Author Terry Warren Discusses THE ART OF CHOICE

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberg. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans right now are taking care of a vulnerable loved one. Maybe it's aging. Maybe it's a child with special needs.

Maybe it's somebody who lives with results of a trauma, like in my case, somebody with mental health issues or addiction issues, or there are just so many different kinds of issues that cause someone to be chronically impaired. But there's always a caregiver. And this show is dedicated to helping strengthen the family caregiver because healthy caregivers make better caregivers. I like to bring on interesting guests who bring a perspective for us as caregivers that I think will enhance our life, give us maybe the jumpstart we need, maybe the insights we need to make some critical decisions in our life.

One of those is my guest today. His name is Terry Warren. I've known him for many, many years and more years than probably either one of us want to admit. Terry's long time years of executive leadership in the healthcare industry, the insurance industries, financial industries.

He has been through the ringer when it comes to business decisions and working with teams and leading teams, all that above. And then he just started, he's going to pursue a real passion of his, which is art. And he's a prolific artist. I mean, visual artist.

I mean, just, I look at his paintings and I'm like, wow. And then on top of that, he's decided, okay, I'm going to write a book. And it's a wonderful combination of things that he's put in this book to offer us as insights. So he sat down with a bunch of leaders and executives of people who've weathered storms and got their stories and compiled that in a way that's going to make sense to us as we struggle along in our own journey of saying, okay, should we look at pursuing this?

Or what are some insights that I might need to know before starting my own business, whatever. Terry's done all these things and he's put it in a way that makes it simple for the rest of us. He's an executive coach, warrenexecutivecoach.com. As caregivers, I think this is part of the problem. We're going to jump into this with Terry. We put our life on hold. We put our businesses on hold while we would take care of someone. We're thinking, okay, we'll do this for several years and then we'll get back to our business. Well, it doesn't work that way.

And I've talked to more people who have been financially ruined because of this. And so I wanted just to pick Terry's brain a little bit today, talk about his book, talk about his art, his passion, his faith, all those things to enhance our life as caregivers, to learn from this man who has had this vast amount of experience. So Terry, welcome to the show. Thanks Peter. Glad to be here, man.

Good to see you. All right. Is that enough of an intro? That's plenty.

Thanks. Talk about this book a little bit. What prompted you to do this? Because I love the idea of just sitting down and listening to these stories of people who have done this, who are leaders in their field and so forth. What prompts you to take this on?

Peter, the real thing that started was through my coaching work, which I've been doing now for nine years, I noticed something. And that was every client who made an intentional choice to make a change, make a shift in behavior, whatever it might be. And we're willing to commit to that. And we're willing to be held accountable for that. They were a hundred percent successful.

And you know, my math a hundred percent is pretty good success rate. And I wanted to just find out if that was true for other people. And that started me on this journey of interviewing 21 leaders from all sorts of industry around the country about just tell me about a time in your life where you made a choice that impacted the rest of your life or career. And it could be a personal choice, a business choice.

It didn't matter. And once I had those stories, it was like, this needs to be shared because people can relate to stories. And so that really is what pushed me to go, you know what, I think this needs to be shared.

You hit on something. People relate to stories and that, you know, I look at the way even Jesus did this, you know, with his executive coaching, if you will, as he told stories, stories that have stuck around and people have written entire books on just a story that he told. But these things stick with people. They make a difference and they, and experience is worth a whole lot more than theory and opinion. And so by sitting down with people who've actually done this, who live this world, you're getting the benefit of their experience. Tell me about the combined experience of all the people that you interviewed.

Well, counting, I guess myself and the 21 people I interviewed, I was looking at this yesterday. There's over 600 years of experience. And I call that more than just business experience. It's 600 years of life. That's a lot of experience.

That is a lot of experience. I think that as caregivers, what happens with us is that we get lost in someone else's story and we put everything on hold in our life, our health, our mental health, our spiritual journey, our physical health, everything, and our professional health, our business health. And we throw ourselves into trying to control a situation that cannot be controlled while we let everything else slide in our life.

And one of the things that I push on the show is the business component of our life, the professional, the vocation. It's mighty hard to be a good caregiver if you're broke. And it's very difficult to provide for things. Resources don't necessarily make you happier as a caregiver. I know people who have vast amount of money, but they get bewildered along the caregiving journey as well. But it does make it easier to make certain decisions.

