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Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen in the host of Inside Personal Growth. And for all our listeners joining me from Oakland, new Jersey is Doctor Christine Silverstein. And you can see by the back of her screen if you're watching this on YouTube, she has a book called Wrestling Through Adversity Empowering Children, teens and Young Adults to Win in Life.

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Good day, dear Christine. How are you? Thank you. It's a very good day so far. Well, it's up there. You're inviting me? Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show. And I want to mention for my listeners, she has two websites and we'll put them in the show notes below. One of them is called idea or Performance dot net.

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There you can learn about her book and her services, testimonials or audio, or I should say, her articles. She's got a blog. It's a wonderful website. And you can actually, book an appointment with her, the other website that she's got is basically her own name, and it's just Doctor Christine I and E Silverstein. Silverstein.com there.

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You can learn more about the book as well. Well, Christine, I'm going to let our listeners know a little bit about you. Then we're going to get into the questions and we're just going to have a great time today. So as I said, she's an accomplished performance coach. She's a hypnotherapist as well, and an author with 28 years of experience in transforming lives through innovative mind body healing approaches.

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She specializes in work with children, teens and adults through her transformative, transformative, Winning Ways for teens program and utilizes hypno coaching in a concise 912 session format that empowers clients to harness their subconscious minds effectively. And I will say, because I'm a big believer in this, that if you don't have a hypnotherapist like Doctor Silverstein, it is amazing what can happen when you reprogram your subconscious.

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She works, and centers on behavioral health and peak performance, like Operation Heal, which reduces stress and promotes rapid healing for surgical patients. She was just talking about a man who came to the door. Hopefully he's going to, take on her services. She employs advanced interventions such as affect bridge technique, to help clients identify and release past traumas and utilize specialized sports program like winning ways for wrestlers to help athletics achieve top performance.

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She operates through the Summit Center for Ideal Performance and has developed specialized programs, all throughout. And it's just, a pleasure to have you on the show. I really appreciate you. And, you know, it's interesting, I, I'm, I'm going to start off with this question because there seems to be more in the, in the news lately.

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Doctor Brian Altman. I should say, what I'm saying, Doctor Gupta, just wrote a book about how, as a neurosurgeon, how pain enters into the body. And I was listening to, a recording that he did. It was a TV documentary. And there's several books out now. And I would like for you to address this, because this pain that we have frequently is emanating from right here.

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It's emanating from our brains. And once somebody like you starts working with somebody, and people really realize that, Christine, they really can transform chronic pain, can't they? Yes, of course. And I like to call it longer term discomfort. Okay. Just change the wording and reframe it. But yes, we have this mechanism. We were given it at birth, to identify pain and to, to know that we're having a pain.

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Let's say, it's like my mother in law, unfortunately, when she was elderly, the was transition in her eyes and she had, many issues with her eyes. And at one point she, she couldn't see that she had an infection. And and the only thing that told it was that she had pain. So she went to the doctor.

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You know, her appointment. But we know that. So pain has a function and it's a very good function. It's like yourself. And then you have a pain in your toe and you realize you're bleeding, so informs us. But when we have to let me go beyond that, of course, we have to look at other things because it's not just the injury that makes you upset or traumatizes you, but it's the aftermath of having the injury and all the suffering that you go through.

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Like the man I just talked about who came to my front door, you he said, you don't know my pain because we noticed that he was limping. I had so many problems with my trauma from my leg, and I knew that it wasn't just the original injury, it's the pain in back of it. So you had back pain.

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You can look at it well, how come it didn't heal? How come it's it's no longer acute. It's it's what you're saying. What you're saying chronic. We have to look at the pain in back of it and all the trauma that comes with it to heal that, as well as the original thing to have. As I say, I use I not use a pain scale with my clients.

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I use a comfort scale. I like them from 1 to 10. So when we start off the session. So I ask them, so what's your comfort scale now? They might say to the by the time I finish it's a nine. Because we worked with healing through the power of the mind to imagine that you're getting better. And then the waist would do it.

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You can literally go inside the person's bone or inside the knee in your mind's eye to help them to heal. So it's a beautiful thing, and that's what your I love what you do. And, you know, I think a lot of people would like to know how you got here, you know, and you, you share personal story of overcoming significant childhood adversities.

