You have the power to change your life regardless of your circumstances. With over 50 years of experience dealing with some of life’s toughest challenges, Debbie is an expert in chasing your own dreams in spite of your circumstances. She is an entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, family caregiver and mother. She has overcome her own limiting beliefs and fears allowing her to begin to live her best life and her life’s passion is to help and inspire others to do the same. In her spare time, Debbie loves to laugh, dance, read and stay active. Recently widowed, Debbie is still following her dreams and wants you to follow yours. You are on this journey together. Every Wednesday, Debbie will share some ideas to help inspire and motivate women to live the life you want. Debbie will also introduce you to those that have helped her on her journey, as well as share other women's stories of inspiration. To learn more about Debbie or to reach out with any questions or episode ideas, please visit www.debbierweiss.com
In this episode of Maybe I Can®, we’re exploring six powerful sprinkles that aren’t in The Sprinkle Effect but are essential for personal growth: Patience, Acceptance, Forgiveness, Self-Compassion, Confidence, and Letting Go. Each of these small yet transformative shifts can help you navigate challenges, release what no longer serves you, and step into a more fulfilling life. We’ll break down what they really mean, why they’re so important, and simple ways to start incorporating them into your daily routine. If you’ve ever struggled with self-doubt, holding onto the past, or feeling stuck in your journey, this episode will give you the tools to move forward with more peace, power, and possibility.
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Hello and welcome to Maybe I Can, exploring possibilities, one sprinkle at a time. If you've ever found yourself asking is this all there is to life, then you're in the right place. I'm Debbie author, speaker, entrepreneur and coach, and every Tuesday, I'm here to share a sprinkle of hope and inspiration. Together, we'll uncover the more More joy, more fulfillment, more prosperity, more fun. We'll share stories of transformation, actionable tips and that little nudge you need to take the next step. So let's embark on this journey of discovery and say maybe I can to a life filled with more, ready to find out. Let's get started. The Maybe I Can Show starts now.
Speaker 1:
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Maybe I Can Podcast. I'm your host, debbie Weiss, and I have a couple things that I want to say before we jump into today's episode. The first is that today is the last day of my show on Transformation Talk Network. I've been on the network for a year and it's been a fabulous experience. So I just want to give a big shout out to Dr Pat and Jessica and Emily, my amazing producer, and thank them for really a wonderful time. And even though I'm leaving Transformation Talk Network, I'm going back to still having my podcast. So if you're listening any other way, you can still listen wherever podcasts you know. You listen to your podcast, whatever Apple Podcasts, spotify, whatever. I don't think I'll have the fancy opener and everything anymore, but that part doesn't really matter. Just want to say thank you and I really do appreciate everything. Excuse me.
Speaker 1:
The second is kind of. That is that I am super under the weather today. Sinus infection, ear infection just got, went to urgent care, got on medication, but I had to show up for my last day on Transformation Talk Radio right, come on. So here I am, but I had to show up for my last day on Transformation Talk Radio, right, come on. So here I am. So please excuse any clicking of the cough drop that's in my mouth or coughing or any other sound I make. It seems to me like everybody that I talk to is either sick themselves or people that they work with are ill. It's just that time of year, so I'll take it. I'm not complaining. It sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm really not complaining. I got nothing to complain about A sniffle and a little earache. I can get through it All right.
Speaker 1:
So that brings me to today's episode, which is exploring some other sprinkles that aren't in my book, the Sprinkle Effect. In the Sprinkle Effect there are 15 main sprinkles and two kind of like beginning and opening sprinkles sprinkle of possibilities and new beginnings. But I thought you know, as I start to, of course, whenever you develop something or write something, you always think of other things after you're done. It's like, oh well, I should have written about this sprinkle and this sprinkle and this sprinkle, and, who knows, maybe there'll be the sprinkle effect too. I'm not up that far yet, but as I started to think about that, it was like well, what sprinkles would I write about or talk about? And so I've come up with I didn't even count, I think six others that I'd like to discuss with you today.
Speaker 1:
So let's start with the first. The first is a sprinkle of patience, and when I think about a sprinkle of patience, I actually think about it in two different ways. About a sprinkle of patience, I actually think about it in two different ways. The first way I think about patience is the patience that we need to have in daily life, like when in traffic, when on a supermarket line, patience with other people, which sometimes that's an area. Well, actually all three of those scenarios are definitely areas that I need to work on.