And your business does not have to plummet just because you're a caregiver. You may have to be creative. You may have to think, okay, I have to be close by. I've had to do this in my own life. I have to be close by to Gracie and I can't go and work at a nine to five job somewhere outside of this. Otherwise I'm going to have to subsidize me being in the home.

Okay. That's a given, but that doesn't mean I can't start a business. So in your years of coaching folks and your years in the business world, when somebody wants to start a business, there's somebody, if you were just sitting there talking to somebody just hypothetically, and I don't like to do hypotheticals because reality's hard enough.

I don't need hypotheticals. But if you were, if somebody came to you and said, you know, Terry, I'd like to start a business and I have some things that I'm doing. What would be the first starting point, first question you would ask them? Well, you know, one of the things that I like to talk to people about Peter, or I like to use a thought process called here and now to there and then. And the idea of there and then is visualizing what you think it would look like if you got there. Okay, so it's nice to have an idea that I'd like to have a business. But the closer you can get to say, here's what it would look like if I had that, you know, I'd live here, I'd have roughly this kind of income, I'd be doing whatever that looks like, the closer you can get to visualizing what that looks like, the more likely you can get there. Because then you can go, I'm here and now, right, this is where I am now. That's there.

And then what's in the gap between them? What has to happen to move me from here to there? So I like that thought process. If you're in the situation, say of a caregiver, or you just don't feel you can give all your effort to this endeavor. I don't think that should stop you.

I think there ought to be I'm a big believer in baby steps. You know, I don't know, Peter, if you've ever seen the movie, what about Bob memorized it? It's, it's Gracie's favorite movie. You know, Dr. Leo Marvin. Yes, exactly.

And I tell all my clients, go rent that movie if you haven't seen it. And because it's a good laugh, but there's a huge principle in that book that Dr. Marvin has called baby steps. And I believe that the road to anything that you want to do differently has to start with baby steps. And I think anybody in any spot can make some baby steps toward where they want to go. Well, I agree. And I've seen this in my own life when I launched out what I'm doing even right now talking with you. And I certainly didn't get here easily. And I'm still got a long ways to go, but I just started doing it. And I think this is one of the things I want my fellow caregivers to understand is you don't have to wait till you have ideal circumstances. You just do it. Have you found that the same thing translates into business that you just start doing it?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I was thinking about Peter. I know one time you, we had a conversation, you mentioned something about a fog.

And I was thinking about this, that there's a house that Beverly and I like to rent to go action. It's on a, it's on a pond. And one day I was sitting, there was nothing but fog. Now I've been in a canoe across this pond many times, and I knew roughly where the center was and how deep, you know, that kind of stuff. And I was thinking about, well, how do you get across a pond when there's nothing but fog? I mean, besides getting a car and drive the other side, right? But if you truly wanted to get across the boat and I said, well, you got to start with something, you know, and so what about I just go get in the canoe?

First of all, I got to get in the canoe. I'll never get to the other side. The next thing I know is that there are lily pads right by the close part of the pond. So I'll go to that. And then I'll head in this general direction because I know that's there. And if I get to that, I'll go in this other direction. And eventually by those little steps, I'm going in the right direction. It may not be the exact spot I thought I was going to land on the other side of the fog, but it's pretty close or it's directionally correct. And to me, that's an analogy of many times in life or business, we're in a fog. And how do you get out of that fog?

We'll start going somewhere, getting a canoe. And I think that applies. I talk about that a lot with the fog of caregivers, the fear, obligation and guilt. And the fear would probably be the universal thing that keeps people from taking that first step of, you know, I can do this.

I can do this. I look at people who've been successful in business and so forth. And I look and I say, you know, are they just that much smarter than me?

And I think it's not that. I think they just decided I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it successful and I'm going to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it, even if I fail. And I'm going to keep doing it and stick to it. And caregivers are notorious for being hard headed perseveres.

I mean, we keep showing up into a job that we don't even get paid for. So we can translate that set of skills. And that's something I wanted to ask you about as well from the book and just from your own journey of how can people learn to appreciate the skills they're using and then translate them over here into maybe building a business. And for example, with the caregiver, I asked my fellow caregivers, I said, well, tell me about your life. You show up regularly, consistently to take care of someone. That means a heightened sense of responsibility, which is an incredibly valuable asset in the business world. People who have initiative and responsibility, they don't have to be told to do something. You learn to be creative and flexible as a caregiver. You have to be. How important is that in the business world of being creative and flexible?