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And they call them aces adverse childhood experiences. And Doctor Brian Allman is somebody who actually is created an app for that. And he's a personal friend, but it's incredibly powerful. Can you share the moment from your own lived experiences? Like kind of truly solidified your belief in our minds power to heal and build resilience, perhaps like, you know, like, you know, people go into, you know, you said the dental office vision of graduating from Columbia.

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I mean, most people go into dental offices like. And I don't want that. I don't want to do that. Right. Yes. Because they're already anticipating the pain that's going to occur. That's right. Crown. Yeah. All you have to say is root canal person is already frightened. Yes. Right. Exactly. Yes. Well well as you mentioned I had significant childhood trauma at the dental office.

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I used to go with my friend Judy to her orthodontic appointment, and we walked together because our parents and mothers didn't have cars and we had to go to another town. So she was really scared to go by herself, and I went with her. But in my life, I routinely went to the dentist alone after school, and I can remember being very brave to go into the dental office and didn't know what the dentist would do, but I knew he was going to drill my teeth and maybe even pull them out, which he had done.

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So. So one day I went when the nurse or I called to the nurse, which she's probably the assistant, called me into the doctor's private office, and she told me that my mother had not paid the bill and that I couldn't come back unless she paid the bill. Now, my mom worked as a waitress, and she we had five children in my family, so when I told her, she said, what do you mean?

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I paid the bill? But I don't know if she ever paid the bill. But I did go back eventually. But the result of it was when I finally, at 17, I went to another dentist, and that dentist told me that I had infections in all my teeth and I had to had major extractions. Well, at the age of 17.

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And so that was very traumatizing. And I, I couldn't, get through it. You know, every time I went to the dentist, I had to go through this and fearful and and I thought, I'll never get over this. But one time I decided to help myself. I had already studied hypnotism some, and I worked with clients who went to dentists, and through surgery I knew what to do for myself.

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So I decided on this one visit where I was going to have a major procedure done, where I said, I'm going to get into the zone, doc, because he said I couldn't have any more anesthesia because of my petite size. He said he gave me as much as he could, but that I may feel discomfort. So I said, no, that's all right.

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I'll go right into the song for a while in the zone. Oh my goodness. I saw myself graduating from a university with the diploma in my hand, and I was on the stage there. So I completed that visualization and he finished the work and he said to me, so, Christine, how are you doing? I said, oh, doctor, I'm doing so great.

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I just saw myself graduate from Columbia University. And he said, no, no, how are you feeling? I said, oh, they're great, they're fine, but I'm so happy, right? So that vision stayed with me and I literally applied to Columbia mercy sometime after that. When I got into the school, it was a challenge because I'm an eclectic thinker, but I convinced the director that I was a good candidate, and I got into the school, and four years later I graduated at the the the Square at Columbia University.

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It was pouring rain and I was soaked right through my graduation gown and cap. But Maya Angelou was there as the keynote address speaker, and I was so inspired by her. And I was it was one of the happiest days of my life, knowing that I reached my goal and graduated. And my mom, she came to my graduation with her walker because she had wanted to be a nurse when she was younger, but she never had the opportunity.

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So there I was, getting my my hood, my doctoral hood, and it was just a proud day. Right? A wonderful that's a great story. And, you know, when you're in, you're sitting in that dental chair and you visualize that, you know, it. It's really important for listeners to understand that you can transport yourself one and two, the endorphins that get released into your body.

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It's it's own morphine. So regardless of how much, this guy shot you up with various, applications to numb your mouth, you can do this yourself. I know from practice, under the surgeries I've been under, where I've actually gone and had hypnotism done first, that I then do these strong affirmations, and I have them on my phone, and it's my voice affirming the positive outcome, the quick healing, the rapid healing my body can do.

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Like, right now you're sitting here seeing me, and I'll just tell this story to listeners. I don't look that bad, but if I showed you a picture of myself a week ago after a PDT therapy, I was red and peeling everywhere on my face. I mean, I literally looked like, lateral. And this is only seven days later, what you see here right now.

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So, you know, you can heal from these quicker. And one of the things I wanted to congratulate you on was being the 2025 gold medal winner of the Hustle and Heart Book Award for Social Impact. You know, that's a tremendous achievement. Not only your doctorate, but this. How does wrestling through adversity, adversity, directly address social impact? And what kind of change do you hope to inspire in communities through its message?