Speaker 1:
I remember listening to somebody else's podcast and they were saying you know, every time that you're on a long line, you know like you pick the wrong line, what you think is the wrong line in the checkout aisle. Think I'm here because this is the perfect opportunity for me to practice my patience. And I've really tried to think about that too when I'm in traffic. Or you know, I am originally from New York. I hate to say it, I am kind of an aggressive New York driver. When I'm in Manhattan, forget it. All bets are off. That is still staying the same.
Speaker 1:
But out here in New Jersey or wherever else I'm driving, I really now try to stop that mindset of why aren't I letting that person in? Why can't I let two people in? Is it really going to make that much difference? And whenever I do and the person smiles and waves at me, I feel good If I'm sitting in traffic, I feel good If I'm sitting in traffic. Why can't I look at it as, oh, this gives me more time to listen to my podcast or the audio book or catch up and talk to someone hands-free on the phone and look at it as a gift instead of an annoyance, especially if you're stuck in traffic because, god forbid, there's an accident up ahead. Thank goodness you're not the one in the accident, thank goodness you're not the one that is possibly injured. So why can't we just be okay with being patient?
Speaker 1:
I think it's part of our society. Maybe it depends where you live. Certainly in the Northeast it's ingrained in us. We're like this rush, rush, rush, do everything as fast as you can, culture. And boy, it feels good to be able to have patience and not get yourself crazy. I mean, I think, just in those everyday scenarios, by not getting yourself crazy, think about how I don't know about you but when I am in those situations, I get stressed and I can feel it right. I can feel my shoulders tensing up, my insides, my face scrunching, like with annoyance. I'm adding more stress to my life than is necessary. Because is it really that stressful? No, it is all in how we look at it.
Speaker 1:
And so if you can play a game with yourself and say, oh look, I'm being impatient, but this is a perfect time for me to practice my patience and you know what, standing in line, so take out your phone which I'm sure you do anyway and pass the time. Pass the time talking to the person in front of you or the person behind you smiling Something else person in front of you or the person behind you smiling something else. Come up with something else that you can do that will make it easier for you to be patient. All right, so that's the first way that I think about patience. The other way is when you're trying to accomplish a goal, and for me personally, the first thing that came to my mind was with my weight loss journey.
Speaker 1:
Right, you start a weight loss journey and you've had, I don't know I want to say a day, but obviously that's really unrealistic. Let's just say a few days or a week of what you would call being perfect with your eating plan, and you jump on the scale and either the scale doesn't move, or the scale goes in the wrong direction, or doesn't move as much as you would like it to, and you get annoyed. How come I did all of these things? I used to say why didn't the scale recognize it should reward me for all the times that I said no to something that I really wanted, you know, some kind of food choice, but it doesn't do that. It's like even over time, the weight loss is not coming as quickly as I would like it. The weight loss is not coming as quickly as I would like it. Now, heck, I would have liked to blink my eyes and one day I weighed this much and the next day I weighed 100 pounds less. I mean, we all want that instant gratification, but it just doesn't happen that way.
Speaker 1:
And I think that when we trick ourselves and when we're so focused on how long something's taking and let me just say, not just about weight loss, obviously it could be about any possible goal that you have, it can be in business. I can think about it with my insurance agency, about how it's growing or how it's not growing and we're doing all the things, we're taking all the steps. Why is this not happening? Why is it taking so long? It is so darn slow. This is ridiculous. All the things, really think about it. It can apply to anything that you're working on, anything that you're trying to attain. It never seems to happen fast enough. But what's interesting is, in all these cases, what I've found is that, once I'm willing to accept the fact that it doesn't matter how long it takes, sure, do I want it to come quicker? Yes, I do, I mean I would be lying. However, if it doesn't come quick enough, does that mean that I'm going to abandon my goal? No, quickie, quick enough, does that mean that I'm going to abandon my goal? No, so, as long as I'm taking the right action, as long as I'm staying on the right path, the right course, however long it takes it takes, and when you kind of release and you allow that your perspective changes, it's a mindset shift.
Speaker 1:
Delays aren't denials. So many of us live our lives stressed out over everything, so many different things. When I look back to who I used to be as a person, I was one big ball of stress. I don't even know if there was a time in the day that I wasn't stressed Really, if there was a time in the day that I wasn't stressed Really. And now that I am not feeling that same level of stress sure, I have stress, and when I do have stress, and it's a prolonged period of stress, I really recognize it when before it was the norm and now it's the exception and it really is a much better way to live.