And so I go through this list of things that they do. And I want people to understand that they have options. Yeah, I'm not going to be a trauma surgeon at this point in my life.

I mean, I set realistic options, but I have options as a caregiver to not be locked into woe is me, that there is a path for me to develop something. We could do things that we never even dreamed of 30 years ago. You can do things in ways that people just didn't even think about when it comes to creating a business. I saw a picture of Jeff Bezos with Amazon, and it was taken back in the late nineties. And it showed a fold out table in a garage, I think upstairs. And it had a handmade banner with the swoosh of Amazon on it, where he started this business of Amazon.

And now he's worth a hundred something billion dollars. But he just, he had an idea and he started it. And I thought, okay, what can we learn from these kinds of things? And these kinds of people who have done this, and this is what you've gone around and you've done. When people read this book, Terry, what is it that you, at the end of this book, what is it that you hope that they're going to glean from this, that the transformation that'll be in their life?

I had to really boil it down. Uh, Peter, it would probably just be first, let's talk about mindset and that I want your mindset to be regardless of what's behind me, what's possible now. So, you know, you can dwell on the past, right? Or you can dwell on the circumstances, but what's possible because I am where I am today. And how can I think differently than maybe I've thought before? Because I think fresh perspectives help you look at things different.

So I think it's just, if I had to simply boil it down, it would be for someone to look at the book and leave it going. There are more possibilities for me than I ever thought. How important is mindset to success in business?

I won't say it's everything, but I'd say it is huge because you know, whether it's caregiving or it's in a business situation, anybody in business, it's in situations they may not like or a circumstance they may not have chosen, or they got passed over for something. And that's real. It's painful. It's real, but I can choose whether to live in that or not. And that's what this art of choice thing idea was, is that I have a choice about how I think about something. And so I'm going to choose to say, I don't like the circumstance, right?

I don't want to be there, but I don't have to live in that. I can find ways to live and thrive despite the circumstances. We're talking with Terry Warren, the art of choice. This is his new book, Terry's longtime business executive. He sat down with a whole bunch of others who have journeyed down similar paths and asked them their thoughts on this. So put all this into a book that you and I can glean from and learn from and make good decisions as we figure out, okay, what's next for us? We're caregivers. We're hamstrung with a few things. We've lost a little bit of our independence, but does that mean that we've lost our ability to create a successful business? And I don't think we have.

I think that there are opportunities, like Terry just said, that we haven't even dreamed of. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver. We'll be right back.

Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. In my three and a half decades as a caregiver, I have spent my share of nights in a hospital, sleeping in waiting rooms, on fold-out cots, chairs, even the floor, sometimes on sofas and a few times in the doghouse, but let's don't talk about that. As caregivers, we have to sleep at uncomfortable places, but we don't have to be miserable. We use pillows for mypillow.com.

These things are great. They have a patented interlocking field that adjusts to your individual sleep needs. And for caregivers trying to sleep in all the different places we have to sleep, believe me, our needs get ramped up significantly. Think about how clean your pillows are. In the COVID world, we're all fanatical about clean. Can you wash your pillows with mypillows from mypillow.com? We throw them in the washer and dryer.

We do it all the time. 10 year warranty guaranteed not to go flat. 60 day money back guarantee made in the USA. As a caregiver, you need rest. So start by going to mypillow.com, type in the promo code caregiver. You get 50% off the four pack, which includes two premium pillows and two go anywhere pillows. You'll also receive a discount on anything else on the website when using your promo code caregiver.

That's mypillow.com promo code caregiver. Peter Rosenberger. He's got a PhD in caregiving from the school of hard knocks. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregivers, for caregivers, about caregivers hosted by a caregiver. Now in my 35th year as a caregiver, bringing you a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline as you care for someone who is struggling with some type of chronic impairment.

How do we help you stay healthy? What is your path for you, even in the midst of this thing? And I've wrestled with some of these things myself. In fact, I've wrestled with all of these things myself.

I am the Wile E. Coyote of caregivers. If you could fail at it, I failed at it, but failure is a good teacher. And speaking of good teachers, I have with me my longtime friend, Terry Warren, who is bringing a lifetime of insights in the business world and experience that he has gleaned, not just from others that he's interviewed for this book, but from his own life. Management, creative coaching. He deals with individuals, deals with businesses. He does it all. And he's been a great friend for some time to Gracie and me.

