internal world, that's when nothing in our life changes. And we keep going through the treadmill of life, just watching and doing the same things over and over and over again, expecting something new to change. And until we change the way we think, nothing in our world will ever change.

And I love that you're explaining that if there's someone that is how we want to be, then we can learn from them.

Yeah.

Right? If somebody has a wonderful attitude and they're positive and they're empowered, we can watch and learn and ask.

And the greatest part about that, see, we're being the hero of our own life when we learn that we grow within or we go without. Right? It's all about personal growth, that our businesses grow to the extent that we do. Our lives, our relationships, our marriages, everything grows to the extent that we do. But we've got to do the growing. You know, we can't point and say, you know, grow taller. I mean, when you plant a seed, think about it. You take the seed and you have to push it down in the ground and you have to cover it with a bunch of stuff. And sometimes you even put a little manure in it, right? Or they call it fertilizer. Sorry. But you put all that on top And then all of a sudden it starts to grow, but you gotta water it. So I've gotta ask, what kind of seeds are you planting in your mind? Are, what are you watering? What seeds are you watering? Because that's what's gonna grow in your life. And so when we say we've gotta be like them to do what they do, to have what they have so we can give what they give, be careful. Ask them to be your mentor if You want to be like them. See, you may, you may want what they have. You may even want to do what they do. Yet maybe there's something in their character you don't really like. So do you really want to be like them? Choose your mentors carefully because you will become like them. Whomever you hang out with. That it's been said, your 5 closest friends, add up what they make, divide it by 5, and I'll bet you 10 to 1 that's really close to your income. Zig Ziglar taught me a long time ago, the people you hang out with is who you will be like. So hang out with people you wanna become like, Diana, otherwise you're in for a real ride called life. Right?

Really good advice. Very good advice. And I, you know, I know we touched on this, but there's some really common limiting beliefs that people have.

Oh yeah.

That come up again and again. And can we, can we talk to them about turning it from a breakdown to a breakthrough for their limiting beliefs.

Yeah, I love the words that you choose, Rebecca. That's really good, because there is going to be a breakdown before there's a breakthrough. Just like Chuck Yeager, you know, when he broke the sound barrier, what happened? All the glass started shattering, the, the plane started shaking, there was a big boom in the sky. Everybody thought that he was dead because he had broken through. But before he broke through, He too thought he was gonna die. I mean, it was shaking like crazy. So when we think and we've got all this shakiness going on and we go into anxiety and worry and stress, all that worry, anxiety, and stress, we know it's never gonna do us any good, yet our brain just wants to go there. That's why we've gotta have great people around us that can go, hey, wake up, be the hero. You get to choose right now. Yet those limiting beliefs, in fact, I have a free giveaway about limiting beliefs that you can work through your own. Yet let's talk about some of these. Um, maybe we say, I need the approval of others to succeed. See, if you believe that, then that's going to limit you. Because if somebody isn't saying, oh, you're so successful, oh, you're doing so good, if you need all that feedback, uh, to get your confidence, well, that's not going to help. And So I would say don't think about being confident. Think about being worthy. See, self-confidence and self-worth are two different things, and people sometimes think they're the same. Mm-hmm. We actually get what we deserve in our imagination. And what do I mean by that? It's whatever you think you deserve, you generally get. So start thinking the best of yourself. In fact, one of the affirmations I use is, what I believe about myself is what I will become. So I believe the very best of myself.

Oh, I love that so much.

Now, I happen to believe I'm a child of God. So are you kidding? It doesn't really matter what other people think. I know what I think. I know what he thinks. And so I'm fine with it. Yet some people say, well, I'm not good enough to do what great people do. Oh, every one of us have been given a gift. Before we got on the podcast. I, I thank you for the talent that you have and sharing it with everyone, because see, you not only opened up your gift, you shared that gift, and you multiplied your talent, which is what we're supposed to do. And everyone listening out there, you've got a gift. The question is, have you opened it up? And if not, open it up. Maybe you are thinking that that it's too difficult, that there's too many sensitive conversations that would happen around it. Uh, you might disappoint a friend or something. Yet that liberating belief is, I have the confidence to do this, and even if I fall, I have the persistence to get up and keep going. And in my book, I talk about limiting beliefs versus as liberating beliefs and how we can actually work through those. In fact, every part of the model that I give, Rebecca Greene, I give the limiting factors of it and the liberating factors and give people how to move from one to the other. So if there's any area in your life that you're just not happy with right now, literally go to that section of the book and work through it. Like I said, it's more of a workbook that you can work on yourself and have the life that you desire, more importantly, that you deserve.