Speaker 1:
The next sprinkle that I want to talk about is a sprinkle of acceptance. Acceptance doesn't mean that you approve of it or you're happy about it. It just means that you're basically choosing peace over resistance. The first thing that came to my own mind was my own journey with loss and, really, gary's diagnosis. Gary, my husband, in June of 2022, out of the blue, even though he had a lot of health issues, this was not one of them. Out of the blue, he was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer called MDS and I just we were in shock. I mean, we were in absolute shock, and I think whenever you're faced with something like that, you go through stages, just like with grief, and denial is definitely one of those stages, and for me, it's always trying to figure out, and for me, it's always trying to figure out okay, how can I fix this? How, what can I do? What can I do? I can't accept what someone has told me, I just can't. But after a little while, after going down as many different paths maybe as you can think of, there comes a point where, if you don't accept it, you're really only hurting yourself, and I love the phrase that to accept it, you're actually choosing peace. That doesn't mean that I'm happy about it, no way. It just means that I was spending so much energy trying to fight it. Once I accept it now. Okay, now, what? Now? What's my next step? Once you accept it, then possibly you can figure out what to do next.
Speaker 1:
And with Gary's diagnosis, I mean, once I accepted it, I don't, I have to say, you know he was not great at discussing how he felt. I don't know if he ever accepted it. Quite frankly, I really don't think he did, don't think he did. But once I accepted it, then I moved on to how can we extend his life, how can we make the rest of his life the best and most pain-free that it can possibly be? And that's where I just kind of dug in, excuse me, and just went from there.
Speaker 1:
I think the same thing Once he died. Obviously you'd say well, of course you have to accept it. What choice do you have? But at first you don't necessarily accept it. It's hard to accept. But once you do, then it's all right. Now what? What's next? What is my path forward? And when you choose not to accept something, and when you choose not to accept something, you can't move forward, you can't. And so a sprinkle of acceptance is something that you know. What is it? What is it now? Ask yourself. Is there something that I'm resisting, something that I just can't accept? Some facts, something that's going on, something that I just can't accept? Some facts, something that's going on, a circumstance that you're not happy with, that you just refuse to accept that this is the way it is. Anything like that sound familiar, anything like that you're going through now in your own life? Yeah, sprinkle number three. Sprinkle of forgiveness. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting or excusing, but forgiveness is really about choosing your freedom over your anger.
Speaker 1:
When Gary died at the same time, I wound up having an argument with a lifelong friend and there's so many, you know what? There's so many, obviously there's you know what is it? Three sides to every story and she and I never really, unfortunately, were able to sit down and talk it through, and I lost her friendship For the first year. I could think about nothing else For the first three months. I was so angry at her. I was so angry at her and I had that anger while I was dealing with my grief and I think that I was really even more focused on how could she do this to me? How could this happen at a time when I was going through this? It almost brought, it fueled my anger, but yet I was so unhappy and I missed her. So and over time I thought, okay, you know, maybe maybe this, maybe she thought that, maybe let me try and see it from her perspective Again. Unfortunately, we never got to sit down and calmly discuss anything. So I'm just, all you know, in my mind thinking of all these different scenarios.
Speaker 1:
But the anger, the anger, like how how could she do this to me and and and have me lose? You know, my best friend at this? You know, thank God she's alive. So not in the same way that I lost my husband, but still I lost two relationships, two extremely important relationships simultaneously, and it wasn't easy and my other friends were very angry and after a while I let it go. I let it go Because what I realized was what was this doing for me?
Speaker 1:
What was this anger and this resentment towards her? You know, I'm sure she was feeling the same about me, but it certainly was not helping me and in the end I realized I got to release this. I can't walk around like this anymore and I don't want to know via text, excuse me, to have conversations with her, but she's, at least right now, not interested in reconciling and I respect her for that. That's completely up to her and if that ever changes, believe me, I will be here to have a conversation with her. But I've forgiven her. I've forgiven her because I can't see things from her perspective and she can't see things from my perspective and I know that she didn't intentionally try to hurt me at the same time that my husband died. I know all of that. And once I was able to forgive her it was like the monkey was off my back. And that doesn't mean I don't miss her, but I'm not angry at her anymore and that has really released my pain, most of my pain released my pain, most of my pain. The pain of missing her is still there but also kind of shifted my energy.
