“Success begins with the mind!” Dr. Lawana Gladney is a renowned speaker, author, and emotional wellness doctor who shares her message of emotional health and wellness with audiences across the nation. I am so happy to have her on Straight Talk Radio to share insights that can help us all create success!
You can hear the radio show here: Straight Talk Radio with Dr. Lawana Gladney
Tired of traditional talk? People pontificating about this or that? The left or the right? Sometimes the truth is just off lost in the noise. Having learned life lessons the hard way, Chuck Gallagher, international speaker and author, cuts through the noise to share truth through transparency!
Nationally-known guests talk about what’s important to you – your life, your concerns and your success. So tune in, turn on to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher.
Now, here’s your host, Chuck Gallagher.
CHUCK: Hi, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio, part of the Transformational Radio Talk Network. We’re here to discuss ideas and issues that can transform your life.
I know we’ve been reaching a core with people based on the emails that we receive following our shows, and today, well, we have a great show lined up for you. If you want to ask questions or contact me, reach out via email to chuck@gallagher.pcgdev.com, Gallagher is G-A-L-A-G-H-E-R. I’m so happy to hear from you and open the door to communication and to your transformation.
Now, I talk a lot about choices and consequences. Well, actually, my wife says I talk a lot about… Well, she says I talk a lot, but that’s a different subject. Every presentation, however, I start with a statement that every choice has a consequence. The challenge often arises when we’re faced with situations that require us to make choices that we didn’t really want to make, situations we consciously didn’t choose to be in. We have issues that we have to deal with. We have to deal with where we are and often where we are is not where we want to be. For example, whether it’s a break up, a family fallout, a stall in your career or an unexpected loss. The fact is, life is filled with events and circumstances that can knock you off your feet, leaving you feeling stressed, confused and lost.
Life sometimes throws at us opportunities to make choices and when we make the bad choices, the consequences will be less than desirable. I know, I’m transparent about my past choices. And I’ve made some pretty poor choices in life and the outcome… Well, let’s put it this way, the outcome wasn’t fun, but I’m also living the opposite today. If you make positive, empowering choices in life, you will find that the outcome can be awesome.
I guess it’s safe to say here on Straight Talk Radio that I know a thing or two about choices and consequences, but my guest today is also a master of choices and change. Dr. Lawana Gladney is an emotional wellness doctor, speaker, trainer, author and CEO of her own company Emotional Wellness.
Dr. Gladney has presented and trained literally around the world, speaking to companies, schools and churches, working with Fortune 500 companies, such as IBM, Pitney Bowes, ATT, Aetna, Texas Instruments and my goodness, the list goes on. She’s a trailblazer in the area of health and wellness, something that everyone listening to this show was interested in. Dr. Gladney, welcome to the show!
LAWANA: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
CHUCK: Honestly, it’s my honor. I know that you are in the Dallas marketplace and associated with the NSA Chapter, the North Texas chapter, and that is where I got my start speaking so I kind of feel like there’s a sort of kindred spirit even though I am no longer in North Texas. That, still, is an awesome, rocking market and I know it’s a great place to be. But you have a new book entitled If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost? And I have to tell you, I love the title and the cover of your book, so let’s get started on our conversation and tell me what was your motivation in writing this book?
LAWANA: Well, Chuck, in what I do I find that life brings about so many different challenges and there was not a life management class that you can take in college. I went to school for 12 years. Well, that’s on top of the formal learning, so 24 years of my life was spent in classes, in classrooms, and teachers and professors, and learning, and there was not a life management course on how to manage your life. As the emotional wellness doctor and a successful psychologist I found that so many people are lost. They are stuck in situations that happen and you don’t know what to do about it. You don’t know which direction so we end up lost.
I knew that everybody couldn’t come into my office, I’m not going to get a chance to see everybody, so what better way to get the message out and to help people create strategies and actually literally a roadmap that is going to help them navigate through all of the detours and challenges and setbacks and setups and everything else. What better way than to put a book out there that can reach the masses? So that was a motivation for writing it.
CHUCK: It’s interesting, Dr. Gladney. Do you mind if I call you Lawana?
LAWANA: That’s fine!
