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Dana is a seasoned mortgage professional with 30+ years of mortgage lending experience as a senior/executive manager in sales, marketing, and lending operations. Her expertise includes development of high performing teams, creating sales growth and strategy, perfecting and implementing solutions to streamline new loan production, new programs, and product development as well as managing large-scale mortgage operations. She has a deep background in mortgage consulting, including compliance, end-to-end business reviews, and the development of targeted and strategic work effort plans. She has worked in all channels of the mortgage business with the last few years focused on the Private Lending/Business Purpose Entity lending space.

She is an avid speaker/presenter at numerous mortgage industry events and believes in deep advocacy for education in the mortgage lending space. Dana is a published author, with some of her most recent articles appearing in Mortgage Women Magazine, Originate Report, and DealMaker Magazine. She is actively involved with Habitat for Humanity in her local area as a financial counselor helping families achieve their dream of homeownership. She lives in the East Texas area on a small ranch with her husband Sean, their two Labradors, and numerous other ranch animals.

 

In this episode, Steve and Dana discuss:

  • Navigating Transitions
  • Accepting Discomfort
  • Embracing Lack of Control
  • Overcoming Fear and Embracing Change
  • The Power of Choice and Perspective

Key Takeaways:

  • Embrace change for personal growth to unlock new opportunities and potential
  • Navigate transitions and change to thrive in both personal and professional life
  • Understand and accept transitions to adapt and flourish in ever-changing circumstances
  • Manifest the right mindset in accepting discomfort; growth often occurs in uncomfortable situations
  • Explore the power of choice, perspective, and redefining one’s tribe

 

“Just trust yourself. Trust yourself. There are things that are in every single person. They talk about it being the gut, right. And I think there is so much to that. Just trust yourself. And once you make that decision, stick with it.”

 - Dana Georgiou

Connect with Dana Georgiou:

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:



Dana Georgiou- What We Can Control              

            

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Insight Interviews for the week. As usual, I get pretty excited about these. Today, I get to bring a friend and a guest back by popular demand is Dana Georgiou. Dana, say hi to the Insight Interview world again.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks for having me back, Steve.

Yeah, I'm super excited. You know, from the first time that we were together, I gotta say, Dana, there are some people in my life, like, we linked in, we started communicating, like, I dig this person. And so, then you and I had another conversation. We were like, you had a topic, and I was like, oh, my God, we got to get that recorded because I think it's super relevant for people. So, want to just dive into it?

Yeah, let's do that.

Well, it might be helpful again if maybe you, because I've got some specific questions for you, but maybe give us a quick update. Give us a thumbnail of who you are. There might be not people who know who you are and maybe a little bit about your background and where you kind of are in life now, because that's going to be germane to the topic that we bring up.        

Yeah, absolutely. My name is Dana Georgiou. I have been a 30 plus year mortgage industry veteran. Really the last couple of handfuls, specifically in the private lending sector, right? Really focusing on business purpose types of loans. And to your point, not only has the mortgage industry as a whole been transforming and changing and adapting and all of those things, but really in the private sector as well. So, I've had quite a bit of movement, which is unusual for someone like me. There's some uncomfortableness when I look at my employment history, I guess is the right way to frame that over the past couple of years because there's been some jumping. And so, I thought that would be a really great thing maybe to talk about, because I think from a personal perspective, it makes me a little uncomfortable of how people view that, and then I take a step back and I look at what has happened over these last couple of years and all of the cool things that has now brought me into this whole new place of my life. And so, I thought it would be fun just kind of talk about that and maybe give a little insight of how I've navigated it and maybe that works for somebody else or sparks something for someone, or even with the dialogue that we have that you even challenge that perspective. So, that’s where I am right now.

