hello. Hello, vitality seekers, this is your host Caroline Schafer. Please help me welcome Natasha Wiebe and International Life Strategist and the founder of Fix Your life solutions. She grew up with polar opposite parents and household as the youngest sibling to neuro diverse and different physically abled foster siblings.

She experienced many perspectives early on. She became fascinated with relationship dynamics through all of this, and she studied psychology and also bartended through her education, which is an education all in itself. She questioned her patrons while they were still with their partners when they were so unhappy. She then became a certified ICF Coach. And NLP Practitioner has spoken at and hosted workshops, volunteered with at-risk youth and those who have been sexually assaulted or abused and taught them how to reclaim their minds.

Natasha has worked with people such as JT Fox and Jillian Michaels. Natasha has a huge passion for helping people to understand one another and to be understood, so their homes are filled with happiness, confidence, love, and this world is one of kindness, acceptance and peace.

Welcome to the Vitality Feed, Natasha. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I have a daughter who was a bartender. There's a lot of interesting information that you can learn about how the mind works during those vocations.

Tell us a little bit about your background, especially with growing up in such a diverse environment.

Yeah. So it was two different households. On my dad's side, I was an only child who was very old school farmer, John Wayne kind of personality.

And then on my mom's side, she was very new agey. I had my, yeah, my foster siblings. I have an adopted sister from Guatemala. I have bio and step siblings. So I really got to learn how to communicate with each person individually. Um, especially with neurodiversity and different physically abled. We learned sign language before we learned English, because it's a lot easier for infants to communicate through body language versus verbal.

So those micro facial expressions, the body language, all of that, I was so in tune with even as early as five years old. It just spurred, spurred this whole life and people go, oh, what got you into? I'm like, literally my whole life has been geared towards relationships, connection, communication, and the aspects of confidence came into play.

With the different challenges, of course, having two polar opposite parents, um, who had different focuses as well. Like I said, my dad had his farm. There was always something to fix on it. He was working full time. My mom had my different siblings who I helped out with. They had their own insecurities.

Now my, one of my adopted sister and my bio sister are the same age. But because one's neurodiverse and has some learning difficulties and the other one would be what we call neuro-typical. I remember one year her asking me and going, you know, why is so-and-so and I so different, we're the same age?

Even her ability to pick out and notice that there were challenges. And so it's like, okay, How do we communicate? How do we empower? Especially people who are neurodiverse and who have different abilities. Because even if, you know, it's the same way in school, even if someone doesn't have say books smarts, there's street smarts, there's emotional IQ.

Like there's all these different skills and talents we have. But because we're not the same as someone else. Sometimes we can internalize that. I love that I have to interject something. I you're the first person who has ever verbalize that because I always say the same thing. Smart is n interesting term.

There's so many facets, you can be smart in one thing and not smart, nothing that doesn't make you smarter than the other person somebody could, you know, get on jeopardy and kill it. But that doesn't necessarily. You know, if you got on a stranded island that they're gonna survive better than somebody.

You know what I'm saying? So everybody has their knowledge base, one's not better than the other. It's just different. Absolutely.

One of my closest friends has three kids and they all think so differently.

And because of that, they don't always get along, but one is very strategic, very book-smart like ha incredible mind, the way that they perceive things and everything. Another, the youngest is so creative and the ability to draw, the aspects that she picks out of life. And so they get along very differently because they don't understand the way.

Right. There's the middle child who has the most amazing heart. And it's just, again, a person who's very, very quiet, not very book-smart. And when it comes to she, I guess, but heart compassion, the concepts that they pick out and I'm like, you three might not get along right now, but I'm like, but when you learn how to understand each other's perspectives and work together on it, you three are going to change the world.

And they'll have that diversity of experiencing that and, and those relationship building skills of all the years growing up to be able to handle when they get to be an adult, all the diversity that's out there that they're gonna, meet every single day.

And I think that, you and I were talking about relationship building as well. And part of that has to go to communication, you know, to not deny people's experience or perspective, just because it's not one a say the most typical or natural modality, it's the same way as people talk about. VAX, uh, VAX as in visual auditory, kinesthetic, you know, which way that we see the world.

Some people are very visual. I were to get you to explain a story and say, and you, and I'd be like, oh, did you like, can you see how that would happen? You, if you're not visual, that question might not resonate for you. Absolutely. If you are kinesthetic and I go, do you don't you just get that sense of, and when you say it like that, if a person's kinesthetic, they're going to understand it. But if a person's visual they're like, well, no, I don't feel like that's not my go-to modality. So, it's all these different aspects of personality, of learning of world interaction.