CHUCK: You know what’s interesting, Lawana? When you talk about life management classes, what you said really is so true. We all spend whatever educational time we have, wherever that may be, but the thing that we all have to live is our life and yet rarely do we find that we have true, direct, focused educational opportunities to say, “Okay, here’s how you navigate.”
LAWANA: Right.
CHUCK: We take courses on Mathematics, we take courses on the appropriate use of the English language or on Chemistry, or my background Accounting, but that doesn’t necessarily say, “But here’s the way things happen in life and here’s the GPS system, so to speak, that will help you understand, ‘Okay, if you take a wrong turn…’” Where do you have that natural voice inside that says, “Wrong turn. Make a U-turn ahead if you can.” You know? I mean, the GPS is a marvelous thing, but that’s so missing in terms of being able to teach people, so first, I applaud you for the fact that you worked and created a book that provides a GPS guidance for life.
LAWANA: Right. Yeah, you’re so right. It’s just a missing piece in life. Even with the book, Chuck, unfortunately, everybody is not going to buy it that needs it, but it is something out there that exists. Of course, there are a lot of self-help books and a lot of things that help people if you actually read it.
The difference in my book is that in each and every chapter I talk about each and every category of our lives, so we talk about finding who you are to finding that you’re lost, potential insecurities, the way you think, the words that you say, looking at your health, your emotions, looking at your finances and your relationships, the types of people that you have in your life, looking at your spirituality. It encompasses all the different categories of our life and at the end of each and every chapter, I lay the roadmap out. “Here’s step 1, this is what you need to do. Here’s step 2, if you’re dealing with, let’s say, depression, there’s 90 million people that are depressed that we know of.” The stats say 90 nation-wide, 120 million world-wide, but that’s just the people who we can count. There are so many people who are functional depressed and they are depressed from situations, so it’s called situational depression. And there are a lot of people that will never go to the doctor to be diagnosed.
The point to all of that is, it’s because life things have happened and people don’t know what to do about it, so it sends them on a downward spiral emotionally, spiritually and physically. What I do is I say, “Okay, if you’re finding yourself here and you’re finding yourself feeling this way, here’s step 1, what you need to do. Here’s step 2. Here’s step 3. Here’s step 4.” It’s almost like learning to dance. Anybody can learn how to dance and we’ve seen it on Dancing With the Stars. You can learn the most complicated anything if it’s done step by step. So I’m trying to help people and teach people their lives, how to manage their lives step by step.
CHUCK: That makes a lot of sense and one of the things that I noticed. Obviously, familiar with the book, I looked at the reviews because I’m always interested to see what other people have to say and one of the folks said, “One noticeable quality she,” referring to you, “has is taking a positive and straightforward approach to the causes of problems and the way they can be solved. The solutions were always very realistic and doable.” I was fascinated by that word ‘causes of problems’ and I’m kind of interested because you really have a wonderful worldwide view because you certainly spoke internationally and you talk with people outside of your immediate marketplace, so I’m interested to see what your take is on where our problems come from.
LAWANA: Where do our problems come from? You know what, Chuck? Problems come because there’s life, because of people and because life isn’t perfect and people aren’t perfect, there are going to be problems and there are going to be issues. And many of the things that happen in life are a lot of times things that you can’t even control. So we have no control over our family, what family we’re born into, whether our family is going to be dysfunctional or not, we have no control over the socioeconomic level so that obviously then dictates our education levels and different things. There are so many things that we don’t have control over. You don’t have control over some of the depths in the things that can really trip people up. We don’t have control over that, over those types of things so the problems are going to be there. You learn that at a very early age that there are going to be problems that you can’t do anything about.
The only thing that you can do is control how you respond and then there are certain things in life that I teach people that you can control. So, for every problem there is a solution. That is something that I drill in everybody’s head. I don’t care how big the problem is, there is a solution. So I help people to understand, if you know the cause of the problem– Sometimes you don’t know what the cause of the problem is, but nevertheless, instead of focusing on the problem, let’s focus on the solution to the problem. Therefore, we shift the energy from negative to something positive. So you see how that works?
CHUCK: That is so powerful. Stay tuned on with Straight Talk Radio.
CHUCK: Hi, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and I welcome the opportunity to hear from you. Just drop me an email at chuck@gallagher.pcgdev.com and let’s continue to dialogue here on Straight Talk Radio.
