Live Authentically Podcast with Pamela Savino Pamela Savino

Episode 125 of the Live Authentically podcast presents Keith Anderson, a lawyer, consultant, keynote speaker and founder of Worth Living Mental Health Consulting. He’s also an author of “Life Worth Living: A Mental Health Anthology.”
Keith knows mental health struggles all too well. He founded his business because he had depression for 16 years himself.
He says he lives authentically by being very real to himself. Keith talks about a very vivid mental breakdown he went through almost 20 years ago. He remembers the day. He remembers where he was. He can still picture what happened.
“After my breakdown and recovery, I went to therapy for a couple of years and had great family support, I worked hard on myself at it as well,” Keith said. “I’m grateful every day. That’s how I come in as real. That’s how I start the day– I’m grateful I’m still here.”
Keith sticks to the present by telling Pam that he’s grateful he gets to chat with her. He says having someone new to connect with is special and keeps him grounded and real. He also expresses how he remembers the darkness, but how he also celebrates his life now through connecting with others. 
And Keith isn’t afraid to admit that he will never be completely healthy as far as his mental health goes. He uses an analogy of the ankle he broke to explain why this is the case and how he copes with it.
“Am I 100 percent healthy in terms of my mental health? No. Never will be,” Keith said. “I broke my ankle one day. I went through the crutches, the cast, physiotherapy, all those things, of course. Is it 100 percent? No, it’s not. Never will be. But it functions. I can walk, I can run, I can get around.”
Keith delves deeper into the time he had depression. He says he did not realize he had it. He talks about the tragedies he endured in his young life that likely contributed.
“My father had died young, and with his passing, my everyday life changed,” Keith said. “I kind of just compounded at the time. I didn’t get it, didn’t understand what it was until I had hit a wall.”
Keith went to see his family doctor the morning five days before his mental breakdown. He spent half an hour with him, which was rare– normally he’d only spend five minutes or so. They talked about depression. Keith had no idea what it was at the time.
He believes the mental breakdown literally saved his life. You can learn more about Keith and his business by watching the podcast here. Or you can visit his website or follow him on Facebook or Instagram.

The Live Authentically podcast is back with Sharon Lebell, a bestselling author, composer, speaker and performing musician. Sharon joins Pam to talk about Stoicism, how to live your best possible life and her internationally bestselling book, “The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness.”
As per usual, Pam asks Sharon a pertinent question: “How do you live authentically?” To which Sharon responds, “I seek to live authentically every day by asking myself one question, and it’s simply this: What can you do with the moment? What can I do with this moment? Because when you think about it, well, it’s all we have.”
It’s true that the present moment is all that we have. And in this present moment, Sharon says we can make a choice that can resonate with us for years to come. It’s hard for any of us to know exactly how, but we have the control to change the course of our lives by the decisions we make at any given moment.
Getting out of the process of constantly unconsciously doing and shifting toward creating conscious choices isn’t easy. It’s not a problem that Sharon can conclusively solve. “But what I do believe we can do is set deliberate reminders to take a pause, to draw yourself back into yourself again, or to remember to remember,” Sharon shares.
One of the ways Sharon says she does that for herself is by remembering that she’s a musician. Sharon put a sticky note on one of her instruments so that when she passes by, she has to read it. The note reads, “Pay the toll,” prompting Sharon to play a tune on her instrument any time she reads the note.
“I would urge other people to just find ways of reminding themselves… For lack of a better way of saying it, remind yourself to be who you decided you were going to be. I mean, you know, one of those aspects of that question for me is I’m a musician. Well, if you’re a musician, pay the toll,” Sharon chuckled.
Learn more about Sharon and what she has to offer by watching the full podcast episode here. Or you can visit her website, or follow her on Facebook.