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Because what this is for young people, right. You have the little wrestler guy there. He's got his hair, right? It's that. Yes. He reminds me of my grandson. Who's that? That age. That's why I selected it. So? So, yes, I was very happy to receive this award. And because I want to make a social impact. And I'm very grateful for the 25 judges who.

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Well, I think it was 12 judges who looked over my book and gate and selected me to win the award, but they don't know the half of the, the adverse incidents I went through to get to that point, to even write it. So as I look back now, I realize that I had a need to write that book simply because of the circumstances, but that was going on in society at the time.

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This was in March 2022. You still had Covid. We still had, we had the Ukraine war just beginning. We had, the pandemic really affecting people's lives, not just, and with mental health issues, but financially and socially with the loneliness. So all these things are going on and I'm watching the TV saying, oh my goodness, I know what to do.

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I know how to help these people because I've worked with these age groups and with parents, and the parents are saying, what can I do with my child? I don't I don't know what to do with their mental health. So I thought it was time to step in and write my book that I actually had promised my dad I would write earlier in 1998, when he was on his deathbed.

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He literally told me I was dying. He I didn't know you was such a great writer until I sent him a note, a seven page letter telling him how he could help himself to heal. So, he called me up thinking that he was paralyzed by holding that. My mother holding the phone, and he. He's crying, and he said, please, you have to promise me before I die that you will be an author and a writer.

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But it took me many years to get to that point. And literally actually. And you're drowning in North Carolina, the Outer Banks, the end of September. Before I started writing the book, that was on Labor Day, I was walking along the beach with my husband. He was holding my hand. There was an ankle deep water and this huge wave me and washed me out to the sea.

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This huge riptide. So I was on my back, floating further and further out, laying that sand and I thought I was going to die. My husband tried to help me to no avail, but there was this man sitting on the beach and he was reading a book in this storm right when he heard me screaming. So he came and he rescued me.

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And when I came out of the water, he showed me the book he was reading, The Count of Monte Cristo. And and it reminded me, I need to write the book that my dad talked about, you know, all those years earlier. So that was the impetus for supporting the book. But the situation in the world was the reason why I wrote it for young people to help them regain resilience in this tumultuous world.

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Well, you, you know, this book is really, really important for listeners. I want them to know and the book delves into the Humpty Dumpty syndrome. And. Yeah, and we'll have a slide come across the screen for all those people that are watching on video, to illustrate. And you say the mind body connection. Now, for our listeners, can you explain this metaphor and to help young people understand the power of their thoughts to achieve their goals and aspirations?

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Yes. Well, this figure I call the figure, it's in my book and it can be accessed for those who are using audiobook. It's on my website. Dr. Christine Silva in.com. You can see the figures there. But it began when I was really fledgling peak performance coach, and I decided to focus on helping wrestlers receive their success, and I wanted to present wrestling as a holistic sport, which is very original, in 1997.

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And I knew about wrestling because my son was a champion wrestler from an early age. So I went to this camp. I was a wrestler too, so I understand the idea. I went to the CIF champions, so I recognized what goes through when you wrestle. Yes, that's very good. Okay, so people are learning from reading my book even though they never knew about wrestling.

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So at any rate, I decided I was going to promote myself and go to this high school wrestling coach and workshop and give a presentation there. So I got an invitation and it was in it was in Pennsylvania. So my husband and I drove there. My daughters, my oldest daughter took care of my children at the time, and I walked into the room where they were having in this hotel and they said, what are you doing here?

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I said, who were you? And I said, and picked the promise coach and said, oh, so you're a psychologist? I said, no, I'm a nurse. And they told me, well, we're not engine, so we don't know why you're here. So I knew I had to set myself up the next day to present this presentation and for them to believe in me.

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They also told me that we don't like that hypnosis. You know that you talk about so many. Great. With this presentation, I developed some diagrams. I, I do them by hand at the time and and I decided to hump. The Humpty Dumpty syndrome was very important to introduce this concept of holistic wrestling. So what I drew was the cross-section of a hard boiled egg and had the white, the white part, the agony and and the yolk and fell.