Yeah, I can't wait. I summarize that into the concept of transitions. You've been through some transitions, you've jumped, right? Like you say, you've jumped from this to that, you found yourself, and there are some people that find themselves in transitions. And so, Dana, I will tell you, the work that I do as a coach and literally the book that I wrote on still the lizard, when I understood whenever that was more than a decade ago, what the lizard brain was all about, the lizard brain, for those of you that don't know that I studied the lizard brain, but the lizard brain is a mental construct. There's a bunch of people that debate whether or not it even exists and people that have gotten mad at me and blah, blah, blah, but it's a construct of the mind that basically states that we have this construct- we have this thing in us that protects our survival. And in order to protect our survival, the lizard does four things. It looks for familiarity, it looks to be right, it looks to make habits, and it looks to control. So, when you think of those four characteristics, familiarity, being right, habits and control, and you then come into our podcast and go, no, I've gone through a lot of changes and jumps, well, changes in and of themselves challenge this mental concept. We have a whole part of us, Dana, that's going don't change, right?

Yeah.        

And which would be great, but we don't live in a world like that. In the mortgage and real estate, financial services, whatever it is, frankly, any world, yes, you were in mortgage, but there are a lot of people listening that they might be in education, whatever the world is, the world will deal you changes.

100%.

And so we get to talk to you, because if I heard you right, you were dealt changes, and it was just, you were such a thoughtful person, you not only went through the changes, you observed yourself going through the changes, so you get to encourage us today. What's it like thinking that your life is going to go in one direction and then it doesn't? What's that actually like? So that we can be encouraged and go, oh, I can do it. When you hear that, I'd love to, yeah, let's dialogue about that.

Yeah. Listen, I think there's two places that you can come from, right? You can come from a place of fear and resist it, and I don't want it. That rarely changes anything because change is going to come whether you necessarily want it to or not. And I think through my years of being in different roles or frankly, just growing up, right Steve? You just have a different mind about change. And I embrace it, not just for the sake of change, but when it comes and it presents itself, I really try to look at it from the angle of, okay, why is it coming at this particular time? Is there something that I have been creating from my own mind, right?  The energy that I put out? I 100% believe in a mindset of what I'm putting out, I am receiving. So, if I'm consistently putting the thoughts out there of things that I want, those things are going to be returned to me. You can call it law of attraction. There's law of manifestation. All of those different things that you possibly could label to it. For me, it's just an energy of the way that I believe that works. And so, I have to wonder, when change comes my way, have I consciously been putting this out there or have I subconsciously been putting it out there? And I think there's been a lot of different examples that both have occurred, especially over the last couple of years. So just from a framing, from a professional perspective, I've now sat in four different companies over the last couple of years. The previous ten years, I hadn't sat in that many companies, right? And so that's a lot of change. Now, those changes evolved from one to the next. Some were forced. The company is no longer in existence. Well, when that happens, change is inevitable. You can't just sit and wish the company was still in the same place that it was, because it is no longer. So, I had to get really uncomfortable for a little bit, thinking from a perception of, wow, how is this viewed from a professional perspective? Because I'm in the peak of my leadership journey and growing still as a leader and wanting to contribute as a leader, and when I look at someone else's resume, for example, or their history and see kind of jumping, does it give me pause? Does it make me uncomfortable as the hiring manager? And so, I was really trying to look at the way that all this was coming about from every angle possible, personal, how it affected me, how it was making me feel. Professionally, what was my viewpoint about it personally? And then professionally, what was my viewpoint about it if I was observing someone else going through all of this? And I'll tell you, that last part is a unique add on, because I don't know that I would have done that just a couple of years ago if I would actually have looked at it from a viewpoint other than my own personal viewpoint. Kind of stand outside of something, if you will.

Untitled design (10)-3 

Yeah, I can't wait to get that add on. Again, I don't mean to interrupt you, but if I don't grab this, it'll pass. I got to grab something that you said, and I want to move out of just the theoretical here, but you did say something about the discomfort, and I wish you'd talk more about that. Like, you accepted the discomfort of all of this, and you might go like, oh, yeah, we just have to accept the discomfort. But I want to pause and go, oh, really, Dana? Just accept the discomfort? Like, there are so many of us who that might sound like some theory, but when we're in it, I feel like we live in this culture, in this world, like, we're doing everything we can to not be in discomfort. So, what's it like for you, anyway, as you sort of were thrust into this discomfort? Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you accepted it. What was it like to accept the discomfort of these changes?

