Life & The Sunday Series

That’s when it’s over, that’s when it ends, that’s when you reach your destination. Your last breath.

So then the question becomes what are you doing with each breath while you are here? What did you do with the last breath you took? It was as important as the one you are taking right now. If every second, every minute, every hour matters on this journey of life, then no breath should be wasted. No breath left behind.

You are amazing. You are incredible. The fact you even exist is a undisputed miracle in this universe. So with all that in mind… breathe. Feel the air in-and-out and realize no thing is as bad, or as good as it seems.  We all, every single one of us, harnesses the power to take our minds to different places. The way you think about some thing makes that thing seem worse or better than it is. It’s not the thing that has control over you, it’s the way you think about that thing.

In every situation, in every instance the breaths you take as you think matter. I just started taking yoga religiously and the more I focus on my breathing the clearer my mind becomes. Oxygen and clarity. Who knew a bit of air could lift me up to places I wasn’t sure I could go? Actually I take that back… who knew some oxygen could help me to battle the fear I might otherwise have allowed to suffocate me from maintaining the daily grind to reach my potential and in turn become more… with the ultimate goal to give more.

I never forget these words: The goal and purpose of this human adventure is productivity, pursuing the full development of all your potential. To see what all you can do with all you have been given. (Jim Rohn)

If you become more, you can give more. You can’t give what you don’t have. I and you have so much inside, from our mind, to our heart, to our very soul, it is impossible to fathom the potential if we just reach inside, focus and breathe. Build on one thing, or even all of what you’ve got and everyone else gets more.  Every one each and every day is battling something. Every person you meet. Never forget that… though it is easy to do, as we fight in our own minds the trials and tribulations of life, as we strive to give it all we’ve got, against the hits life will throw your way.

When life is going down and the oxygen mask drops, it’s up to you to take a breath first, so then you can help others to breathe. There’s no higher calling than to breathe life into someone else.

Make every breath matter so you can encourage and lift others to do the same. A journey of hope and encouragement which never ends, until your last breath.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

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Author: The #1 Amazon Best Seller: It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
(http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Brodinsky/e/B00FI6R3U6)

Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-brodinsky/)

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The Podcast: (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sunday-series-courage-inspiration/id1028611459)

Biz Impact: http://www.prweb.com/releases/markbrodinsky/072015/prweb12862708.htm

Company “Stories”: http://www.ushacareers.com/news/

For more info contact Mark: markbrodinsky@gmail.com

 

Change.

There you have it. Encompassed in one word is the magical mystery which permeates our existence. Change will come, it will happen, the question is when. Do you make it happen, or does some higher power guide your path? The only sure answer is change is inevitable, growth is optional.

Life is not stagnant, life is ever-moving…there is ebb and flow, at times effervescent, at other times dark and ominous. Like any great drama on the screen or the stage, we see life play out right before our eyes. We are all actors and actresses in this performance, directed by, if you believe in such, a higher power asking us to take our roles and embrace them with all their magnificence, imperfections, joy and strife.

Play your role in life and watch it unfold, act by act, day by day… this stage of life is your story.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is The Sunday Series.

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The Sunday Series (136): An “Act” of Service

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…”
– Shakespeare

From the time she was a little girl Patty Lewis wanted to be an actress. Patty was bit by the acting dog, not the bug…the dog. More on that in just a moment, but first a question.

Who attends Northwestern University and doesn’t get a job in acting? Graduates of that university are the likes of Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Megan Mullally, Ann-Margaret, David Schwimmer, Seth Myers, Gary Marshall, Stephen Colbert… the list goes on and on.

But as Patty will tell you she’s probably the most non-famous graduate of NWU, though in life what is true fame? Another question yet to be answered.

Patty does know that she loved the city where she attended school and perfected her craft, but the cold weather of Chicago was a deal breaker. She made the conscious decision as well not to head east to New York, or west to LA, but south, back home to Texas. Family concerns also pulled her to return and for a time she gave up pursuing her dream. Instead she worked, but unhappiness and feeling unsettled her attraction to the stage sent her back in pursuit of living her art.

That’s when the dog bared his fangs and life changed.

“Yes I was bitten by the theater dog, not the bug,” says Patty. “I went to this theater to pick up a script, but apparently I went in the wrong door and the director’s girlfriend had a giant dog and the dog bit me. The director and his lady friend were very apologetic, and I guess they felt bad so they gave me a role in the next show.”

Her canine encounter led to a few years of working in local theater, especially at Pegasus Theatre, where they perfected the art of Living Black and White – a performance, lighting and make-up which creates the illusion that the audience is watching a 1930’s-40’s black-and-white movie brought to life on stage.