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And so I told these coaches that that to be a wrestler and to be successful, you need to know what to do physically. Obviously you need to be wrestling moves, which is represented by the shell. And then you also need the albumin or the white part of the egg. That's the protein you need that the mental aspects of the sport.

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And then I pointed to the yolk which I said, oh, these are the core beliefs. And and these are also the spiritual access to who you are as a wrestler. And so I described this to the wrestlers and at first they're just looking at me, but they accepted it. Later on they said that was great that you call this holistic, you know, but I did.

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No, I took a chance. My body, my body spirit. Right. Yes. Right. I and I think that graph and we'll put that across the screen for our listeners so you guys can see the visual of what she created. We will use that one. So for those of you who are watching on video, not audio, you'll see it.

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If you want to go to our website and you can get, the visuals here as well. But I do want to I do want to discuss an important topic with you and, you know, in the book you highlight this alarming rise in mental health and loneliness challenges. I used to sit on a board for teenage suicide prevention, and I think this is something we do need to highlight and get to and discuss.

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What, in your opinion, is the most pressing crack in the institutional wall of our current mental health care system that needs immediate attention to really support young people today, because, there's certainly a break in a crack. We're seeing more and more of this depression more and more uses, social media, bullying, all of these kind of things. And it's created quite an issue, of mental health.

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Yes. Well, I agree with the pundits who say that the major issue is that we have a broken system and that we we don't have funding for mental health, that we we don't have specialists who work with young people like child psychiatrist, and we don't have coordination of school counselors. We don't even have enough to go around. And we don't have, the coordination of efforts.

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And so the major issue, of course, is the decrease in funding that we have, but currently in the US for health care and people just can't afford going to therapy even if they wanted to. So, so so that's a major issue. I find one of the biggest problems is the reluctance to work with people like, who work with the parents, who work with the social workers before a crisis occurs so that our youth end up in the emergency rooms and they're there for days, for weeks and even months without care.

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And they are outcast in the emergency room because they there's no actual care for them. And some nurses even said during the pandemic, well, we don't know how to treat these people who have the suicidal ideation. We just put them in a room, take away their phones and look at them on the remote TV, because we're only trained to take care of broken bones and things like that, so we lose out.

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But one of the things that brings this to mind, what's really depressing, depressing moment in history is that recently we had two occasions where we had gun violence. One was in New York City and one in Minnesota, and and then recently in the schools. So the first one was was actually the shooter was a 27 year old, and he thought he had, CTE from playing football in high school.

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And so he came with this gun right there on the streets of Manhattan. And he shot up the NFL, sky sky scraper and killed four people and injured one. But the fact is, he had mental health issues that were known, and he had been hospitalized twice for it, for maybe harming himself for others. The other thing that that occurred, of course, was, he didn't get the care and he committed suicide at the end.

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And then the other one was was the school shooting that occurred last week. Where? You mean in the church? The one that occurred in the church? Yeah. That's right. Where the children were praying and school had just started. And because they had locked the church, he shot from the outside into the church to kill the two children and injured.

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I think it was 18 other people. Now he had mental health issues. Obviously, that were not picked up by parents or by social worker. And he actually planned this violence and had had, you know, a record, on, on the internet, speaking about this, it was not picked up. So that reluctance to give primary care, what I call primary care, to prevent and to promote mental health and prevent mental illness, that is the reason why we had these challenges now.

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And you wonder, I wonder where I know the mother used to work at the church, and the young man used to go to that church, and you always look at, you know, what's going on about the vindictiveness of these people and somebody trying to counsel them first, just like what you said, and intervene so that it doesn't escalate to something this tragic like this did.

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And I think that brings me to this, because there's so much work that you do with hypno coaching. But one of the things is you emphasize mindful toughness skills, like breathing easily, mental rehearsal and positive self-talk. And I want to talk about this because obviously, if we could get to these young people with some of these techniques, we might, actually prevent some of this.

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It's going on. So for someone that's new to these concepts, what's one simple, full, fun exercise they could try today to begin tapping into their enter healing power? Well, the first exercise that I would that comes to mind is the way to enter the zone. I call it the zone because I work with a lot of athletes. So that way is to to be able to breathe easy.

