Episode 262: Tina Brooks Green: A Retired Judge's Journey to Authenticity and Fulfillment

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, this is one of those days that I love where I get to bring on community members that when I hear their story and what they're walking through and the changes they're making, it's just so inspirational to be able to have a major life change and then really putting yourself in environments where you're able to support and encourage that change. And so I am so excited to welcome my next guest to the show. Her name is Tina. Hey, Tina. Hi.

How are you?

I am good. How are you? Good, good. I'm so excited to be here with you.

I'm excited, too.

Hey, and for the listeners, this is Tina's first podcast interview, which I love being everyone's first interview. So I'm excited to, to share that.

I'm so happy. You're my first. Stacy.

I would love to start off and just have you share your story.

I don't think this is long enough. No, I'm kidding. Well, as far as career wise, I'm a district court judge. I been on the bench for, it'll be 30 years this year. And yes, I started when I was 12. And in fact, this year is going to be a pivotal year for me because I'm at the end of this year, I'm in Michigan and we run by election and I'm not running for reelection. So I'm going to transition this year with my career. And I've been doing this, I'm like the people's court judge because I do a lot of domestic violence, a lot of drunk driving if you get a speeding ticket. And we actually, we do airport cases. So when you accidentally take your gun through the airport, you get a free ride to come and see me, which is kind of crazy because you think, who carries a gun through an international airport? So many people. So many people. Especially because Michigan is a CPL state. So a lot of people carry. And if it's in their bag, it's in there, whatever that they take to work every day when they go to the airport, they just don't think about it. And so anyway, we do, most of people that come, we don't do divorces. You do some juvenile stuff. But the majority of my, my docket is just people that live in our communities most of the time that have done stupid things, made stupid mistakes. I've been doing it a long time. I started, I've wanted to be an attorney from the time that I was whatever, third grade or something like that. My dad was a lawyer, so I think I was inclined to follow in his footsteps. I worked. I actually he's passed. He passed 16, 17 years ago now. But I was lucky enough before he died to work in his office, work with him and actually try some cases with him. So I feel pretty blessed with that. I worked in the prosecutor's office and the Attorney General's office, and sometimes life opens doors. And I just, in my life have been lucky enough to know when to walk through them. And so people ask me, like, how did you get to be a judge? By the grace of God, by synchronicity, by all of those things lining up. You listen to. I'm a fan of Abraham Hicks. And she talks about being in alignment. And I've just had the ability in my life to be in alignment at the perfect times and float and. And so I feel pretty blessed with, career wise, on everything that's happened. And so that's a nickel version of my career, at least. Yeah.

And I love what you said with doors open and you're lucky enough to walk through them. So I know you mentioned sometimes it's coincidental, but I'm just wondering, how do you know when to walk through?

You know, I'm not sure that historically that I did. No, I think I just. I did things naturally when I was younger that I haven't done as much when I've gotten older. I don't know if that makes some sense that I didn't think about them. I just did them when I was younger. And I think the older we get sometimes the more pessimistic that we sometimes get. And so it took me, I think when I was younger, I was like, oh, I want to do this. And I just. No one was there telling me the pitfalls. And so I did things or I had goals and aspirations that, thank goodness I didn't have parents that told me that I wasn't good enough or that I didn't have the ability or that I'm not smart enough, I'm not whatever. I had people that said, you can do whatever you want. And so I believed that. And then life starts to show you sometimes that, well, can you really do everyone? And then as I've gotten older and I'm 60 years old, and I think within the past 10 years, I followed Dr. Joe Dispenza, if anybody, if you know who he is, on his meditation and basically creating your own realities, like Abraham Hicks. There's a whole lot of New age thought out there about if you. It's like getting up on the wrong side of the bat. Everybody knows that saying, if you're convinced that you're going to have a bad day, then you have a bad day, you stole your coffee on yourself, you get it to work and whatever isn't where it's supposed to be or whatever. But if you get out of bed every morning and think everything's going to be great, it tends to work that way. You know, I think Henry Ford said, and I'm from Detroit, so Henry Ford with the car industry is appropriate. One of his famous quotes is, whether you think you are, you think you're not, you're probably right. Actually, I have a Joe Dispenza shirt on that says mind over matter. It really is mind over matter if you believe it. And so when you believe in something, I think opportunities present themselves. And so I believe. And I'm a daily meditator. And that has not been a lifetime, it's been in the past. I've had a whole bunch of crazy in my personal life and health and stuff like that over the past 10 or 15 years. And it's only taught me that. Check in with yourself if you have a question about whether you should or you shouldn't do something. Your intuition, your true, authentic self. At least I believe whether you want to think it's your intuition, your authentic self, your guide to whatever it is that moves you and drives you. If you check in, you know, if you really listen, you know, whether something. It's all about emotions and feelings. And so if something doesn't feel good, my opinion is that's something inside of you saying, this isn't where you're supposed to be. This isn't the path you're supposed to. When you make a decision and you have a gut feeling that's a negative, then you should reassess whether or not that was the right decision. And half the time it's really not about whether you make this decision or that decision. A lot of times it's just about making a decision, saying, okay, so many people in life do nothing because they sit back and they're afraid to take the right path or the left path, and so they do nothing. But doing nothing is making a decision also. And so, yeah, I'd love to hear.