“I worked a lot in local theater,” says Patty. “Mostly in comedy and then transitioning to improv comedy, which is one of the most fun and scariest things a performer can do. I have a good comic persona, even though I look a little meek I’m really not and I was always able to play opposite my personality. I actually worked in a troupe that did a lot of risqué stuff.”

Theater is also where Patty met Spencer, the man who would become her husband. They met in a movement class, ended up working together in theater and Spencer pursued Patty. “I had no intention of marrying him, but he chased me around asking me, so I said if I want to keep him around I better do it,” laughs Patty.  Eventually she accepted the offer and took on her next role in life to become Spencer’s wife. It was an artistic collaboration that led, a dozen years later, to the birth of their son Chase. A marriage which took center stage for more than two decades, ending not by choice, but by chance.

  

Community theater doesn’t pay the bills and so Patty worked a number of jobs. But it wasn’t until her work at the FDIC, and the prospect of the government doing massive layoffs that she sat down with a job counselor who asked her why she was doing all this acting stuff, he told her she had a mind and a talent for business. “At first I was furious”, says Patty. “I told him you don’t know how hard I’ve worked and I’ve studied, but I sat down and thought about it and about five days later a friend of mine told me she got this offer to work at a company called Impact Productions. I walked in for an interview and these guys were playing foosball – and I said to myself, I love this place!’

“They were putting this TV show together called Common Courage, about quiet heroes who were improving lives and my job was to go out and collect footage and help get this show started. They hired me and I worked hard, but Impact also did live events for companies and I couldn’t help notice one of the companies they were working with, this sales organization called UGA, and all the activity surrounding this new guy in charge named Troy McQuagge. When the person in charge of doing the live events left, I ended up taking over to produce all the events for this company from 1997 to 2008. What was important to me is I got to see Troy speak, over and over again.”

It was the company Impact in synergy with the impact of a dynamic individual, who when life turned would also impact her own, especially when Patty’s favorite actor was about to star in his final performance of life.

In 2007 Patty’s husband Spencer started having back and stomach issues. A man who always took good care of himself, at first it was believed to be kidney stones, but after more testing and a biopsy, it turned out to be pancreatic cancer. “We were blessed about a million ways when Spencer got sick,” says Patty. “Pancreatic cancer is about as bad as it gets, most people live less than six months. But my husband was determined to live because Chase was only 7-years-old at the time and Spencer wanted to live long enough for Chase to know him.”

With the help of MD Anderson in Houston, some pancreatic specialists and Spencer’s will to survive, he ended up living with what Patty says was “a good quality of life” for the next 2-1/2 years, eventually succumbing to the disease in 2009.

But it was right after Spencer’s cancer diagnosis where Troy McQuagge directly touched Patty’s life. She says UGA was planning a Super Trip to Hawaii which meant Patty was looking at being away from Spencer and Chase for more than two weeks. Instead of living the separation, Troy flew both husband and son to Hawaii and put them up in a separate hotel for the entire time. “I would go to work during the day, interact with the agents and every night I would go back and spend time with my family. It also gave Spencer and Chase the time to be together and bond. When the company trip ended Troy extended our time in Hawaii for another week so we could be together as a family and have that memory. It was like a Troy McQuagge Make-a-Wish Trip.”

Patty also says her theater friends and that community also stepped up to help, especially when toward the end Spencer’s illness left him confused and forgetful and for much of the time unable to care for himself. But everyone pitched in to assist, providing meals and comfort. “I had been retired from the theater for almost ten years at that point, but it didn’t matter. So many people wanted to help and wanted updates on Spencer’s condition which I posted on Facebook. We were super blessed to feel so much love.”

After Spencer’s passing that life event and other changes with UGA led Patty to start her own business doing live event and video productions, eventually creating a partnership. Patty eventually dissolved the partnership and in 2011 Troy came calling. He said the original team from UGA and some others were building a new enterprise called USHEALTH Advisors and he asked if she would she like to participate. Patty says she didn’t hesitate, she accepted and joined in.

Patty will tell you herself she is a like a jack russell terrier, full of nervous energy – drawn to new experiences and opportunities and in 2013 she decided to take on one of her life’s desires and earn an MBA. She went to school and graduated in 2015.

At the same time, and as luck would have it, another opportunity presented itself with USHEALTH Advisors, a chance for Patty to put her degree and her outgoing personality to good use.  She now serves as Vice-President of Customer Service for the company…developing her own system called PEAK.

