Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth, another episode of the show and Faust Ruggiero, is that how you say it?

Faust Ruggiero
You said it, yes.

Greg Voisen
Ruggero M.S is joining us. And you are joining us from what city again?

Faust Ruggiero
I am in Pennsylvania, Eastern Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes from either Philly or Manhattan.

Greg Voisen
Okay. And we're gonna have a two for one today. Faust has to he has two bags. This one here is this one is Fix Yourself Handbook. And the other one is Fix Your Anxiety Handbook. Both of them great books for people that are looking to actually change their lives for the positive and that's what this show is about. And first, I'm gonna let him know a little bit about you. Faust Ruggerio is an MS therapist and professional counseling career that spans over 40 years as the president of that community, community psychological center, he has counseled at inpatient facilities, prisons, substance abuse centers, and nursing homes. He provides employee assistance programs to major corporations. He's also provides counseling services for couples families, abused women, veterans, law enforcement, and other emergency personnel. Since the publication of fixture self-handbook, Faust has been seen on nationally on enter and internationally in over 300 interviews, including television, radio, and internet podcasts like this one. It's been published in over 20, magazines, and other publications, he continues to conduct workshops and trainings about what we're going to talk about in this interview, the process way of life. And he's become one of the most sought after self-help personalities worldwide. Now, this is interesting, because we're going to bounce a little bit between these two books, one's about anxiety, but we're going to try and cover as much as we can in the next 45 minutes for my listeners. So fast, if you would, thanks for being on inside personal growth. And thanks for your willingness to share some of your insights about your experiences, and your education and knowledge and wisdom about this topic. You have these two books, what inspired you to write these two transformative books? Obviously, you are out counseling all over the place, you were in prisons, you were working with women, you were work counseling people. And when people go to your website, which by the way, for the listeners, the website is faustruggiero.com. There you can learn about his books. He can learn some excerpts, you're going to see podcasts and videos, all kinds of things. But how did all this kind of come about for you that you wanted to publish? These two books, and in particular, the first book, which was that the second book, which is just came along, not that long ago?

Faust Ruggiero
You know, Greg, first, thanks for inviting me on, it's a pleasure to be here with you. You know, I spent a lot of time counseling over four decades. And, you know, it got to the point where I was looking at retirement, which didn't happen. But at that time, and it was back in the 60s to 2016 17. I thought, you know, I've been using this approach in my counseling sessions, for so many years, I wanted to put it into a text. Publishers weren't really happy with the design because it had so many different topics. And it appealed to everyone. And if you know anything about publishing, that, like it have one or two topics to appeal to a particular demographic, and I wanted to write the book for everyone, I wanted anyone to pick it up, and to be able to use it for any problem I had. That's the fix yourself handbook. So you started writing started learning about the publishing industry wrote the book published in 2019. And it just began to take off it was it's very practically designed, it gives action steps. It says here, here's the information, now do all these things. So that design just really took off. We use it as we went to the second book, same design, third books coming out with that same design also. So it's worked really well. I wanted it to simulate a counseling session. I wanted people to be able to walk in and you know, read that pick up that book and say, oh, this is yeah, this is right. Here's the information. Here's what a counselor would tell me to do. And I can go do those things.

Greg Voisen
And you did a really good job of it. share a bit about your own personal journey because you when I was reading your bio, obviously that was a snippet of the bio but between the prisons and counseling women and counseling people, and all your experiences, it led you up to writing these books, obviously. But out of every one of those experiences you've had, it helped to inform these books. And the people you counseled, helped to inform these books. So tell us a little bit about, about that journey. And then we'll dig into the books themselves.