Too, because I hear this a lot, especially when you're going to a new level and from going to this top of the career chain, right, being a judge and kind of going through that, I'm imagining as you're making the decision, how do you determine that your gut is off or this is just going to be hard, and so you have to push through the discomfort.

I visualize a lot personally, and there's different things. There's my personal life. And then people ask me sometimes, how do you know I do criminal defendants. How do you know you're going to make the right decision? And I don't. When I in charge of somebody else's destiny because they have some criminal matter in front of me, all you can do is show up and be honest and truthful about who you are and what you're doing and try to make the best decision with the information that you have in that moment. And if that information changes, then circle back and do it again. And I apply that to my personal life too. Is the only thing you can do is if you have a decision and it's a difficult decision, then what is the ultimate outcome that you want from it in the first place? Because determining what the outcome is helps you to decide from right this moment, how do I get to that outcome? What's the path? What's the journey to get there from here? Don't be so hard on yourself. Everybody makes mistakes. The most important thing, it's not whether or not you make the right decision or the wrong decision. It's about getting up in the morning and looking at yourself in the mirror and being able to live with that person that looks back at you. That's my thought, at least at this point in my life. Is just because it's a hard decision doesn't mean it's a wrong decision. And sometimes, or probably all the time, the hardest decisions are the ones that we learn the most from. Those decisions that are the easy decisions, what's the benefit of those if you had no conflict in your life? People want to be happy or whatever. Everything was wonderful all the time. How would you know? Yeah, if everything was great? You don't want to live in a world where everything's great all the time. I mean, not that you wish anything bad, but conflict creates opportunities, conflict creates challenges, which tests your mettle, it tests your willpower. It makes your mind go into gear to figure out ways around it, which is all about growth. And I think in our lives, that's the whole point, isn't it? Is you never quit learning. I talk to high school kids and stuff all the time. And I was like, do you know what you want to be when you grow up? Because I haven't figured it out yet. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. And so, I mean, there's always learning, there's always something to learn, there's always lessons. And with every opportunity and every challenge, it's one more brick in the wall on your development. And so you're building a path, building your life, hopefully a legacy to somebody or something making a difference. And so I think that you just have to check in, trust yourself. And when you get a feeling that you shouldn't do something, don't do it. You know when something is off or something's wrong. And so many of us do things in spite of the fact that we get and not serious life choices. Sometimes it is, but a lot of times it's the little things that you feel like, ah, you shouldn't do this, and you go ahead and do it anyway. And then something happens and you go, I knew I shouldn't have done that. Those are the little things which are learning lessons to you also. But I think on the big things in life, you gotta trust your gut. If you're going to work every day and you hate your job, you should be finding a different job. And I don't want to hear, oh, yeah, but I'm not going to have my retirement. If I leave or I'm not, I'm afraid to leave. I've got to support my family. You're showing up every day. You spend more than, you know, spend a third of your life allegedly sleeping, and then more than a third of your life at work. You're spending so much of that time that to live years and years, it's not fair to anybody. It's not fair to your family, it's not fair to yourself. And those are the times that you look for those doors or create those doors to be able to answer your inner calling of. I mean, this year I had no. If you would ask me even two or three years ago, how long will you stay at the court, I would have told you, I never retire. I'll be here. I can stay here for another. We were aged out at 70, so you can't run after you turn 70, but I could run a couple more times. I could stay after this year, another 12 years, but I found myself less content. Not that I don't like my job, but I don't want to overstay my welcome. I still do a good job. I still like my job. I don't want to be the last person turning out the lights and shutting the door in 12 years when I feel that there's a calling for me to do something else, spend my time giving back or doing something in A different way. And I think if we all spent a little bit of our day or our week or whatever time, we all have time to do the things we want to do. So people would say, I don't have time for that. Yeah, you find the time to do the things that you want to do. You find the time on your social media or you find a time being playing Candy Crush or whatever you're doing. You find the time to do the things that you want to do. And don't you think you owe it to yourself to find the time to spend some time on self love, self reflection, self analysis, even saying things like who am I? And sit and listen, who am I? I'm a mom, I'm a judge, I'm now a grandparent. But working, it's a work in progress. I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm an aunt. But really, who are you? And reflect on that. What makes you who you are? What are your characteristics? What are your traits? And. And if you do some of that reflection, you start to come up with the answers that maybe you never really thought about before. And then even things like, what do I want? What do you really want now? Not in 10 years or whatever, what is it? What do you want? And most of the time, most of us, it's really about a feeling. We want to feel happy, we want to feel loved, we want to feel secure, we want to feel financially stable, whatever those things are. And then what can I do today to work towards those goals?