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I call it breathing easy, in which you, you, have triggers to, to relax you during this, this process and how it works. It's very simple and it can be a lot of fun as well as a describe in a case how I use this on myself, when I was at Columbia University. So it starts with just sitting in a chair, you know, with your feet flat on the floor.

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And you can actually, get very comfortable. You focus on a spot that's in front of you, that's eye fixation. And it could be a happy face like I used in my office. It could be a drawing up a picture on the wall. And as you focus on this, you circle the fingers on your non-dominant hand, which is a triggering.

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So you can see it here to circle to things like this. And then you set yourself in to go into the breathing. You know, the breathing is abdominal breathing. So you imagine that you're breathing into your lungs and your chest and your abdomen like a big balloon. And then you exhale. So I'll explain to you how that works.

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So say you're sitting in the, in the chair in my office, and you're looking at your eyes fixated on the happy face, and then begin to take your deep breaths. Take three deep breaths. You breathe into your lungs, expand you like a big balloon. Hold the breath in. Breathe out through your mouth and you say that word easy to yourself.

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Then you take a second deep breath, breathing into your lungs. Expand your chest and add them in like a big balloon. You hold it for a second, then you exhale, saying easy to yourself mentally. Now on the third deep breath you breathe in. You hold your breath. You close your eyes and you count backwards. 3 to 1. You exhale slowly through your mouth and said that were easy.

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And now you're getting in the zone. And you can imagine that there's a light shining from above, right on to your scalp and right into your brain to relax. The air is in the brain, the left and right side, and you can imagine that this wonderful relaxation flowing across your face, down to your neck, your shoulders, down your arms, all the way to your fingertips, and then breathing into the lungs this wonderful oxygen.

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This is great for athletes. And imagining that in your abdomen you have this gut feeling that you are a winner. You see yourself winning the wrestling championships in your mind, and you are just continuing to breathe as you relax the muscles in your back, all the way down the spine, all the way down the legs, the knees, the calves, the ankles with the two, the tips of your toes.

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And when you're finished with this progressive muscle relaxation, you just say the word relax and count for one. That's one, two, three and your eyes are open. And that's a very simple technique that I use, particularly with athletes, so they can perform. It has the muscle memory automatically when they walk onto the wrestling that are in the batter's box.

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But it's very powerful. So I'll explain to you a story of what happened to me at Columbia University when I was in a statistics class, and we had this problem for homework, we were given the answer, and we had to work backwards to find out how it was solved. So my classmates were saying, oh, it's really hard to do that.

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And, and, and I was listening to them, but I decided to go home and do my homework. So when I arrived home, I just filled up my bathtub with warm water, my jetted bats, and I decided to use this breathing exercise right there. Just get myself in the zone and then I looked at the wall where I had painted a mural of the blue sky.

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The sky's the limit. The fish floating by and in. In my imagination I saw them floating by going with the flow and the sand. The beach below. So I'm looking at my wall in my bathroom and I'm figuring out how to do this problem. And they came to me automatically. I found the answer automatically, and I got of the tub, wrote everything down just to make sure.

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So the next week I went back to class and when I arrived, my classmates were saying we couldn't figure out the answer to this problem. It's so hard. And I they showed me the answers and I said, I think they're wrong. I think I had the right answer, but they didn't believe me. Right? They they said, why don't you go to the professor and ask her what the right answer is so they could change the answers.

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They have a better grade. So I went up to the professor and I told her what I did and and what they did, and she looked at the class and she said, I don't understand why you're not listening to Christine because she has the right answer. So I was the way that and the reason for this, because I actually had a healing, because in high school I had a teacher who taught auditory, and she would tap on the floor with this big stick.

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We had to recite our homework a plus B equals C, and I would be petrified that I wouldn't have the right answer. And she tap on my desk and yell at me, right? So the end of the semester, my my teacher put us, arranged our seating according to our midterm grade and the people who had the best grades with first row, first seat, the people who had the worst grade was last row, last seat.

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And I happened to be in the last row seat and everybody knew I was the dumbest, right? So this held me to think, and I wish that that none had hurt me. Wherever she is, that I achieve success here and I got the right answer. Well, you have the right answers come from within. So when you went into the bathtub and looked at the scene, was able to visualize able to come up with the answer, your higher self was working with you.