And his new book is called The Art of Choice. And I'll tell you why that title is important as the conversation unfolds. But Terry, we were talking about the mindset. It's not as simple as a positive attitude where you have this, I'm just going to think positive thoughts. I think sometimes that becomes a little bit kind of cliche.

I think this is a mindset of gaining a perspective, like you said, and one of the things that your book is able to help us have is that perspective of people just like you and me, flesh and blood people who deal with their own kinds of issues and yet have discovered nuggets of wisdom along the way that led them into a successful business career, whether it's their own small mom and pop business or leading a large corporation, you've dealt with all of them. And so reiterate that perspective that, because I think caregivers are in this situation where you don't understand, I have to be on call all the time. I'm having to deal with somebody who I have to monitor all the time or I don't get enough sleep. I get it.

That's my life. But that doesn't mean I can't be pursuing things in that, that are not just one more burden that I got to do, but it actually unleashes something inside you that unleashes that creativity, that spark inside you so that it's not just drudgery all the time that you're actually doing something. Address that a little bit.

Yeah. If I may, I'd like to share two stories because they're opposite ends of that spectrum of thinking. One seems like it's nothing.

The other is a big deal. One of them is my story. When I started coaching, I wanted to work with top level executives, but I went, as my wife would tell you, despite what people would think, I go through a crisis of competence frequently that maybe I'm not capable of whatever, but I hired a coach, my own coach. And we had a conversation one day and let's just say in the course of that conversation, one hour, he totally changed my self-confidence. And my wife Beverly said, wait a minute for 30 years, I've been telling you that you should be confident. You have a conversation with a guy in an hour and you've got your whole different mindset.

What happened? And I said, it's real simple. As a coach, I was thinking about what a coach does. And I was measuring on each call, my performance as a coach.

That's not what I'm supposed to do, but that's what my mind was doing. How well did I help that client that day? The coach helped me change that mindset. And after a discussion, he said, what if you just thought of it as serving clients wherever they are at any given moment that you're talking about? And I said, serving is something I know how to do. And it just shifted the whole way I think about it. And now I don't get anxious about the calls.

I don't worry about my performance. I just try to be very present and show up for what they need when they need it. And it is just that simple, seems like a little shift in mindset, right? It was career changing and life changing for me that simple thinking about it differently. The other short one, the short one is I have a client who during the pandemic is stuck in an apartment in Chicago. And the days her work and life seemed to just keep, I mean, business kept coming together, right?

There didn't seem to be any separation. And I said, if you get yourself to do something that you consider an achievement, what would be a good reward? What could you celebrate? She said, if I could just go across the street and get an Italian ice, that would be great. So, okay, go try that. Two weeks later, I'm talking to her and she said, I celebrated. I said, you did.

What'd you do? And she said, I went across and got an Italian ice. And she said, but what's important is I've done that forever. The difference is I chose to start thinking about it as a reward and it was fun. Well said, I would imagine this woman did not feel guilty about going over there and getting an Italian ice.

And yet we feel guilty if we reward ourselves with something. And I would imagine that again, that guilt or that fear or that sense of obligation, that fog of caregivers, fear, obligation, guilt is paralyzing to folks just in the business world. I can't do this. I'm not qualified to do this. How many times have you heard that in your life? Well, I'm not qualified to do this. Talk about that a little bit. Oh, I couldn't tell you how many times I've heard that.

Or the other thing I've heard from people, it's the same idea. I coached a woman who was suddenly given a very big role to follow someone else. That person she followed had been very charismatic and was one of those leaders, you know, that could stand up and speak well.

And she knew she didn't have those characteristics. What we had to talk about was, how do you lead from authentically who you are? What if you don't need to be somebody else? What if you just are you?

What might attract people to follow you? And just the idea, you know, of saying you, you, your track record says you have all the capabilities, but you think you can only do it if you're like somebody else. I think let's look at how you can do it out of who you actually are.

I love that Terry, because I think sometimes we feel like if we don't have this kind of resume, if we don't have this kind of degree, then we can't do it. We may not technically know how to do certain things, but if we know who to call and how to engage the right person for that, how delegation is a huge stumbling block for a lot of caregivers. We don't know how to delegate something out.

And in business, that is one of the most important things you can learn in a leadership place is how to delegate, not do everything yourself. How many people get stuck in that rut of thinking that they've got to be able to do everything themselves? How many people have you encountered like that?

