Martin Salama: Reframe Your Meaning Of L.I.F.E

[00:00:08] Diana White: hello and welcome to 10 Lessons Learned, where we talk to leaders and luminaries from all over the world to dispense wisdom for career, business, and life in order to make the world wiser lesson by lesson.

[00:00:24] Diana White: My name is Diana White, and I’m your host for this episode.

[00:00:28] Diana White: Our guest today is Martin Salama. Martin is known as the architect of the Warrior’s Life Code.

[00:00:36] He specializes in helping frustrated people with their lives quickly shift their mindset and uncover their greatness so they can live their true potential and enjoy life. An example of what he’s achieved is a client like Roberta, who lost her six figure job due to Covid and came to Martin depressed and very lost.

[00:00:56] Diana White: Roberta stated that within a short time, she had direction focus and a renewed sense of energy.

[00:01:03] Diana White: Around all the possibilities she could pursue and was getting back on track to enjoy life. The key to Martin’s success, he’s mastered the ability to live incredibly full every day, which he turned into the acronym life, L.I.F.E., and created the Warrior’s Life Code Coaching Program.

[00:01:23] Diana White: Welcome Martin.

[00:01:25] Martin Salama: Oh, thank you so much, Diana. I’m so excited to be here with you.

[00:01:29] Diana White: I am so excited to have you here and listeners and viewers. Martin is a fellow New Yorker, so you know that this had to be my episode. Sorry for all my co-hosts. So, Martin, I’m going to start with, a question that I have for you before we get into our lessons. what would you tell your 30 year old self.

[00:01:50] Martin Salama: I would tell my 30 year old self to listen to what your father’s been telling you your whole life. Don’t take anything personally.

[00:01:58] Diana White: So true. Oh, so true. If only we weren’t so angsty and just took our parents’ advice when they gave it to us. Huh?

[00:02:07] Martin Salama: Right. You know, as I got older, my parents got smarter.

[00:02:12] Diana White: It’s so true.

[00:02:13] Diana White: And I bet you if you asked them, they’d say how as he got older, he got smarter because that’s what my mom says about me.

[00:02:20] Martin Salama: Exactly.

[00:02:22] Lesson 1:    Start with Admission, Cleansing, and Celebration

[00:02:22] Diana White: well, let’s start off with your first lesson, lesson number one. Start with admission, cleansing, and celebration. Let’s talk about that.

[00:02:32] Martin Salama: So admission, cleansing, and celebration. So let me first tell you, a lot all of these lessons that we’re talking about, I’ve have in a card deck that I’ve just produced called the Worrier to Warrior Card Deck, and you know, hopefully my New York accent didn’t screw that up for everybody else.

[00:02:49] Martin Salama: Diana. I know you got what worrier to warrior means. But being worried to becoming a warrior. So I, the, the card deck is something that just came out and it’s available for people to get. So while we’re going through this, I mean, it’s not all the things that are in the cards, but the 10 lessons are a part of the card deck.

[00:03:10] Diana White: Love that.

[00:03:11] Martin Salama: So, the first one Yep. Is admission, cleansing, and celebration. Okay. So admission means admitting that the way your life is going isn’t exactly as you want it to be going. It’s recognizing. You have the control to change the way things are happening for you and admitting that for that to happen, you have to say, I have to change.

[00:03:37] Martin Salama: Right? So that takes you to cleansing. Once you’ve admitted it, you start the process of changing or cleansing. Getting through these different changes that you’re going through, cleansing yourself of those things that were holding you back. And as you start to do these, you start to celebrate the little changes that you’re making.

[00:03:57] Martin Salama: So that’s the celebration. For example, someone goes on a diet, they go, I want to lose 50 pounds. They get the five pounds. They usually go, okay, so it’s five pounds. No, celebrate it, it’s five pounds, you’re 10% of the way . Yes. So that’s, that’s, you know, it’s just an idea of what admission, cleansing, and celebration’s about.

[00:04:19] Diana White: It’s almost reminiscent of, I, I believe this is Maya Angelou viewers and listeners, correct me if I’m wrong, but, she once said, when you know better do better. Right. And so that acknowledgement,

[00:04:31] Martin Salama: well, it’ll correct you if you’re wrong, but I think you’re probably right. . .

[00:04:33] Diana White: So that acknowledgement, you know, that admission of I, I’ve got this thing I want to do or want to change leads to those other pieces.

[00:04:42] Martin Salama: Right.

[00:04:43] Diana White: Which I think is great.

[00:04:44] Martin Salama: Thank you so much.

[00:04:45] Lesson 2:    Use The Cycle Of A’s

[00:04:45] lesson number two. Use the cycle of A’s. Now I was confused by this, so I’m curious.

[00:04:52] Martin Salama: Okay, so get ready. Because to me, the cycle of A’s is really where things start to happen.

[00:04:58] Martin Salama: It’s the beginning of it. So the cycle of A’s stands for three letter a’s that’s a cycle that once you get into it and get to it more often, things will start to happen. So, what am I talking about That’s, I haven’t said, I’ve said a whole lot of nothing so far. So we’ve all heard of, many of us have heard about the law of attraction, right?

[00:05:20] Martin Salama: What you attract, what you think about what you want attracts you. But you know what, there’s a very, very basic. Definition of the law of attraction. So the cycle of A’s takes it from that foundational and helps you to put it into practice. So, there’s three A’s. The first one is ask. Ask God. Ask the universe.

[00:05:39] Martin Salama: Ask whoever your greatest power, the great power of your life is, to, to give you the things that you want in your life or that you desire. Okay? So that’s the first one. , and that’s where the law of attraction comes into play. It’s the definition I track to my life, whatever I give my energy, focus and attention to, whether wanted or unwanted.

[00:05:58] Martin Salama: So that’s the cycle of A’s card. And just to show you for a second, I don’t know if you see there’s this, a cycle here. I do. Yeah. All right. So that’s the first one. Ask, ask for what you want. The next one is act. Start doing the work. Towards getting what you want. Because just saying, oh, I want this. It’s not going to get it for you.