00:34:05:14 - 00:34:37:23

And I want to talk about that because the concept of learned helplessness learned. And I want to underline learned is a significant barrier to personal growth. All those other people and I'm not saying in the class, but they had learned helplessness. How do your programs empower individuals to overcome this? And what role does recognizing one's high octane energy play in transforming challenges into productive forces?

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That's what you did. You found high octane energy to solve the problem. Yes, and to heal, which is very important as well. So yes, I have a chapter in my books, chapter eight I call an ADHD. Where did the Ants in My Pants go? And from the title you can see that I was a person who had ants in my pants or what I called high octane energy, and I could have really suffered from it as a result and have and had learned helplessness, which is a psychological phenomenon when you feel powerless and you have the lack of confidence because of these negative, labels that you have.

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But fortunately for me, I had my family who believed that my high energy was a gift and was normal for children, and also from my hypnotherapist and biofeedback instructor later on in life who measured my energy level. And he said to me, Christine, when you 100 pounds at one time, and here I was, 100 pounds when he was, he was testing me.

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He said, I'm afraid you're going to break my machine, you know, with your high energy. But he told me something very important, and that was that I could do great things with my energy and then I could use it wisely. So that was my reason for knowing it. Thank. I'm thankful for my parents, of course, for helping me to realize my potential.

00:36:14:20 - 00:36:38:17

But it didn't stop because when I was in grammar school, I was an Ace student. But on Monday, my teacher, who was a nun, came into my classroom and said, I'm going to take care of you today because your teacher is absent. And while she's talking to us, because I was very active with with sports, my father was the director of the Police Athletic League.

00:36:38:19 - 00:37:03:02

And so I like to imagine I was playing basketball. I was sitting in the front row is the trash can, and I rolled up a piece of paper and I threw it in the garbage pail while the nun was talking, and it hit her habit, the hand of her habit. And she had a fit, and she literally roomy down two flights of cement steps without a railing.

00:37:03:04 - 00:37:27:00

Because I was disrespectful to her. She didn't give me a chance to explain. I was just playing, you know, my I was improving my free throw at the garbage pail and and so on from that. I didn't have any injuries because I had good balance, but I never told my parents about it because I was embarrassed in front of my classmates.

00:37:27:06 - 00:37:55:09

And later on, not only that, she announced at the at the assembly that I was disrespectful and took me up by her hands and threw me against a classroom door. So that was very interesting and very traumatic, but certainly adverse childhood experiences and saying yes, no. So I knew that I could I could have fared better and I did fare better.

00:37:55:11 - 00:38:18:01

I had challenges in nursing school when I first got there because I had to improve my focus to save people's lives, you know? So I worked through that, and I found that some of my clients who had called me like this one man called me. He was a father of a young child. He was a going to law school and he was on medication.

00:38:18:03 - 00:38:37:15

And he told me that he really wants to get off medication, be the best lawyer and use his energy. But when I told him what it entails here you can learn these mindful techniques, techniques, and maybe you could come off the drugs, you know, in the future because he didn't want to take the drug, although he said he was dependent on it.

00:38:37:17 - 00:39:10:03

And then after a few moments, he kind of lost interest and he, he hung up on me, you know? So I know that there was learned helplessness because he admitted that he had these emotional issues from chest when he was in the class. Well, you did this. Well, you have been a person as a doctor and a hypnotherapist and a nurse who's really culminated all of these life lessons into a practice which just helps people heal.

00:39:10:05 - 00:39:32:10

And you use the whole mind, body, spirit in the process, which that's what I want to get across to people today. I know. And to wrap up our interview, I want to ask you this one last question. And I think it's an important one because you say, as a keeper of the trees, you advocate for nurturing strong communities.

00:39:32:12 - 00:40:02:11

What is the most important message you want to leave with the listeners about how we as a society can collectively build resilience and empower this next generation to win in life. Because, look, it's wrestling through adversity, right? And we want to empower this next generation to not beat down, not be negative, look at the positive psychology and become better at everything they do.

00:40:02:11 - 00:40:42:07

What advice do you have? Doctor? So we're saying, well, I have always had an intimate relationship with trees since my childhood, and therefore I wrote this chapter, keepers of the trees. And I really believe that we have, since we have the same DNA, 50% of our DNA is is with trees. And I strongly believe that we need to learn the lessons of was from the forest where I have learned by breeding the hidden life of trees that trees actually have families, right?