And what do you say to them? Uh, lots. Um, and two things on that Peter, one is I want to make sure that we would say that, that your listeners, whether they're in business or not in business, whether they have interest in business or not, we're talking about things that are applicable to life. So that's what we're really talking about.

But you know, I find that a lot of, uh, let's call them emerging leaders get stuck because they can't delegate or won't delegate. And part of a mind shift that they have to make here, we are back at this mind shift thing. Again, you can tell how important I think it is, right? Um, part of their mind shift has to be a couple of things. One is if you're a leader and you have people that you lead, if you're not delegating, you're not developing, you're not developing future leaders if you're doing it all.

So that's one aspect of it. The other is that I think you're may not be making the highest and best use of what you do know. And you know, there's a book I love and I can't, unfortunately, I can't remember the author's name right now, but it's called essentialism and it's not a religion, but it's the idea of thinking about what's most essential. And if you take it to the individual leader or individual person level, like you and me, what's the emotional, the most essential thing we can offer. And then let me find a way to get the stuff that's not essential done by somebody else, because we will get further that way because we're focused on what's most essential. Again, whether it's in your home life or in your business life. I had a lady call in, I actually have a lot of people call in about this particular topic, essential, what is most essential?

And their thing is, well, I'm trying to make mama happy. That's not the most essential thing. The essential thing is to create a healthier environment as you take care of your loved one.

If I spent all my time trying to make Gracie happy, but at my expense, eventually I'm not going to be able to sustain that and I'm going to collapse and leave her without a caregiver. So the essential thing cannot be to just make somebody happy. The essential thing is to create a healthier environment. How many workplaces have suffered because of this toxicity of an unhealthy work environment.

And then we, and again, I love what you said. What we're talking about here is universal to the human condition. So just because we're putting it into business context or the caregiver context, it's still the human condition. And the human condition means that we're going to have to work through issues like this of our own, and then dealing with others who are bringing the same kinds of issues to the table and working with them and dealing with that and creating a healthier environment. And sometimes the most unhealthy environment is the one we have when we're looking in the mirror. And that goes back to what you say with mindset. And I love that because if we can help people start to have a healthy relationship with themselves, then that's going to translate into healthy relationship with other people.

And ultimately that comes from our healthier relationship with God of understanding who we are in Christ with this. And I want to bring, I want to get into this in the next segment and talk about some of those kinds of principles, because all of this is rooted in that relationship and it extends from there. And we'll be right back with this. We're talking with Terry Warren. His new book is called the art of choice, making changes that count in work and life. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver.

We'll be right back. I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And 26 years ago I walked for the first time on two prosthetic legs. I saw firsthand how important quality prosthetic limbs are to an amputee. This understanding compelled me to establish standing with hope for more than a dozen years. We've been working with the government of Ghana in West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie and I'm standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. It's all about learning to be healthier. Don't try to go after this elusive thing of, I want to be happy. I want to be happy. I want to be happy. Well, happiness may overtake you, but healthiness is a better choice.

Healthy in your personal life, in your emotional life, your physical life, your physical life, your spiritual life, all your relationships. And it brings me back to my conversation we're having with Terry Warren. His new book is called The Art of Choice, Making Changes That Count in Work and Life. And before we went to the break, we were talking about some of these issues and I, he wanted to circle back to go.

So jump right into that. Then I want to take you to some other areas of Terry's life that have really profoundly affected me as well. So this, simply this last week, I use a tool with my new clients. It's called the Judgment Index and it looks at how people make judgments on what they call the work side and the self side. Knowing those two are not distinct and, you know, separate functions, they relate to each other. This young man had fabulous judgment measures on the work side.

His self side was the worst I have seen yet. And basically the conversation we had to have is you and I in our coaching relationship, we got to focus on you before we focus on the work because what you are now doing is not sustainable and it will derail a promising career. I'm not telling you it might, I'm telling you, if you don't change this, it will derail your career. And so that's where we're going to start. We're going to start on self-care and self-criticism and stories he's telling himself. Later, we'll get around to some business stuff, but this will make his business stuff stronger.

Indeed. In this last segment, I'd like to introduce something to you because you've taken on this and I don't know when you started this, so you have to tell me that, but I've watched you take on fine art and you are a wonderful visual artist. I mean, not just doing this as a hobby, you're actually selling and doing galleries and so forth.