So for the people listening who feel stuck in their limiting beliefs, I am going to guess that you can give them hope that you have seen people who are feeling stuck make the progress to more liberate— liberating beliefs.

Absolutely. In fact, there was a lady who believed that she— well, she wanted to be a coach, and she came to me and she goes, I just don't have what it takes. And her voice was like this. And she said, I just don't know how. I just don't have what it takes. I can't do it. Nobody wants to listen to me. And I go, well, now she's allowed me to share this, just so you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, uh, I've shared it many times. In fact, she'll even share the story. I looked at her and I said, you know, I love you, and you know, I believe in you, and you're right. Right now you cannot be a coach. Yet let's look at how we can take that belief and make it different. Because until you change that belief, it's not gonna work. Number 1, have you thought about getting a speech coach? She said, no, no one's ever told me to. I said, well, first of all, you do your coaching over the phone. You definitely need a speech coach. She went out, she got a speech coach. She lowered her voice. She has a beautiful voice now. And she's a great coach and has been a coach for 15 years now. A very good coach. She's gone on to become a leader in an organization, and she's just thriving. She ended up getting a divorce because she started doing so great, and I don't recommend that to anybody, yet it just wasn't working. And now she's getting remarried, uh, and she's just— she's having a ball. She was a single parent. She had a lot of things to work through, but each and every one of them— it wasn't just changing her thoughts about herself. It was about changing her perspective about a lot of things. There's limiting beliefs about ourselves. There's limiting beliefs about the world. There's limiting beliefs about the way that we speak. More importantly, the words that we choose identify some of the limiting beliefs that we don't even know that we have. So it's so fun to know that we can work through them though. That's the main thing.

Oh, I love that story. I love that. That's so inspiring. I'm so glad she's doing well. That's, that's amazing.

Yes. I mean, I can tell you countless stories of people that didn't— a speaker that she said, oh, I remember one lady and she was in the bathroom and she was crying. And I go, is there something I can help with? Because we were at an audition and I knew she was getting ready to audition. I said, Did something happen? And she goes, I can't do this. I can't audition today. I said, well, what happened? Tell me about it. I'm sure it will work through. We'll put you at the very end. And she goes, no, I just don't have what it takes. I'm going to go out there and make a fool of myself. And I go, stop. You came here for a reason. What made you believe in the first way that you wanted to be a speaker? She goes, well, I want to help people. I said, so helping people, is that more important than what people might think of you? She said, well, yes, I want to help people. I go, okay, so let me ask you, when you get up in front of everybody today to audition, who is that about? If you're concerned about what they think of you, is that about the people in the audience or is that about you? She stopped and she said, well, that's about me. And I said, well, wait just a moment, you said that you wanted to help people more than make it about you. So which is it? And she said, I want to help people. I said, well, then you have to audition. Otherwise it's about you and you're lying to yourself and you're lying to everybody else by saying you really care about people. So you decide. I'm, I'm going to support you either way and I'm going to love you either way. If you decide not to, that'll be fine. And we'll know that you care more about yourself than other people. And if you get up there and you audition, then we know that you care more about people. And who cares what they say? Because whatever they say, the feedback is going to help you get better. Well, she went on to audition. She did make it as what we called a redshirt. And she became so good that it wasn't— within a year, she was one of the better speakers and had the best ratings of many of the other coaches that we were sending out. And so a lot of times we just need somebody to tell us the truth instead of condoning us. Because a lot of people, they go, oh, you're so mean. I go, no, I'm not mean at all. I'm taking a stand for their greatness more than they will stand for their limitations. See, if you're surrounded by people that are going, honey, yes, you need to understand, I understand that You can understand it, yet you've got to get their greatness out of them. Otherwise you're helping them with their limiting beliefs and you're the storyteller, not only in their mind, that's in front of them. Be the one that empowers them, that encourages them, that literally understands how to speak with them, to get them to do what they need to do. Because if you don't see more in people than they see in themselves, Well, how are you ever going to add value to anybody?

