Empowerment Journey: Transforming Pain and Rebalancing Life with Donna McGoff

Ever wondered how to transform pain into empowerment? Join us for an insightful conversation with Ms. Donna McGoff, a former teacher turned life coach. Donna shares her journey from overcoming trauma to helping divorced women and others who feel stuck in life. Together, we reflect on our shared experiences as educators and the resilience required to change thoughts, actions, and beliefs to achieve different outcomes.

Join us in our mission to empower you toward a more harmonious and fulfilling life.

Donna McGoff: Living Above the Ordinary

OneDegreetoVictory: 31 Days to Wellness Challenge Calendar

Chapters

• 0:14 /Overcoming Trauma and Empowerment/
• 12:52 Changing Thought Patterns for Empowerment
• 17:55 Self-Empowerment Through Attitude Adjustment
• 24:41 Self-Empowerment and Wellness Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello, constant listeners. It's another Selfie Sunday on One Degree to Victory. This fourth Sunday I'm featuring guest conversationalist Ms Donna McGough. Now, we recorded this back in March of this year and let me just say that I have had my fair share of technical difficulties.

Speaker 1: 0:35

The first time we recorded we met actually was on a discovery call and the video was lagging. And this was just a discovery call to you know talk about what we were going to discuss. So we set the time we met, we had a great conversation and guess what Great video no audio, if you can believe that Zoom recorded it without any audio. So after months of trying to restore the audio, I reached out to Donna and she was unavailable, but she was so gracious that she said that I could use whatever I thought was best to serve my audience. So what you're about to hear is a very candid conversation between two former educators, two women who have overcome trauma and are now committed to helping others move through their trauma with empowerment and triumph. You're going to love this format of this Selfie Sunday episode as much as I enjoyed putting it together. I want you to go ahead and get comfy and stick around. This is going to be one uplifting and electrifying conversation you won't want to miss. Hi, hi, donna.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Good morning. I got to get the two of us on there. Can you hear me? I can't hear you, I can't hear you. I just need to change it so I can see you. We can see each other other. Okay, say something. Oh, you can't hear me, now I can. Yes, oh good, um, good morning, good morning, it's so nice. Can you see me? I mean you can see me, right? Yes, all right, but we're not. We're not side to side, but that's okay, I'm on time yeah, we're just.

Speaker 1: 2:42

I don't know how to do that, I do I usually can do that.

Speaker 2: 2:46

I don't know why I'm not. I'm not doing that. I mean, it's usually.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Oh, there we are okay, you're side to side, yeah you, no, I just have you. I have to change the view.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Well as long as as long as, as long as you can see me, that's good enough. Yes, man, look at all those books. Do you read all me? That's good enough. Yes, man, look at all those books. Do you read all those?

Speaker 1: 3:07

Oh, girl, you know that's. Oh, that's a background. People say stop telling people that I'm like, yeah, okay, when I get my real library, I mean I really actually have one, but it's not conducive for Zooming with the kids, you know. So I can't actually sit in front of my real bookshelf.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Because it's so funny, I said Ooh, is she?

Speaker 1: 3:33

is she an attorney? Yeah, but mine does look like this, only because it's it'll be full of, it'll be full of middle school books and and oh yeah, oh. You can't education from my years of teaching. So, yeah, oh, me too, I was a teacher too.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Oh wow, yes, I was. I retired from teaching and, and a counselor turned life coach. Yeah, yeah, a long, a long time ago, though I was, um, yeah, high school English, english, what about you? What about?

Speaker 1: 4:07

you, what were you special ed middle school you are special.

Speaker 2: 4:12

No, seriously, yes, you have to be a special person. I mean, all those needs. It's so much more than just a regular classroom teacher and people don't realize that you know.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Yes.

Speaker 2: 4:27

Yes, anyway, I'm really, you know, grateful that you wanted to just talk to me. You want me to like, you want to ask me stuff, you want me to tell you.

Speaker 1: 4:38

No, tell me that whole being getting unstuck is so relevant to where women and people are today. I mean, I think I think getting unstuck has to do with healing, and I think that when you're stuck, it is paralyzing and and and you're lost. You know you're, you're stuck in this one place, and you're lost. You know you're you're stuck in this one place. And so, um, having gone through a, uh, an episode in my life where I could have become stuck, I would like to hear from from you like and and also, how did you, you know, being a, you said your niche is divorced women yeah, because they're stuck.

Speaker 2: 5:30

A lot of them are stuck and decided to um have a niche. So let me just tell you quickly what I did before I realized all this. That's more important about the unstuck that you're talking about I did was I. I developed a process for them to take them from here over to here, right.