Faust Ruggiero
No, Greg, I'm one of those people that has been blessed to know why I'm here and what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't know a lot of if a lot of people have that, that opportunity. But for me, it's about being in service to other people I thoroughly enjoy that I thoroughly enjoy connecting with people, loving them in the situations and in terms of which they enter my life. So counseling people was just a natural for me. Again, you know, I started doing that out of grad school. And that was way back in 79. So 80 Or so I started doing this, and here we are, you know, 43 years later, and I'm still doing it and still loving it. So, you know, we talk about my journey, that's what it's all about. I was born into it, so to speak, as a kid and in school, everybody talked to you know, that type of thing. So, you know, unfortunately, we

Greg Voisen
came to you, they came to you, if you had a they had a problem. Right, I listened,

Faust Ruggiero
you know, I listened attentively, intently, you know, smiled, made eye contact, and you know, we, you know, validated Oh, my gosh, you know, so here I am 43 years later as the guy who never worked a day in his life, because I got up doing exactly what I wanted to do every day. Well,

Greg Voisen
you had, you've had an interesting journey on to say the least. Now let's take a deeper dive into fix yourself handbook. You structure this book around a process way of life. Right. And I mentioned that in the beginning, I mentioned it in the intro. Could you elaborate on what that means? And how it can empower individuals to kind of take control of their life? Because it's, it is a unique approach. But like you said, you wrote this book for everybody. Yeah,

Faust Ruggiero
you know, it's the first and most important question, what's the process way of life? You know, everything we do in our lives, right, everything we do has a process associated with it. Here, you and I are doing an interview today, we started as you know, a few weeks ago, it contact people contacting each other, we did a zoom, where you and I talked about things is this going to work. And then came all the things to set it up. So we are in this situation today, there was a process after process after process. It's the same thing in life, regardless of what we do. It's bound by processes, little steps, or little ways of doing things that make things work out, right. It's things like being honest with yourself, and learning how to allow your emotion to express itself before your intellect, I'm sorry, before your emotions, learning how to gather facts and communicate properly, and all those types of things. So those are all processes. And what I've done is just put them into a format, where people can use them to address the various conditions in their lives, their everyday living. It just it gives definition to the journey. It addresses what we call mindfulness, people like that term today. It allows us to have a plan to move forward every day, and check into that plan and allow it to work for us just by using simple steps that I call processes.

Greg Voisen
Well, if you would read along that theme of the process centered life share an example or a story from the book that like I liked how this approach can lead to some kind of, I'm going to call it profound personal growth, but really Trent personal transformation, because and as a psychologist, you know, when you see the light bulb go on inside of people, right? It's like being and all of a sudden they realize that, Oh, I've been playing this tape. Since I'm seven years old, right? And it's still there. And the question is, can I coexist with it? Or, you know, you're not going to be able to throw it out, because it was plugged in a long time ago. So what what kind of stories do you have around that if people had what I call an epiphany during your process, and had some major life changes?

Faust Ruggiero
You know, I go back to the first step. In the first book, you know, when we talk about processes, nothing we can do, nothing we do in our lives can work unless we are what I like to call brutally honest with ourselves. We like on it. We like to think of ourselves as honest people, but when We've got an array of defenses and strategies that keep us away from anything that might challenge us, it might make things uncomfortable, might let other people see some vulnerability, or what we might define as weaknesses. So we don't get completely honest with ourselves. And whether it's counseling or working this program, or whatever it may be, every day in our life, if we are not honest with ourselves, nothing, nothing can grow nothing at all. I give the example of the woman that comes in, and she's talking to me, and, and, and this, this could be any person, most people come in this way. And they begin to tell their story. And they go into, and they give me the highlights, and I start going deeper. And I noticed that the deeper I go, one, you know, one onion layer deeper, so to speak a little more, the gains come up a little more defenses, they're going to tell me some of the story. And I'll make that connection for them. I say, Do you remember when you started? And you gave me the story you planned? That didn't have a lot of defenses? Or you didn't think it did. But now as I'm going deeper and deeper? Do you realize as you continue to tell the story, you also introduce some protective devices in there? Do you think you really need them? And when do they realize that they don't, and they stop fearing that that honestly becomes their best friend. And that changes everything. We'll talk about epiphanies, when they get to the point that they say, I don't need to do this, at least not in here, at least not with you, I can start here. And it because you know, they think they're starting with me. But you're really starting with yourself. When you get to the point that you say, I didn't like that in me, I made that mistake. I'm the one that caused that or I'm not too happy with this, you start peeling off those layers, you also get to the point where you're saying I'm finding the beauty inside me that I covered up forever with these defenses. So I really didn't have a good way of getting into me, I wasn't connecting with myself good, bad. It's not we're not good or bad. It's just what's there.