Oh, that couldn't be more true. And I often think we want it so bad for other people, and I want us to want it so bad for ourselves too.

Isn't that the truth? It is interesting that we want it so bad for other people.

Yeah.

And yet for ourselves, it's almost like we don't deserve it.

I was literally— you just took the words out of my mouth. Why does someone else deserve it and we don't? That's the question to ask yourself.

It's a great question. And it all stems down to that self-worth. In my book, I talk about the 4 energies of success, and confidence is one of those energies. Okay.

What are the— tell us all of them. I want to hear all of them.

Yeah, the energies of success. Well, first of all, let's talk about those energies that actually limit us, right? They're fearful, worried, nervous, depressed, dissatisfied, anxious, stress, complaining. Oh, that's a big one. Complaining to me equals a garbage magnet, for heaven's sakes. And we just— when we complain, we just have more to complain about. And yet when we show gratitude, we find more things to be grateful for. Mm-hmm. I love that. Irritation. That's one that I really had to work on. I could become very irritated. Right. And I realized that that wasn't an energy that was serving me, nor self-doubt. Self-doubt. See, we all have an energetic calling card, Rebecca Greene, and They literally feel that energetic calling card before you could ever hand them a, a regular business card or trade phone numbers with them on the phone, even AirDropping. They feel it. We're like a, a satellite broadcasting our own energy everywhere, and we're playing the match game all day long. Whatever our energy is, we're matching up to that energy. And so let's talk about these energies of success. One of them is intention and purpose. And a lot of people say, I don't know my purpose. Well, there's ways that you can find your purpose. Yet literally, what, what is your gift? What are your strengths? That helps you find your purpose. And you'll know it. It's not this mystical thing. It's really pretty simple. I think people just make a big deal out of it. Yet there's the Purpose Factor book that you can get from Brian and Gabrielle Boucher, and, and that would help you with your purpose. The other one I told you, the energy of confidence. It's the energy of saying, you know what, I can do this, and if I fail, I've got the persistence to get up and keep going. And persistence helps build that confidence. The energy of gratitude. Oh, this is a huge energy. People that are grateful are generous. People that are grateful, they value people. And when you value people, you can add value to people. And so I highly recommend that you keep doing that. You keep finding everything that you're grateful for. And then the energy of being in the present moment. Live in the present because see, When you live in the past, you'll never get out of it. You'll be like in a prison, always in the past, always recollecting what didn't work or what did work, and you're sorry because it's not happening again. Or you're dreaming about the future, yet change can only happen in the present moment. So if you want to do something with your life, you have to live in the present. Yes, Set goals for the future. Yes, dream about the future. Reflect about the past. What did you learn from the past? What did you do correctly? What did you not do so great that you can learn from? See, at the, at the end of every day, Rebecca Greene, I have two questions I love to ask myself, and that is, what did I do today that I never wanna stop doing? And then I ask the tough one, what did I do today that I hope I'll never do again? Mm-hmm. Is there anybody that I need to ask for forgiveness for? And I wasn't always that way. I think as we get older, we get better and wiser. Yet, uh, I have been a reflector of what I can do and how I can improve. And I think that comes from my brother and sister. Watching them always strive to become more. And yet you can't— that the name of the book is absolutely correct. You can't get to better until you get to different. Einstein said, if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and expect a different result, that's a sign of insanity. So we've got to think differently before anything will show up different in our lives.

Well, and I'm thinking about how, you know, you're inspiring me because I like to think of myself as a very grateful person, and yet I find myself venting to my husband, and he doesn't want to hear— he doesn't want to hear all the garbage. Like, how about hearing, I'm so thankful for our life and my day of work? And, you know, how about telling him all the good stuff. It's like, I think the good stuff isn't as important as the other stuff that I need to vent about.

