It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

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Good morning Las Vegas. It's Zandra Pollard. The show is it's where I am today. We have Dr gigline back in studio, and she is here with 12345,

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books, five books, five books that she's written, and we're gonna talk about, though, I didn't write all of them. Oh, you didn't. No, we're just gonna talk about how we're gonna use, Oh, I see your name on a few of you got my name on a few of okay, don't die. Series is mine? Yeah. Okay, okay, well, we're gonna get into that. Thank you for tuning in to 91.5

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jazz. And more. So let's get into it.

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Don't die waiting to be brave. Yes, well, so that's a perfect setup for this week. Okay, we're about to go into Thanksgiving in a few weeks. Yes, we just had an election. Think about the concept, don't die waiting to be brave. And that's why I brought unicorn. You can't see it audience, but we've got a furry little friend. Oh, but believe me, it is here. It is here. She is here. So the reason that I wanted to come back, you know, last month we talked about the techniques and and some of the things like, I your story about a student who had the sniffles and you're like

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snotty nose little kid, yes. Well, you know what better description for elections and upcoming Thanksgiving

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than the in the image of a snotty nose kid. Okay, so before we start and talk about what I have created with the unicorn challenge and for 2025

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the unicorn ageless edge challenge is really about how you live in the present moment and how you use the techniques offered in positive psychology, that's what it means to be brave. Okay? It means not to deny where we are, but to defy it. And you defy it by how you manage your thoughts. Okay, so on purpose. On purpose. Yeah, so first you have to know what your thoughts are. Everyone thinks that they know what they think, but you rarely know the moment by moment thoughts that you're having, and it is not your thinking that gets you into trouble, but those insidious little thoughts about generally, something that happened in the past or something that happened in the future that You're afraid will happen in the future. Okay, okay, so let's take Thanksgiving as a perfect example. Do you have memories of Thanksgivings? Yes, and I'm tired of cooking for Thanksgiving, I'm gonna say that. Okay, yeah, there you go. So there is a memory that you hold. So whether you front of mind note or not, you are beginning in the weeks before to remember, oh my gosh, I have to cook again. There you go. There you go. And if you're a younger person, you're thinking about what you have to give up to show up at that dinner that your parents have cooked. Yes, okay, yes. And that starts weeks before, because the arguments in the house start weeks before. Like, what do you mean? I have to be here on Thursday. What do you mean? I have to go to grandma's on Thursday. What do you mean? What do you mean? Okay, I just had this conversation with a friend, yeah. Okay. And so it's important for all of us, no matter our age, the way we get that ageless edge, that edge that allows you to really thrive in the moment and create the real life you want, not the one you think you've had or are gonna have, yes, is by actually realizing how you're creating your own angst through your thoughts. Right? Okay, so the don't die waiting to be brave book was one that I wrote, gosh, it's nine years old now, and it followed a pattern of my don't die series, which was taking four main thoughts and you examining in your own life, where is there something that there is a perception that I have that has to shift, like, how do I have to shift how I feel about Thanksgiving? Okay? And.

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No matter your age, you've got something about it that's gonna block you from having a good time that day, and you actually have the ability to change that before it happens. Okay, so how do we do this? Because I'm telling you, I had this conversation already. Okay, so tell me what the conversation and so not to put you on blast, but you're one of my dear friends, and she