Greg Voisen
I think you, you know, we live in a world of making stuff up. And I always say we begin to believe what we made up. And then we spend a lot of our life unraveling what we made up which was that story that we were living. And you know, part of that comes down to this. I remember distinctly many years ago, Byron Katie was on the show, and she asked two questions. One was, Is it true? And then she say, Is it really true? So people would come up on stage, and they would say, this is my story. My husband abuses me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I don't love them anymore. But whatever it was, and then she goes, Well, is that really true? And then she said, Stop, think about that. And then they would think about it a little bit further. And they go well, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it really isn't. It's kind of like a story. And I thought just those two simple questions were pretty revealing, just very revealing. And I'm sure you've used them as well. Yeah. So I've

Faust Ruggiero
used those and I, this is the one I say to people. Do you want to love yourself? Or do you want to love your story? It has no roots. You created it, it's floating there? Do you want to go away inside and say, You know what, no matter what I find good, bad or ugly, it doesn't matter. It's me, I can love it. I can go in there. And if I can do that I can embrace me. And I can make all those changes I want to make but I gotta be able to get to the point where I say, This is me. This is my version. I may not like it when I start. Okay, right. But I definitely have the ability to change it.

Greg Voisen
Well, the other thing too, you know, these books really do go hand in hand because the story creates anxiety. And I want to address the anxiety fix your anxiety handbook, we said we'd go back and forth. It's really prevalent today and society. It's like it's deep rooted. So many people have you know, you talk to him. I have an anxiety attack doctor put me on, you know, Prozac or some kind of drug right? But how does your second book build upon the principles in the fix yourself handbook to Pacific specifically target and alleviate the anxiety from our own stories? Because the reality is these books, really when you look at it, folks, whoever's listening at this point, your own story is what's creating your own anxiety.

Faust Ruggiero
And you hit it on the head, I call it feeding the demon. All right, and we don't want to feed the demon you know Oh, when I wrote the first book, one of the premises was that it, the tendons in that book could be applied to any problem we have, to relationships and to depression and to what's all these things that that affect our lives, people pleasing whatever it may be. So obviously, if I was going to be right with what I did, it would lend itself to anxiety. We started talking about this story we tell, that's one of those things. When people come in the office, I'm gonna use a lot of those processes to help them purge. And what I mean by that is, let's get all those things that are feeding the demon out of your life, or at least let's reduce them. Let's make you conscious of them.

Greg Voisen
That's the first thing aware, make you aware of them

Faust Ruggiero
know that this is what you're doing. When you come in my office. And I say, you're getting panic attacks. And you say yes. And I say, Well, let's look at your diet first. Did drink coffee? Yes. How many cups a day? Three or four? Now? Okay. Any other soda? Monster drinks, whatever, sometimes? Yes, sometimes. Okay, so we know that caffeine, and all those amphetamine based products are designed to rev up the system. Your system is an anxious one, it gets anxiety. Maybe we want to talk about that, first. Let's purge that in and out, we don't they'll do they'll go back to that honesty thing and say, Well, I really don't have it all the time. And now we start to backtrack. So we get back into that we start getting into emotions and how emotions play into anxiety. And I have a chapter in the first book, I overeat, I call it intellect over emotion, I want them to learn how to be fact finders, that's another process in the first book. So if you're going to be you're going to work with anxiety, you have to work with the facts, you can't keep on coloring things up. You can't keep on stepping into the same footprints every day, or you're going to walk on the same path. So we have to change that path, we're going to talk about how you sleep are you going to, you know, everyone says, Well, I get enough sleep well, they get the amount of sleep they're gotten used to, but not we haven't looked at what the body needs. So we're going to take all those things. And we're going to do a, put them all in one further context, which is to slow the process down. You can't fix anything while you're while you're while you're on a treadmill running as fast as you can, you got to slow down in life. So your brain has enough time to think about the information, I'm going to present you with information, you got to be able to think about it, then you got to be honest, you got to look for facts, then you got to address the facts. And then the last step is you got to kind of make sure that you can understand that you're going to get a little uncomfortable before you get comfortable, comfortable. Because your growth does not exist in your comfort zone. It exists in you stepping out of the comfort zone. So I'm going to cautiously and I'm gonna hop your back when I do it. But I'm going to take you out of your comfort zone. And I'm going to help you exist in some places that you weren't used to before because your comfort zone, your comfort zone became your toxic zone. We went away well,