Yeah, I think, like, with most humans, I think most humans, anything uncomfortable at first, there is a resistance, right? And I'm like, no, I'm just going to push that away for a second. It's really not my reality. And so, for me, it was fairly brief, I think, of going, no, that's not really happening, right? Let's just live in that little wonderful unicorn world. And then I was like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to stay there very long because I have bills to pay and things that I have to do that actually bring me back to a reality standpoint. And then I just kept thinking in my head, wait a second. All of the time, through your whole life, whether it's been personal or professional, the place where you've had the most growth has been in the change. So, I was like, all right, self, if I'm recognizing that's where the most growth is, I'm in a place right now that is changing, and it's changing quickly, then the acceptance had to come quicker, right? I just couldn't sit in the fact that I didn't want it to change, I just had to accept that it was. And so, once I had that acceptance, it's like, okay, now how do I move through this? What's the lens in which I can navigate this change and from that lens in the past? And so, it's not an easy thing.

                                                                                                 
"I think most people can't just go, yes, it is what it is. That's a famous saying, right? It is what it is. I've even seen people tattooed that on themselves. Like, it is what it is. I don't believe things are what they are. It is what it is. They are what you make them to be."

And so, once I decided, and my brain is like, I am going to make this change a growth opportunity, then it just set this whole new cycle for me that it just wasn't as uncomfortable as I was trying to make it to be.


Yeah. Oh, my gosh. There's an insight in there that usually I wait till the end because I'm taking notes and I draw those out and I'm like, hey, folks, did you hear that one? But, Dana, this is something that I'm going to take into my own life and into my own coaching, and I'm going to totally swipe it and adapt it and give you no credit. I'm going to pretend like I made it up. I just want you to know.

I love it.

No, I'll give you all the credit in the world. You said, you know the saying, it is what it is, I don't believe that. And then I think if I heard you right, the reason you don't believe that is because that concept and the attitude and the positioning and posture and really, worldview of it is what it is, is a relinquishing of an ability to craft and make and create and generate something. So, it's not what it is. You and I have to create a bumper sticker. It's not what it is.

It is not what it is, it's what I make it to be. It's what I believe it to be. It's what I decide it to be and what I create it to be. It's funny because I say I have all the control in that statement, but I truly believe I have no control over the universe, right? But what I do have control of is my emotions and my thoughts and the things that I am putting out into the universe. I control all of those things. I choose to react in a negative way or from a place of fear, it's going to be a really difficult process, whereas if I try to reverse engineer that and really pull it internally and go, okay, why am I feeling fear about this? Is it because it's an unknown? Or maybe it's unknown and I didn't like the outcome last time, and so this time it's raising up some fear of, okay, either don't do it that same way, or if you do it that same way, you're going to end up with the same result, right? So all of those things, I think, are true from the, yeah, I don't subscribe to the it is what it is. It is what I make it. It is what I decide it to be. It is what I think it to be.        

Well, I just certainly hope that people get to, that's what's cool about a podcast, right? We can pause, you can rewind, go listen to that again. I want to listen to that again.  I don't mean to put words in your mouth and if you and I were talking about the lizard brain, at least I was, right? Familiarity, being right, habits and control. So sometimes people think when we're in a coaching engagement that I'm going to help you be more in control, and actually, what I've come to understand about control is, I think what I'm trying to do in my own life and with other people is help us all realize that we can operate effectively knowing that we're not in control.

I agree.

You can't be in control. Okay. The company is shutting down. Interest rates went to this. The economy is like that. Politics are like this, the world's like this. There ain't no amount of nothing you can do to control those things.        

There is not. No. I just get to control how I respond to those things, how I feel about those things, and then how I let that impact my next action about things.

Which is a very stoic, that's what the stoics, one of the key stoic concepts, which is, that's becoming a theme for us. The stoics spoke about really beginning to understand what it is you can control and what you can't. I believe in my own life that a lot of pain, unnecessary pain, there's necessary and unnecessary, unnecessary pain exists in my own life because I'm still not clear on what I control and what I can't.

Yeah.

And so, you are reminding me today, like, actually how something can happen and over the space of time, what I can control is my response to it.

Mmhmm.