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is so worried about Thanksgiving, because her family has different political issues, right? They're all coming together, right? There's tension, just, not only the political situation, but just growing up, and she's got to bring her kids now, and she's just totally not looking forward to Thanksgiving, okay? And she doesn't know how to approach it, okay? She was telling me, I don't want to be patronizing, correct, but I feel like that's the only way I can get through it. Okay, so this information will be valuable, okay, for someone like her. So is this a family that normally has something like a prayer before or something a process where maybe something they're grateful for, like, is there a way to have an opening conversation before the day starts? Oh, wow. Okay, and the conversation can go something like this, I have something to be thankful for I am thankful that we are all in this room now. Everyone in this room knows how each of us thinks, and most of the time, it's not the same as the person that we love standing next to them. I would like to suggest that for today, for these few hours that we'll wear together, that we not have a conversation about politics, but only about all the good times our family has shared together. Yeah. Okay, so you set some boundaries around why are we here today? Now, if you have a bunch of silly relatives who just want to get into it because they like to move their lips, you know you can respond with silence. It takes two people to have a fight, and it is amazing that once you have made the request, this is the one thing cool about humans. Most of the time, we don't ask, we tell. So instead of me asking you, would you consider doing today differently? That's generally, someone's going to say yes to you, especially if they love you, you then can say, My request is that for today, we put the topic of politics or anything that could hurt each other off the table and enjoy the food that's on the table. Yes, so you're actually making a request of someone who cares about you, who has gathered. I am fully aware there are some people that would tell me where to stick this unicorn. I got it the second part of this, and this is the harder part for everyone to accept. There may be days and times you should no longer be in the room you thought you should be in, and it is your responsibility to do what is best for your family and your mental health, even if it means saying, for this year, I'd rather preserve the love we have than put it under a challenge. Okay? Not, I don't want to be in a room with you, right? Everything is about how you position the request and be willing, but don't die waiting to be brave. Is you saying? You know, it's the small things in my life that really require that I be a brave person. We think bravery is the person who lands the jet on the Hudson and saves everybody's lives. Yes, that's incredibly brave, but the true brave work of day to day living is us adjusting and taking responsibility for how we show up and how we react, and when it is not possible to control others, make a brave decision that says, for now, you don't have to cut out your family forever. It's a for now conversation. It is best that I make another, you know, make a reservation, go out to dinner. I love you, mom, but this time we're gonna do X, Y and Z, exactly. How about I come over the next day, make sure that there is a conciliatory you know, you don't want, let's assume you do not want to fracture the family. It's fractured enough already. Instead, take a break with the invitation to come back. But you know, start by seeing whether or not you can get the people who love each other to just come to an agreement on one topic. Many years ago, we flamed out in our family on this topic, and I'm fine with that at this point in my existence, our nuclear family, my nuclear family is very solid. My peripheral family, not so much. And I had to come to a decision that said I don't love them any less. I just know that it's, you know, not the right place for us to try and reconcile things right? And it doesn't have to be on Thanksgiving. Thank you. Yeah, you know it's a crazy holiday. You know, the thing I love the most is I loved because I grew up in New York being.

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Able to see the parade and go to the parade. Everything about that parade is what Thanksgiving is. For me. I have a second love. And the last there was a lot of years that our daughter brought families together. Her at the time, boyfriend, now husband's family, and we would pick a location and spend a number of days doing many things. So all the pressure wasn't about how what was gonna happen over one meal, right? You know, there are ways to do life differently. Yes, you need to be brave enough to know what it is you're willing to do in the moment to make this moment the best that they can be. Yes, okay, and plan for those moments. And oh, because you already know. You know what you're going to do and what you're not going to do exactly in a couple of weeks. Yeah. And therein lies the truth. Thanksgiving comes the fourth Thursday of every November. You know Christmas is on the 25th you know these things ahead of time. You have history. It's not as though you deny the history of what has occurred on these holidays. It is taking the information that you have from the past. How do you make the best present possible? Yes, and that may take a degree of bravery of you breaking down the illusion cycle, oh my gosh, and the illusion of how wonderful it's supposed to be. Yes, oh my goodness. You know, don't get me started. Do something different. Y'all

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and know that you have the ability to do some you can always make a difference. Life is about choices. That's right, you can always make a different choice. So I want to wrap it up, be brave, y'all. Be brave.

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But I brought all these books for a totally different reason. Okay, so what else you got here? Well, I brought a collection of books with me, which is going to be the basis of you know that I do my unicorn challenges, which is a every quarter for the last, oh, 18 months to the benefit of an organization I love, Teach For America Vegas. So it's TFA vegas.org.

