Transcript
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Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity.
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I'm Judy Oskam.
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As a university professor, administrator and former journalist, I love interviewing people who inspire, educate and motivate People like Linda Fogg Phillips.
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Linda has a story about reinvention, growth and a calling to serve.
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You'll also learn about Pearl Habits in this interview.
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Linda is on a mission to help others live a happier and healthier life.
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She is the CEO and co-founder of the Tiny Habits Academy.
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Her work focuses on behavior change and habit design and, as the mother of eight children, Linda has had her own behavior change and habit design laboratory in her own home for more than 40 years.
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Well, Linda does share some of the tragedies and the heartbreaks in her life, but she also tells us how she made it through.
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I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did .
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In the last 15 years.
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It has been like one change after another, after another after another none of them of which I anticipated or ever thought I'd have to deal with and the first one the first, basically the first domino that tipped, the first shoe that dropped, however you want to refer to.
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It occurred well, really occurred in 2008.
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And that's when a lot of things in my world were starting to fall apart.
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We were home builders here in Las Vegas.
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Very, very successful home builders had a company for 25 years.
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Net worth was $30 million.
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It was a really successful company.
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Wow.
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We were a privately owned company, meaning we owned it all.
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Sure, sure, it was a really successful company.
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We were a privately owned company, meaning we owned it all.
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Sure, many family members my children, my son-in-law and if you look back to those years, that's when the housing recession was really starting to get into full swing and every place in the US started to fall apart.
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Even public builders that had deep pockets started to fall apart.
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The little builders that we were really didn't stand a chance, but we fought good and hard and we hung on for quite a while.
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But 2008, as I look back to that year.
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That really was the pivotal year for not only struggling financially and struggling with our home building business, but that also was the time that we lost my 20-year-old son to an accidental Oxycontin overdose, and so it just seemed like the world was falling down around my feet.
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You know, adapting to and my son, his name was Garrett.
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I have eight children.
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He was the third of our eight.
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Just, you know, he really was well and even my kids say he was the golden child and I'm not going to deny that.
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I'm not going to that.
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Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to.
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All my kids are amazing.
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I love them all equally, of course, but Garrett was everybody's golden sibling or golden child cause he was just so kind and generous and just so caring and unfortunately, his death really put us all on a tailspin.
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And this was an unexpected death and the history behind him getting on oxycodone was very tragic.
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He was a high school athlete and was one of the high school coaches.
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It was an injury, huh yeah, and his high school coach introduced him to stackable steroids that then led to pain meds that unfortunately, he got addicted to and just could not kick it.
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So that was a monumental change that took me a while.
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I don't know.
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I don't know that you can ever get over that.
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How do you ever get over that ?
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You don't, you don't, judy, you don't ever get over the loss of a child.
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It's something that I had a very wise friend, and I'm going to share this advice because it was really helped me, not just through the loss of Garrett, but subsequently.
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Three years ago, I lost my husband as well to early onset Alzheimer's.
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Um, and a friend of mine,Ji m Anderson, told me he said, Linda, people will tell you that time will heal, and this was in in relationship.
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This was um about three days after Garrett passed and Jim came over to visit us and he said, Linda, people will tell you, time will heal, he says.
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But don't believe them, that's a lie.
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All time allows you to do is to learn to live with the pain, and I have found that to be really true.
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It's true.
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Yeah, and having had Jim share that with me, it helped me revise my expectations.
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Instead of saying, oh, why aren't I getting over this, or why is this still a problem for me, or why am I still depressed about the loss of my son, I realized that it was going to take some time for me to learn to live with this new reality of mine.
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And I will tell you, that journey has been a bittersweet journey, as I'm sure you can imagine.
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Sure, the first probably three or four years, and so this was about 15 years ago.
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About the first three or four years, I struggled to function, I truly struggled to function, and I finally got to the point in my life where some of the things that would cause me a lot of pain or sorrow, that would bring back up that wound in my heart the loss of my son I then started to embrace and I didn't realize that the pain that I was feeling was because I loved him.
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So that was a shift and a change, not so much in mindset but in the allowing time to help me learn how to live in a positive manner in the face of such a negative and difficult situation.
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Even today it's been this many years.
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You know I never work on Garrett's birthday and I never work.