And that's what you're getting better at and you're seeing this and as a result, sounds like these changes, and I'd love to hear you talk about that. You've been navigating them more effectively and that's why we're here, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's part of just like any one personal journey is hopefully there's growth. And from the first time that you and I met and then I picked up your book and read it and I was like, oh, there's a lot of aha in stuff in there for me and then some other coaches that I've had the privilege of having some recent conversations with and just some of those little nuggets of people, right? Like, you don't necessarily have to take one thing or one collective thing. It's only pieces that resonate for you, right? And so, there's been things that people have said to me that I'm like, you know, I see their perspective, I hear that point of view, but for me, that's not a practical application, if you will. I just don't see me implementing that with success and maybe I just was not really bought in, or I just didn't see the value at the time. And then there's things that I've come back to several years later, like, dang, I really wish I had taken that little nugget eight years ago and put that one into place. But I think that's kind of part of the whole growth and transition and, yeah, for me, for the last couple of years, it's been a lot of that. Listen, I think on the positive side of things, it's not been all positive, it's been difficult to navigate some of this. When a company closes and you lose your job and you're not sure based on where the market is, and quite frankly, I'm going to say this, too, the age and the place of where I am in my career, that there's going to be another opportunity coming up, that creates some fear, right? And you either have to push that down and be able to either reinvent the way that you feel about it and say, no, none of those things matter, this is the value that I bring, and so, the opportunity is going to align with the value that I bring, then you're kind of working to create your own destiny. And that's really the place that I am today is that I have finally gotten to the point that, one, having everybody else be in control from a professional perspective is no longer where I want to be. And so, I'm stepping out and starting my own company with a partner, and not only just unbelievably excited about it, but the timing of where it is from a professional perspective. And people are like, wait a second, you're going to do what in this market, in this industry? Are you crazy? It is the exact perfect timing. The exact perfect timing. So, yeah, really excited about kind of what those last two years have brought in and the way that they've come in and out, the uncomfortableness, the places that I've come back to, the thoughts that I've been forced to learn or the forced to think about, I guess, and sit with, and really make some decisions about who I am, what I want to be and when I grow up, right? I love that. I turned 57 in December, this past December, Steve. And I'm like, am I at the best part of my career? Am I at the back half of my career? Am I at the back half of my life? I got two new grandbabies this year.   

                                                                                                         
"There's been a lot of stuff going on, and I feel better than I have in my entire life, physically, spiritually, mentally, like all of those things are just right here, and I realize it's because of the work that's been being done over the last couple of years, and it's been really intentional. And I think that's the biggest takeaway is the intention of things."


Oh, my goodness. Well, like we do in this podcast, I'm sitting here taking notes, and I'm like, I wonder which rabbit hole to jump in there, Dana? I will tell you that when I first started to be more of a student of neuroscience and I started to take classes and stuff, it's so interesting, this concept of neuroplasticity. Plasticity is all about how the human brain changes, and you don't have to go back very far, literally, to the which in the great scheme of things. I know for some people, that'll sound like a long time ago, but it really wasn't from a scientific perspective. But not too long ago, they thought that the adult human brain didn't change. After adolescence, we were largely fixed. And as it turns out, the brain morphs and changes and has regeneration even, until the day we're dead. So, we have sayings in English, Dana. Here's one that I just tell people about. Here's a saying, and you can finish it. You can't teach an old dog -

New tricks.

I want everyone to know that that's neurobiologically inaccurate, and you're living proof that we keep changing. And if we can see these things as lessons, then we get to use our cumulative knowledge to see them as opportunities. And so, I don't just whimsically tell people, Dana, you know, your best is yet to come. That's not just some lackadaisical encouragement. It's a fact. It could be a fact depending on how you interpret your next days, right? And it sounds to me like what you're learning is to go, wow, I can take this knowledge, understand, see things differently, and should you choose to do that, your best days are yet to come.

My favorite quote of all time, I write it on birthday cards, anniversary cards, I have it on different things throughout my home, is come grow old with me, the best is yet to be, because I truly believe that. I think every year that continues to go by and whether that's professionally or personally, the best still can come if you're open to it coming, right? And you're participating.

But that's a pretty big if.

Yeah, it is a big if.

