 Welcome to Elderhood, Aging Gracefully. My name is Larry Grimm, and I am so grateful to Think Tech, Think Tech Hawaii for this opportunity to share with you the background and foundational thinking of the coaching that I do for elders in Elderhood. I have the approach of aloha, aloha to all of you, welcome. We're here in Hawaii and Honolulu and experiencing a lovely, wonderful day again in paradise as they call it, and it's wonderful, great to be able to share that with you. Aloha means to breathe together and to share a common breath, and certainly we are all linked together in this world in that way. The internet gives us a great opportunity to experience our connectedness, perhaps developing a new consciousness actually that embraces all of us and surrounds the world. Thank you for coming. You are simply friends and I have not yet met, and I am glad you're here. In my Elderhood teaching, I'm also a I do two hats here. One hat is that I am a chaplain, a spiritual care provider for the hospice Hawaii, not hospice for a Bristol hospice in Hawaii. I love this company. We really do live out our tagline which is to embrace a reverence for life, and we serve families and patients in their homes and facilities across Oahu. You can find out more about us at Bristol Hospice Hawaii dash Hawaii dot com and I welcome any questions that you have. I'm also serving as a life coach. My coaching is focused on Elderhood because I think I have the best personal coach for life and faith in Elderhood primarily, and my phone number is there on the lower third that you saw come up there. I certainly welcome any calls that you may have to inquire further about Elderhood. Elderhood for me is like it's a stage. I'm treating it like a stage. We have Elderhood, we have our adolescence in which we grow into adulthood, and then now we have Elderhood. Elderhood has been somewhat neglected among the intellectual community until recently in the mid-1990s the term Elderhood started coming into view with many, many books being written about it and it has continued to be of interest to me as I have worked with aging population. We have 250,000 Hawaiian citizens over 65. That's a quarter of our total population, just about a quarter. We are definitely a people and you only need to look around as you walk down the street to realize this or know people in your neighborhoods that are in this category of 65 and over. I have observed that there are five spiritual tasks in our Elderhood experience. These are tasks that come up and ask for our attention and if we give them our attention, pay attention to them, then we can make our Elderhood real and wonderful. The first task is grieving. We do more grieving than we thought we might do. We experience loss and we experience change and sometimes positive change, but even in positive change there's a leaving behind something else. So grief is part of our life in perhaps a more prevalent way than ever before. We engage in sorting out our stories. We sort out our stuff. I don't know how many people I've heard say, man how do I get all this stuff, but every part of this, every stuff you have represents a story and part of what we do is sort out our stories. What are the stories we want to keep because they are part of who we want to be today? What are the stories we want to discard or perhaps change and Mary, my guest today, and I'll introduce her in a moment, is here to help us look at the power of story. The other three as you can see on the list here are forgiving, preparing and letting go. Mary Stack is a certified transformational health coach and flew in from California to be on my show today and so I'm very grateful to introduce you. Mary Stack, Mary, welcome. Thank you so much, Larry. I'm so pleased to be here. You know, I somehow fell upon your show while I was on my own Facebook fun and I just, you just stopped me and I thought, this man really has a handle on something that's very important and that is elderhood. Well, thank you. And the choices we have and the choices we can make, make our elderhood as dynamic and vibrant as possible. I'm very pleased and honored that you would have me here. Thank you so much. Well, you're welcome. Thank you so much for making the journey. It's not a bad place to visit for sure, is it? Not at all. Not at all a bad place to visit. So the topic today is sorting out stories or the power of story and I am convinced that stories not ourselves influence the choices that we make all through life and I'd like to have your help today looking at the power of story and not only the power of story all through our life but also in terms of elderhood and how those stories may be impacting some of those decisions that we face in elderhood. In your coaching, have you seen the power of story? Oh my gosh. As a coach, the first thing that I do is call the health assessment and in that I am looking for and digging into finding the story. The why. Why does someone want to get healthy? Get off medications, reverse diabetes and I see so many stories that people are living through and with at any age at our age particularly that we hang on to. So my work is to sort of encourage them to stop believing their old stories. You know, our stories begin when we are very very young. Perhaps we don't feel nurtured enough and that sort of settles into our subconscious so we are always on the search to feel nurtured and a lot of people actually go to food for nurturing and eating habits start developing and addictions to food actually begin. And they are really developing around a story that is one that we have accepted and somewhat taken on which is not necessarily a nurturing story. That's correct. For instance how many times I heard a number last week that a child hears the word no 5,000 times by the time they are 5 years old. So we are creating stories in these children that will carry them through their whole life. The clients I work with come with stories like well my family is obese therefore I have to be obese. It's my family's story and I'm here to tell you it's not. My mother always said Larry you just have big bones. You know, look at this. Your wrist is so big. That's why you're a chubby boy. That's not necessarily true. The percentage difference between skeletal frames is so small. People buy that story. So those old stories we wear them as baggage and we live through those old stories limiting ourselves to our vibrancy. So I have my family is obese therefore I have to be obese. I can't not be. And it's so limiting our diabetes runs in the family. Do you know the diabetes is now taking a life every seven seconds in our country? Every seven seconds. Obesity is now considered the number one cause of preventable death in the country. It has replaced smoking. Luckily smoking is