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Or you know I never make plans on his birthday or on what we call his angel day.
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And you guys have a big celebration on that day, don't you ?
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Yeah, we always even my kids that live out of town come into town and especially on his angel day, we'll go to his favorite sushi restaurant and we really celebrate his life again, instead of just sort of pushing it aside or ignoring or trying to pretend that never happened, because really reality is it did happen and it did impact all of us.
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And so the years have allowed me to adapt and start to embrace those feelings of pain, in acknowledgement of the fact that that was unconditional love that I had for my child, and so that was a big shift for me.
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But in that same year, in 2008, when we started to lose everything losing our home, building business.
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Eventually we lost our home.
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We lost our five-acre ranch.
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We had to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy where we had nothing left because my husband had personally guaranteed a number of land, loans and things.
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It necessitated a very drastic change of life for us.
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I had eight horses at that time.
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I had to either sell or give them away.
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It's sort of like a fire cell because we had to move out of our home pretty quickly because the bank was taking it back.
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They wouldn't work with us on it.
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But everybody I mean not everybody, but that was sort of a common thread that people were losing their homes and losing their properties and losing their businesses right and left, especially people that had anything to do with home building.
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I never expected that at that point in time I would need to go back to work or I would need to help support my family, and I did so a little bit hesitantly.
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You know I was a full-time mom.
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That's what I love doing with a big family.
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Yes, yes, my youngest child was 11 at the time and I'd had a charmed really a charmed life up until then.
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Sure, I had the privilege and the opportunity to stay home with my children.
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They were in private school, we had a beautiful horse ranch, we did a lot of extracurricular activities around horses and around sports, and I had the freedom and the ability to do that.
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So when my world was turned upside down and it's like, wow, I think I need to do something to help support the family because I have a good education, it's like maybe I need to bridge this gap for a little bit until we get back on our feet with home building, I knew it would come back.
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My husband was a very, very good entrepreneur, but what I didn't know is that was not God's plan.
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Yeah, and shortly after that, in 2014, as we were trying to put the pieces back together on many things, you know not just the ramifications of losing my son, but losing our home, building business, needing to move, you know, uproot my children, pull them out of private schools, just you name it everything changed and the bankruptcy just really it was really difficult to go through.
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It was never in my life that I think that we would need to do that.
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I was actually, I'll be honest, I was actually pretty upset with my husband for personal and guaranteeing loans, but that's the nature of the business, and so for a little while I had to navigate through that.
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But then, in 2014, my husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 58.
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Oh, so young.
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And then I realized, okay, this is not a temporary situation for me to need to help support my family.
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This is now going to be my role.
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And, judy, as I say that and I know there's, you know, a lot of implications there.
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But as I look back on that and as I say that there's a lot of things I had to step into and had to move forward with courage because I had no other choice.
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There just wasn't another choice.
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And as I look back, I am and this is gonna sound funny, but I am so grateful that I had that opportunity to step into the role that I'm currently in.
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I would have never paired up with BJ to build out the Habits Academy.
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I would have never been even motivated or needed to be in the position that I'm in now, and I love what I'm doing.
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I love the people I'm working with.
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Like yourself, I love giving people back that hope and evidence change and that the skills and tools that they can implement to navigate really difficult changes and come back through it on the other side better than before.
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I've learned this the hard way and I don't want it to be so hard for others.
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So when you say, well, what was the pivotal change.
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What was the most impactful change?
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It's not one specific, but it was sort of a period of time where I had to decide is this going to destroy me or am I going to rise above this?
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And obviously I chose the latter and I'm still rising above it.
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I think we still are, but I look back and the blessings and the opportunities that I've had as a result would have never come to me without those challenges that I faced.
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Well, I think, right there, you're also talking a lot about mindset, too, and the fact that, because all of those instances, any one of those events, would be enough to just knock somebody flat, any one of those events would be enough to just knock somebody flat, and the fact that you kept going and going and you went from one to another, and that resilience, I think, is something that I love, the fact that you've actually looked back and sort of analyzed that, because that, I think, helps you grow right.
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Yes, oh yes, and I'm very analytical, and so when things are going wrong, or even when things are going right, it's like okay, why?
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Why did that happen?
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And you know, getting stuck in the why is not helpful.
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It's very helpful.
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You know why?