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I'm sorry. I know some 60 some odd year old's and 70 some odd year old's who are so excited about what they're going to learn, and to be honest, I know some mid 20 people who have a fixed mindset. And as crazy as it sounds, you get to choose.

You do. It's the difference between it is what it is, and it is what I make it, right?

I know, but I've met some younger people who are like, I just am who I am.

Yeah, it's funny that you say that, because I have two 20 something year old daughters. Neither one of them subscribe to that mindset, thank goodness, but they do have friends, and when I hear that, I'm like, oh, what I wouldn't give to be back in 23 knowing what I know now, because the next level that I could get, right? I'm already at this level in my mid-50s. If I had started this journey and didn't have that fixed mindset when I was 20, what was my potential? What did I miss? And so, I tell them all the time, oh, child of mine, please open that beautiful mind of yours, because it is not just fixed.

Yeah, well, and again, there's so many juicy ironies here, not only is it not fixed, and again, I don't mean to put words in your mouth, I'd love to hear you speak about this. Part of what I think I'm hearing you say is, and I have to ask you a question, have you failed at things?

Oh, my gosh. More than I've accomplished, probably, yeah.

But hearing you talk today, we live in this culture, I know I sound like an old guy in a log, and for the record, we're the exact same age. I think we talked about that. Whatever. And I love it when you meet someone who's 57 and they refer to themselves as middle aged, and then I think, well, that's a math problem. You know, we're not in the middle? Unless you're planning on being 114, which maybe, you could.

I don't know. I had a grandfather who was 104, so you never know.

I know, but I still meet people who are 67, and they're talking about middle aged, and I'm going, yeah, that's...        

Not so much middle anymore, I don't think. Sorry.

But it's okay. Right? Their best is yet to come, too.        

True.

But with regard to those people who have a fixed mindset, maybe it becomes fixed because we do everything not to fail, and when we do fail, we don't sometimes see the failure as this next opportunity, which, by the way, is the choice.

It is the choice.

But failure for so many people is like this, and again, this. Dr. Daniel Siegel talks about this in terms of temporal integration, right? You could be in the real estate space or financial services mortgage space right now, and this happened, that happened, and you feel like a failure. Well, yeah. Maybe you did fail at something. Maybe the company failed. The failure is there. How will you read that? And the cool thing that I'm hearing you say is, interestingly, you get to pick, and it could be that's you go back to Thomas Edison, right? He failed. His whole quote about, I didn't just get the light bulb, I had to fail. He failed a thousand times, and his failures, to him, were, like, awesome.        
            
Yeah. And every single time, it kept over and over until he created something extraordinary. I mean, Hershey, same way, right? Dude filed bankruptcy four times, and everyone knows Hershey. I had this conversation recently that failure is a lot more public than it used to be, Steve. And I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. I think part of what it is today is it can be seen way more than it used to. You used to be able to fail in private, maybe kind of push that around and not have to deal with it a little bit, and just suddenly now, you got something new going. It's a lot more public now. And maybe from a mindset perspective, it fades away quicker, too, because there's so much happening in the world and from, you know, public viewpoint. So, you know, maybe it is more public, but people have shorter memories, or they're just moving on to the next best thing, or they just don't see it for as long, I don't know. But I think that there's this element that not only are people afraid to fail, but they're afraid to fail because people are seeing it in a much broader way, and that's an overwhelming type of feeling. I can see my younger self being almost paralyzed by that thought. And again, I think it's from the learning and the age that I've put on is that's just not so scary anymore, because I just don't, and I know this sounds a little crass, but I just don't care what people see or think about that, because what really matters is the way that I see and think about it and how I move forward from it. But I recognize not everybody can have that or has that same approach and opinion that they need to value their own thoughts about what they're doing way more than what somebody else is placing on top of them.

Well, you just said something again. Failure is just so much more public. And then you said, I'd love to hear my thoughts. You know what my thoughts are on that? I don't know, but you got me going, you know, that'd be really cool. I bet there's some really great research done. I wrote that down. Like, I want to actually go research what some of the scientific journals say about public failure, and I just think that's such a cool concept. Dana, I can tell you that you say you don't care. I would tell you that I do care, I'm just getting better at recognizing, like, oh, look at me care about that. And I see know I own a company, right? And I have had that thought, like, God, if something failed here and whatever, and that got onto Facebook or TikTok, imagine what they could say. Like, I've had that thought, like, isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? Yeah. I can't help but think, you know, we're social animals. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg got to be who he was because he figured that out.