My guest today is Dr. Lawana Gladney, the author of the new book If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost?, and oh, my goodness, this is a great book. It’s filled with insights and information and solutions. This book is a practical guide that teaches how to take control and regain personal identity by learning how to manage emotions, stress, health and any other aspect that is keeping you from happiness. Dr. Lawana Gladney provides inspiration with ideas, easy strategies and sound advice to help you cope with stress and navigate through everyday challenges.
We were talking a bit about this concept that there is a solution to every problem and sometimes it’s a function of the choices that you make. I want to ask a question or two. On Straight Talk Radio from time to time I have to ask those questions that others shy away from, so here’s one of them. Some people believe, Dr. Gladney, that subconsciously we are very active contributors in creating the circumstances we face. Now, other people seem to prefer the idea that we don’t have control and we are victims. We have little responsibility for where we are in our lives. Do you fall into one of those camps or the other?
LAWANA: Oh, absolutely. I do believe that subconsciously we are really controlling where we are. I teach people and my clients that where you are in life is a direct reflection of where you thought you would be. That does play into the subconscious and people get all worked up and say, “What do you mean?!” For me, as an example, I know that but I have to be reminded of that, and when I was going through my divorce after 23 and a half years of marriage and I said, “You know, I didn’t think myself into this divorce!” My business was suffering financially. I didn’t think myself into– Well, you do. What happens is your thoughts turn into actions.
And sometimes, Chuck, people are driven by fear so they are so afraid that they are going to lose what they have, they’re so afraid that they’re not going to get something, that that’s the way that they act and that fear is really what is stopping them. So yes, I do and I am a firm believer and that’s what I’m trying to teach people with this book that you do have some control over things in life while we can’t control how the streets are laid out. If we want to use the metaphor of driving, you cannot control when there’s construction, you cannot control when they put a detour sign up, you can’t control how they laid out the streets and if they are curving or not, but you can control and determine and decide if that’s the street you’re going to go on, if you’re going to drive fast, if you’re going to be in this lane.
So, there are things about our life that we can control. If people understand that, then they can take responsibility and do something about where they are. If they take the victim role, for instance a person is born into a very dysfunctional family and born into poverty. If they feel like they have no control over their current circumstances the but when they get of age and you make choices and decisions, you don’t have to stay there. There are other directions and routs that you can take. That, of course, depends on if you think that you can, then you act out that way. If you don’t think you can, then you won’t. So I absolutely follow the first category.
CHUCK: I think it’s fascinating and you have a professional experience in that and I guess I would say, certainly not professional experience but maybe life experience, but it’s fascinating when you take control of your life and you make more positive, empowering set of choices and you recognize that the life you’ve lived, you were a contributor, too, to that life. It wasn’t as if it just happened one day. Life becomes a whole lot better, but it’s fascinating to me, the number of people that will call or I’ll see in a seminar and they will talk about, “How you found your second chances or how did you do it?” and then they immediately fall back into, “But this is what’s happened to me,” and they go into this victim role and to me it’s weird, it’s almost like it’s comfortable for them to be a victim and not exercise control and find their happiness than it is just to accept. “You contributed to it, you’re a part of it so you can change it.”
LAWANA: Well, yeah, and that’s because the natural human state is that we don’t want to put forth a lot of the effort or work. You do what’s comfortable for you, you do what you know. People are afraid of things that they don’t know so they know the kind of life that they’re already living and they’re comfortable with it. I say that people are content to be this discontent. They have found content in being discontent.
To move out of their space that means that you have to do some work, that means you have to have knowledge about where you’re going. And people don’t have a clue what to do about it and where to go so it’s like, “Let me just stay in this role, this is the reason.” Now their life becomes filled with excuses. You just don’t understand. You had it told, “At least your daddy was there. At least your mother was there. At least you had a grandfather.” People will give you all types of things and reasons for your life as to why you made but how come they can’t. That’s because they’re comfortable and they are content to be discontent. So that’s what you’re seeing, their nature.
Then it’s people that are born because you can’t teach people drive and all that I do, I cannot give you drive. Drive is usually something that is innate and inherit. In personality you can see it and in younger kids you can see it that they are driven and they may have more energy and more whatever so it’s not something that people are born with. That’s why we had so much, when we look at the numbers, the people that actually become successful, the people that are actually writing goals, the people that are actually living the track of life they lived.