Greg Voisen
because you just gave the listeners about three. What I would call strategies that yes, kind of in the book, you mean you were just kind of iterating through them. And you know, anybody who picks up the fix your anxiety handbook, you give techniques to overcome this, you give some strategies. What are one or two? You just talked about three just now you actually got them all out at once. Maybe one of your favorite ones to get people to their come in? They're anxious. All right, you ask them a question about how much caffeine how many sodas are they're drinking? You get down to a lot of different issues. I liked it the approach actually. Because you went from the physical to now the emotional. So why are you drinking all that? Right? What what is it that you need? You don't have enough sleep? I mean, those were great questions. Are there any from the emotional side, that you would be that I would think would be good questions or zingers as I call it. That would awaken people to what they're doing to themselves to create this anxiety.

Faust Ruggiero
You talk about fears when you talk about anxiety. Anxiety is one of those conditions and I and I stress this to people. It's not who you are. It's what you have. It's a condition you have and it makes you feel weak. So now what you're doing it and most really that's what people don't want to feel I don't want to feel weak. I don't want to feel that anxiety. I don't want to feel like I'm going to jump out on my skin or when I'm feeling relatively okay. I don't want to look and say, when is it coming again? So now? You know, I'll, I'll be very careful about what I do. So I don't bring this on. What I'm asking them is, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid is going to happen, that you need to build all these little things around you, and continue you allow yourself to continue to be weak? So that maybe the monster doesn't come and get you today? What are you fearing, let's define what those fears are all about. Let's define maybe any traumas that have happened in your life. Let's look over any abuse, let's look over failed attempt at things that caused you to be in the limelight, you didn't want to be in those types of things. Let's go get those things. You know, I start with the physical. And I say this all the time with things, I just get the physical out of the way, because it's your body's revved up, let's get that calmed down a little bit. But now we got to go and start talking about the causes, a lot of those are emotional, their fares, some are rational, some aren't so rational. And then once you get into the point where you're so into the emotional part of it, your brain feels like it's getting scrambled because it can't think anymore. Your mind can't turn off 1000 thoughts at one time. So we have to kind of work from the bottom up on this body emotions. And so how

Greg Voisen
would you address I mean, there's, you know, obviously, this term has become overused, but it probably in a good sense, overused, but limiting beliefs. You know, somebody comes into you. And really, I always say, because they're maybe down on themselves. As you say, what's really part of both of these books is taking full responsibility for yourself, your healing and your growth. And to make that critical shift is a mindset. All right, change. And that mindset change can be around limiting beliefs. But I say that it's always between your reality and your potential. Right? Because, look, a lot of people their reality is they walk into your office, and they lay out the story. You're getting them to change the story. Okay. So that it isn't that story. What advice would you give for listeners around shifting their story, and making a critical shift in their mindset so they could change the story? It

Faust Ruggiero
is one of the best questions you could ask. We have an eye, the way our minds work, we want to come in, lay out our story, have spelt someone tell us what to do to change it. Go do those things, and then consider it changed, which would be great. If we lived in a stagnant world that didn't change much, then it would accommodate that. But we live in a dynamic world, it changes every day. So we have to learn the strategies. And the mind shift is to say, I will incorporate those strategies in my life every day. And people look at that and say, I've got to do this every day. And I say you're making this a chore. You've decided it's like cleaning the bathroom. It's not. There's no toilet to clean, there's no tub to scrub. It is every day where you get up, embrace your life. Create a world that you like, get in there and apply these tenants every day. All these little strategies, all these skills, apply them every day with a positive attitude, your life will change. And barring unforeseen circumstances, like you know, the house burns down or some your spouse dies, you are going to be able to live that life and change with the world and actually begin to program your changes into the world. If you're willing to accept the premise that you're going to change every day, because the world's going to and get up and apply these tenets every day.