Speaker 1:
When you're angry all the time, it's ugly and you're not happy. If you have all this pent up anger, that's all you're noticing. You're not noticing all of the great things that are going on for you in your life. So a sprinkle of forgiveness it's a big thing. So if you have someone or a circumstance that you need to forgive, I would say try journaling on it or writing a letter to just release it. Just release it out there, all right, time's running out. Next, sprinkle of self-compassion.
Speaker 1:
How do we talk to ourselves? Oh my goodness, I used to be the queen of calling myself names, not out loud, maybe out loud Like Deb. How dumb are you? I can't believe you did that. I can't believe you said that, whatever it was. And would you ever, ever talk to your friend like that? Gosh, I hope not.
Speaker 1:
How we talk to ourselves. It's so awful sometimes, that internal dialogue. What the heck? Why are we so hard on ourselves when we might look at our friends and family and be like, hey, it's okay, we're all human, everybody makes mistakes. Give yourself a break. If I would say that to someone else. Give yourself a break. If I would say that to someone else, why don't I say that to myself? Not to mention the fact that you keep and I see this with one of my sons you keep telling yourself that that's what you're going to believe and that's what you're going to become. You keep telling yourself that you're worthless. You're going to believe you're worthless. So stop it. Stop that, right this instant. Okay, moving on. Oh my gosh, talk too much, as usual, and now I'm rushing at the end. Sprinkle of confidence. Oh boy, sprinkle of confidence.
Speaker 1:
I really lacked confidence for a majority of my life, and I'll tell you one quick story. When I first started on social media and started making these social media videos, oh my gosh, I was like what do I say, what do I do? I got to look perfect, excuse me. And I did myself up and I tried to memorize whatever I was going to say in that minute social media video. And oh, I had cue cards. I, oh my gosh, it was so stressful and I thought I can't do this. I can't do this. Who's listening? I'm going to sound ridiculous, blah, blah, blah. I tried that like maybe three times and I thought this is exhausting. Until one day in the morning, seven o'clock in the morning, walking my dog no makeup, hair up, exactly how I look right now and I just said what's on my mind? No cue cards, no, really forethought. I just said it and people started reacting and I realized you just got to be yourself, yourself is enough, and I didn't realize that. So confidence in itself can be a whole episode, and maybe that's something that I'll do in the near future. But I'd like you to say to yourself I may not feel ready, but what am I willing to try? I think stepping out of your comfort zone does build your confidence.
Speaker 1:
All right, and last but not least, the sprinkle of letting go. Letting go often feels like giving up, but actually it's a step forward. And when I think about letting go, I think about letting go of control, because not letting go of like self-control, but I mean letting go of control. Sometimes I'm gripping so tightly. I think that I should be able to control every circumstance. Sometimes I think I should be able to control other people's actions Newsflash no, I can't and no, you can't.
Speaker 1:
And so when I give it up, when I let it go, when I realize it is what it is, and by holding on so tightly, what am I doing? I'm only causing this inner turmoil, all of these things, all of these sprinkles. If I don't sprinkle in patience and forgiveness and confidence and letting go and everything, I'm only hurting myself, right? Because all of these things, just really they cause inner stress and turmoil and it clouds our outlook on life and it puts like a negative filter over it. So I want you to think and maybe it's not one that I just discussed but what sprinkle do you need most right now and what's one small step that you can take to invite it into your life today?
Speaker 1:
I'd love to hear from you. Please let me know, dm me on Instagram, at debbierweiss, or email me at debbie at debbiereweisscom, and let's figure this out together. Once again, thank you all for listening. Thank you to the Transformation Network for having me as your host for the last year. It has really been a privilege and an honor and I'll see everyone next week on your podcast host or whatever the heck you call it.
Speaker 1:
You know what I'm saying Apple, spotify. I keep coming up with that. Okay, that's enough I'm rambling. Make it a great week and sprinkle lots of love and compassion. Bye-bye, the spark to light up your journey to more. Remember every big change starts with a single maybe. If you're ready to kickstart that change but not sure where to begin, I've got just the thing for you. Head over to download my free guide, the One Critical Step to Kickstart Change, and take that all-important first step. Let's make those maybes into reality, one sprinkle at a time. Catch you next Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern, 1 pm Pacific, with more stories, tips and that extra push you might need. I'm Debbie saying goodbye for now, but always remember maybe, just maybe, you can.
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