You make a valid point about all the different ways. And I think that is problematic in school systems. Things need to be taught in all the various ways people absorb. I'm a very visual learner, I have an art background but I had a difficult time in school. I did. Okay. But, um, it wasn't until college where I figured out how I needed to learn. Um, and pick teachers just don't provide the different types of learning.

Most teachers teach through auditory. Like sometimes it's visual through drawings and things, but very rarely is it kinesthetic and most people are kinesthetic learners. It is a problem. Cause I think that's why a lot of kids just struggle so much in school.

I know that you have, a three-part foundations of relationship program; trust, confidence, and communication.

Can we talk a little bit about the trust factor? Absolutely. So they all go hand in hand trust. What a lot of people struggle with trust is that they don't trust themselves. They experienced an event. And they blame themselves for not being able to handle it or for getting themselves into that situation when really each and every person does the absolute best they can in that given moment.

And you know, when you get into a, we'll say a discussion or debate with someone, and then sometimes it's an argument. But afterwards you leave that discussion and it's like, I could have said this. I could have said that, or I shouldn't. And there's all these could've should've would've right. There's also when people react to a say trauma or stress, right.

Stress shuts down the brain's ability to think it goes into fight flight freeze or fawn, fawn being people. And all of those are perfectly natural responses. The thing is once we get out of that adrenaline, We go, well, that's not how I typically act. Well, no, because your brain basically went down to its most basic function of survival.

Right? So whenever you need it to survive. So when it comes to trust, a lot of that has to come to trusting ourselves. Which again, ties into confidence. If we have confidence in ourselves, we're going to trust ourselves in the decisions. Um, and then we also have the ability to trust o

ther people more.

Cause we know what, how that's like, we know how we experienced that. Again, if we don't have proper communication with other people, there's going to be a sense of mistrust because something's misunderstood. Right. So if, if you and I were having a discussion and I'm telling this story and you don't fully understand it, but you don't have the confidence to be like, Hey, did you mean this?

So one of my favorite recommendations for people to check in with someone is if you don't understand something. Or if, if you're offended by something instead of reacting right away, come from the space of, and ask the question. What was your intention with that statement? Or what was your intention with that action?

By asking the intention, we then get to be able to clarify what that person's real meaning is because most people are not trying to tear down another. That is such an awesome piece of information, I want to put this on a billboard, so many arguments would be ruled out like the amount of happiness that that could inspire if everyone, oh, that just blew my mind.

If everyone did that, just clarified what peoples, especially with texts, And, um, I have a good friend, Rory shout out to him that he's been pushing me to do audible texting because this way, your voice messages, vocally, your inflections are heard, and the message usually gets delivered better than the message would if you just texted out. Cause a lot of times that can be portrayed in a bad.

Yeah, I find that my sentences tend to be quite blunt or abrupt. And whether that's because of sign language and there's not a word for every single thing signed for every single word, uh, or. When you're communicating with neurodiverse people to it's typically basic very, to the point sentences.

So I love voice notes and audible messages because yeah, people can hear my smile. They can hear my laughter. Whereas when I text her, like that person was a, B TCH. I agree, but I grew up in a household with communication. I was almost on the comedy level because nobody ever listened, nobody cared about their words and everything got miscommunicated. It was just a given, it was literally just a given. Boy, I can't imagine growing up as everybody understood and actually put that into action. It'd be completely a opposite. Well, not to mention that we're also only at the moment talking about people who are speaking the same languages, right?

When we, when we start to include people who have English as a second language or who have different cultures. So one, one example being I was at. Beautiful. Three-day business coaching event. There was about 30 of us. There was one woman, such an amazing spirit, absolutely adored her. We got along so well the last day.

And, and I was, I was watching her. She was just going from, you know, each person chatting a little bit, and each person was lighting up. When, when she came over to them, I refer to those as energy givers. Yeah, well, and so she came over to me and I was like, I appreciate you so much. I was like, you remind me of this beautiful butterfly and a weird look crossed her face.

And she was like, thank you. And, and I caught the little. But at the same time, I was like, well, I also don't want to check and be like, you got a weird look on your face.