[00:06:21] Martin Salama: It’s really not going to get it for you. Oh, I want a million dollars. Well, how are you going to get the million dollars? You going to wake up one day and the leprechaun’s going to be standing outside with the pot of gold ? It doesn’t work that way. And that takes us to number three, which is the most important because it’s the hardest.

[00:06:41] Martin Salama: But it’s really if you, once you start to embrace it and understand it and utilize it, it makes ask, act an attitude. This the three cycle start to happen to perpetuate itself. The third one is attitude. Have an attitude of I don’t care about the outcome, or you have a detached emotion to the outcome.

[00:07:05] Martin Salama: Cause what happens is you’re doing act and ask, and you’re doing all this work, what your natural tendency is, oh my God, I really want this to happen. It’s really got to happen. And you start. To put out this, this emotion, this energy of lack, and the ether out there is hearing the lack. The law of attraction is hearing the lack and keeping it from you.

[00:07:31] Martin Salama: Okay. But if you have this attitude of, I don’t care what happens now, if something comes along the way, that’s not exactly what you expected. Instead of you saying, oh my God, it’s not happening, you start to say, maybe I need to make a course correction. And if you keep your emotions out of it, it can it push you into this perpetual cycle of

[00:07:52] Diana White: I love that. So, it’s ask act, and attitude.

[00:07:58] Martin Salama: Right.

[00:07:58] Diana White: Flawless. I love that. And I think I’m, I’m going to adopt it today, . Cool. Cool. Cause I am a firm believer of the ask, of putting the energy out there. But I absolutely hear where you’re saying, Martin, where some people put the ask out there and then immediately start to give off the odor of desperation.

[00:08:20] Martin Salama: Exactly. Desperation means, oh my God, I’m going to kill myself if I don’t have it.

[00:08:25] Lesson 3:    Stop, Think, Respond

[00:08:25] Diana White: Okay. Lesson number three. Stop, think, respond. So, I love what you’re doing here because you have a lot of threes, and it’s very simple to adopt, very simple to act upon. And I, I imagine it just shows results. So talk to me about stop, think, respond.

[00:08:47] Martin Salama: So, yeah, I do have threes and I have fours as well, but yeah, a lot of threes. So when your children were growing up Okay. As my children and maybe us two, I don’t know, and the firemen would come to school and teach the children fire safety. They tell them, they teach them three words. To think about when you’re in a fire, in an emergency fire.

[00:09:10] Martin Salama: Do you remember what those three words are?

[00:09:12] Diana White: Can we say them together?

[00:09:13] Martin Salama: Sure.

[00:09:14] Diana White: 1, 2, 3.

[00:09:15] Diana White: Stop, stop. Drop, drop and roll and roll.

[00:09:20] Martin Salama: Right. stop what you’re doing. Drop to the ground below the smoke and roll away from the, from the emergency, from the fire. Okay. So I was somebody who was a very, reactive type of a person. I would react to everything to the point that I was, I would overreact to the point that I was like a nuclear reactor.

[00:09:41], because I took things personally and as a result, I was a controlled freak and I was a people pleaser, and I had a short temper. So while I was going through my divorce, I was also going through life coach training. And it was God’s way of saying, this is what you need to do. You know, you’re down and there’s more to the story.

[00:10:01] Martin Salama: Be before that, maybe we’ll get to some of it. But I was really at a low point already when my wife asked for the divorce. And you know, I, I was, I had so much lack of self-confidence, self-awareness, self-love, that I was afraid of never being married again. I afraid nobody would ever love me and all that.

[00:10:20] Martin Salama: So I went into this coaching and I had already admitted to myself that I want to change who I am professionally. But then when I got there that first week and they go, before you could talk to coach others, you got to figure out what’s going on in yourself. And that led me to, to this. So I took stop, drop, and roll.

[00:10:38] Martin Salama: And as I was. Putting my course together, I realized I was working with a coach to help me develop my course. And he said, well, what did you do to get you to stop reacting and start responding? And I said to him, well, you know, like a fireman stop, drop and roll. I came up with stop, think, and respond, right?

[00:10:59] Martin Salama: Because I was always shoot first ask questions. So now I said, and, and this came through as I was going through coaching. I was going through my divorce and I was noticing the, the buttons that she would push, whether consciously or unconsciously, to get me going. For example, she would say, you know, we’re in the middle of something and she’d call me up or whatever, and she’d say, I don’t want to fight.

[00:11:25] Martin Salama: But now for years she used that. and to me it meant let’s get ready to rumble . Okay. And I would say, okay, I guess we’re fighting. And I would, my, my emotions would go up and I would start fighting. And it was easy for her to then turn around and say, you started the fight. I said, I don’t want to fight.

[00:11:45] Martin Salama: But right now, like I said, I’m not going to say she did that consciously. She probably really meant, I want to tell you something and I don’t want you to get upset. Which would then that would happen. So now that I was more aware of my feelings, I recognized that that’s what I was doing. So I stopped and I said, okay, she, what do I need to do?

[00:12:12] Martin Salama: I got to listen a little better, and I got to listen to what she’s saying and recognize where’s it coming from? Am I taking it personally? So on and so forth. And then respond. So, once I recognized that, that’s what I was doing, I came up with stop, think, and respond.

[00:12:26] you know, one of the things that struck me when, when you talked about this is.

[00:12:32] Diana White: Everyone I think in the world has their idea of how the different sexes handle a, a breakup or a relationship challenge. and I think unfortunately, a lot of the times, the man has always seemed as, you know, cold or distant or, in most cases. he started it, you know, he, he checked out before I did, or, those kinds of things.

[00:13:01] Diana White: The vulnerability that you showed by saying, men think the same things that women do when relationships are falling apart. What? I’m afraid of the future. I’m afraid of the future without this person. I’m afraid of the future by myself. What does it mean for another relationship? Will I have another relationship?

[00:13:18] I think women, I think we think we’re the only ones that think that way and. It is not true, and I’m so glad you brought that up and mentioned it, and I wish that more men were strong enough. Yeah. We’re going to, we’re going to change that narrative instead of saying vulnerable, say strong, strong enough to admit these things.