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Me?
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I think that's a very a lot of us have gotten stuck in that mindset, especially in the midst of turmoil.
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That's a very a lot of us have gotten stuck in that mindset, especially in the midst of turmoil.
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Well, why me?
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Well, why not?
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But it's not so much why.
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You know, understanding, you know.
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But now understanding, okay, taking that that you learned, or the situation surrounding that, and how are you going to leverage that to be better?
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There's a saying that I often share with my children and it's be better, not bitter.
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It's really easy to be bitter about what life hands us and be bitter about the changes that are thrust upon us, but that doesn't help, that doesn't do anything.
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No, no, no.
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The challenge is just to be better because of it.
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Rise above it and be a better person and make the world around you better as a result.
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Well, again, that's a choice, though, and again, you made those choices, and I think back and I look at all of the challenges that you had and what a good role model you have been for your own children and grandchildren now, because now and have you thought about that that everything you're doing as moms right, they're watching us all the time.
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Even though they're grown, they're watching us.
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You know thank you for saying that, Judy, that actually I felt a responsibility, not necessarily to be a role model, but I felt a responsibility to be my best self for their benefit.
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For them, yes, yes for them.
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And also, you know, during the time that my husband was alive but still declining, I needed to show up as my best self because I owed it to him and I owed it to my children.
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I do know and they've referenced this several times that when they're facing their own challenges which they do my children are now adults.
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They have their own families, they have their own day in and day out, big challenges as well as little challenges, and it doesn't matter if they're big or little.
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They're still challenges.
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They still are changes that you need to navigate, and I know that I've given my children some hope that they can do it too.
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And, to be really honest, my lifeline through all of these challenges was tiny habits, yes, which then evolved into, as you know, pearl habits, which is taking the challenge and creating beauty out of it.
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Pearl Habits, which is taking the challenge and creating beauty out of it, like that grain of sand making a pearl, making a gem out of that irritant or that challenge that you have, as opposed to allowing it to cause you to be bitter and to deteriorate or to have your relationships deteriorate.
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I have one daughter right now that's having a lot of challenges with mental health.
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She has bipolar illness and also has a borderline personality disorder and has really struggled the last three years and I'm hoping that we have.
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I have daily conversations with her and she gets really stuck in the negative mindset and I'm hoping that the conversations I have with her, as well as what we've been through over the years, helps her see that there's a better way than being bitter.
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In fact, last week I was on a call with her.
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I was on a Zoom call with her and she won't mind me sharing her name.
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She's given me permission to share her name as well.
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Her name is Amber and she was complaining about something.
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She was very negative and I just said look, Amber, happiness is a choice.
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And I have a sign in my office downstairs, the one that I usually sit in to write and read, and you know I pulled the sign off of my bookshelf because I have it just written on a little note card.
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With a smiley face, I said look, happiness is a choice.
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I said I've had this up on my bookshelf for over five years.
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I look at it every day to remind myself.
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I can choose how I'm going to face this day.
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I can choose to be happy or I can choose to be angry and bitter and I think I'm starting to get through to her.
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You know she's probably the only child that really struggles with negativity.
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I know a lot of us get stuck with the negative talk in our head or narrative that is negative.
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You know, whatever we're going to tell ourselves, it's going to be the truth.
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Yeah, so you can change your story and, just like you said, judy, we can choose to be happy.
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We can choose to live a different story than the negative story we're telling ourselves.
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Well, and that's why I love Pearl Habits and talk a little bit about Pearl Habits.
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And how did that come to be?
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Because people who listen to this podcast and they you know, we'll put in the show notes information about Tiny Habits but talk about Pearl Habits.
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Because to me, I think that's fantastic, because a lot of the changes we want to make are coming from a negative spot, a negative place.
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Yeah, and, like I said, they're thrust upon us.
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They're not necessarily our choice to make those changes, but we have to adapt, we have to be resilient.
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Pearl, habits emerged during my journey of really struggling through some of the challenges that I just shared with you, along with other challenges that emerged during all of this as well, as you can imagine.
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And one day well, it was in the early days of Tiny Habits One day I was talking to BJ you know BJ, who designed the Tiny Habits method, who's my brother.
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We're very, very close and I was.
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I was pretty depressed, I was pretty apathetic, and I it was not.