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This is an organization that puts and trains the best and brightest of teachers and puts them into communities so that they can make sure that schools are getting the best and the brightest of you know who is teaching in our schools. Okay, so it's an it's a national organization, and I take the work that I do in the unicorn challenge, which is a free download of an e book off of my site and free videos on my YouTube channel. So it's a self help. You do the work. The self has to do the work. Yes, but on behalf of Teach For America for a donation of any amount once a quarter, for about 18 months, I have offered four weeks where you can get on a live zoom, call with me and talk about where you're stuck, what's working, how you're working, the various tips in the classroom. Actually, I do it on Zoom, right? But I mean struggles that teachers have in the class. Oh, no. So this is for everyone most of the time. It is business people, okay, who come to the unicorn challenge. Okay? It is designed for and it's really the step by steps of, how do you create a commitment to daily reflection, to writing, to having dump list to prioritizing what's really important in your life. Like, you can use the same techniques on how to get through Thanksgiving, okay, okay, it's youth tracking your thoughts with a particular focus in order to achieve the goal. The goal is generally joy, happiness, like, in addition to good jobs, like no one has a goal. I want a miserable job that pays me a lot of money, like I've not come across that goal anytime soon, right? Some people might act like it, yes. So well, what you really want, right? Yeah. So what I've done coming into 25 you know, I get bored. I do this work. I live this work, I get bored. So for 2025

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I am creating the next level of the unicorn challenge. So the prerequisite this time is not only that you do a donation of any amount to Teach For America Vegas, but that you actually have already in place. You know what your five top strengths are you already have a version of a reflective practice so that you come or ready at the next level of readiness. Because one of the books, which I don't have here today is called the big goal, and it's written by a woman who is a great positive psychology researcher, Carolyn Adams Miller, and she is this book is coming out on November 27 Okay, and so that's going to be one of the core books that I use, and it's up leveling the types of goals that we'll talk about, whereas the unicorn challenge in its original form was about getting you into the routine of what it takes.

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To achieve any goal, the next portion of it will actually take on the bigger goals that you're afraid to think about. What are some of the goals that you see? What do you hear out there, who's coming to you? I have the goal of, yes, what? So you can be someone who's got a complete career in insurance, but you feel you have a book inside you. Okay, okay, so the discipline to find the time to write the book and then do the things that are necessary to get a book out in the world. And I will tell you, I have a philosophy that says we should all write a book, whether or not you ever publish it. Not so necessary, but the process of writing it, I think, is what is in each one of us. We all have a story to tell. So that would be a goal. With that someone would they're living their daily life, and they've got their day to day job, and it could be a quite impactful job. But the next level is, how do I do that thing that I keep thinking I want to do, but I'm not allowing myself to do it, you know? So that's where the tracking comes in. I like that, yes, yeah. And you you hold yourself accountable, like, if you say you want to write a book, that means you have to schedule time to write. So the first step is schedule time to write. Seems like, Oh, my God, that's so Elementary. Yeah. Then how come you're not doing it right? Okay, we use techniques like using, you know, that's the one thing Smartphones have become magnificent at. We really don't have an excuse why we don't track our thoughts and keep pushing ourselves, because at any moment, you can stop dictated into a note, no matter what kind of phone you have Yes, and you'll be surprised when you're waiting on that line someday, you know, trying to kill time. The thought comes up again, and it's like, you know, I'm gonna sit down over a cup of coffee and do X, Y, Z, right, yeah. So that's the kind of, you know, like it is, other people will be in a job, and it is reaching for the next level within their career, within that job. Okay? You know, everyone has the number of people I've met who want to podcast, amazing amount of people. Once I thought everyone had one exactly. Well, pretty close, because the barrier to entry is so low. But the real barrier to entry is in your head, yes, and in your thoughts, that's right. It is the difference between getting it done and thinking you want to do it and I play in the ground of getting it done. Okay, yeah, me and the unicorn know how to get it done. All right. So this is the thing, okay, there is a huge unicorn head. There is a table, huge unicorn head. So when you go to your organizational meetings. Yep. Do you wear this unicorn or Well, every so often, actually, she sits on a stack of books behind me. So everything I record in my office, she is always present.