He did, indeed. Yeah.        

In a huge way, for better and for worse. But I think what I'm hearing you say is to put your own perspective on. You got to choose how you felt about that. And I think, again, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but your encouragement is, yeah, you might feel like a public failure, but did you know even that feeling gets to include your interpretation, your thoughts, and you get to choose what to do with that?

Yeah, I wish my younger self had known that, too, because there may have been different lessons executed different ways, for sure. And you're right, I think me saying I don't care, it's not that I don't care. Of course, I care about other humans and their thoughts and certainly how something I do potentially could impact them in any way, whether that's negative or positive, of course, I care about that. I have just come to a place that I care more about when a failure happens or something negative happens, I care more about how I am feeling about it and how I am responding to it and what standard can I set for myself and my girls and my grandbabies, where maybe they go, oh, yeah, maybe I just don't have to put as much thought over onto that when really, for me, I feel okay about it because this is all the great stuff that came out of that failure. Or here's the not great stuff that came out of it. Man, I'm not doing that again. That was colossal.

But that goes back to one of the thoughts that we had at the beginning here. Okay, so let's say you and I do this interview. We post it, which is going to happen. I can't wait. And two people, I don't know. I'm totally making this up, Dana, but two people write and go, yeah, that kind of sucked. I didn't like her, or me, for that matter. Let’s say that happens because that's what people fear, right? Like, the critique or whatever. What part of how they're feeling about what you're saying can you control?  

I control my entire being with it.

What part of their thoughts and feelings can you control?

None. Zero. Zip. I control none of that.

And what part of how what they say makes you feel and do and what part of that can you control?

100%. I can control 100% of how I feel about that. And listen, that's part of social media, right? I am pretty active out on social media, and I post some stuff that I think is fantastic. And I've had people make comments of, like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And the first part of it is like, dang, is it really the dumbest thing they've ever heard? Because that's pretty powerful statement right there. Or is it just that something is happening in their lives that they feel like they have to tear someone else down? And that's really the place that I have gotten to, is when someone is putting something out there negatively about someone else's work, is it just because they really do believe it's the dumbest thing? And that's a perspective certainly willing to they can share, or is there something else that's just going on in their life that they're just framing it because they don't want to deal with whatever it is, that it really is the dumbest thing going on, that they've probably created themselves? So, I discount it to a degree of, it makes me sad sometimes when the only thing that someone has to respond to when someone's putting themselves out there in whatever way that is, content, video, information, feeling, sharing, whatever, that you're compelled just to just take it out, take it down at its knees or whatever, as opposed to either not commenting or potentially commenting something positive, right? There are a million things that you could be looking at. Just move on, man. What is it that drives them?

Well, that's a whole other podcast episode. I actually think you alluded to it. A lot of times when people are doing that, it's their own crap, right? That's showing up in their view of others. But anyway, that's a whole other podcast. We're going to run out of time, and I want to do something a little bit odd, if it's okay with you. You've said a couple of times about younger Dana. I was going to ask you to really quickly, if you were going to teach a master class on transitions, how would you teach that class? But I think I'd rather frame it like this. Dana, today, I know I'm putting you on the spot, if there were some crucial things about going through transitions and change that you had the ability to speak to 27 year old Dana Georgiou, what would the two or three or, I don't know. I don't want to limit you, but what would be some of the key things with regard to transitions, changes, what would be those things that you would love to make sure younger Dana knows?        
            