Thankfully. So this was the last day of the workshop, but thankfully she trusted me enough that as we were leaving the hotel the next morning and checking out and she comes up to me, she's like, I have to ask you something. What did you mean when you called me a buttercup? And so I told her, I was like, because you know, when, when you're going to each person, you bring, you have this grace and this beauty, and when a person sees you, they laid up and she's like, oh yeah, in Chinese culture, it means a slut.

Oh, my gosh. That's hysterical. I did not know that. That is such a perfect example story. Like you can't get any more perfect than that. Holy, I had been like her husband was there. She's very conservative, but she'd been married for like 12 years at this. And I was like, and I just had to say it, as soon as it got over my shock, I was like, thank you so much for, for checking in and asking me and trusting me to ask.

I was like, I would have never known. And you would have thought that I was insulting you in some way. So, yeah. Wow. You know, it's so funny because when we had that talking point of trust, Nothing that I had envisioned came up. The first thing he was talking about, trusting yourself, who thinks of that, that is beautiful.

Always better to look inward than outward because people are so much more tempted to blame others. So that was really neat. And then such a great nugget to clarify what people's statement or questions are their intentions. Um, Gosh, I love that so much. So our second talking point here is confidence. Talk to me a little about that.

Yeah. So when a person has inner confidence again. So for me, I always focus on building the relationship with ourselves because, and happy and empowered person does not tear down another. And so we get to create change by, and this kind of goes to my, my signature has tags, um, fix their life, or sorry, fix your life.

Fix. Yep. And this goes to when, when people are confident, they raise confident, empower children because they know how to build up. And so with confidence when it comes to inner confidence, again and again, the three of these tied together. So when it goes to trust, but confidence ourselves is about knowing our core values and living.

So when we know our core values, it's that inner sense of integrity. So for example, my three core values are determined, curious, and true. These three things come across in everything I do. And even if something doesn't go according to plan, say I have good intentions and I try and help a friend. But they don't receive it that way.

And I go, okay, well, I was curious about solutions. I was acting true to myself and I was determined to help them, you know, or I was determined to at least try and find solutions. And so when anything that we do, if we. If we act from our own internal values, that gives us confidence. Because again, even if something doesn't work out, like if we chose one job over another, well, that one aligned with my values.

It didn't work out in the end, but at least I was as true to myself as I could be. And now I just take those lessons moving forward. The moment that confidence breaks down is when we step out of integrity. So when we step out of integrity with ourselves and this can be when we're settling in relationships, you know?

So if we accept a partner saying that's so stupid, why would you do that? You know, if I have confidence, I'm not going to tolerate someone speaking to me like that. And if I'm living of my own values, I'm going to stay true to myself and I'm going to be like, okay, you can ask how silly that was, or you can ask me why I would do that because it doesn't make sense to you, but in no way, will I ever accept or tolerate being called stupid or having stupid referred to me?

Because again, we all think differently. We all have different experiences and perspectives, right? Part of that is having the confidence and also setting those boundaries. Each kind of nugget, so that trust, confidence and communication, each of those breakdowns come into their own three separate individuals too.

So when it comes to confidence, typically, it's what are someone's values? Helps them set their boundaries. And it's about knowing the roles. We play, the roles that we enjoy playing the roles that we tolerate playing and the ones we don't like. So roles of all sorts. If you think of a parent, you know, they are a parent, they are a partner, their mentor, their taxi driver chauffer me.

So there's all these different components and who we act with our partner is not going to be the same that we act towards our boss or our employee. So none of those are any less authentic. They're just different facets of her personality. Again, part of that is being clear on the roles that we play.

Are we attributing certain characteristics? You know, when it comes to say a certain coworker, am I putting myself as less than because of an insecurity or am I raising myself to be an equal. When it comes to, say a boss, am I allowing myself to be treated as less than, or to be talked down to?

And what type of role do I need to adapt in order to make sure that that's still an empowering one that is very true, a hundred percent I'm right there with you. Gosh, I don't think most people think about, I mean, I guess that's why you're here. Right? Most people do not go down these avenues in thought they don't think about this process.

And then the last part is communication, which I just think is pretty much the key to life. Because if you don't communicate well, which I think is just heading down such a horrible path, more in this generation than any other, just because of people hide behind their phones and the laptops.

We talked about before you don't get. Choose those of the inflections in your voice or the nonverbal communication so it makes it a lot harder. People can falsify information a lot.