Greg Voisen
Fast. What would you say to people that people start diets all the time and they don't stick with? I'm on a group right now where we, we there's four guys and we send our weight each morning to one another. Right? Accountability. Right being accountable. What would you tell people about sustaining long term personal growth and keeping anxiety at bay? Because it's one thing it's like the maintenance plan. It's like okay, I Foust came in and talked to me. He gave me all this great advice. I took it in and now I've got to sustain this because Faust isn't going to be around forever nor am I going to pay him for all these sessions to keep doing what it is great. You got Two books that you can give to them. Right? My question is, what advice would you have for them around sustainability of change after the story has changed? Right?

Faust Ruggiero
The key word in this is embrace, embrace. Okay? Talk about accountability. It's either a monster, or it's your best friend. Depends how you look at it and give you an example. I wrote the first book. And you know, if anyone listening has written a book, you write the book. And if you're doing it, right, you then take your book, and you send it to the copy editor, who looks for all the mistakes, sentences that can be restructured things that were said before that maybe you're saying too many times, what happens? Okay, now it comes back. And I remember in the when my first book came back, and I, you know, done in Microsoft Word on the right hand side comes, all the editors changes, and it was 160, some pages. So there were probably 500 changes little thing. And I looked at, and I, my first thought was, you got to be kidding me. And then I walked away said, Okay, motion down, use my own program. What are we going to do here, I have two options, I can grudgingly go forward, I'm going to be accountable to her because it goes back to her. Or I can embrace this and make her my best friend, I have two options. I obviously chose the second one, she's now added in second and third books. The key to what you're talking about, is to get up every day and say, I'm going to embrace this, I got to lose weight. Hey, guys, I'm at 175 today. Fantastic. And I like that. And if I do that, I'm not resisting. That's the key. I'm not resisting it. It's about I always talk, I talk a lot about energy management, not just time management. It's how much energy you put into what you're doing and what kind of energy that is. If you're going forward grudgingly and saying, I gotta be accountable on this, you're really not going to do it, you will do it some days, but you're not going to do it long enough. And the time you are spending doing it, you're not going to put your whole self into it. But if you say, you know, no, I got this, and I love it. And I'm going to do it. Positive energy goes and more of it goes in the direction you want it to go in. It's embracing accountability, we don't do it. Accountability for us is usually the guy who doesn't want to do something and has to say, I gotta be on the bar every day, I gotta be accountable to myself and my family and whoever else. Versus Yeah, I got this, of course, I'm going to be accountable. I'm going to be okay, you know what happens? The chore gets easier. It's done in less amount of time, and I'm happier while I'm doing it. And after I've accomplished it. Yeah, not resisting.

Greg Voisen
I think it's acceptance of what you want to change. Knowing that you can do that. And are you are the only one responsible for that change. Nobody else there isn't anybody outside yourself, that's gonna get you to make these changes. Now, one of the things that I think is really good, is in all your works, you highlight this thing between the balance between emotional and logical processing, right? Kind of like that's this process, we're talking about? How does finding this balance contribute to people having either that aha moment personal growth, and helping them reduce some anxiety that they might be dealing with themselves? Because it's like, there's an emotional side, there's a logical side, you've addressed both of them so far. I'm not certain if people actually see them together. They probably see them separate, right? And I think you're saying no, there's a balance between these two. Just like I said, my accountability on my phone to send my wait. That's a process, isn't it? It is pretty logical. Yeah, pretty logical process. It's like, okay, I'm gonna, every morning I'm gonna text these other three guys. I'm gonna see what they weigh. They're gonna see what I weigh. Right. Exactly. But there's also commitment. And, and I and I think sometimes that word. I don't want to say it frightens people, but it's hard for them to live up to. Yeah.