It’s usually about 95% of people are not happy, are not content, 5% of people are. Those are the people who have their extra amount that innately they have this driven personality that in spite of whatever’s going on, I’m going to make this life look how I want to.
Most people don’t have that and they say, “I don’t know what to do. Where do I begin?” Those are the people I’m trying to reach with the book. “You didn’t know you had this so I’m going to give you the outlet. Here is the roadmap. Here’s what you need to do. If you don’t like your life, change the script.” This is how you begin the process.
CHUCK: That’s profound to me and I really say this and applaud you for the approach and the content, because you know when you’re right. You do have people who just have natural drive and they are the folks who will automatically pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and say, “Okay, that didn’t work,” and try and find something else. Even if they don’t know how to find it, they have enough motivation or drive, I like that word, to search it out and figure it out.
LAWANA: Right.
CHUCK: You’re providing people who may not have the innate skill, “the roadmap” as you put it, to be able to find out what to do. It’s kind of like if I want to find something, I want to do a Google search. Well, some people are like, “Where do you even start?” Well, start somewhere! I mean, ask a question, “What would you want to know?” But if your mind doesn’t function in that capacity, you’ve given them the questions to ask.
LAWANA: Right, right. I’m giving the script.
CHUCK: Yeah, it’s amazing. Do you need to ask this question, it’s kind of strange for me because in the book If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost? you mention the main road block to overcome deals with insecurities. I’m sitting there thinking, “Okay, so I’m insecure and that is a main road block for me to achieve the success I have, but if I am insecure, how do I ever become secure?” And now that I hear the music playing, that’s telling me we need to take a short break. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio, we’ll be right back.
CHUCK: This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. Today Dr. Lawana Gladney, the author of the new book If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost? has joined me and she has written a great book filled with insights, information, solutions, a practical guide to take control and regain personal identity.
Dr. Gladney has provided some really great information. She is a television personality, has been a co-host of a cable show and an expert on Fox 4 and as a media expert she has been interviewed and appeared on national TV and radio shows and has reached over 40 million with her message. She’s written articles and books that help people to manage their emotions and stress thereby creating amazing lives, and she’s a mother of four children.
Dr. Gladney, you are one busy lady.
LAWANA: [laughs] You bet I am.
CHUCK: Yes, you are. We’ve talked about, right before the break, this question of, you said, “The main roadblock to overcome in our lives deals with insecurities,” and my question is, if you’re an insecure person, how do you ever become secure? It seems like this great big circle dance where I’m insecure and I think I’m going to be secure, but I’m insecure so therefore I stay insecure. How do you overcome that?
LAWANA: Well, there you go. The question, the answers, who knows, they’re all out there and it’s like, “Okay, so how do I find the answer?” Let’s take this because insecurity is a foundation and you can find that you’re secure one day and something can come along and shake that.
Insecurity is really about not believing in yourself in some kind of way; either not believing that you can perform a task, you have low self-efficacy that is about performing a task, got a low self-esteem or low self-image on how you look, or low self-esteem on how you feel about yourself.
So all of that is related to self and it is something that every human being has to challenge with and has to conquer. First of all, acknowledging that you’re insecure and identifying what those insecurities are, and I talk about that in the book, and looking at the things that are causing you the insecurity. Then we have security blankets that we put all around us and they come in things, they can come in people. Sometimes you feel like, “Oh, I’m secure just because this person is around.” When your parents are around, you’re not afraid, you feel secure or if your siblings or your friends are around.
A lot of this is learned behavior, Chuck, it really is. Because nobody teaches you all about security and confidence. And confidence is a skill that you learn. Because we all do have battles, we have these insecurities, we have to learn how to be confident. I specifically talk about ways, the road to our higher self-esteem in the book and what that looks like and becoming aware of your insecurities and not comparing yourself to others because if you think about is so much at the time when we feel like we’re not good enough or not as good as, it is all about somebody else and what we think about what somebody else has, does, is or how they look. It makes you look at yourself and say, “Well, compared to them, I’m not as…” fill in the blank.