Well, and you know what's interesting is when we take a picture, we have the camera, right? Or our phone, so to speak. And, and we're aiming that phone at exactly what we want to capture. Yet we don't do that in our life.

Mm-hmm.

And I just find that so interesting. Why is that picture so important that we wanna capture it? And yet in our life, if we speak about the good things, aren't we capturing that?

Yes.

And putting good thoughts in our mind, which puts in good chemicals into our body.

Mm-hmm.

And yet when we complain, we're actually putting bad chemicals into our body because all that complaining, well, it certainly doesn't feed the good stuff, right? It's always something's wrong. And when it's wrong, well, you think about all the people that are ill. And I'm not saying we make ourselves ill, only sometimes we can with our thoughts. That's for sure. We can help get ourselves better. There's been remission from cancer. There's been remission from all sorts of diseases. And they go, what happened? And then they ask the people and they go, I did affirmations. I started thinking differently. And they, their brain actually changes. I mean, if you've ever had a brain scan, it's interesting to see how you think and do you, all the things that show up in a brain scan, and then you start thinking differently and you go back to brain scans. They did brain scans with people. They had them come in and they had them write about what they were grateful for, for 5 minutes. You know, I'm grateful for the air I breathe, for the house I live in, for the car I drive, for my kids, for my spouse, all the different things they could think of. And I think a lot of times people think it has to be something really grand to be grateful for. No, it can be grateful for the fact that we can be on a Zoom call, that we have a camera, that we have a chair to sit in, that we have a pen to write with, that we have books to read that we— I mean, you just look around your room. I'm grateful for the table. I'm grateful for the food. I'm grateful for the makeup. Oh goodness, I'm sure you're grateful for the makeup too. I'm grateful for the desk. I'm great. You can just go on and on. And then they waited 30 minutes and they did brain scans, and the whole brain was lit up.

Wow.

I mean, cerebellum, the creativity, the intuition, the logic, the emotions of joy and happiness, and the area where you learn. It's all lit up, the amygdala that makes us wanna go into action. Then they went back, same people, and said, think about what-ifs. What if my dog died? Oh, what if I had a wreck? What if I was diagnosed with a bad disease? What if I lost my job? What if, what if, what if? Then they did a brain scan. The only things that were lit up were the emotions. Worry, fear, anxiety, stress. There was nothing in the logical side of the brain. There was nothing in the creative side of the brain. That's why I won't even use the word I'm frustrated, because frustration shuts down the creative side. I say I'm fascinated with what's happening.

Oh my goodness, that's perfect.

Yeah, see, frustrating limits us. Fascinating liberates us. These are the things that are in the book on how can we speak to liberate ourselves and open our brain up to where we train our brain to the life that we desire. Because if, if you are the creator, the crusader, and the champion, and the character of your own life, don't play a stand-in in your own life's journey. I mean, for heaven's sakes, be the main character, right? You're the star as long as you desire to be. Yet all these little things that limit us, the way that we speak about ourselves, the way we speak about others, the, the values that we have. It's not only our beliefs. See, each one of us have 6,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. It depends which research you, you look at. I don't care how many, it's a lot. The sad part is 90% of the thoughts that we have are the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. And nothing changes. And even worse, 85% of those thoughts are generally negative because it's so much easier to go to the negative than the positive. You have to work to be positive. Yes. And you have to train your brain to think in a positive way. In fact, I'm, I'm gonna just challenge everybody out there. For the next 21 days— let's do a whole month. One month of every time you sit down to dinner with anyone, you say at least 5 things that you're grateful for that happened that day. Like, I'm grateful I could be on the Zoom call with you. I'm grateful that I haven't had any phone calls while I'm on the Zoom call. I'm grateful that I can remember the things from my book. I'm Come up with all sorts of things and then see what happens in your life. See how much better you feel and even how much more successful you are.

Now, you said that it's easier to go negative, and what I wanna ask you is, with practice, don't you think it becomes— Oh, take your time. Don't you think it becomes easier to be positive with practice?