[00:13:38] Diana White: Because I think that the conversations, but would be richer even if they don’t, even if they still end up in the separation. Yeah.

[00:13:46] Martin Salama: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know what I mean? And it’s interesting that you brought up the word vulnerable and strong because. I actually wrote a blog, I don’t know, a few months ago that’s on my website about that.

[00:13:57] Martin Salama: Be a Man has new Meaning. Yeah. Okay. Yes. When I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, all right. It was the time of Macho Man. You know, and all that. And before that, in the forties, fifties, sixties, men didn’t show their emotions because if they did, they were looked at as weak. Yeah. You never ask for help and you held your emotions in, I was an emotional kid when I was growing up.

[00:14:23] Martin Salama: I was always an emotional kid and my father would say, don’t worry about it so much, . But that was the times that he had, and I really took everything personally. Now I’ve learned. Temper that, but thanks to somebody like Brene Brown. Yes. Who brought the word vulnerability out of the closet. Whereas at the time we would look at vulnerability as a weakness, and now you’re so right.

[00:14:47] Martin Salama: When you show your vulnerability, you show your authenticity, you’re showing you can be strong while having emotions. So thank you for bringing that up.

[00:14:55] Diana White: I am. I’m thanking you for bringing it up. It, it’s a revelation and I hope our viewers and listeners take something away from that.

[00:15:03] Lesson 4:    Reframe Your Meaning Of L.I.F.E

[00:15:03] Diana White: So, lesson’s number four.

[00:15:05] Diana White: Reframe your meaning of L.I.F.E and life in your acronym, which is, once again, tell us what that acronym is.

[00:15:13] Martin Salama: So, LIFE stands for me for live, incredibly full every day.

[00:15:17] Diana White: Love it. And you so reframe your meaning of living incredibly full every day. Tell us about that.

[00:15:24] Martin Salama: So, as I was going through my divorce and coming out the other side, I immediately became a divorced recovery coach.

[00:15:32] Martin Salama: Made sense. I just came through a divorce and the things I had learned had helped me. Get through the divorce. And I did this for a few years and like you said, it was interesting cuz I, I couldn’t get too many men clients cuz they didn’t want to admit their feelings and so on and so forth. But I still had clients and so on and so forth.

[00:15:50] Martin Salama: And then I looked in the mirror one day and I wasn’t happy with the way I looked. I wasn’t happy with the way I felt. My coaching was just a side job in my regular job was a dead end job. And I was allowing all those things to hold me back and I wasn’t being coached, which was. , every coach needs a coach at all times.

[00:16:08] Honestly. So I, I, I looked in the mirror and I said, I got to change. I was the heaviest I ever was in my life. I was working, I was leaving the house at 7:00 AM getting home at 7:00 PM and I could have easily said, I have no time. But I wanted the change. The change was strong enough in me that I said, okay, what can I do?

[00:16:28] Martin Salama: Oh, my friend was talking on Facebook that there’s a 30 minute video that I can do from home. Great. I can wake up 45 minutes earlier, work out, take a few minutes to cool down, take a shower, and still get to work. Just changed my, my time schedule. I did that. I started eating better. I started reading better. I started allowing myself to be coached again, and in nine months I lost 65 pounds.

[00:16:54] Diana White: Wow. That’s amazing.

[00:16:55] Martin Salama: But long. Yeah. But along with that came a new sense of self and I went from self-conscious to self-aware, which will get a little deeper and lesson nine. Okay. Just to give it a little tip of it, and. I started doing things like meditating. Now I’m ADHD. Okay? So, imagine me being meditating, guided meditation for 10 minutes.

[00:17:20] Martin Salama: When is this going to be over? Okay. But one of these times I had this download that I loved my life and I loved everything that was going on, and I wanted to help other people. After I meditated, I wrote for two hours, and out of that came life live incredibly full every day

[00:17:38] Diana White: It amazes me how when you’re going through a change or a metamorphosis and if you had asked yourself or challenged yourself before this metamorphosis, hey, write a book.

[00:17:49] Diana White: Hey, figure out a philosophy. Hey, bring something to the world that will help it be better, you would say, but ah, I’m not that person.

[00:17:58] Martin Salama: Right, right, exactly. That actually happened to me. Somebody turned to me and said, you should write a book. I was like, me. A week later, I got an email from one of these emails that I was on saying, my friend’s holding a seminar on writing books, a webinar.

[00:18:11] Martin Salama: I was like, all right, let me go on it. I wrote my first book, recovering from divorce because of somebody planting the seed. So yeah, and then when I came up with L.I.F.E, my book coach, she challenged me. She said, okay, so you have living incredibly full every day. Now go back and find a, come up with a couple of other acronyms for LIFE.

[00:18:34] Martin Salama: So I was like, okay, so here’s a card. Alternate definitions. I couldn’t remember exactly what it said. love intensely, fiercely, and effortlessly. Leadership inspires fearless energy. Luck is innovated from experience; lasting improvement favors everyone. And there’s another few of them, but I just gave you a couple of them there.

[00:18:55] Diana White: And they all go together. Yeah, they all go together. I love it.

[00:19:00] Lesson 5:    Lose The Worrier And Find The W.A.R.R.I.O.R In You

[00:19:00] Diana White: Lesson number five. this is the one where our, our New Yorker accents might get the better of us, eh, so let’s, let’s do this lesson number five. Lose the Worrier and find the Warrior in you.

[00:19:12] Martin Salama: That’s right. That’s right. So, I have two cards on this. One is the warrior mindset, which is basically 20 affirmations You can. To get yourself into a warrior mindset, I am open and ready to be positive. I am control of my feelings. No matter how hard it is. I can do it. And down the line, positive things. I deserve to be happy.

[00:19:36] Martin Salama: I’m a kind person. I have the power to be happy. I’m grateful for what I have. It’s okay if I make a mistake. I like myself for who I am. Today is going to be a great day.

[00:19:48] Diana White: So viewers and listeners, I, I want, I want you to take this in. I know there’s going to be some of you that are saying affirmations, they’re stupid.