dropped away really good news but right behind it is obesity and so much of this has to do with old stories. I'm not good enough therefore food nurtures me and it makes me feel better. Do you remember when you went to the doctor as a child and you were really good at the doctor and what did the doctor give you when you left? Candy. I was brave and so when I'm brave I'm going to reward myself with sweets. Or when you fell down and you skinned your knee and your mom wanted to make you feel better what did she give you? So sweet. So the belief is when I'm hurt food makes me feel better. You see so that's all seated in the subconscious even when you do great things what do you get a big birthday cake. So so many stories are tied into those kind of. Mary addictions the trouble with addictions is they work for a short time for that moment they work and I self medicate myself with alcohol or with drugs or with food and it does calm it does bring pleasure but the costs are so great. That's right. So we use a system called stop challenge and choose so if you're subject to wanting immediate gratification like that piece of cake or that alcohol I'm not opposed to drinking I love wine myself I'm not here saying don't drink and I'm also not here saying don't ever eat a piece of cake again but I'm what I'm saying is that if you know and make a choice is this serving my life is this choice or is it hurting is that cake good for me or in the long run is it going to hurt me and then you stop and you just analyze where you are and you make your choice stop challenge and choose and that's for food for anger for depression or whatever happens in your life where am I do I want to stay here and how do I choose to be different so we're always in control. Mary well I have a question what's the difference between the story and the narrative oh boy the story is what you believe the narrative is how you express your belief is that at home for you narrative is it seems to me that that's accurate the narrative is how we got to that believe the narrative is about an incident or an event out of which we abstract a story about ourselves. Right so when little Johnny cries and didn't get nurtured then that's the narrative and the story is I'm not lovable. Yes the generalization then that's applied to the self. No one will love me good enough so we grow into this we grow through our lives and it affects our lives throughout our careers throughout our family life our parenting and into elder hood because my story is this I found this program when I was 69 years old 4 years ago I'm a 73 year old proud person and my story was that I believed that the aches and pains and joints joint pain I had had to be and I decided that that's not going to be my story any longer and I went on this program and found complete freedom because you don't have to be 73 or 74 and live with pain and it doesn't it's not part of getting old so I found freedom in that and that's why I want to pass that on to anyone I can and my story of aging is that we're all just going to become decrepit and I want to fight that I mean I want that not to be your story and we will look at some stories when we come back after a short break here for ThinkTech. Hello my name is Becky Sampson and I'm the host of It's About Time on the ThinkTech Hawaii a digital non-profit organization that's raising public awareness. Join us on Wednesday at 2pm where we talk about real issues. Some of the topics will include entrepreneurship, health life skills and growing your business. So once again this is Becky Sampson on It's About Time on Wednesday at 2pm on ThinkTech Hawaii. Mahalo. Aloha this is Rob Hack my show is exporting from Hawaii every other Thursday from 12 to 12.30pm where I bring in people involved in the entire exporting infrastructure in Hawaii including government academia and manufacturers and shippers themselves. Please join me every other Thursday 12 to 12.30pm on exporting from Hawaii. Mahalo. Hi welcome back to Elderhood Aging Gracefully. You just aged one more minute and I hope you were graceful in your doing it. We are here with Mary Tech, certified health coach, transformational health coach and she has flown in from California to be on the show with me and to talk about stories and how stories influence power of stories to influence our choices and we take a look at those stories do we want to save them do we want to throw them away do we want to change them and rewrite them so Mary you were about to treat us to your own personal story well as I said before I found this when I was 69 I was a cooking instructor and I was asked to design classes for clients and I couldn't be unauthentic so I said put me on I didn't think but at the time I have a three level house and I couldn't get myself up and down my eight steps without pulling myself up and supporting myself down and my hands were I had inflammation from head to toe my hands were career ending I couldn't function in a kitchen and and this was due to the the weight that you were carrying I didn't carry that much weight it was just I was eating the wrong foods inflammation and I was believing my own story you see when you believe that when this is a before and after picture of me I believe that I had to be old and and hurt all the time and then when I dropped about 14 pounds but I dropped about 30 years I got younger and so much so some friends of mine were in Mexico and invited me down and they decided to go out to one of the ancient Mexican pyramids this is a rendition of the one that I we went out to see and my friend went up to the top and she turned around and she knew that I had such need problems and she said I'm so sorry you can't see the view up here it's beautiful and normally I would have a music you because I looked up at her and I said watch and that's when Rocky's theme comes and I went up like Rocky and her mouth dropped open and I was elated but I got to the top and something really big happened to me I not only realize that we don't have to become old and ancient but I also remember my own story when I was 11 years old and my father experienced a massive heart attack and he was brought home and put to bed they moved all the furniture out of my bedroom and moved all the equipment in which was really scary at 11 and they put him to bed for a year and during that year I made deals with God for a year to save his life and his big wish was that he would live through Christmas and he did and sadly he died the day after so as I was standing on the top of that pyramid seeing a complete new life I looked around and I said no child shall lose a parent or grandparent or an aunt or uncle to preventative disease under my watch this is not going to happen so it became my mission Wonderful mission it is and thank you