You have to practice. You have to train your brain, Rebecca. You're absolutely right. When we train our brain, because see, we've trained it to go to the negative.

Yes.

It's natural to go that way. And because it's easy, we go that way. And the more we go that way, the more we desire to go that way. And the more we desire to go that way, we start finding friends that will join us in doing it. Oh, if you think that was bad, guess what happened to me, right?

Oh, it's not a good pattern, people. Not a good pattern. Oh my goodness.

So what does our mindset then do? Then we go into a limiting mindset. By the way, mindset and attitude are not the same, Rebecca Greene. And a lot of people get those two confused. They think that attitude— all you gotta do is change your attitude and you change your mindset. No, attitude lives in the conscious mind and mindset lives in the subconscious mind. You know what your attitude is, and yes, you can change it in the moment, yet your mindset is different and you don't know exactly what your mindset is. And when I looked up mindset, there were like 150 different mindsets. Now, Carol Dweck made it very popular with the fixed versus the growth. Hmm. And that is the main thing. That is certainly a big one. And many parents out there are literally teaching their kids and training their kids' brains into a fixed mindset. I'm going to give you an example. See, let's say that your kid comes home and he has an A on a math test and you go, oh, I knew you'd get an A in math. You're really good at math. In fact, you are so good at math, that's one of your best subjects. You are so much better in math than anybody else in the class or anybody in our family. What do we just tell our child? That some people are good at math and other people are not good at math, and you're either good or you're bad, and there is no in between. That's a fixed mindset. When you think it's either one way or the other, right? Now, a growth mindset— wow, an A in math! Oh, that's because of all the effort you put forward. In fact, if you put that much effort into whatever you do, you're going to be a success. See, one is anybody can do it with the effort. The other is you're either good or bad. And the one is growth, the other is fixed. Yet there's many mindsets that we have, and they limit us or they liberate us. The attitude is how we use that mindset. Let me give you an example. If you have a judgmental mindset, you'll express that judgment in a positive or negative way based upon your attitude.

Attitude.

Let's say that, oh my goodness, one of your mindsets is entitlement. You'll express that based upon your attitude. Entitlement, negative attitude. Well, don't you realize who I am? I mean, I deserve that. Entitlement with a positive attitude would be more, well, I was kind of I was expecting something different. I thought that— did you hear the difference?

Oh, yes.

And yet a curious mindset based on your attitude is how you'll ask a question. So all these things combine together in our mind, and that's why the pyramid of going from being to becoming is so important that you go through and you work on each segment of the pyramid, taking you to a legacy that you desire and one that you absolutely are proud to leave. Right.

Wow. Wow. I hope that everybody listening feels as inspired as I do right now, because I certainly want to go on with my day with, like, the best attitude and mindset possible.

Well, I'm sure you will, because that's who you are. And I just love the podcast that you're doing and how you're helping people. And I trust that something that we said today will help others. And you can go to the book, look at all the different chapters, see what's limiting you and liberate. And it doesn't matter. You can be one of the best and the most successful people out there. Yet we all have to keep growing because growth is the only guarantee that tomorrow's going to be better than today. That's what my mentor for 28 years, John Maxwell, has taught me. And man, personal growth, which is one of the chapters of the book, is very important.

Well, tell everyone we all need to read this book. Tell everyone where to find the book and where to find you.

Well, Amazon's probably the easiest, or you can become becomingmorebook.com if you want to order in bulk. We have many companies that it's actually a requirement that their employees read it.

I love that.

Yeah. And we have a lot of high schools I was surprised many private high schools are taking it on as curriculum, which I'm very excited about. And then of course you can reach me at Diana Kokoska, which I trust you'll put the name up there so they'll know how to spell it. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and you can go to DianaKokoska.com or to DynamicGrowthBusinesses.com and find me.

Well, I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate the conversation that we had, the knowledge you shared. I mean, that was so helpful. I can't thank you enough.

Well, thank you, Rebecca, and I appreciate you so much.

This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, Please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.

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