Patty says, “PEAK stands for Performance, Enthusiasm, Ability and Kindness”. Patty says she wants her team to be the best of the best. She says she is working the “Troy culture” with her team and with the customers and agents they serve. This past year Patty’s customer service team has worked incredibly hard – an intense year of training, motivating, improving and growing, that they entered their story into the competition for a 2017 Stevie Award for Sales and Customer Service… Service at the speed of Sales. They are finalists and later next month will learn if they have won a Bronze, Silver or Gold Stevie. (The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service recognize the achievements of contact center, customer service, business development and sales professionals worldwide.)

 

None of this is acting. For Patty it’s all so real – her time on stage, in theater and in improv served her well, teaching her to reinvent herself at every turn, in business and in life. Change happens and though life goes on without Spencer she has her son, 17-year-old Chase, an artist in his own right, and her USHA family.

Through all of her experiences and even more so today, Patty has discovered the role of a lifetime, one for which she is earning thunderous applause and worthy of a standing ovation…an act of service.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

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Author: The #1 Amazon Best Seller: It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
(http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Brodinsky/e/B00FI6R3U6)

Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-brodinsky/)

The Profile: (http://www.talkinggood.com/profiles/MarkBrodinsky)

The Podcast: (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sunday-series-courage-inspiration/id1028611459)

Biz Impact: http://www.prweb.com/releases/markbrodinsky/072015/prweb12862708.htm

Company “Stories”: http://www.ushacareers.com/news/

For more info contact Mark: markbrodinsky@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want it you gotta go get it. It’s a very simple concept. Easier said than done. Especially more difficult if others can’t see it. Realize most times they can’t. What you’ve got is inside you, it’s what you were given, it’s what you’ve had since the day you came screaming and kicking onto this planet.

So get it and give it. Even if others have no idea what “it” is.

It doesn’t matter, only you need to have the vision, at least at the outset. The greatest accomplishments in the world were first seen in the mind of one man or woman. And the vision stayed in their mind until they found the courage to do the work and manifest it.

So ask yourself the question? What do you want, or better yet because in life we don’t get what we want… what do you have to have? It’s what you are here for, that’s what you need, or have to do because others need you.

Everyone needs you. You are important, you are amazing, you are incredible. But you have to want that and feel that about yourself.

It’s up to you to figure it out because you owe you. If you do that which is easy, life is hard. If you do what is hard… then life will be what life is supposed to be… not easy, but fulfilling. And if you put in the work on your dream, if you show up day after day, then that which was seen by only you will be seen by others as well, in ways that help them to live.

I want to inspire people. I want to positively impact the lives of a billion people. I want someone to look at me and say “because of you I didn’t give up.”

Sometimes the work toward that goal makes me feel invisible, like no one cares, like there is no support. That getting to the place I truly need to be, because it’s what I have to have, is so hard it makes me want to give up.

If only you have the vision for you however it’s OK. Know why? Because only those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark

Join the Tribe!
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Author: The #1 Amazon Best Seller: It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
(http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Brodinsky/e/B00FI6R3U6)

Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-brodinsky/)

The Profile: (http://www.talkinggood.com/profiles/MarkBrodinsky)

The Podcast: (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sunday-series-courage-inspiration/id1028611459)

Biz Impact: http://www.prweb.com/releases/markbrodinsky/072015/prweb12862708.htm

Company “Stories”: http://www.ushacareers.com/news/

For more info contact Mark: markbrodinsky@gmail.com

 

 

 

Life is all about love. How we love others and how we love ourselves. Simple concepts but in practice, especially the latter, can be a challenge… mainly because we don’t always know how.

This inability can define our path, at least for a time, and we get lost along the way. Sometimes we stray so far we fall into darkness, and the light to lead us back appears dim. But there is always light. It may not be much light, but it’s there.

On this road to redemption, back to love, understanding and acceptance of who we are, we learn a great deal. This lesson becomes part of our journey, it tells a story.

As we all know, everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is The Sunday Series.

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The Sunday Series (135): Mind-Full

At 22-years-old she’s got it figured out, more so than most people twice her age. Spend any time speaking with Ashley Zahabian and you’ll see clearly, because she does.

Considering it’s been less than a decade since she was malnourished, scared and emotionally distraught, Ashley has made such tremendous strides it has literally caused the earth to tremor, since this girl, now woman, is trying to move the world. She’s literally a rising star.

Ashley first shared her story, (http://markbrodinsky.com/sunday-series-106-mark-brodinsky/), many months ago and was just starting to ride the wave she had created. It’s worthy of an update because the wave is building, a wave this young lady is forcibly pushing to help fix the way people think, to help put them in control of their minds and by consequence take control of their lives.

Ashley went through the pain of an eating disorder, hospitalized, in day-to-day counseling at the age of 14. But it was a blessing in disguise since she got the chance to work on her problems, to talk about things, something in truth so many need, but she also took the time during her isolation to study, to learn, to personally develop and realize the biggest thing holding her back was the one thing on which she had lost her grip… her mind.