I feel like you're hitting on so many points because it is so easy to just get lost in the weeds, right? And I hear it all the time. And I've experienced this myself, so I think that's why I hear it all the time, because that's who I end up attracting. But we're kind of going through the life motions of the fire and all the different things and moving parts and everything, and then all of a sudden something happens. You have this big pause and that's when everything sort of hits right. And I don't think people just realize how important it is to take that pause and not wait for that big thing to happen. Take the pause now and actually take the time to get to know yourself and who you are without all the other people saying who you are supposed.

To be and appreciate. We focus as humans. I guess you and I have had some conversations, you know, that I feel like my life is wonderful, my family's wonderful, my kids are wonderful, my job's wonderful, I'm Financially stable. I don't have that piece of the pie that I'm in a romantic relationship that I would like. I'm working on that. It's taken me some pause to say, you know what? I need to be so grateful, and I am with everything else that's on my plate and that's a desire, and I'm not giving up on that. But put a little bit of distance and say, yeah, that is what I want and what can I do working towards that. But while that's developing, make sure that you. It's the old smell the roses. I don't like that comment, but that is the cliche is take time to smell the roses or whatever, but enjoy everything else that's going on that's right in your life. Don't focus on the one area that's lacking. And I'm a true believer in that. Like attracts like. I believe that we create our own energy and that if you're a positive energy source, that you attract positive, like, minds. And that if you're negative, then those wonderful negative people show up, you know, call you on the phone or whatever. And so if you stay positive and focus on the gratitude of the things that are going right in your life, those areas that you want to change, it makes it easier to work on them and for them to appear and work out. I've lived my life with the mantra that everything happens for a reason. Everything does. And that being said, my dad died in a car accident in 07, and it flipped my world upside down. I would have told you up until 2007, my age, everything was great. I had a husband, kids, family, career. My whole life was wonderful. And my dad was killed in a car accident and it set me spinning. And I had a stepmother and he had a second family that had two little kids. And I ended up. My dad put me in charge of everything. So I was the trustee in charge of all this stuff. And I ended up with those two little kids and I raised them. And in fact, I call on my daughter, even though I raise her, she's going to have a baby next month, in fact, and she's in law school, so she's definitely a source of pride for me. But their mother, who had addiction and mental health issues, she had me in court for years. It was a real struggle about my dad's stuff and about the kids. And thank goodness I ended up with the kids. And then as. As we went into a couple of years after that, my husband gets diagnosed with stage four cancer that had metastasized to the brain. And he was stage four from the beginning, and he lived 18 months after that. And so that was thrown on my lap. And so at some point, you start to question, okay, wait, hold on. My path has not been so for up till 2007, everything was wonderful and a bed of roses, and it was happiness all the time. And then I get this insanity, insanity, insanity. My husband dies, and I have four kids that are all in teenage ish years. My two, and then the two that I had raised of my dad's. And so, pushing a couple years out from there, I get diagnosed with breast cancer. And I'm like, okay, hold the brakes. Seriously, I can't go tell it. So I go home and I tell the kids, I'm not your dad. To my voice and to the other two, I was like, I'm not going anywhere. And then I was like, somebody up there better make sure that's true, because these kids have been through enough. And so that's when I started meditating, actually. And the funny thing is, for me, breast cancer. And I'm seven years out now. And I had the trifecta. I had