And a lot of people aren't confident to be themselves. So yeah, it truly is a breakdown, so you are very much needed, but what are some things, that can aid in communication? Communication, so again, it goes to intentions. It goes in to knowing people's modalities. If you can find out what the people that you're closest with, whether they are visual auditory, kinesthetic, you kind of look for those keywords and that can be challenging to do if you're not trained.

So that definitely helped by working with someone, if you are struggling with a relationship. The other aspect is love languages. People look at love languages as just for romantic. But if there's a friendship that I really want to nourish, I want to know their love language so that I can show them that they're appreciated.

That they're important to me, same thing with our kids. If we know their love language, when they're really stressed out, we know how to speak to them, and we know how to communicate in a way that they're going to receive that love or appreciation. Another part of it.

One of my favorite things to get clients to do is. If they find that there's a word that their partner is saying quite often, is asking what they, what their partner feels the opposite of that word is? So for example, And I just went through this exercise and, it was really interesting. So, I asked a friend or doing this, doing a journaling exercise, and I was thinking about family and I was like, okay, so what, what does family really boil down to for me?

Like what would be the one word that I would associate as its synonym? Or it's equivalent. And it wasn't until that I realized that the opposite of family to me is isolation and the synonym is belonging. Because I found that when I was thinking of family, I wasn't just thinking of my immediate family. I was also thinking of my clients, my friends, the support team.

And so this is, so it was community. Again, community boil down to belonging. When I asked my friend, I was like, okay, what, what would you say is the equivalent of family and what is the opposite to you? And so they said that the opposite of family is disconnect and the synonym would be unity, which is really interesting because when I had also done this exercise for the word relationships, those were the two words that I had for relationships.

Wow. That is wild. But I love that exercise. Like we all need to implement this.

So that is really neat. Something that I don't do, but I definitely am going to try to implement. I actually heard another neat little strategy this morning. During, during a podcast I was listening to, and they said that you, when you think about people try to come up with 10 positive things about them. And I think it would be a really cool challenge if everybody like two, a day, two people a day and find 10 positive things about them. And things like that, communicating well and your intentions and thinking of people in a better way. It just all adds up to good relationships, which is what you are all about.

So last question is our signature question. If there was one thing in this world, that you could remove from this earth forever, what would it be? I would say insecurity because again, when insecurity removed, you don't have greed. You don't have someone trying to control other people. You don't have worse being started because everyone's just happy with what they have and with helping other people, because there's no need to compete. There's no need to compare, there's no need to hoard. So I would say insecurity goes, goes to all of it. There's no need to bully.

That's true all the things that you've talked about, the trust, the confidence, the communication. And I'm thinking of some specific people, their insecurity gets worse and worse and worse if, they're on a not so good path.

And then if you're on a better path that just grows and grows and grows because you surround yourself with better people. When you're insecure, I felt like it almost domino effects. Do you feel that? Yeah. And the other thing is if insecurity was gone, there wouldn't be assault or abuse.

Right? So when you take that away, people know that be able to have the relationships that they want or that they're comfortable waiting until they're. It's just that they want, or again, they are empowered. And so they don't go into my dynamic.

To add to the exercise that you had mentioned about the 10 things that you appreciate about someone. If you really want to change your relationships with people that you don't necessarily get along with and send them and send them three of them. Whoa, boom. That. That is the season of what it's all about. Isn't it? That's a giving of the heart and that's beautiful. Cause it's real easy to find things up from which people that you like.

But not so much people that. That's not even like, but just maybe have a little more of an agitation with, and then to tell them, and you know, that's the domino effect too. Like once you start doing that, hopefully the other person would reciprocate and then they might tell somebody else, and it's kind of like buying someone's coffee online, you know what I mean?

It starts that that whole funnel effect thing and that's really awesome. And a beautiful holiday thought, and I'm hoping all our listeners will take part in that and do some of these activities because it truly can help you so much with your mental state and building relationships in such a good way.

And gosh knows we all could use that, but, tell our listeners where they can contact. Yeah, so I can be reached if you want to do it through email@infoatfixyourlife.ca or you can connect with me on LinkedIn, which is linkedin.com/in/fixyourlife. Or Natasha Wiebe you can search on there. And, or if you're on Instagram, it's the Eggless Perspective.

The Egoless Perspective, that's a really cool name too. I love it. Thank you, Natasha. You've been fascinating to have on our show today. So much good information. Like I said, I really hope people implement this. That's what it's all about. It's about change. And speaking of, I want everyone to remember, life has no remote, so get up and change it yourself.

Thank you. Thank you.