It was the beginning of her new journey into her passion and purpose to teach others about the concept of emotional intelligence, your EI, and how it can change your life by teaching you to take control of your emotions and your reactions to those emotions.

“EI is the ability to feel and to be aware of emotion”, says Ashley. “But have the brain capacity and control to fight that emotion when necessary. I lived the example. Going through an eating disorder, without even realizing I am doing it because when someone tells me I can lose a few pounds an emotion goes through my body and the back part of my brain, called the amygdala, stores that situation, creating a memory or emotion which is then fight or flight. If I feel that again I will have an impulsive reaction and by the time it reaches the rational part of my brain it’s already reactive. It was me and being sick because I acted on that feeling… I didn’t eat. But someone who has mastered emotional intelligence has the brain capacity to fight that emotion. Now if someone tells them they are overweight, it still hurts, but you have the control to battle back.”

Basically it’s your mind telling part of your brain to not let your emotions control your life. You stay in control and your life becomes better because of it… dousing the flames of the fire in your mind which left uncontrolled can become an inferno.

It makes sense and science backs up what Ashley is teaching. Conditions such as anxiety, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias are suspected of being linked to abnormal functioning of the amygdala. As Ashley explains gaining control of this part of your brain is like riding a young horse. When you first hop on the animal is unsure, irrational, emotional and lacks control, until you teach it. You can do the same thing with your brain. The trick is to get the frontal lobe, where rational thought takes place to take the reins over your amygdala. But that frontal lobe is late to develop in life, so finding a way to speed up that development and increase your reasoning means you get more control of your life. More control is a path to more happiness and success.

  

But let’s get back to the person who is preaching and teaching this – talk about being on fire – Ashley, has just created and been approved to actually teach a course at a university on emotional intelligence and leadership. Let’s not forget Ashely is 22 and just graduating from this same college herself.  The course will be offered in the fall at The Feliciano School of Business at Montclair State University. The same business school from which Ashley will graduate in the spring.

Understand AZ and her EI mean business! (https://www.ashleyzahabian.com/)

Ashley has already opened on stage for the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, been interviewed by Grant Cardone, worked with Eric Thomas (ET), has a Ted Talk coming up in March in Vancouver and she’s working on a book about EI. In the world of personal development and self-improvement, Ashley is making tremendous strides and is doing it for one reason… to serve the world. “It’s not about me, it’s about the mission”, says Ashley. “It’s not about you and it never will be. It’s how you serve, how you give. Don’t create something for yourself, create something for the world.”

  

One of the reasons Ashley is so focused, so driven, is her ability to be in control, to know her EI and to know it’s more important than her IQ. She says one of the best ways to feed your emotional intelligence is meditation. “You are sitting there and feeling thoughts and the meditation teaches you not to give in to this urge and push it aside while you are meditating. It helps academic scores, business success, relationships and every part of your life. A lot of research shows as your EI increases, your income increases, your business and interview skills get better, you are more aware of what’s going on and how to serve people. It’s so subtle but it makes a big difference. You can actually pick up on what other people are thinking and how they are feeling and reacting because you are so aware.”

It’s not only what’s in Ashley’s mind, it’s what’s in her heart… and you can feel it when you spend any time talking with her. Just crossing over two decades into this life, Ashley has a heart full of good to give. The WHY that drives her is because she appreciates, as we all should, that no one is getting out of here alive, we are all going to die.. and this one fact should drive you to LIVE. While you are here, why wouldn’t you do all you can with all you have been given? Ashley turned her issues, her sickness, her isolation, her intense study of herself and of personal growth, into a tornado of understanding how the mind works and the gift of sharing and giving.

“I want the world to understand that EI controls everything. It is the most powerful drive in our brain and because everything we do is emotional essence you must learn to control that. Emotional intelligence will lead you to discover the one thing I did, that life is more than just you.”

“With all that we do, we must always keep society in mind. We must think about the person to our left and to our right, and not much about ourselves. It’s a decision every leader makes, and I believe that’s what keeps dreams alive.” – AZ

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

Join the Tribe!
Enter your name & e-mail address into the box on this blog and get posts sent directly to your inbox!

Author: The #1 Amazon Best Seller: It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
(http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Brodinsky/e/B00FI6R3U6)

Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-brodinsky/)

The Profile: (http://www.talkinggood.com/profiles/MarkBrodinsky)

The Podcast: (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sunday-series-courage-inspiration/id1028611459)

Biz Impact: http://www.prweb.com/releases/markbrodinsky/072015/prweb12862708.htm

Company “Stories”: http://www.ushacareers.com/news/

For more info contact Mark: markbrodinsky@gmail.com