One way is to focus on your own self and not about other people when comparing yourself and looking at what they have, how they look or what they know. So you have to know who you are and know your special gifts that you have and then understand that we’re all going to have battles. When we talk about jealousy, which is insecurity’s cousin, and we all have that. It comes into our life. “They got the promotion and I didn’t,” so now this is going to make you question you either be jealous about it or your question may be my ability or not or you’ll get angry. There are different ways that you can respond to that. A lot of times they are just knocks over people’s self-esteem and it knocks them down, now they’re not confident. “I thought that was good enough, but I didn’t get it. I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that.” They start questioning and it goes back to all those thoughts that we have in our head. All those thoughts that will keep you weighted down because you become your own worst enemy.
We’re telling ourselves that if you grew up in a household and you had the parents that were constantly trying to tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are, how smart you are, they were building your confidence, sometimes that still bounces off and if a child does not believe that themselves because they’re comparing themselves to other people, that doesn’t matter. “I grew up in this house and we told you!” That happened even with my son. I’m like, “I was constantly telling you how smart you are.” “You’re my mother, you’re supposed to tell me that.”
[Chuck laughs]LAWANA: So we’re looking around at the other kids and that’s what people do, that’s what adults do. We look around at the other people and we start to feel less dead. So I understand what all that looks like and I wrote a book about, “Here are steps to build your confidence. Here are some activities and things you can do because you have to understand how everything is about doing the work. If you want to become a secure person and build your confidence, you have to do the work. It’s not going to come just because you say, ‘Okay, I’m going to be confident today.’ You have to do the work to get there and I teach you how to do that in the book.” Some of those ways are just even looking at your list of accomplishments, what you’ve already accomplished in your life. You’d be surprised! When I hear them say, “Read my bio sometimes and my list of accomplishments,” I’m thinking, “I want to meet that woman, she sounds fantastic!”
CHUCK: Well, it is a profound statement. It seems maybe simple to hear but it is a profound statement to say that if you’re going to accomplish whatever, you have to do the work, and that is true. When I hear you say, “You have to do the work,” I interpret that to mean, if I’m off base, tell me, that’s really more inner work than outer work.
LAWANA: Absolutely. It’s inner work. All and everything in this book is all about inner work. It’s all about you. The outside is easy to fix. I mean, we can go to any store, any place and we can dress the outside and I see a lot of dressed up people, I see a lot of rich people, I see a lot of famous people, and guess what? They’re so messed up on the inside. So, all of this work is about inward of work; looking at yourself, doing introspective thinking and processing and working and saying, “Okay, what are the things that I need to change and actively participate in?” This is the activity booklet that helps you to change so it is like having a coach, a 24-hour coach. “What do I need to do now? Oh, my goodness! I wish I’ve got somebody to talk about my life. Let me go look at the Toxic Chapter. I might get rid of this toxic co-worker or toxic sibling. How do I handle my sister who is driving me crazy and I can’t talk to her?” Go look in the book, it’ll tell you exactly what to do.
CHUCK: That’s interesting. In fact, that’s one of the areas that I wanted to touch on, so thanks for opening that door because the book encourages us moving away from toxic people, yet it seems to me that there’s some folks that just have a way of attracting those folks in their lives. Is it possible that in order to learn life’s lessons, we need to attract what we need to learn from ‘till the lesson is learned or is that something like a Facebook fable?
LAWANA: No, what it is, is the energy that you put out is what you attract back into your space. As long as you’re putting out this type of energy, what is the same, but you’re going to attract those same kind of people back into your space.
CHUCK: Got it.
LAWANA: If you are a drama person, you are going to attract drama even though you say, “Everybody that’s around me thinks that theyjust have all kind of stuff going on in their life.” That’s because you’re attracting—“No, people like that do not come up to me. They’re not going to be attracted to my life because I have no tolerance zone for that.” And some of it is the lesson and even in that chapter I talk about if you have packed the people in your life the first thing you need to do is to stop and look what you’re getting out of it because you’re getting something out of that relationship. If you have somebody toxic and you’re allowing them to be there, you’re getting something out of that relationship so it all points back to you because you can’t change that person. You can only change you.
CHUCK: To me, this is a fun conversation and a wonderful interview because I think you’re absolutely right. I see so many people and they have toxic people in their lives or emotionally destructive people and you say, “Why do they put up with that?” And they say, “I like it,” and they will complain and moan about it and so forth, and I know I sound not very sympathetic, but to me the issue is there’s something you’re getting from it.