00:40:42:12 - 00:41:08:06

They they take care of the old, they take care of those trees that felt withheld centuries before, and they give them sugar so that they can live in these trees because they're all part of the family. And also the mother trees reach out to the teenagers and they actually prevent them from growing too fast because they know that will affect their longevity.

00:41:08:08 - 00:41:42:19

So they take care of others when they're sick, when they're weak. And this gives my to the world of how important of course, trees are to the oxygen that we breathe. But beyond that, looking at the metaphor, we need to have community. We need to build up community. And I know from from experiences and from my research that there are programs in the world like one in Wales, which they actually passed a law to help young people to overcome their aces.

00:41:42:24 - 00:42:02:02

And they do it to the change agent of sports. And so they promote the sports and they they realize that you have four or more aces that are more prone to criminality, to suicide, to homicide. So they want to treat that, but they also want to prevent it. So they gathered the community. And then this is a war.

00:42:02:02 - 00:42:32:23

So they all work together with the the government and they they form groups of like minded people who have interest in working with kids. They said, well, goals for the country and they're working to make major changes. And I think that we need that kind of community in our country. And it's lacking right now because everybody has this, this lassitude, thinking that nothing will change, that nothing's going to change.

00:42:33:00 - 00:43:14:18

How many school shootings do we need before we make changes? And so there's this lack of hope that that built us through to all of us. And without hope, we have nothing. Because an oak tree is not a forest, and it knows it cannot stand alone. It will perish. So I say, we all have to gather together. And there's one thing that gave me hope recently, and it was an experience I had at a business conference that I went to last week, where a lot of young people with so energized to be entrepreneurs and I was the speaker, their guest speaker.

00:43:14:20 - 00:43:37:12

And when I went into the ladies room, there was a lady at the end of the bathroom near the sinks, and she looked at me and she called me to ask me, is there a Starbucks nearby? And I said, I didn't. I didn't know about that. But she began talking about these these shootings just out of the blue.

00:43:37:14 - 00:43:57:19

And I'm listening to her and she's saying, what's happening with these young adults? And how come we don't care about them? How can we don't help them with the mental health? And I said to her, you know, I wrote a book about this, and I work with the young adults, and she's telling the story of how she met this young person who was 21.

00:43:57:21 - 00:44:21:18

He was homeless, he had mental disorders. And also he didn't have a job. So she brought this young person to the church group that she belonged to. And although the men were older, they took care of them. They found a job they found in the home, and they built that, this self-esteem. And so she felt confident that she could do that with other groups.

00:44:21:22 - 00:45:04:00

And she was so happy to meet me. Now, this gave me hope, because the plan to try is to plant hope will feed you planting seeds, Christine. And that's what you did with this woman by telling her about your book, Adverse Childhood Experiences, What He Can do. And I really, encourage you as you do, going out and speaking, to encourage these people to remove apathy and have compassion and when we all reach out with compassion and understanding, we have an opportunity to change the world, just one little person at a time, one step at a time, like this young man that they helped in the church get a job and help lift him up.

00:45:04:02 - 00:45:26:15

So whether it's working with the homeless or it's working with people that are having mental illness, and you see that or helping people who are struggling just in their normal day of life. I want to recommend to all my listeners, now you have two websites you can go to. The one is Ideal Performance dot that there.

00:45:26:15 - 00:45:54:11

You can book an appointment with Christine. You can see some great videos. You can learn about her book, her articles and so on. And then the other one is just her own website, which is Doctor Christine Silverstein. Silverstein.com. There. You can learn about the book as well. You can you can download those, PDFs that she was talking about.

00:45:54:13 - 00:46:17:03

And so, Christine, it's been a pleasure having, you know, inside personal growth, sharing your own personal stories, sharing your knowledge and wisdom, about what you've actually gone through to get to this book out. And I thought it was interesting how this book really came about. The book is called Wrestling Through Adversity. Click below. We'll have a link to Amazon.

00:46:17:03 - 00:46:33:20

So you can purchase that book. Again, thank you so much for sharing your great stories and sharing your time with our listeners today. It's been an honor and pleasure having you on our show. Thank you for inviting me, Greg.