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She you know, she's just your inspiration. It is I had a habit of dressing up for Halloween and going, I live in Las Vegas to Downtown Summerlin, and the stores would give out candy to the kids. That was an organized Halloween, and I decided to fill a shopping cart full of candy and dress up every year, and I would stand in the square and give out all the candy. Oh, okay, because it was a safe environment, and kids like it. I gave them a lot more candy,

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and I was in a store. I wish I can remember where I found her. I believe it was target, oh, and I have yet to replicate her. So when she's gone, she may be gone, but I took her out to lunch with me to a business meeting. The following year, Halloween came around. I took her out to a meeting with me and sat her next to me at this business lunch and took a picture having a cocktail at lunch, all things I don't normally do with unicorn, and it just became a part of my brand during that period of time. Yeah, I allow it, and this is what I attempt to open people's eyes to. And this is very important, going back to Teach for America and going into the schools. You know, we beat the creativity out of our children, meaning, we beat it out of ourselves pretty young, because we have to fit people into a system, or we thought we needed them to fit into a very tight system. We now know there's a lot of ways to learn and allowing yourself, allowing me, like the tagline that I've had for a few years in my business, is you can be silly and successful. Do not think these two things. That doesn't mean I do pranks. That's, you know, Farrell's world. I But lighten up. Lighten up. Your brain will think better. What isn't here today is a bunch of the books I use on Play and fun. There are some really beautiful.

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Books that have been written on by adults to help adults again live in a different space so they can recapture what it means. You know, I'll go back to Thanksgiving again. Oh, that's fine, because we're right there. Okay, the reason we start dreading it is because of what came before and our memories of what came before, whether it is your career, your family, a holiday, examine your thoughts about it, examine where they came from, and then remember you can transform those thoughts. So my ability not to think I looked foolish showing up with a two foot unicorn head

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at a lunch in a really cool restaurant.

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Was one of those things. I am a trustee at Nevada State University. When I went to take the corporate photo for the trustees, I asked them, Do you want me to bring unicorn or not? Okay, unicorn came. All right, unicorns, part of the picture. Okay, all right. That ability may seem like silliness to some, but it is representative of standing in your self worth in a way that allows you to define it. And that is another act of bravery. You know the line that your net worth is not yourself. It should be the other way around. Imagine how rich you would think you are. Yeah, wow. Yeah, wow. So, okay, well, tell us about these other books you have here. So the other books, and this is going to be when we go, when I go into 25 it's going to be a little different program, where the others were, you know, four meetings over a quarter. What this is going to be is over a six month period, one meeting a month, where you deep dive onto the new techniques that come out of the book Tomorrowland, that come out of the tomorrow. Mind, tomorrow. Mind, yes, not Tomorrowland. Thank you. This is the latest of Marty Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology. Okay, and it's talking about, you know, the truth is, we are all on the verge, no matter what we do for a living or how we live our lives with our families, the impact of how we do almost everything is going to be impacted by this thing known as AI. The tomorrow mind is that ability for you to move away from the fear factor and grasp quickly or quicker, how the adjustments in your life will happen because of this new technology that has come online. How you teach, how you go to the doctor, how you drive your car, is all impacted so how our children learn, how we form groups, everything, how we discern critical thinking, which is such an important skill? Well, let me tell you something. You will need more critical thinking to figure out if AI has given you accurate information or inaccurate information. Yes, indeed you will. You need to be very brave, right? It is a brave new world, but I mix the books up. So the big goal, the big goal book, which is yet to come out, okay, okay, and the tomorrow mind book are deep in the research. Then there is other books that I'll be using, like conscious luck. And someone used the terminology today that he was always gifted in managing his coincidences, because at a very young age, he learned to observe coincidences in his life, and your ability to learn that one habit is a lot about what conscious luck. And another book into the magic shop by Dr James Doty out of Stanford. These give you a way of thinking. So over a six month period, we'll integrate the information. I'll do the integration. I hope people read some of the books, but, you know, a lot of them have a lot of research, and my books are self help. My books are very short and designed to have you get to a point quickly. But I will do the integration of the information, and each month there'll be a different exercise for you to do for 30 days as you allow yourself to up level your goal. Okay, okay, so that's what's gonna be Oh, that's awesome. I know you know what you brought up, the AI thing, the AI thing, yeah, and tomorrow minds. So I'm making doctor's appointments today, right? And I'm having to go through all of this extra stuff. You know, no longer can I just do it once I get there, I can't just fill out my paperwork. They want it done in advance, correct? They want it done on the phone, right? They want you to put your credit card on there, right? They want you to have all your medicines you're taking all this stuff. And it's like, why can I not do this when I get there, right? Because you're gonna make me wait anyway. Also, the other thing with AI that is just so irritating is the hacking. So someone hacked my it's where I am account. So now that I had this, I have this issue, trying to straighten it out.