[00:19:57] Diana White: What do they do? They’re just words. But I challenge you because you know what, how silly you feel if you say, I am deserving. Right? How silly you feel when you say that out loud in the mirror. You don’t feel silly subconsciously when you say, why’d you do that, idiot? Right when you did, it’s so easy to demean yourself and say horrible things that you would never say to another person.

[00:20:21] Diana White: Yeah. So easy to say that in your head. Why can’t you flip that narrative and be able to embrace those affirmations. and say them and mean them as fiercely as you meant the negative stuff. You’d be surprised what it does to your mindset. Yep. And, and how you interact in the world.

[00:20:39] Martin Salama: Yep. We’re going to save the other one for less than seven.

[00:20:43] Martin Salama: Okay. Cause I, I flipped them by accident, but it’s all good. Okay.

[00:20:46] Affiliate Break

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[00:21:03] Diana White: You can start your 30 day free trial by going to audibletrial.com/10essonslearned. With Audible, you can find your favorite lesson while at home or on the go. Once again, that’s audibletrial.com/10lessonslearned all lowercase for a free 30 day trial. The link will be in the show notes.

[00:21:26] Diana White: Let’s welcome back Martin Salama and continue with lesson number six.

[00:21:31] Lesson 6:    Incorporate Your new mindset in your finances so you can live in Financial Abundance

[00:21:31] Diana White: Lesson number six. Incorporate your new mindset in your finances so you can. In financial abundance. Let’s take it away.

[00:21:42] Martin Salama: All right. All right. So I, I kind of put. towards the middle end of my course because you first got to understand the importance of a abundance in other areas of your life because finances always end up being the sticking point.

[00:21:58] Martin Salama: Oh, I can’t, oh, I can’t afford it. And you start to struggle with yourself. So I basically said, no matter what your financial status is at this moment, there’s at least a little bit of financial insecurity. The mindset of financial abundance seems to be one of the more difficult mindsets, to achieve for most people.

[00:22:17] Martin Salama: That’s totally understandable. Start by taking a percentage. So here it is. I say take 40% of the money that you have coming in every day. No matter what, how many dollars you get in take 40%. Some people say 40%, I can’t do it. Start with 20%, whatever the number is, but your goal should be 40% down the line because they go, oh my God, I can’t live on what I’m living now.

[00:22:42] Martin Salama: Try it. You’re going to find after you start to do this and you start putting this 40% away, that you’re able to live on the 60% just as easily. It’s just that your mindset is set in telling you, you can’t. And then what do you do with the 40%? You set up four separate accounts, 10% each. Big purchases. Like for example, I want to buy a car.

[00:23:03] Martin Salama: Okay, you got to put money towards that next one, fun money. Do something fun, and don’t let this accumulate more than 90 days because you’ve got to put fun into your life. Oh, if you’re not, you’re not going. Right next, giving to others charity and then golden goose slash emergency slash paydown debt, whatever it is.

[00:23:24] Martin Salama: Once you finish paying down your debt, you’ve got some emergency money, and really what you want to do is have it for your golden goose down the road, invest it into something else, so on and so forth.

[00:23:34] Diana White: Now, it’s very rare that I hear someone say the second part of what you said with the fun money, which is don’t just save it and continuously save it.

[00:23:46] Diana White: Challenge yourself to use it every 90 days because you need to treat yourself. I think that is the crux of why people don’t want to set aside money. Including 40% of their earnings. It’s because if I do that, how do I have fun? I’m not going to have fun.

[00:24:05] Martin Salama: Right. Exactly. And you see what I have over here. This sign over here, it says, never get so busy making a living.

[00:24:12] Martin Salama: That you forget to make a life.

[00:24:14] Diana White: Yeah. Oh man.

[00:24:16] Martin Salama: When I saw that, I’m like, oh my God, life. I have to get this.

[00:24:22] and I like the buckets. I like the buckets because they’re simple, they’re meaningful. and I find a lot of the gurus that tell you, you need to save and why and what you need to save for.

[00:24:34] Diana White: They’re speaking the truth. But the reality is people are living in the now and they’re not living in the future. And so all of the things that they’re talking about retirement, you know, your stocks, IRAs, Most people say, well, yeah, that’s all well and good, but I got, I got to eat right now. You know?

[00:24:54] Diana White: Right. And I don’t want to, I grew up eating hot dogs and, and pork and beans. I want to eat filet mignon right now, and I have the salary that I can do that. And so it kind of takes away from that process of, well, you’re going to live a lot longer than you think. That’s right. And you’re not going to be able to work that whole time.

[00:25:15] Diana White: And so That’s Right. What are you going to do?

[00:25:17] Exactly. you’re going to, you’re going to live on social security.

[00:25:20] Diana White: Yeah. , you know what if. If that is your plan, if, if listeners and viewers, if your plan is to live on social security alone in your retirement years, and, and I know, retirement means something different in all the different countries that listen in to us.

[00:25:38] Diana White: But in the US if your goal is to live off Social Security, then I. That you can cut 40% out right now, because you’ll be doing it later anyway, so you might as well start right now. .

[00:25:53] Martin Salama: That’s right, .

[00:25:55] Lesson 7:    Use The Warrior Mindset Affirmations Everyday

[00:25:55] Diana White: All right. Lesson number

[00:25:56] Martin Salama: seven. Okay, so now seven. We’re going to talk about the find the warrior within you because we did the affirmations.

[00:26:03] Martin Salama: Yes. Number six, number five.

[00:26:04] Diana White: Yeah. Lesson than number seven, use the warrior mindset affirmations every day,

[00:26:11] Martin Salama: right? So, we did that. So now we’re going to talk about L Lose the worrier and find the warrior in you. Okay. So I had, I took the word warrior and broke it down to another acronym. Okay. Number one, seek wisdom.

[00:26:27] Martin Salama: You never know enough. There’s always more to learn. And when you say, I know you’re really saying, no, I’m not interested.

[00:26:35] Diana White: Oh, powerful,

[00:26:37] Martin Salama: right? Imagine when someone tells you something. I know. I know. You’re shutting them down cuz I know you don’t have to tell me. So have some wisdom number. The A is act. Ask an attitude.