Episode 123 of the podcast is back with David Wood, a previous guest on episode 84 of the show. With over 20 years of experience as a life coach, David is also the founder of Focus.ceo. 
David starts off part two of his podcast with his latest book, “Mouse in the Room: Because the Elephant isn’t Alone”. The book talks about how the elephant isn’t the only animal in the room. David says there are many other more subtle animals to see that not everyone in the room may be aware of. He provides a recent example.
“Like, a couple of nights ago, I was at an acting class, and I suggested to someone something she could’ve done a little differently,” David said. “My story in my head is that ‘That didn’t land well,’ that she kind of felt a little bit insulted, and she did not want that feedback. And so, that’s a mouse.”
“Now, I could just let that mouse hide, or I could identify it and say, ‘Oh, okay,’ and reach out (and I probably will today) and leave a message and say, ‘Hey, I just got the feeling that didn’t land well and that wasn’t what you wanted to hear, and I wanted to apologize.’”
David stresses the importance of identifying the mouse in the room in the first place. That’s part of why he named the book what he did, to center the problem in the room that many people are too scared to confront or name otherwise.
“It’s about authenticity,” David said. “It’s about stopping the act that we’re always presenting to the world, because we don’t want to get in trouble or feel uncomfortable, and finding artful ways to name your mice so that you can be seen for who you are and generate more connection, confidence and be a better leader.”
Naming the mouse in the room also generates more trust, according to David. Being real (or honest) in a situation can get you farther than pretending that the problem doesn’t exist in the room in the first place. It’s also the point of good leadership.
“It works for leadership as well. If you’re not willing to be revealed and give people a sense of who you are and what’s driving you, and why you care about this and actually name what’s happening, who’s going to trust that?” David said. “They’re not going to want to follow you. So, there’s business application. If money’s a driver for you, I think you’ll make more money.”
Watch the entire podcast episode here to learn more about David, his work and book. You can also follow David on social media: Youtube or Instagram.

Live Authentically podcast episode 122 features Monique Rhodes, a self-proclaimed happiness strategist. On her website, Monique offers eight different kinds of courses focused on sleep and stress meditations to self-improvement and self-love exercises.
When asked how she lives authentically each day, Monique says she practices by choosing to pay attention to the places her mind wanders.
“I think that what most of us don’t understand or realize is that we think we go through our day and make a whole bunch of decisions about what we like and what we don’t like, the things that we’re doing and not doing, and yet, most of those things are actually habits,” Monique said.
Habits are important to get you from destination A to destination B. We need habits to know how to drive a car, brush our teeth every day or remember other important and healthy daily tasks. But what about our emotional space? Do habits form there, too? According to Monique, they most definitely do.
“There’s a whole bunch of other things that we’re doing habitually that we’re not even aware we are. Our emotional reactions, the way that we’re showing up in the world, we think it’s based on the present moment. But it’s not actually,” Monique said. “It’s based on past habits. And that really holds us back because when we start practicing a thought over and over again, that becomes a belief. And beliefs really drive our life.”
Monique believes that it’s okay to have beliefs about things, as long as they are conscious. However, Monique notes that most of the time, that is not the case. Most of the time, people are run by their longheld unconscious belief systems. 
Monique uses a flower as an example to explain the eight levels of consciousness people go through when forming beliefs. She says the first five levels of consciousness are based on your senses. You’ll use sight as one of your first senses or levels of consciousness. Then you’ll move to level six of consciousness, which recognizes the flower. Then you move into the problematic one, consciousness level seven.
“The seventh consciousness says, ‘I like it, I don’t like it or I feel negative about it,’ Monique said. “And then the eighth consciousness stores it, a little bit like a piggy bank or an external hard drive on our computer, right? What then happens is, I show you this flower, you look at this flower, and you say to me, ‘Oh, I love that flower,” and you think in that moment that you’re loving that flower, but if we were to look closely, we might find a past story sitting behind this love for a flower.”
And it’s those past stories sitting behind the flower that Monique says shape the way in which each of us chooses to live authentically.
“When we start to break this down and look at it and work with it, I believe then we can begin on the journey of living authentically in a deep way,” Monique said.
To learn more about Monique and her work, watch the Live Authentically podcast episode 122 here. You can also visit her website or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Live Authentically podcast episode 121 features Dr. Varun Gandhi, a life and business coach who, if you read his website, went through a slew of career choices after leaving behind his career in environmental engineering consulting.
Gandhi says he lives authentically by ensuring that he’s expressing himself authentically. “Anything that comes out of my mouth, I want to make sure it’s authentic,” Gandhi said. “So I always have that screen to make sure, ‘okay, am I saying this authentically, or am I saying this to please someone else?’”
Having this filter is important to Gandhi now, but, as mentioned earlier, it wasn’t always the case. Gandhi used to be an environmental engineer consultant until he felt a pain in his stomach that just wouldn’t go away. He started questioning the pain, literally.
“I started kind of unconsciously, I didn’t really know about this technique of asking questions to the pain, like what is the message that the pain was giving me?” Gandhi said. 
“I don’t really know about it, but I was asking these questions to the pain, and one answer that I got was, ‘Why are you waking up every morning, 8 a.m., going to this job from 8-5, and it’s something that you don’t even care about that much? Like, it doesn’t feel like you make much of a difference.’”
Gandhi felt like there was something greater out there for him. Around the same time, he also went through a profound breakup. The breakup tore him down to the point of pushing him into opening his eyes with a spiritual awakening. He began reading “The Book of Secrets” by Deepak Chopra.
“The little bit that I did pick up was this word called ‘meditation,’” Gandhi said. “Then I started researching meditation, what is meditation? Googling it, learning more about it, and finally, about a couple months later, I picked up a practice of meditating every day.”
It was that meditation that enabled Gandhi to see that he is capable of changing his course.
“I create everything in my life, all of the miseries in my life are my doing, and I’m creating these stories in my head, and I have a way to change it if I want to, if I choose to,” Gandhi said.
Find out where Gandhi’s story took him next by watching episode 121 of the Live Authentically podcast. You can also find more information about Dr. Varun Gandhi by visiting his website or following him on Instagram or Facebook.