Faust Ruggiero
When I talk about the intellect and emotion, I always try to get the point across to everyone that first of all, they exist in the same place. They're in our brain, our brain processes, our intellectual, everything that we do, and it processes our emotion. And so they're occurring in the same place. They are both going to have their say, the question I posed to people isn't that what I teach them is, let's tell our emotions, don't worry, you're going to get your say, we're just going to let the factfinder go first. That's all. If I can do that, it's sort of like, you know, the old mom says, count to 10. And wait, you know, and what we say to people that would like, hold off, just back down a little bit slow down, get the facts, what happens is that when people do that simple exercise, they say to themselves, instead of, oh, I can't believe and they go into it, they say, wait a minute, okay, I'm just going to slow down a minute, I want to hear what's going on, I'm going to try to get the facts and then make some decisions, then I'm going to talk about how I feel about it, they look at me and say, Ah, I can do this. Because my emotions are going to come through people afraid of not being validated or, or not being heard, or their point that isn't, isn't going to be expressed. And I say you can do all that. But how about if you do it based on the facts, being able to take your emotions, slow them down a bit, say, Okay, I'm gonna put him to the side just for a moment, I'm gonna get all the facts, I'm gonna hear everything you have to say or hear about, whatever that thing going on in the country is or, or in my family or with me, whatever it is, I'm gonna get to the facts, then I'm going to make some decisions about how I want to do this, then I'm going to tell you how I feel about all of it. Now I'm emoting in a more healthy manner. And my emotions are on a virus, so to speak, that's affecting my brain's ability to think,

Greg Voisen
Well, you did say mentioned earlier, like you can't do it while you're on a treadmill. So you have to pause. And I think look, when we are reactive, not action oriented, will blow up, where everyone's gonna stop, take a deep breath, be mindful, you know, before you actually say, and might put, I'm just gonna say, put your big foot in your mouth, right and hurt somebody's feelings. Because you really didn't think through it, your emotions got the best of you. We all know what those emotions are of anger and frustration and whatever it might be. And it comes up during the day, that sometimes at unexpected times, right doesn't matter who it might be that you're dealing with. So watch for those little things and be mindful of that. Now, there's some people out there, file set right now, probably listening to the show. And I'm just gonna say it, they might be a little bit skeptical about the ability to to fix themselves, or manage anxiety without a doctor giving them a prescription of Prozac or whatever it might be. What would you say to them? And how does your book address those kind of concerns? Because like, these are, these are Do It Yourself books. Right? Both of me, pardon me? I didn't get the front cover. They're both do it yourself books. That's what they're meant for. You wrote these after years of counseling people in said, Let me address everybody, right? And anybody can pick these up and fix yourself handbook. Right? And they're going Nah, no, no, no, I can't do that. I don't. What are you telling them to get past that?