[00:26:51] Martin Salama: We went over that R realization. Be content with what you have. Have a mindset of I have everything. That doesn’t mean that you don’t desire more, but love what you do have without saying, oh my God, I need that, and that and that. Next, recognize or be grateful. Gratitude. Be grateful for everything in your life.

[00:27:13] Martin Salama: I imagination. Think. You know Norman Vincent Peele, the power of positive thinking said, shoot for the stars. You may hit the moon. Optimism. Find optimism, positivity in everything you do. Wear rose colored glasses and then r. Resilient, be flexible and have an open mind because as we said, you may be doing act, act an attitude and something comes and says, okay, this isn’t the route you’re supposed to be taking.

[00:27:43] Martin Salama: You need to make a course correction. So be resilient, be ready to change.

[00:27:47] Diana White: So, what I’m getting, and I love this, you’re taking that word warrior and you’re removing. The fight. Anytime somebody says, you got to be a warrior, that means that head on. You are fighting for something. Someone.

[00:28:02] Martin Salama: Yeah.

[00:28:03] Diana White: And it is less about you embracing yourself and enhancing yourself, and it more about fighting.

[00:28:10] Martin Salama: Yes.

[00:28:11] Diana White: You’re breaking down each letter and giving it a word that internalizes it and challenges you to make yourself a better person.

[00:28:19] Martin Salama: Right.

[00:28:20] Diana White: Martin, you’re a smart man,

[00:28:24] Martin Salama: thank you. Thank you. Well, let me tell you where the warrior part came up. So here we are. I have this life in life stuff that I did, right? I told you how I came up with life.

[00:28:33] Martin Salama: Live incredibly full every day and I’m living every, this is night 20 14, 20 15, 20 16. And I’m living great and I’m dating. I started dating and while I’m going on these dates, I’m looking for women who have the same values cuz I learned so much about values in And I never realized how important values were until afterwards.

[00:28:53] Martin Salama: And I don’t mean this in the wrong way, but if I knew my values when I was in my twenties, I might not have married my wife, my first wife. I love my four children, don’t get me wrong. But, you know, I’m not regretting it. I’m just saying I’m, I might have gone a different path, so now I’m doing this, I’m dating and I meet somebody who’s checking off all the box.

[00:29:10] Martin Salama: I’m like, oh my God, this is fantastic. Month into it. I’m really loving this person. I’m, and I tell her, I got to tell you something. You don’t have to say it back to me. I’m falling in love with you because I see you as you are, and you see me as I am, and you’re not looking to change me. So when we get married two years later, now comes 2020.

[00:29:29] Martin Salama: Something happens in 2020, right?

[00:29:32] Diana White: Oh, something happened that challenged everybody’s relationships.

[00:29:36] Martin Salama: Yes. Continue. Oh, everybody’s, everything. Everything. It was basically everybody was running around like they were chicken little, the sky is falling and now it’s May. And we were always supposed to be in lockdown for a couple of weeks and now it’s a couple of months and people are like, what is going on?

[00:29:53] Martin Salama: And they’re all worried. And I’m looking at them saying, why is everybody worried or better ask , why am I not worried? why is my wife not worried? And I realized that the last 10, 12 years of my life, through the negatives that I’d gone through in 2008, when the financial will fell apart, I lost everything.

[00:30:10] Martin Salama: Every penny I had by the time I got back on my feet. Mentally. My wife said, I want a divorce on our 24th wedding anniversary I was down. I decided to go through coaching. I transformed myself from 1.0 Martin into Martin 2.0, and I was loving life even. And I realized that what happened was, is that the last 12 years had prepared me for anything.

[00:30:36] Martin Salama: Even Covid.

[00:30:37] Diana White: Wow.

[00:30:37] Martin Salama: I got out to Facebook and I said, guys, I get it. I know why. You are all worried I was there. So let me show you how to go from being a worrier to a warrior, because a warrior is somebody who’s gone, who’s been down, has faced adversity, and become stronger as a result of it.

[00:30:55] Lesson 8:    The true meaning of Rationalize and how it’s self-sabotaging you

[00:30:55] Diana White: Amazing, amazing lesson number eight.

[00:31:00] Diana White: The true meaning of rationalize and how it’s self-sabotaging you. Ooh, I found this so interesting. Let’s go.

[00:31:09] Martin Salama: So, okay, so now let me go back a little bit. I was 10 years old. I had a tragedy in my life. Mm-hmm. I lost my brother. My five-year-old brother was killed in a, in a school bus accident. I have four older sisters and it’s just me as the boy.

[00:31:23] Martin Salama: I come from the Jewish community. Boys are everything. Okay, you are going to carry on the name, you are going to carry on the legacy, blah, blah, blah. Now I lost my brother. It’s all up to me. At that moment, I became a people pleaser. With that came a lot of other things. Over the years, I became, I took everything personally.

[00:31:40] Martin Salama: I was I was short-tempered. I was a control freak. So as a people pleaser, I would do things and I would rationalize that why I’m doing them is for the greater good. It took me about 40 plus years to recognize that that word rationalize was me self-sabotaging. Because it’s really, and this is something I’ve, I’ve, I’ve trademarked it’s two words.

[00:32:04] Martin Salama: It’s rational lies.

[00:32:09] Diana White: Rational lies.

[00:32:11] Martin Salama: You lie to yourself that you’re doing something that goes against what you really believe because it’s rational to do these things because it’s for the greater good, or you’re going to make the other person happy, or your ego is getting in your way. Whatever it is, you tell yourself a lie, that it’s rational.

[00:32:29] Martin Salama: Like, oh, I have no time to exercise. You could find the time if you really want to. So now when you make those excuses say to yourself. Is it a reason or is it a rational lie that is really an excuse in disguise?

[00:32:44] Diana White: Viewers and listeners, take that away today. Ask yourself, is it a rational lie or is it a real reason?

[00:32:54] Diana White: So powerful, so powerful.

[00:32:58] Lesson 9:    Be clear about Self-Conscious vs, Self-Aware

[00:32:58] Diana White: Lesson number nine. Be clear about self-conscious versus self-aware.