chemo, radiation. I was triple positive was the diagnosis of breast cancer. And I was blessed enough that I didn't have a double mastectomy, but I had chemo, radiation, a lumpectomy, a year of targeted therapy. And then to this day, I still take a pill, which cancer is the gift that keeps on giving. I have bone density issues because of the pill. So life goes on. But you can either look at all of those challenges, all of those things that happened, and you can either be a victim or you can embrace. What can I learn from this and what's my journey forward? And going back to how I started this by saying everything happens for a reason, even all of those things. And so I'm a better parent today because of that. I'm closer with my kids kids because of everything that's happened. I have a relationship that I think a lot of my friends and family are envious of because of the things that have happened and because I am an appreciation of my life and my blessings that I never would have had if I hadn't been through the last 17 years of insanity. But everybody has a different experience. Every person has their own blessings and their own experiences and their own viewpoints and perspective. But perspective is everything. Change your perspective, and you can change your life. Change your attitude, and you change your life. If you go in with a negative attitude, then. I have a sister who I love dearly. But when I say to her happiness is an inside job, she thinks I'm nuts. Although I love her. Happiness is an inside job. You decide. Nothing that happens externally to you is what really makes you happy. You decide that you want to get up every day and be happy or that you want to see the glasses half full as opposed to half empty for lack of another cliche. But those things, they do matter. So I spend more time now thinking about what I appreciate. What can I do to make myself happy today? As opposed to what am I going to do? I mean, with some long term planning, obviously, you know, I'm retiring at the end of the year, so I had to do some financial assessments and some other assessments on. Okay, what does this look like? Can I do this? Is this doable? And what am I going to do on January 1st of next year? And the answer is, anything I want? No. But it's so crazy once you decide to not let people rock your boat. Not let that we all have difficult relatives. Not my mother. Love her to death. My mother. I'll say, mom, it's sunny out. Well, it was sunny most of the day. But she's kind of contrary. I don't know if that's age or whatever, but she drives me crazy on certain days. But my opinion is I still have my mother. So many people don't. And so you should appreciate the things. And if you have a strange relationship with a family member or someone that you want to fix, then there are no guarantees. We know that you have some people that decide that they're upset with you or decide that they don't want to fix it and whatever, but forgive yourself for that relationship and do the little things to work towards. Listen, apologize even if you're not guilty of anything, because you're apologizing for the separation, you're apologizing for the relationship not being the way that you want it to be. And sometimes that turns. Stuff makes a difference. I mean, I'll always apologize, even if I'm not wrong, because I'm sorry that we have a breakdown in the relationship. I'm sorry that if I said something that hurt your feelings. I'm sorry that I said something I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. How hard is it to do that? People are so hung up, I think. And the cornerstone of everything in your life, in my opinion too, is all about love and relationships. Or at least that's what I think it all boils down to love, period. You got to love yourself. You got to love the people that you Surround yourself with. You got to love those people that are hard to love. And if you show them love, I mean, I can say, even though they don't deserve it, everybody deserves it. It just makes your life so much better. And of course it's great for me to sit here and say this and then do I practice it all the time? No, of course not. Of course. You have your moments where I want to kill my mother. Know she says things. I'll call my sister and say, you know what she said? She's driving me crazy. You talk to her? Yeah.