so much for being focused on the story. Have you ever heard your clients come in with a story that says I always do Sure I always finish the cake I can't eat just a little bit of ice cream I finish the whole gallon I always eat the whole gallon I always fail so we dig in to find where that came from where is that in the psyche I am not good enough I can't prevail I can't be successful and if we can dig deep enough to find that story and that why you want to change it that's the secret because when things get tough on the program and sometimes people want to have that candy and that's their choice and then we take them back to their why why do you want to get healthy do you want to play with your grandkids do you want to see your grandkids grow graduate get married and I have wonderful stories I have a friend who would like to share another story with you if that would be alright Just let me say one thing before and share with the viewers if you have stories about yourself when you say I always do and it will roll off the tongue just so smoothly and you'll think oh it's just a matter of fact but it actually reveals that story that you're living by and if you'll be alert to that you'll be aware that that's a powerful story for you it is powerful and you know there are exercises to change those stories and if you can repeat that over and over and really just put that into your emotional body and speak that from your emotional self I am healthy fit and strong I am vital I love life then that's going to tip the scale of that belief system in the subconscious and your serotonins will start being generated and it will start feeling good rather than the cortisol that run through your body when you're feeling those negative feelings about yourself Neuro-linguistic programming says that we like a computer we program our subconscious mind and what we've been living by or the program you've been living by and then I've been living by I'm going to be a big guy and I'm going to conquer my father or protect myself from my father all those stories when you hear them in our subconscious mind it could be changed It can and we have tools we have this workbook which is called a life book it looks big but only a page a day and this starts out by all you do is you put your name in the front cover this is going to be Larry's story and then you just do a couple pages a day and this starts changing your story there are tools that we offer to change stories Would you share some examples of people who have rewritten their stories from the impact it's had on them? Oh sure, sure I've got one slide coming up who's a dear friend of mine her name is Dee and Dee and I have known each other for quite a while and Dee was at 411 pounds she's one of five or six children her twin brother was at 500 pounds her sister died in her arms as an obese person her entire family are morbidly obese she was in a wheelchair she could barely stand when she decided to do this program and she just decided to change the family story she said I am not going to live the way my family has lived she just lost another brother last year to obesity so she went on the program and I was honored to be her coach and two weeks after she was on she called me one morning and she was crying and I thought oh gosh my old story is what have I done wrong what have I failed to do Mary I sat on the side of my bed and I tied my own shoelaces for the first time in 15 years today I cried and this is what I get to do every day of my career changing people's lives and bringing them back it's the most wonderful thing I have to say she's lost over 217 pounds she's now riding a bicycle and her life is completely transformed you see and that life book in the program helped her rewrite a new story about who she is and how she's going to live her elder hood she's entering elder hood gracefully with joy and vitality and I'm blessed to see this happen every day it's those kinds of success stories that really do inspire one of the things that I'm aware of is that we have studied and studied and studied the problems of our lives and we're really quite good at analyzing problems but we aren't so good at analyzing solutions I'm going to people that have succeeded saying what did you do to become such a great success and that's the focus that I want to have in my counseling personal coaching for life and faith and knowing that there are tools available it's one thing to say change your story just change it like Bob Newhart stop it the fact that you're able to deliver tools that will work cognitive tools gives hope to those people who are struggling and feel hopeless you don't have to buy into a hopeless story you guys you don't have to buy into old age hopeless stories and limited thoughts I am here to tell you that life is miraculous and Larry Grimm is going to be able to bring you to that place and other stories like this on my Facebook page which is Facebook personal coaching for life and faith and oh I know right there is one up there Eric thank you a woman who has a tremendous transformation and you can see that it's what jumps out at me Larry is the look on her face tremendous change on one of the shots you can see the sadness and when people break through that then the glow and it's like coming out of a cocoon beautiful I love that image well as a chaplain I do I have the privilege of working with people who are at that time of life when disease or aging process has taken over and most of my clients and patients are in their 80s and 90s in the chaplaincy work that I do and you can tell when some of them have been strong all their life I mean they have come in with vitality made some good choices so I'm not interested in keeping you alive into the hundreds although there are those like Deepak Chopra who said bodies can live until 120 if we just believed it so I give you the opportunity not to be decrepit and in fact I am going to enter the program which Mary represents and every couple of weeks I'll be here and you can see if you join me every couple of weeks two o'clock on Tuesday, Elderhood Aging Gracefully with who it is, thinktecawaii.com you can keep me on accountable and see how my dragon will shrink a bit thank you again so much Think Tecawaii and thank for your excellence in providing this opportunity Mary thank you very very much for being a part of my show and giving us some inspiration it's been a pleasure and Hawaii is I lived here for a little while it is a second home for me so thank you so much you're sure welcome and I look forward to your return and we'll welcome you again Thanks Think Tecawaii, thank you to all of you for viewing and please feel free to contact me my phone number was on the screen here a minute ago and there it is again and I will respond gladly. Aloha!