I mean, you're the real deal. I've watched you explore this and this was the side of you that I did not know until all of a sudden one day you just started, poof, you just showed up on the scene and said, here's what I'm doing. How long has this been inside you to do visual art like this and paintings? And then what was the thing that kind of triggered it to go to the next level?

The thing that actually started, it was actually in 1981 and I was living in Australia and I took a drawing course to give a present to a friend who had all kinds of stuff. And what I discovered about it is that art was my escape. That was my happy place where I could forget everything else around me.

And a coach of mine later called it creative alone time, meaning it wasn't just, I wanted to be alone and sit down and take a breath. I wanted to be alone and create something because even if I felt drained, it was my recharging station. It gave me back energy to then deal with all the things I had to do with.

And I believe people have got to find a way. It's different for different people. Art for me recharges me. It brings out a different component of my brain.

It actually helps my, we've talked about perspective earlier. That's what art did for me. It did that. And then for years in my corporate life, I'd paint three hours on a Sunday afternoon.

So it got a little better and had some practice, but I really just felt like, regardless of my age, that I wanted to take it to a new level. Churchill did this. He was a prolific painter and he did this. He said, I had to let part of my brain cool off from running the world and just zone out and do this. And so it sounds very much, very similar to what you experienced. It's exactly that. And I think frankly, what I've learned and it's reason it's intentionally called the art of choice is I think art informs life and life informs art.

They are, they are for me interconnected. And the idea of taking it to the next level was just that I've never been too satisfied with where I am. You know, I just, I want to be a better version of whatever that is.

And to me to do that, then as a coach, how could I do it? Well, I had to go find somebody that knew a thousand times more than me who I could never emulate, but if they could help me see things differently again, get a new perspective. And I think you've seen Peter that this, this, this guy, it's named Roger Dale Brown. I don't mind talking about it. Roger is a master artist. And what he helped me do is his way of teaching fit my way of thinking. So he crafted to me and made me want to just do more.

I love those kinds of stories. How important is that in any kind of, not just in just, uh, the business world, but just in life for folks to find that spark in themselves to do that. How important would you recommend that you've got, you know, mindset and then that spark of creativity that unleashes that creative power. Where does that rank? Well, it, to me, it's way up there because again, I think many of us, I can't tell you whether it's a church, you know, or whatever people will say, well, I don't have any talent.

Not true. You know, God created each one of us uniquely. He gifted us with something. And what, what my gift or gifts and other peoples are, they're not the same. And that's okay.

He didn't create me to be somebody else. But I think the idea that you got to understand, there is something my wife would tell you. She can't draw a stick man, but she has a heart for elderly people and especially women. And she would say that's not creative.

Sure is. She comes, she looks for ideas of how to go. Maybe I can make them an extra meal. Or maybe if I just went over and spent 30 minutes with them, that's creative. It's just not the same creative that I do, but it's still, it's legit.

It's still real. I've watched the various ways that people express themselves. I've had a, I was thinking when you do this, Graham cares, but on my show, he was the world new is the galloping gourmet. And he's become a friend, a friend of the family for many years and the way he approached food of cooking.

Some people enjoyed being creative in the kitchen. And my daughter-in-law is spectacular and it has placed in the nationals with dog agility. She trains dogs for those whole agility things you see on ESPN and so forth.

She was just on ESPN last week. And she does this, it's extraordinary what she does with dogs. And now I don't think you do that with cats, but it's cats are cats are a weird animal, but it's a, no, I don't want to get any letters from cat lovers, but I love, uh, you know, with horses, uh, with, I got a guy out here, a rancher down the road who passed away some years ago, just a great friend.

And in the winter times, when things were slow and ranch work was a little bit slow with the heavy winters, he would take the hair from horses that he would collect off of the barbed wire fences and so forth. And he would braid them and make jewelry out of horse hair, uh, extraordinary talent. And, and I look around at the, the, the, the abilities we have as human beings to create and to do things that'd be, and that is, that is from our creator. That is from our father who created us this way.

We're meant to be ingenious creators, uh, to, uh, you know, Adam's first job was to name the animal, you know, that's pretty creative to name something. Um, and lastly, you're an elder and I still, it's still my home church there nationally, even though I live in Montana now and your approach to ministry, how has this changed, um, through all the things that you're learning through, through the coaching world, through the art world, through all your business experience, what have you seen that ties all of that together? Because I don't believe that we're meant to be segmented people. I think all of this should be intersecting every part of our life at any given point. How has that worked for you?