[00:33:05] Martin Salama: Yep. So, as I was looking back over my life and when I went through Coaching and the coaching program I went to was not like one of these one day, two day weekend things and you’re all done. It was almost a year.

[00:33:19] Martin Salama: Because you really needed to learn the skills, learn about yourself, learn about how to approach your clients and all that. And then as I went through that and then found myself a few years later looking back and saying, why am I so heavy? Why am I so unhappy? Whatever. And I started to make this transformation.

[00:33:37] Martin Salama: I started to go from being self-conscious to self-aware. So, to me, I made a card on it. Self-consciousness comes from a place of negative energy, guilt, conflict, and doubt. Self-consciousness is more outward directed. It’s being more concerned about what others are thinking of you and how the situation is going to affect you.

[00:33:56] Martin Salama: You probably react to uncomfortable situations instead of respond. Stop think and respond. Self-awareness comes from a place of positive energy acceptance, contentment, self-assuredness. Self-awareness is more inward facing. You have an accurate and realistic understanding of how you are responding to situations and how you feel about things, and it goes on for both of them.

[00:34:23] Martin Salama: But that just gives you an idea when you make that shift from self-conscious to self-aware. , you are recognizing that you are in control of where you’re going with yourself.

[00:34:33] Diana White: So, before we get into our last lesson, I want to talk about what we’ve learned so far. And I want to ask you, Martin, you know, you had a, a, a life changing event.

[00:34:45] Diana White: You had a shift, you had a divorce, 24 years of marriage. You had to really almost reinvent yourself, right? What about the people out there that everything’s status quo and by status quo, I mean, they’re not sad, they’re not happy, they’re just living. And in order to take this journey and change there’s no trigger.

[00:35:13] Diana White: An outside trigger for them, they really have to do it themselves and they have to do it in an environment that may not be changing around them.

[00:35:20] Martin Salama: Right, right, right. Absolutely. I get that.

[00:35:22] Diana White: How does it work?

[00:35:24] Martin Salama: Well, first thing is, are they feeling like they’re in their own comfort zone? Because that’s not a good place to be.

[00:35:30] Martin Salama: When you’re in your comfort zone means you’re not willing to get uncomfortable to change what’s going on, and you just accept what’s going. So you got to get uncomfortable to get more comfort.

[00:35:42] Diana White: That makes sense. It does. It does. And I think it’s applicable to so many of the things we mentioned today, including exercising, right?

[00:35:50] Diana White: That’s right. Everybody wants the body. Nobody wants the pain and the,

[00:35:55] Martin Salama: they don’t want the sacrifice. Right. You just want the reward.

[00:35:58] Diana White: Exactly. And it, and it’s so funny. Whether or not I’m going to be the avid person that works out every day, right? . And I notice that, like as you said, excuses, huh?

[00:36:12] Diana White: I don’t have time. I, I’m doing so many different things. I have these meetings, but, but I’ll find time to stand in the Starbucks line.

[00:36:20] Martin Salama: That’s right. That’s right.

[00:36:22] Diana White: I got my time for that.

[00:36:23] Martin Salama: And that’s where I found having a coach for me was the best thing to happen to me. and for my clients, because I became their accountability partner.

[00:36:32] Martin Salama: Mm-hmm. , my coaches, became my accountability partner whereas. When you have to answer to your boss, to your wife, to your children, to everybody else, they’re your accountability. You’re accountable to them. But when it comes to answering to yourself, it’s very easily to rationalize or just say, I can’t do it.

[00:36:50] Martin Salama: You know, come up with the excuses why. It’s just okay, so it’s not for me. Everybody else gets what they want. You got to put the mask on yourself first. , you know the airplane mask.

[00:37:00] Diana White: It’s true. It’s so true.

[00:37:03] Martin Salama: And it’s not selfish.

[00:37:04] Diana White: No, I dare say it’s not because I think the most selfish thing is to not address who you really want to be and, go through your entire life and all of your most significant relationships being a person you really don’t want to be.

[00:37:18] Diana White: I you’re not giving the best true self to the other person that you love.

[00:37:23] Martin Salama: Right. You know, so, so people ask me who, who, what’s my client look like? I said, it’s that person who feels the something off, but they’re not sure they have this like existential crisis going on. Yeah. Saying, is this all there is?

[00:37:38] Martin Salama: And you know what my answer to them is? Yes. but it’s how you are looking at it.

[00:37:43] Diana White: Oh, you know how many gurus say, no, this is not all there is. You can blah, blah, blah. No, I love that answer. Yeah. Yeah. This is all there is.

[00:37:54] Martin Salama: What are you going to do about it?

[00:37:59] Diana White: Oh, I love it.

[00:38:00] Lesson 10:  Build Your Emotional Strength to keep your feelings from ruling your actions.

[00:38:00] Diana White: Lesson number 10. Build your emotional strength to keep your feelings from ruling your actions. Now as a reformed, angry New Yorker, I can tell you that I learned this the hard way. So, Lean into this one for us.

[00:38:17] Martin Salama: Okay, too. So, I, I have this spread out in my course. First it teach, stop, think, and respond.

[00:38:23] Martin Salama: And there’s, there’s things that they learned. There’s, the cards. There’s even a scorecard for the stop, think, and respond to see how you’re doing with it. Okay? But then you need to go deeper. But before you go deeper, you got to first recognize the things you’re And I’m going to be honest with you, when you’re doing, stop, think, and respond.

[00:38:39] Martin Salama: And when you’re going to do this, you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail over and over and over again. But what’s happening is as you become more aware of it, you’re going to fail a hundred percent, 98%, 97%. And it’ll start to decrease because it’s like muscle. Brain muscle memory. So I came up with another acronym for life to Build your Emotional Strength so that your, you could rule your emotions instead of your emotions ruling you.

[00:39:09] Martin Salama: Because how many people have had their emotions rule them in the past and then say, oh my God, I can’t believe I did this, blah, blah, blah. Right? So now I took L. Listen to your inner voice and acknowledge your feelings or emotions, because to me, there’s a difference between emotions and feelings. An emotion is something that happens like that.