Episode 120 of Live Authentically features Martin Rutte, president of Livelihood, a management consulting firm. He is also the co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work,” a New York Times Business Bestseller. 
In addition, for over 15 years with his Project Heaven on Earth, Martin has been learning what makes people human, and what they envision their dream world to be.
Martin tells Pam that he lives authentically by seeing what’s true for him. He says that he sees where he can leverage the difference he makes in the world.
“I have to have time for laughter, puns and playing with people, and some intellectual stimulation. I like innovative, unique thinkers,” Martin said.
In addition to that, Martin explains how he tries to be the person who will tell people the things they don’t always want to hear– the negative stuff– but in a nice way. Constructive criticism overall, and we all know this can only help us grow. 
Martin says his goal with telling people the negative stuff is “to say that with some heart and soul and yet still get the message across.”
Martin believes that the negative stuff should be told, but in a way that invites the person to continue the conversation.
“You start with the positive, then you go to the negative and then you give another option,” Martin said. “... I like that a lot because it puts the no inside of a yes. It puts the no inside of forwarding the relationship.”
For Martin, forwarding the relationship is one of his life purposes with his Project Heaven on Earth, which focuses on bringing people into the sphere of seeing their own personal heaven on Earth.
“I’m fascinated, Pam, by the idea of the soul’s dream we have for the kind of life and work and relationship and nation and world that we want,” Martin said, “And the idea popped into my head, ‘Oh, you mean Heaven on Earth.’”
For Martin, the last 30 years have been about trying to evoke the “Heaven-on-Earth-knowing” within others. He mentions how it’s so much easier to focus on hell that he instead wanted to know what heaven looked like to everyone else.
To learn more about Martin Rutte and Project Heaven on Earth, listen to Episode 120 of the Live Authentically podcast or visit his website here. You can also follow him on Instagram or Facebook, too.