LAWANA: Yeah.
CHUCK: There was a lady that I worked with, and I’m still flabbergasted by this, but she was abused by her boyfriend. She got a job in a company that… I was a Senior VP in Sales and Marketing and she was doing a wonderful job. She really had sales potential, we moved her into a sales role. She blossomed! Really started producing very well and made more money than she had ever imagined in her life, and her boyfriend became jealous because she was making more than he was. So he beat her and because she wanted him, she was willing to stay in an abusive relationship and give up the income which was carrying her to being able to support her child and so forth. I sat back to myself, just baffled, “Why would you put up with that?” I mean, that guy, as far as I was concerned, there’s no chance… I couldn’t even think about being around him. But she was getting something from that that would cause her to give up on her good that had come into her life and it’s not for me to judge because she was the one that was dealing with that issue and would need to do the inner work.
I’m hearing the music that says, “Guys, we’ve got to go to break.” This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio, we’ll be right back.
CHUCK: Well, welcome back for our last segment. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. I am interviewing Dr. Lawana Gladney. She has written a new book If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost? I love that title.
Dr. Gladney is a television personality, she is a speaker, she is an author, she has traveled the world and she brings to us, to this show the opportunity for people to look at– You know, if you made a wrong turn in life, what can we do and how can we correct that and I think her book is a masterful book on that. I have to say, I would encourage you to pick up a copy of her book. Certainly you can find that on amazon.com or pick it up at a book store near you and again the name of the book is If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost?
Let’s get back to some of the questions. We were talking a bit about this whole concept of what people can attract into their lives. Today, one of the things that you say in your book talks about the power of words. And today it seems to me more than ever that words are far more powerful than they’ve ever been in the past. I know this is probably a dumb question, but does it seem like our words are carrying a bit more power these days or is it just the media super-connected to them?
LAWANA: If the media and the social media and everybody is super-connected to the words, probably one of the best social media is Instagram because it’s all pictures and there’s the words. So many people get into so much trouble on the social media because of the things that they are saying, and the words that they are saying, and the posting, and the anonymity that comes along with all the social media. We see in today’s society in the light of what has just happened with the NBA and I put up a post out there about how powerful the words are. Words can kill.
It only takes one person to bring down something so powerful and so huge, and the whole nation is talking about because somebody verbalized some verbs. I took that opportunity yesterday to say, “You know that your words are powerful, life and death can happen in the tongue.” I talk about that in the book. It’s the smallest muscle in our body but it’s really the strongest one, because it builds up or it tears down. You can build yourself up or tear yourself down.
We were talking about that in one of the segments is that a lot of times people are tearing themselves down, which is where the insecurity comes from. Case in point, the lady that you worked with. She’s in a totally different place so she required counseling even to get out of that cycle. She’s torn herself down so much and believed this is what she deserves. So, the words, the verbs that we say just on the positive side of that, you can build yourself up. You want to move into a different place, the success you want to experience, it is going to come along with your words. Your thoughts are feeding your words and in reverse, your thoughts turn into action. It’s all tied in there together, your thoughts and your words and your actions, but it becomes so powerful, so you have to be very conscious of your words.
CHUCK: It’s fascinating today. I’m 56, soon to be 57 so I have enough age at this point to be able to look back and to say, “What was it like in the sixties and seventies and so forth, in the old days?” Not that, by the way, we’re dramatically different people. Not sure we are.
LAWANA: Um-hm.
CHUCK: But you didn’t have the capability to capture what you can capture today. You can be the President of the United States and probably slide by some things and nothing will ever be said because there was no way to capture it.
LAWANA: Right.
CHUCK: And today, as evidence of the whole debacle in the NBA and so forth, you can be in a private conversation in the middle of a heated argument and someone turned on the telephone and the next thing you know, you’re flying that all over the Internet and it doesn’t make what you said right. What you said was reprehensible, but it’s his innermost thought in the midst of an argument with somebody you cared about and presumably somebody cared about him, although the whole debate about that might be just moot as it goes into a different world. But it is fascinating to see the power today that words have in our lives and you’re absolutely right. The ability to build up or to quickly tear down and I’ve almost come to the conclusion today, and I don’t know what it’ll be like 20 years from now, but today it’s almost as if everything we do is being recorded.