I think the thing that's great, though, is that being self aware, right? And that's where you're self aware when it's happening, versus a lot of times people don't even notice it happening. So I think that's really good. What do you suggest for someone that is at the bottom of their rope right now and they're kind of in that despair? And if I'm thinking about where you were just through that time, I will.

Tell you one of the worst moments that I had guilt on. It has to do actually with my husband. When we're at the hospital and my husband was first diagnosed, there was a moment and I was married to him for almost 25 years. He was a wonderful. Just a nice guy, a wonderful guy. And he did everything. He was the handyman. He did all the stuff around the house. I didn't have to do anything. Do you know what I'm saying? There was something in the house he didn't let, like plumbing. That was a thing with him. But pretty much anything else he did. When they first came and told me that he had this stage four diagnosis, my first thought, and this is like a heartfelt confession, my first thought was, oh, shit, what about me? You know what I'm saying? Like, what's going to happen to me? He does everything. What's going to happen to me? And here I have somebody that I love very much that basically I know he's going to die. I made the mistake of looking up the statistics and we never spoke of them, but it was like 2% lived five years. I mean, it was a horrible statistic. So that was probably my rock bottom. And I felt.

Terribly. Okay, so now I have this situation where my husband's not going to be around for who knows how long. We didn't know. It ended up being 18 months of really healthy. Good. It was a very. We had quality, which was nice. But I think that was my rock bottom because I realized that he wasn't going to be around. And I had this guilt over being more worried about me for some moments. And those things are natural and normal. But I think you don't know you're at rock bottom until you look back in the first. You never really know what rock bottom was till you look back and go, wow, that was. That was low point in my life. So I think that there's always room to say, but.

Yeah, I mean, my. But through my husband's, I had known other people that had.

Lost spouses, lost family members, and I was so blessed that my husband was a police officer. And when he got diagnosed, he ended up retiring. He had time and stuff like that, and he took a pension that I ended up taking. Our financial situation did not blip. And that was such a blessing because there's so many people that lose spouses and not only or have cancer. We have good health insurance, too. There are so many people that end up with a cancer diagnosis or some other castrapet event, and they have financial collapse, they can't pay their bills, they can't make their mortgage. They have this whole host of things. And so for me, even though there was a whole lot of terrible going on, we were financially secure. So that was one thing I didn't have to worry about. And I don't know that I did that in the moment thought about that that much. But I think that if you're in the moment of some tragedy, you have to find that light in the darkness. You have to find that, well, this and this happened, but thank God I'm healthy. This and this happened, but thank God my kids are okay. It's a blessing that this is the way or that I have the support to deal with it. I have the friends and family that or whatever it is, there's always some blessing to look towards. And what can I do right now just to make myself feel a little bit better about our. Because whenever. If you're really at rock bottom, there's only one way to go.

It's all. If you're really at rock bottom, you just have to hold out until it gets a little bit better.

Yeah.

You know, I was always blessed with. Amazingly enough, 10 or 15 years ago, I didn't know that sleep or bad sleep is like an epidemic in the United States. I have no knowledge of that at all. Because I lay down on my pillow at night and I shut it off and I go to sleep and I realize that now nobody I know sleeps well. Everybody has sleep problems and stuff like that. And so that's another Blessing in my life because being able to sleep, you have a new perspective in the morning. And your brain waves give you all kinds of clues on ideas. Your subconscious inserts little ideas in your brain when you're sleeping on how to resolve this matter or whatever. You. You may not even realize that's how you come up with some epiphany in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning because your subconscious is telling you this is what you should do or whatever. But getting enough sleep is probably huge too. If you're having a lot of struggles in your life, don't stay up late and lose sleep, because then you really lose the ability to be able to reflect and find that healthy path. And I say healthy path too, because a lot of people fall into addictive behaviors when they reach rock bottom. And I actually run a sobriety board of this group of people, there's 25 of them or something right now that I see every two weeks that are repeat drug and alcohol offenders. Some of them have mental health issues also. And you can't look to numb your problems with drugs or alcohol or something like that because that doesn't change your scenario. And when you wake up, it's still there. And so numbing it or trying to fix it by the bottle or whatever other narcotic substances isn't the answer. And I'm not preaching abstinence or anything like that. It's always abuses. If you are in bad place, the last thing you should do is go out with your girlfriend striking.