[00:39:32] Martin Salama: I’m feeling angry, I’m feeling anxious, I’m feeling mad. I’m feeling sad. I’m feeling happy. And then what kind of anger are you feeling? Is it strong where you’re enraged, or is it life where your little ticked off. So in my course, I give them a chart and across the top of the emotions, and then each one has a column with strong, medium, and light emotions.

[00:39:57] So I say, okay, listen to your inner voice. Recognize what you’re feeling, what your emotions are. Then identify what kind of feelings they are, what kind of feelings are these? Are they strong, medium, light, put a word to them. Enraged, ticked off, miffed, whatever it is, right? And there’s a list.

[00:40:16] Martin Salama: There’s like 20 or 30 for each one of these things. L, listen to your inner voice. I identify your feelings. F find out why. Ask yourself questions. Be like you’re on trial with yourself. Cross-examine. Why am I feeling this? Is it helping me or hurting me? Who did it to me?

[00:40:37] Martin Salama: Why did I allow them to do it? Blah, whatever those questions are, write it down. They get a sheet, they get a worksheet. Write these things down, and then E engage and change and take So that sounds all good in theory. How about if I give you an example of how I used it in my life?

[00:40:56] Diana White: Let’s go.

[00:40:57] Martin Salama: All right, so here I am.

[00:40:59] Martin Salama: I’m divorced about two years, and my son’s getting married, and we have a tradition. It doesn’t happen all the time. Now I’m living in New York. My ex and my children, for the most part are living in New Jersey. They come to me every once in a while and my son happened to be living with me because he was going to Baruch at the time, which is in New York, but for the weekend he went to New Jersey the weekend before his wedding.

[00:41:21] Martin Salama: And we have this tradition where sometimes we do it, sometimes we don’t. And I thought we had decided not to do it, to have a Saturday lunch after they go to synagogue on Shabbat, have lunch for the, for the bride and groom. My son comes home after the weekend and says, dad, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that mommy was making a lunch and you weren’t there.

[00:41:43] Martin Salama: Now the old me first thing I said to him, it’s not your issue. It’s your mother. The old me would’ve picked up the phone three days before the wedding and would’ve said, who the heck do you think you are blah blah ? That was me. That’s what I did. I reacted. So, I said, let me think about this. How do I feel? I feel angry.

[00:42:06] Martin Salama: Okay, what kind of anger am I feeling? Great anger why? So, L I was feeling enraged. L I was angry. I, I identify, I was enraged. F find out why, why did I feel this way? She went behind my back. She did these things. She makes me know, okay. I wrote out all these things and, and then I went engage in change and take action.

[00:42:32] Martin Salama: So here’s where it came into. The old me would’ve done that. And what would’ve happened at the wedding? Two days later, I would’ve been upset. She would’ve been upset; he would’ve been upset. Everybody would’ve heard about it, the family, the kids, everybody. And I’d be the bad guy. So, I waited. So my action was, I wrote down, what am I going to do?

[00:42:50] Martin Salama: And I said, I’m going to wait until after the wedding. Two days after the wedding, I picked up the phone and I said, this is what you did. This was the message that you sent. I was, it was controlled anger. People think life coaching is to teach you how to be happy and never have anger. Right. It doesn’t work that way.

[00:43:06] Martin Salama: Yes. It’s never going to be never angry, never said. It’s how you control those emotions when they come and I called her up and I told her these things and I got. My 2 cents out and I ended it. And this was a defining moment for me. I said to her at the end of the conversation, thank you for divorcing me.

[00:43:26] Martin Salama: Because until that moment, there was still this little thing of maybe we could get together, maybe I could figure it. We were just never right for each other. We were in a co-dependent relationship. I had been the people pleaser for 25 plus years, cuz we actually got divorced finally after our 25th anniversary.

[00:43:43] Martin Salama: So officially we were married for 25 years. But at, at that moment, I was done. I had graduated myself to the next level.

[00:43:54] Diana White: So viewers and listeners, I want you to take away from that story, right? We’ve got several things going on. The first thing, I would like to put out there is Martin is absolutely right.

[00:44:06] Diana White: This is a process, right? It’s not something that you’re going to master with your first, interaction with figuring out where you are on the emotional scale and how to deal with it, but, . I also know that most of the time when people are triggered, they’re triggered in, in the moment, in that situation, in a conversation with the other person.

[00:44:27] Diana White: And unfortunately, we are not at a point in our lives as a species where we can say, hold off. I got to go in a corner somewhere and write down my life. I got to write down these issues. Right? And so what you can say is, This conversation is not going, you know, it’s not, it’s not becoming healthy. It’s, it’s devolving and I think I might be contributing to that.

[00:44:50] Diana White: I don’t know what my part is, but I’ve got to go figure that out. Before we continue this conversation. You can say, let’s stop. Let’s take a break. Let’s pick this up another time, and then set the date and time. I think, Martin, you’ll agree that not only does that let the other person know that you’re not trying to dismiss them, but it also holds you accountable to figuring that out before you meet again.

[00:45:15] Martin Salama: Absolutely.

[00:45:16] And it’s something that you will have to practice and it’s something that will make you uncomfortable. And for some of us, and I’m going to put myself in that category, I went through a similar transformation with the way I communicated with people and the first few times of practicing it, Martin, I, I, I’m not going to call it any other way, I felt like a simp.

[00:45:40] Diana White: I felt like, ah, you know, I’m, I’m not, I’m not the same old Diana that used to curse you out and didn’t think twice about it. You know, right now I’m, I’m all nicey nicey trying to get the win-win out of it. Oh, I’m such a sucker. No, no. I was learning how to communicate better and it changed my life.

[00:46:00] Martin Salama: That’s right.

[00:46:01] Martin Salama: That’s right. And you know what, on the back. On the back cover card, it says something that made me think of you. Don’t proclaim to the world. Look at me. The new me. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. They want to see what you do.

[00:46:19] Diana White: There you go. There you go.