The first thing that jumped into my head was, don't panic. Think for a second and feel it and let it circulate through all of the cells of your body. Maybe just not that one little mind. How's your heart feeling about it? Is there a soul piece of it? Right? There's so many more mechanics that I'm aware of today than I was in my early twenties, right? If something was cropping up that looked like a failure, my first instinct, my heart would race, and you'd feel like almost like this sense of panic and, you know, neuroscience, right? What happens when you're panicking? There's going to be a fight, a flight or a fight, right? Flight or fight or freeze. And so, I don't want any of those three. I don't want to fight. I certainly don't want to flight, and I don't want to freeze. And so, don't panic, just be able to just process, even if it's 5 seconds, right? And slow that process down. So, I think that would be the first thing that I would tell myself. And then the second thing I would say is, is anyone really going to give a crap about this in 5 minutes, five years, 50 years? I think there was a lot in my younger days where I looked at that lens through a lot of other people, whether that was family, friends, or otherwise, as opposed to how was I going to feel about it? When I look back in 5 minutes and five years and 50 years, would I be proud of the decision I made? Or would I have thought if you just spent a little more time in the process of it and being okay with it, being uncomfortable and not feeling like you had to make a decision because you were uncomfortable, I think that there's definitely things in my life that would have been different, whether they would have been better or worse, I can't answer that, right? I just know they would have been different. So don't panic. Don't feel like you have to make a decision right away. Listen, unless someone's bleeding in front of you, then make a decision. Right? You got to do something about that. But most things aren't a life and death situation. Thank goodness they're not. And then the third thing I would tell myself is, listen, girl, just trust yourself. Trust yourself. There are things that are in every single person, they talk about it being the gut, right? And I think there is so much to that. Just trust yourself. And once you make that decision, stick with it. You've listened, you've heard, you've felt, and maybe you've even had great people to share things with and talk things through. And I think the last thing that I would say is, find a tribe. I don't care if you're a girl, a guy, whatever you are. Find a tribe of like-minded people and not like-minded people. Some of the best things I've ever gotten out of my life are from not like minded people, because they've been able to share with me a different perspective that I had no way of knowing or seeing before, either from the way that I grew up or my heritage or whatever any of those things are that you get to have really radical, candid conversations that are heartfelt, meaningful, aren't intended to hurt anybody, that everybody gets to pull something away from. I didn't have a lot of that early on. I didn't trust myself to be that person, and I didn't trust enough in other people to let them be that for me. So those things. Just those things.

That's just so rich. All right, we're done. I will let that sit with people because, Dana, I have just so many. We're going to have to have you back again and again. Like, just the tribe thing alone. I loved what you said. There was such a cool paradox. Most people, when they think of tribes, they would have thought you would have said and find people that think like you and act like you and whatever, which is what most tribes are. Is there such a thing as a tribe where not everybody thinks alike and acts alike? Because how do we find that? Because if we can, oh the places we will go. But it's almost the definition of not a tribe. We're all going to think like this, whether that's religiously or politically, that's what tribes are. And I just heard you say, like, include in your tribe people that actually don't think everything that you think so that you can learn.

It's the word that pops into my head.

No, I dig it. Don't change it.

I think it should be. I think we should redefine the word tribe.

Okay. Well, Stephanie, my colleague, is going to have a field day trying to name this. Redefining tribe could be, like the name of our podcast. Don't panic. I was writing some things down. You did a really wonderful job of talking about contextualizing. That's the word I wrote down. Like, don't panic and then contextualize, like, wait a minute, pause and give space to it, which you have learned over time. So, look, I am so grateful for you. I think you have helped us all perhaps go through all these transitions a lot better. There's so much here and just, I'm super grateful for our time together, so thank you.

My pleasure, and thank you, as always. I'm always so grateful to how receptive you are to my ideas and thoughts and how engaged you get with them. I was writing notes of things as well as we were going through, so I appreciate you so much, Steve. Thank you.

Dana, this is going to be great. I can't wait to have it out there. Well, folks, like we do every time, maybe you're like me and as I was listening to Dana, I was going, oh, there's so much more here and in and of itself that might feel a little incomplete, but there's so much to chew on with regard to how we're growing, how we're going through transitions. And so, Dana, thank you again for the encouragements. I've got a lot to think about, and that's what the insight interview should be. We didn't maybe even conclude a bunch of stuff, we reached out there and hopefully created some great insights for others to have, so thank you. All right, folks, we will see you here next time on the insight interviews. We'll certainly let you know how to get a hold of Dana if you have any more questions for her, and again, see you next time on the insight interviews.        

 

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