I'd love to hear more about. You had that moment where you were feeling less content with the job and then you decided to not run for re election.

I actually went to a life coach to. I had a couple of sessions. I got referred by somebody that I know to a life coach. And I sat down with him and said, I don't know what I'm doing. I got these and he actually helped me to identify, like, what do you think you want to do? Do you want to stay? And I was very, very going back to making a decision. There's a door that's open. And I struggled last year. I didn't really have to make the decision. The decision took file or not? File isn't actually until April, but I made the decision last year. And when I first started thinking about it, I went to this life coach and he suggested that I talk to some other people. I got certified in yoga and meditation a couple years ago. And so I talked to some people that were in that field trying to figure Out. Okay, what am I going to do? And I actually might do meditations and mediation is what my LLC may be next year. So I don't know how that's going to fun. It's kind of fun. Yeah. Mindful mediator. I have a retired judge that does mediations and he wants me to come and work this much and I want to come and work this much. So we're going to be at odds over that next year, but it'll be fun. But I think that I started thinking when I pull in at work and I'm like.

Not unhappy, just I'd rather be at home. I'd rather be playing pickleball. Sorry, I. That's my new.

I should give a shout out for pickleball. It's the best sport ever. So much fun. You can do it with your family and friends. Any listeners that haven't tried it should go to your local pickleball court. Pickleball panel. But all jokes aside, I struggled with it probably for several months and it was constantly on my mind. And that's an indication of, hey, pay attention. You got to make a decision. When you have something that's reoccurrent, I think in your psyche, you need to examine that. And instead of just going, well, of course I'm going to stay, I thought, okay, well, I didn't say what else I did. And so I actually went, it's almost two years ago now, to talk to this retired judge that's a friend of mine and I went to talk to him about his mediation practice and I ended up leaving with him saying, quit your job now, come work with me. I said, I'm not ready to do that. But he helped me to make the decision of there's other opportunities and I'm not really retiring, I'm switching what I'm doing. I mean, I am going to leave my full time position, but I'm going to do something else part time. And it's about that. So many of us identify with what we do for a living. And that's what I do. That's not who I am. And so you have to make sure that you separate certain parts of your life. You're afraid to make decisions. And this goes to relationships. So many people stay in relationships way past the point that they should because they don't want to be alone or they want to identify as a couple. They want to identify as part of a relationship. But when your emotional well being is anxiety, some level of uncomfortable is the only term that I can think of that you Know that everything's not. And I'm not talking about with relationships that you have a fight with your partner and. But if there's a constant feeling like there's something missing or there's something, you need to investigate it. You need to look and say, okay, is this a temporary. You know, what's the source of this? What's the source of. Obviously, my subconscious, my emotional well being is trying to tell me something, trying to get my attention. And that's what was happening with my job. And the funniest thing is the second that I decided and I told my kids, the first people I told were my kids. And I said, I'm not going to run. And my oldest son was like, oh, what do you mean you're not going to run? And I'm like, why is it so important to you in the first place? Because my kids identify that this is what I do. But there was once I made the decision to myself, yep, I'm going to move on to the step. I've got to find out what happens next. What's the next chapter in this book? I don't want to keep reading the same chapter. I want to create a new chapter. It was like the heavens opened up and I was so. I'm like, okay, I wasted the past three months agonizing over this. If I would have just fucking made the decision, I would have been happier from day one. But it's all a process. I wouldn't be where I was if I hadn't gone through the angst or whatever of discovery. Who am I? What do I want? What do I want my life to look like? What's the process to get there? And you don't have to have some profound answers. Just ask yourself a little bit, am I happy if I'm not? What is it that I'm unhappy about? And is that because of external things? Because then it's your attitude towards them that's got to change. And then you can slowly change the external situations, but while you're changing the external situations, you have to change the way you respond to them. And so I'm much happier. Nothing's changed at work. I'm much happier at work now because I know I'm leaving.