What does that look like? And where does your faith drive you in, in, in extending all at yourself into the, all these different areas that you do? Wow. That's a lot of, a lot of stuff, Peter, and one question, um, I would say a quick answer and then, and again, another illustration, I like stories, right? And, uh, the quick thing is that I think, again, I've worked with a lot of ministries for, I can't tell you how many years in Ukraine in particular since about 2005. And it's really a matter of helping them get new perspectives, right? Helping them realize that as ministry, a lot of ministry leaders, and you would, I'm sure appreciate this, uh, burnout and helping ministries focus on the idea. You got to take care of you as well, or the ministry won't go anywhere. So it's the mindset for me in that is not really any different than it is in business. How can I serve in such a way that it helps people who are called by God to do formal ministry service, do that even better and take care of themselves.

How can they do that? I think I can help facilitate that. And that's what I try to do.

Uh, but I'm also reminded when you said that of a story, and I won't say anything about, I'll try to be very vague in a sense about this, but you were talking way back early in the program, uh, about something. And there's someone that I was talking with who had a ministry and was struggling to fund the ministry, but also had a talent and something they could do that generated income. And basically we had to have a discussion around, go away and think about what is the most essential thing. There we are with the central again, what's the most essential thing that you need for that ministry to be successful. Two weeks later, they came back and said, I need to earn enough money to fund it. So what if for a while your focus is on earning the money with the purpose being to ultimately have the ministry, but let's get the order straight. And basically that's the direction they went and their ministry is still going.

It's not going at the, at the scale they would like, but it's still there because of what we've talked about today. I would be, I would be remiss if I don't leave people with a challenge. And the challenge is to think about what is one thing, one baby step that you could take this week that would feel like it's a moment for you. I'm thinking of one for myself. And so that's why you have to pause because I've taken on that challenge and I'm going and I want that to resonate with all my fellow caregivers. What is that one thing that would be a moment for you?

Okay. Last thought is what you were saying is, you know, the Bible talks about seeking first the kingdom of God and all these things, you know, will be added to you. But it also talks about if I got my priorities right, right. So if I'm seeking him first, that's a caveat. He actually puts things in my heart that are his desires.

And I think they're mine, but it's got to be in that sequence. It's got to start with, I got to seek him first. Then these things start to happen. What's the most essential thing.

Seek him first, Matthew 6.33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things. And it doesn't mean that we're not going to have tears and struggles and travails along the way, because anybody that tells you that will lie about other things, but it does mean that you're going to be healthier and stronger to look at those things with perspective. And that's the whole point of this is hope for the caregiver is that conviction that we as caregivers can live a calmer, healthier, and dare I say it, a more joyful life while we deal with challenges and brutal realities. We all deal with it.

And that's the human condition, but we don't have to be miserable in it. And this is what Terry has been talking about. And your business, your business dreams are important. They are important things.

They are not to be discarded away. They may have to modify. They may have to be flexible. There's an old business axiom, Terry, that you may have heard. Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be been out of shape. That's not in scripture, but it's a true statement.

Flexibility is a huge issue in any type of organization in life. And so I hope these principles will sink in. And as Terry said, what's a moment for you this week? Just a moment for you. Don't feel this obligation make it grandiose.

Just a moment for you that is soul charging, energizing. Yes, we have to look at heartbreaking realities. I get it.

I do it. That's a part of our life as caregivers, but life is still to be enjoyed and it's beautiful even today, right now in the midst of this. And you can see the fingerprints of God. If you look closely, you can hear the whisper. If you listen closely and see that He's inviting you to go down into a deeper journey of relationship with Him and see Him move in these things and those desires in your heart. If you're seeking Him and His righteousness, those desires in your heart, not just important to you, they're important to God. And I thank Terry for being with him.

The book is called Art of Choice, making changes that count in work and life. I appreciate you being here with us, Terry. We're going to have you back on. And we thank you for joining the show.

We got to go. This is Hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com and we'll see you next time. This is John Butler and I produce Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country that you put out the plea for and they're disassembling, you see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic limbs and arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry because I see the smiles on their faces and I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.

Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. And so these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg, I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're, they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for the supplies to get over there.

What does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave. I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and the other ones like it, but I know about this one is just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much. That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.