[00:46:23] Martin Salama: Right here’s a, there’s a look. I didn’t get into a fight with you just now, right? Right. You just called the elephant in the room. Hello? Let the elephants sit in the corner. Leave them alone.

[00:46:33] Diana White: Yeah. The, it really truly boils down to this is not about winning the argument, winning the discussion.

[00:46:41] Diana White: Right, right. This is not about be coming out the bigger, better person. This is about, I have some feelings and things that I need to say. I’m going to say it in a manner that you can receive, that it can calmly be heard. And then I don’t care what you do with it after that. That was for me.

[00:47:00] Martin Salama: You don’t receive it. That’s on you.

[00:47:01] Diana White: That was for me. Right? I love it. Exactly. Oh, my goodness. This was.

[00:47:07] Martin Salama: Now, did she receive it? I don’t know. And I don’t care.

[00:47:09] Diana White: There you go. There you go.

[00:47:11] Martin Salama: What? Right. In hindsight, I do have to say right now, and this also something that’s in my course. I didn’t really talk about it here. It’s not in the cards, I don’t think, but it’s in my book and it’s in my course is I learned how to tell myself a new story about her.

[00:47:25] Martin Salama: Mm. And that helped me to get to a point now where we have a pretty darn good relationship.

[00:47:31] Diana White: I love it. it.

[00:47:32] Martin Salama: She’s married. I’m married to different people.

[00:47:38] Diana White: I, I love it. And you know what? I, I dare say, yeah. I’m a firm believer and everything happens for a reason. And, I do believe that when you spend so much time with someone and you create life together, you know, not just a life together, but you’re creating children, you’re creating life together.

[00:47:56] Diana White: Yeah. , even if the relationship doesn’t last as originally intended, you’ve done something fundamentally to each other. Mm-hmm. that hopefully will help the next partner,

[00:48:11] Martin Salama: right. Yeah.

[00:48:12] Diana White: Help you be better for the next partner.

[00:48:14] Martin Salama: Exactly. And that was part of what I had. What my coaching, when I was doing re recovering from divorce was explaining to people, if you don’t change yourself when you get into a relationship, you’re going to end up marrying somebody exactly like the person you were married to, just in a different body.

[00:48:33] Because you attract what you’re looking for, and if you don’t change what you’re looking for, you’re going to get the same thing.

[00:48:41] Diana White: Well, this has been absolutely amazing, but I got to hit you with one more question.

[00:48:47] oh. Here it comes.

[00:48:50] Diana White: What? I mean, you have formed so much knowledge. What have you had to unlearn?

[00:48:57] Martin Salama: I had to unlearn that I don’t know everything. Mm-hmm. and that I’m not always

[00:49:02] Diana White: I love that. And that, and that is, that is hard for anyone to admit. But I, I got to say, I hate to keep bringing regional back up, but it’s particularly hard for a New Yorker, .

[00:49:14] Martin Salama: That’s right. That’s right. Forget about it.

[00:49:19] Diana White: So, so I applaud that for sure. Martin, it has been a pleasure. This, this has been a great episode for me because it has been, Not only enlightening, but affirming because a lot of the things you talk about, I had to get to through trial and error, and it just feels so good to know that there’s somebody out there.

[00:49:42] Diana White: You know, this is what we do. This is why we created 10 lessons so that people can learn from other people’s journeys. Right? And. I’m so glad you’re out there with your program, helping people go through these journeys and not do it the hard way or the hard-headed way. Right. That the way I did, as I should say.

[00:50:00] Martin Salama: Gotcha. Yep. Yep.

[00:50:02] Diana White: Oh, well, I want to thank my guest, Martin Salama for sharing his lessons with us today.

[00:50:08] Martin Salama: Thank you so much.

[00:50:09] Diana White: You, you are, you are amazing. And, and I’m, I’m probably going to be one of the first ones to get in there and buy the book. I tell you that.

[00:50:18] Martin Salama: Thank you. Oh, it’s easy to get the book. It’s easy to get the cards.

[00:50:20] Martin Salama: Let’s go to connect with martin.com.

[00:50:23] Diana White: Oh goodness. So, say it one more time for us so we can put it up on the screen.

[00:50:28] Martin Salama: Sure. It’s connectwithmartin.com. When you go there, you’ll. A link to the cards, a link to the pre-launch of the book, and when you get that, you’ll get the first three, you know, chapters and, and some, some free gifts.

[00:50:43] you’ll also get a link to, you know, if you want free gift, like imagine if I should told you, how would you like those seven Steps of the Warrior in a coloring book for adults.

[00:50:55] Diana White: Yeah. Yeah, I would like that. Oh lot.

[00:50:56] Martin Salama: And I also, I also have it there for kids too, cuz that’s what it started out as being. And then I made one for adults too. Oh wow. So those are some of the links when you go to connect with martin.com.

[00:51:05] Diana White: But, but we’ll get those affirmation cards too, right?

[00:51:08] Martin Salama: Well, they’re, they’re in the cards.

[00:51:10] Martin Salama: Oh, the cards are there Right at the top. You can link on it and, and buy the cards and get them shipped right to you.

[00:51:16] Diana White: I’d love it. I love. Thank you. You’ve been listening to 10 Lessons Learned. This episode is produced by Robert Hossary, supported as always by the Professional Development Forum. Please tell us what you think of today’s lessons.

[00:51:31] Diana White: You can email us at podcast@10lessonslearned.com. That’s podcast@10lessonslearned.com.

[00:51:40] Diana White: Go ahead and hit that like button subscribe and turn on the notification bell so you don’t miss an episode of the only show that makes the world wiser lesson by lesson. Thank you, Martin.

[00:51:53] Martin Salama: Thank you, Diana.

[00:51:55] Diana White: Be safe, everybody.

 This episode is produced by Robert Hossary. Sponsored as always by Professional Development Forum, which office insights, community or discussions, podcasts, parties, anything you want here, but they’re unique and it’s all free online. You can find the www.professionaldevelopmentforum.org you’ve heard from us we’d like to hear from you. Email us it’s podcast@10lessonslearned.com. Remember, this is the podcast the only podcast. That’s makes the world wiser lesson by lesson.