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It was probably about the you know, three years or so after Garrett had passed away, and I was just really in a bad spot mentally and emotionally.
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And one day BJ said hey, linda, why don't you try this tiny habit recipe?
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We didn't have a name for it then, but he said it goes like this After your feet hit the floor in the morning, I will tell myself it's going to be a great day.
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And then, as you know, with the tiny habits method, one of the most important parts of it is reinforcing the behavior that you're wanting to create as a, as a habit, with a positive emotion, and I would just do two thumbs up and say, yes, you've got this way to go, that habit I have done every single day since that point in time.
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What happened in this?
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And you know, I was sort of scoffing at BJ, not at him, but it's like, oh, brother, he thinks that's good.
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Yes, yes, like really, come on, bj, seriously.
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But I thought, why not?
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You know he's a pretty smart guy, it's not going to hurt me to do that.
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So why not try it?
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And we have a close enough relationship that you know we're comfortable challenging each other on things and just say hey, but I said, okay, I'll try it.
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I said I'll try it.
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It probably won't work, but I'll try it.
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Here again, my negative mindset and within three days, what I saw was a complete shift in my mindset and a shift in my demeanor and I thought, wow, isn't that interesting.
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And as I looked at that and here again evaluated, why did it have such an impact on me?
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What I noticed happened is it took me out of my victim mindset and put me into a victor mindset, just by starting my day off with it's going to be a great day and celebrating, releasing the endorphins and dopamine that happens when you celebrate.
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As a result what I started doing, as the you know, I'd start my day off with that.
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But as a result what I started doing, as the you know, I start my day off with that.
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But as a result, I started looking for the good things in my day.
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What's going to make my day great, what are the great things that would happen that I didn't even plan, or great things that I would then make sure happened, and so my focus was more on the positive than the negative.
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That has been transformative for me.
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In fact, I have told BJ I think he saved my life because I was in such a dark spot at that point in time that he gave me that tool to implement.
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That has really positively impacted me and that's one of my favorite recipes.
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We now call it the Maui habit, yeah, but also so I consider that a pearl habit, because you're taking a negative situation or difficult situation and you're looking at it differently.
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What I also saw is it gave me permission to look at the positive things in my life, as opposed to be drawn into the negative or drawn into everything that was going poorly.
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It really helped me realize there's a lot of things that are going well and to continue to focus on those, as opposed to the opposite.
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Another pearl habit that I use often and there's many, many of them Another pearl habit that I use often is when I get in a situation that is new to me, or I'm uncomfortable or, it's like, causes anxiety, and I, you know, it's like, oh man, I've never done this.
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This is causing me to be uncomfortable.
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I tell myself and here again, that's you know, when I'm feeling uncomfortable or when I get into a situation that causes me anxiety, I will tell myself, oh, this is going to be a new adventure.
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I wonder what I'm going to learn.
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Now.
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Adventures are fun, right, right, right, y'all don't want to go on a fun adventure, and so if we can reframe those challenging events or situations in our life that we're uncomfortable with or that are new to us, if we can reframe them as an adventure and in turn, look, I wonder what I'm going to learn.
00:20:05,413 --> 00:20:17,486
It allows you, I think, to navigate that experience or event more effectively and gracefully, but it also allows you to be taught, allows you to be aware and be curious about.
00:20:17,486 --> 00:20:18,869
Okay, what am I going to learn on this.
00:20:18,869 --> 00:20:28,310
And here again, instead of dreading it's like, oh no, not this again, or oh, I can't do this, you're reframing it and saying, hmm, this is going to be an adventure.
00:20:29,693 --> 00:20:30,595
That's a Pearl Habit.
00:20:30,595 --> 00:20:49,777
So, taking either an emotion, a feeling, an experience that causes you that is that irritant, or the challenge, and designing how you're going to respond to it, instead of reacting, then you can design a more positive life and more positive response, which usually ends up with a positive result.
00:20:49,777 --> 00:20:51,729
So that's why it's called.
00:20:51,729 --> 00:21:02,753
You know, that's why we decided to call it Pearl Habits, and Pearl Habits simply emerged from, basically, the way that I needed to use tiny habits to cope with the challenges that I was facing.
00:21:03,384 --> 00:21:06,576
And even today says, hey, this is really where it was.