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Hmm, can't do it over my phone. You have to do it on a computer. And then you don't get to speak to a live person right away. They send you through all these bots. How do you manage that stress? How do you re adjust your thinking to deal with that time consumption? Okay, so I will tell you I don't handle that well, okay. I will tell you that the technique I've used to handle it better than not well is I only choose to do one topic per day that I like. I will sometimes have five or six different things that are in at some point that needs correcting. That puts you in that kind of system. Medical things is just one of them. It is every aspect of your life, from something you just bought to, I mean, there is nothing where you're not stuck in that cycle, right? So choose, make sure you schedule the time. Don't think you can do it, oh, I've got five minutes. Yes, oh, I've got five minutes. I'll make this call. No, right? You will end up so angry. Yes, schedule it during a time. Get a cup of tea. Settle in. You are, you know, remind yourself, and you will be surprised how I had a funny one that our North Carolina lottery site, our account was shut down because I live in Nevada, and I had a North Carolina account, and you're not allowed to buy tickets, and which because a geo places you. So I've never bought a ticket, other than when I'm in North Carolina where my daughter lives. But they transferred systems and locked me out, and I've got winnings on this account. Oh my gosh, you gotta get those. Okay, so there was a lot that I had to do, but it is amazing how if blocking the time and not thinking it could be done quickly, right? Is the first thing, because those days are over, those days are you just gonna make a phone call? So I like that. Yeah, plan time. Plan time to do those things, and don't do too many in one day. Never, yeah, no more than one, unless you're dying and you have to, yes, because even the grocery store, you know, it's like I at one time, I was thinking, Oh, if I don't buy into this system, it's gonna change. Well, yeah, it's gonna change, all right, but not in the way I would like it to exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I want to thank you for being here and sharing Thank you. Thank you. Your information about the unicorn challenge, the age of the 2025,

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unicorn, ageless edge challenge. And if anyone wants more information to get involved, yes, they can go to my website, which is, you know, the easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn. My last name is G, as in, good o, e, g, l, e, i n. My first name is Andrea. That's the easiest, but my website is serving success.com. S, E, R, V, I N, G, S, U, C, C, E, S, s.com, and I'm on Instagram, but Instagram and LinkedIn are the places I am every day. Okay, yeah, all right, so let's change our thinking. Yeah, let's be conscious about it. Don't choke on that Turkey

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or choke each other. That's exactly right. All right. Y'all Well, everyone, you have a great Thanksgiving. We know it's going to be great because you're going to change the way you think about it. On purpose.

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This is Andre Pollard. I'm here every Saturday. At 7:30am

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I'm here every Saturday with wonderful guests like Dr gigline, thank you, alrighty. So have a great day, everyone. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great day. Bye. You.

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