LAWANA: And everything is being scrutinized.
CHUCK: Absolutely.
LAWANA: I would like for people to understand how to do that themselves. Everything that you say about yourself, it should be scrutinized with yourself. “Oh, I don’t need to talk like that so I will find myself saying, ‘How did you do that? No, no, don’t talk to yourself like that. You made a mistake, learn from that. You’re not stupid, you’re not crazy.’” You know what I’m saying?
CHUCK: Right.
LAWANA: If you can monitor your own words, then nobody would have to be worried about being recorded and saying something they shouldn’t say.
CHUCK: Absolutely.
LAWANA: Learning how to monitor yourself, and that is what is going to get you successful or not, is that you are learning how to monitor your own behavior. And that’s what we’re in control of. Sure, we can find people, we can bring punishment, but at the end of the day, a person could be put into jail saying the same thing as they said to get them there. It is not going to change how they feel or think or what they’re saying.
CHUCK: Right.
LAWANA: So, we’ll have to learn how to turn that inward and monitor and say, “Am I building myself up or am I tearing myself down?
CHUCK: Yeah, I think that’s very profound because you’re right. I’m sitting here thinking about the external power of words. The reality is the true power is that inward power and maybe we’re in a place of society now in our lives where we really can become much more conscious of those words that we think, whether they’re uttered aloud or not, it doesn’t change the fact of how we think and we have to adjust that and find true happiness.
I have a question for you and I know we don’t have a whole lot of time. Actually, I’ve got two, but the first one, if you were to provide your one key piece of advice that makes your book a must-have book, what would that piece of advice be?
LAWANA: A must-have because it gives you the solutions right there. You don’t have to figure it out yourself. It’s all right there in writing. If you pick it up, your life will change. It will change. It’s the solutions are in the book.
CHUCK: Okay, I like that. It’s a book of solutions and if you want your life to change, your life will change with the book. The book is a really, really wonderful book. If You’re In the Driver’s Seat, Why Are You Lost? Now, I have to do this. I know you’re the author of many books, but one of them is just for men. So you’ve got to tell me just a little bit about the book for men written by woman. I’m intrigued.
LAWANA: It’s called For Men Only: 50 Tips To Power, Women, And… It’s an ebook. I wrote that because, as the emotional wellness doctor, I saw some things that I can help men with because at the end of the day, I know human behavior. There are some things that are gender-specific, but I know human behavior so I just happen to be female who knows– There are male psychologists and we don’t wonder how they can write for females.
LAWANA: The point is there was some information that I could help men, but I couldn’t call it Emotional Wellness because they wouldn’t pick it up.
LAWANA: Yeah, so I called it 50 Tips For Power, Women, And… How to get that power and that woman and other stuff. So that’s what that book was about.
CHUCK: I saw that, I was looking at your list of accomplishments, everything that you’ve written up. That is just intriguing and it’s just kind of cute because you certainly have the skill capacity, education and life experience, and personal experience to really be able to help people with solutions and certainly not to minimize where you’ve been.
I have to applaud you for wanting to write a solutions book, not just problems but solutions. What’s your Twitter handle?
LAWANA: Dr. Gladney, Facebook is Dr. Gladney. My website is creatingamazinglives.com.
CHUCK: Okay, excellent. Now, let me also say as we close things out, if you’re looking for a powerful meeting that seeks truly an inspirational presenter, visit Dr. Lawana Gladney’s website. I’m sure she’ll welcome the opportunity to speak with you. Dr. Gladney, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been a true joy.
LAWANA: Thank you so much.
CHUCK: It’s my pleasure. To all our listeners, join us next week for more Straight Talk, transformational talk radio to live by. This is Chuck Gallagher, and remember, every choice has a consequence. Here’s to the power of positive choices.
You’ve been listening to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher. Tune in each week on transformationtalkradio.com, each Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern, as Chuck Gallagher, international speaker and author, cuts through the noise to share truth through transparency. Nationally-known guests talk about what’s important to you – your life, your concerns, and your success. Visit gallagher.pcgdev.com for more information and turn on to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher.