Right? Yeah, it's true. Once you made the decision.

Yeah.

I would love to hear what your number one piece of advice for people is on doing the thing.

I have a girlfriend that a couple months ago gave me a little ring. You can't see it, but it's on my thumb and it says faith over fear. And it's not just to me, it's got a religious overtone or aspect to it. But even to those people that aren't. I mean, I think everybody should believe in something if it's not God or a higher power. I mean, I think we're energy sources. And even if you don't ascribe to the institutionalized religion, if it's faith in yourself, faith in whatever, don't ever do or not do something out of fear. That's the most important thing, I think, because if you listen to your guidance and when you talk about do, the thing, that's what it represents anyway, is do it. Don't let fear rule your life. Because most of the time anyway, Stacy, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? What's the worst thing that's going to happen? And once you eliminate what those things are, just step up and do it. In the long run, there's so much like, wow, why was that such a big deal? And I feel like there's too many people that stay where they are, whether it's job, relationship, whatever the situation is, because they're afraid to do something else. And life is so short that if you wait, you gotta make the right opportunity and you gotta make the right situation. Don't just sit back and wait for UPS or Amazon to deliver it.

Yeah.

Because it's always gonna happen.

Please share with people what you're working on now and where they could find you and keep up with your new journey in life.

I don't know. You gotta find me. I don't livestream anymore for a while during COVID Live Streamed. I still do most of my stuff by Zoom. Anybody's interested? I'm Judge Tina Brooks green at the 34th District Court in Romulus. I had a YouTube station.

But we don't stream so much anymore. But obviously anybody that's interested in whatever, even just talking or whatever, can reach out to me at T. My first name, just the T. And then brook, screen one word, no hyphen, @gmail.com. so if anybody wants to reach out to me, you can do that. And I'm in Michigan. Anybody's also in Michigan wants to play pickleball.

And then I'm also on some of Stacy's challenges and stuff. And I'm looking forward to. And Stacy really helped me to guide through all my stuff about my relationship stuff on when so much importance. Just lay back and be more. A little bit more relaxed about it. I was all like, just happen now. And so Much better with that. But, you know. And then if anybody is interested and didn't hear my contact information, reach out to Stacy and she can get it to you.

And what advice would you have for people that haven't gone through a do the thing challenge and aren't part of the community?

Oh, you should definitely try it and do it. And even, oh, because I wasn't great. It's kind of funny. I wasn't great about posting. I did some. Even if you want to do it and you don't post, you can follow Cece stuff. And if you're like, I don't want to get the phone and post my stuff, or I don't want to express it, do you want to do it secretively? There's nothing wrong with that. I think that it's all about the level that works for you. And so you've got to. And maybe you do one short challenge or one whatever, and you're not comfortable posting. And then the next time you do something and you post a couple of times or whatever. I mean, the community, I think the community that you're building or that you built is fabulously supportive. And so I think that people that haven't done it would be supported. Surprised how much support you can get. And it really is a feel good. And that's what it's all about anyway. So I definitely would encourage people to reach out or follow it. If you're like, oh, I want to see. And maybe do some of them follow it every day and just live it vicariously. Of what? Experiencing and supporting other people's successes along their journeys. That's sometimes an encouragement for you to do something different in your life, whether it's what the challenge proposes or something else that you think is something that you hesitated on doing.

Thank you so much for doing this with me. This was so much fun.

Of course.

It's the perfect thing. And I'm so excited. Your first podcast episode, let's say.

I'm so excited to make me. I'm gonna take your job.

Stacy, I'm about to send you the podcast workshop so you can. You should.

I think I should do it. I think it'll be good for me.

That's what I'm doing. We're marking the words right here on do the Thing. Thank you so much again and for the listeners.

Thank you.

Do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it. And hey, guys, have you checked out my Facebook group yet? Go to do the thingcommunity.

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