Faust Ruggiero
First of all, when it comes to medicine, I always say that's a last resort. It doesn't mean it cannot happen. You know, I always tell people that 30 years ago, people would come into my office with anxiety and depression or whatever. 5%, seven, 8%, whatever. We're on medicine. Now, they come to my office before we've done anything, 70% of them are on medicine. Now. That's such a telling statement. What's happened is we've begun to rely on that quick fix. It does something quickly. And we want that. But everybody's got the ability we survived on this planet all these centuries. Yeah. And we didn't do it with medicine. That's only the last few 100 years in, in some way, shape, or form. Do you think we can't do this, we just got to the point that we rely on quick fixes. If you're really willing to go inside and get all those things, everything you need is already there. You just have to learn how to access it and how to use it. All my people have done that when they come in the office today. I don't even think about referring them to a doctor for medicine. We don't go there unless they're telling me. No, I'm having panic attacks every day. I say okay, fine. We have to calm your body down first. We might need a month or two But we're gonna we're not going with antidepressants, we'll do an anti anxiety Med, you'll get calm down, we'll start setting the components in place coping skills first and strategies. And then we'll get you to the point that it happens. And for and what I tell people is, don't worry about I don't know, if I can't, I can't do that. Give yourself a chance. Let's try. And if you're willing to do that, at the very least, you're going to find out things about yourself that you didn't know, were there.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I would agree with exactly what you're saying. I remember having Dr. James Gordon on here a couple of times. And he would say because he does similar work to you, but more integrative medicine, right. And he tells people, you know, they come in with anxiety, now we're addressing your anxiety, or having help with heart palpitations, or whatever it might be, you know, medicine should be the last resort. Look, you can do mindfulness, meditation, Tai Chi, Yoga, exercise, all these other kinds of things, which they've proven that when the body is being exercised, right, because a lot of people that are coming in with that are not on a regular routine of some meditation or exercise program, that literally those symptoms that they're having start to fade away. And when he said 90% of the time, he will not prescribe any kind of medicine, and he's an MD, he can prescribe medicine. And I think that's an important point you make because you're telling people, let's try this some other way before medicine, right? Give it a chance, because there are things you can do on your own. And that's the fix yourself part of this. Okay. So as we wrap up the conversation, what's, what are one or two final pieces of advice you'd like to leave the listeners with? And is there anything upcoming at your website or other things you want to mention with relation to people, other than just getting the book where they can find more information about you and what you're doing.

Faust Ruggiero
So the first piece of advice I give to people is give yourself a chance, you can do this, you need some help, that's fine, have it have people to help you have a network, have a family, friends, let them help you, a physician, a psychologist, or what have you, and start doing all the physical things. First, give yourself time. If we were able all these years to get people to feel good about themselves without meds, we can do it with you, it's going to take time, that's the that's the key here. It's not a quick fix, even if you go to the doctor and he gives you medicine, he did not get he or she did not get to the problem. And the medicine has a shelf life, regardless of what they tell you, eventually, it's not going to work well for you. And they're going to bounce you around on medicines, or increase medicines or, you know, add three or four. Is that what you want? Eventually, you will get to the toxic effects of those medicines. Right? What if we, you know, again, you didn't get to the cause. We want to get to the cause of whatever's doing this for to you. So it stops. Second is, again, everything's inside you. It's already there. Go talk, be honest, be willing to work with your intellect, be willing to put a plan together that you work every day, you're going to feel after a while that the power is starting to come. That's what we want.

Greg Voisen
Well, and I'm going to encourage the listeners today to go to your website, Faust Ruggiero, that's f-a-u-s-t-r-u-g-g-i-e-r-o and there's a newsletter there called the fix yourself, Power Zone newsletter. And you can click on that that's right at the top of the banner. Fill that in your email and your name. And you will be getting newsletters from Faust. He's also got published articles there, and the fix yourself handbook. Which basically, you know, we're talking about this book. You can order these on Amazon we will have links to Amazon to be able to order both of these books. And you can also see some videos and podcasts that Faust has been on which is at that same website. It's been a pleasure having you on inside for Personal Growth and talking about your books, talking about your process, and spending time with my listeners to know a little bit more about how you approach this. And the only way people are going to find out is if they pick up your books, pick up your books, read them, and get in touch with fast. You got a way to contact him through his website, he'd love to hear from you. And do you have any other final words?

Faust Ruggiero
Again, the power is there. Get some help to access it. Feel free, go to my website. There's a contact link there for all of you. If you want to ask me any questions, I do get back to people. The books are there, the third book, the fixture, depression handbook. We'll we're hoping to have that in publication by the end of the year. That will be there also, but by all means, contact me. I'd love to hear from you.

Greg Voisen
Faust, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure was really cool. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed us talking about how we make up our stories, and then we start to believe them, and then we've got to unravel them. And we've got to ask questions of ourselves to do that. And that's the thing these books are loaded with questions for you guys to actually use these as a handbook and fix yourself. So thanks so much for being on the show.

Faust Ruggiero
Again, it has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me on.