00:21:06,576 --> 00:21:16,432
You know this, pearl Habits allowed you to cope, and still allows me to cope, with constant change and challenges that cause us to be uncomfortable sometimes.
00:21:17,244 --> 00:21:23,567
Well, because a lot of the people that we work with and coach are wanting to make a change and they're coming from.
00:21:23,567 --> 00:21:27,698
Why do I act this way in a meeting or why do I feel this way?
00:21:27,698 --> 00:21:42,435
So using the Pearl Habit technique is beneficial and I know I've had some, some people that I've I've worked with that, just to kind of, when I turn on my zoom I will do something.
00:21:42,435 --> 00:21:48,458
You know, I mean really to think more positively, but it's all about changing the mindset to making it more positive.
00:21:49,765 --> 00:21:50,868
Exactly, In fact.
00:21:50,868 --> 00:21:51,530
Let me share another.
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This is sort of a funny example, but this is where Pearl Habits really helped diffuse my anger, Because sometimes our mindsets were irritated or angry or put out about something.
00:22:02,596 --> 00:22:08,055
About three years ago, my catalytic converter was stolen out of my Sequoia.
00:22:11,710 --> 00:22:13,394
I have a 2002 Sequoia.
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I love it.
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It has over 200,000 miles on it.
00:22:15,571 --> 00:22:20,401
But I went out one morning to start it and it sounded like a freight train.
00:22:20,401 --> 00:22:23,230
I didn't know what was going on and I called my son.
00:22:23,230 --> 00:22:23,506
He goes.
00:22:23,506 --> 00:22:27,714
Well, look underneath your car and you know we discovered that my Cadillac converter had been stolen.
00:22:27,714 --> 00:22:32,593
Well, this was in the middle of the pandemic and so parts were very, very limited.
00:22:32,593 --> 00:22:41,905
You know, parts were very, very limited.
00:22:41,905 --> 00:22:42,546
Supply chain issues were real.
00:22:42,546 --> 00:22:47,050
I took my car to the shop and they said oh yeah, it's going to be about $2,500 and we're going to need three months to get this part in.
00:22:47,050 --> 00:22:48,051
So it's like that was irritating.
00:22:48,071 --> 00:22:48,971
But I still needed to drive my car.
00:22:48,971 --> 00:22:50,173
Sure, I mean, I couldn't just park it and not drive it.
00:22:50,173 --> 00:22:51,454
And so I would go out and start my car.
00:22:51,454 --> 00:22:52,315
Every time I'd start it.
00:22:52,395 --> 00:22:56,839
I sort of forgot that my catalytic converter wasn't there, so it'd be really loud whenever I started.
00:22:56,839 --> 00:22:57,861
That it would scare me.
00:22:57,861 --> 00:22:59,061
Then I'd get angry.
00:22:59,061 --> 00:23:05,047
It's like, dang those guys.
00:23:05,047 --> 00:23:07,175
But then I would just start getting angry and irritated and then my day would go downhill from there.
00:23:07,175 --> 00:23:08,521
Then I realized I think it took me about a week.
00:23:08,521 --> 00:23:20,976
It's like man, this is a perfect opportunity to create a Pearl habit, and so the Pearl habit that I designed was when I start my car and hear the rumble of my engine, I'll remind myself I'm grateful they left the rest of my car.
00:23:20,976 --> 00:23:28,436
That's good, and just that little change, right, you know, just oh, I'm so glad I have the rest of my car.
00:23:28,436 --> 00:23:33,709
Um, and celebrating that really changed my mindset and, you know, sort of made me chuckle at the fact.
00:23:33,709 --> 00:23:37,894
Oh yeah, because I have had a whole car stolen before yes, yes, a whole car.
00:23:37,973 --> 00:23:57,634
Yes, and so you know that's uh, you know an opportunity or a time where you can, when something like that makes you angry or upset or irritate, you design how you're going to respond to that and, as a result, I was able to diffuse my anger or my sense of irritation over the fact that I was very inconvenienced for a period of time.
00:23:58,194 --> 00:24:05,776
So well, I I always you know, as a Gallup strengths coach, I always ask people to talk about their strengths and I can.
00:24:05,776 --> 00:24:08,925
I can see you have many strengths, but what?