Speaker 2: 5:50

So I did all that. But the most important thing that I realized through my study of the mind for many years and mentoring I've had, and the learning was that in order to even go through, when you have any kind of a trauma and you're stuck or in pain in order to move anywhere it doesn't matter if it's a divorced woman you have to change three things. If you keep thinking the same thoughts, you keep acting the same way and you're gonna keep getting the same results. And, like you said, when you're stuck, sometimes you just can't. Your conscious mind wants to do it. You know like say you want to lose. You know this, I'm just saying it out loud. You want to lose 20 pounds and you're all ready and you're going to get going, but then deep down, you don't believe you can do it because you get what you believe. It's not what you want, it's what you believe. It's not what you want, it's what you believe.

Speaker 2: 6:51

So that's why I decided to figure out how can I teach anybody in you know any these three strategies so that when you want, when you're ready whatever it is is your trauma you incorporate these three things and it will help you to move forward much more quickly, because otherwise it's going to take a while and a lot longer, because you've already been there for a while and you're sick of it, so you want right. It's like, it's like mental bars around you. It's like you know, yes, you know I can't, I can't, just can't get out of here. I can't figure out, I don't have a plan. But even with even, you don't need, you don't need the plan until you do these things, until you do it until you have until you don't need a plan, until you have a plan to move.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Because if you're stuck in a place there all you're you're figuring out like how am I going to get out of this? So you have to get out of the room, you have to be able to open the bars, I think first.

Speaker 2: 7:55

That's it, right there. You've got to be able to open your mind, because right now all you're thinking about is all this crap, all this stuff over here and you're meshing it. You know, and you can't get, can't get out of it, you don't know how to get out of it and you don't want to be there, but you don't have the tools. I didn't have the tools. I had to figure it out, right.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Right, that is exactly, I think, the place and I think that's where we connect, because that was me. I had to figure it out. Thank God, I figured it out in just a few months. That's good, no, that's really good. Well, after I figured it out and began to move forward in my life, the process, actually the process of healing, because here I am, that trauma happened to me in 2022.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Oh, no, about the same. And I'm telling you, march will be a year that the trauma happened. Oh, so then I I began to move forward. It took me till about, I guess, july to the bars came off. Then in October I got the end of the year. I was able to receive a plan.

Speaker 2: 9:19

And then in March, and you could begin to go forward because you had done the work in here. Everybody's always looking out here for the work.

Speaker 1: 9:32

That's not it, donna. You and I both know that's not it and I think that's our job is to is to is to have a conversation with the ladies, that that our audiences, but to bring them into this awareness and this understanding of you have every, really. And I didn't understand when people say you have everything you need right now. They say that but they don't give us the tools and the strategy that's right Forward.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Yeah, and so of course, I don't know I might've been on a podcast, but the reason I am wanted to go on a few podcasts was because this chapter, this book, is the one that I wrote the three strategies in there. I was in the other book, I wrote my process, but then I thought, well, how can I, how can I help other coaches figure out? Yes, they have a way that they do things, but maybe they're kind of missing these strategies. But really and truly, when you think about it, you know my process. When you think about the process, it could really be for any trauma, put it as though. Let me just tell you there are, there are, three things that one needs to do, and I I'll just talk about, I'll go through, the three strategies. So what you need to do really is learn to change your focus, how you think about that situation, because if you keep on thinking about it in the same way, you're going to continue to get the same results. So here you are, thinking about how bad it is and all this stuff which you need to do. Like Wayne Dyer says, if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, and it's really true. So you're in that depth and that low feeling of what's going on. What you need to do is you change the focus. That means learn the lesson Out of that trauma, any trauma that anybody's had. What is the lesson that you learn from that? Because you can't have an up without a down, in without an out. A problem has a solution. So there are two sides or you couldn't have any of it. There are two sides, or you couldn't have any of it. So what my focus is is to help people learn how to look at it different. Change the focus. So, whatever the trauma is, you focus on the lesson. You push aside, see, because what you really want to do, you don't want to stay here. You want to move from here to over here. So when you take the focus off that and focus on the lesson learned, instead of getting all involved in that, like I remember, some mornings I couldn't even get out of bed because of the trauma. Right, I couldn't get up and it was all encompassing. You know it was driving, it was bad. So what I learned to do was change the focus of it. What was the lesson I learned? And that's what you hold on to. You hold on to that. Every time you think of that, you switch it. You switch it out of there.

Speaker 2: 12:52

I always attracted emotionally. Now, this is just the first strategy. I always attracted emotionally unavailable men, but I always believed that it was out here. It was like any jerk, come here, here I am. But it wasn't that. What it was was that. That was how I grew up. Both of my parents are emotionally unavailable and narcissistic, so that's what I was used to. So that's what I attracted and I didn't know any better. I didn't know what a real healthy relationship was like. So what I started to do with myself? First I thought you know, it's just, it's not me, I just attract them. But no Kept trucking along.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Yes, it's in there.

Speaker 2: 13:40

So what I needed to do was change my focus on the lesson that I learned, and I did do the learning. I started doing some research about emotional unavailability and, sure enough, I had that pattern and I realized a lot of things. So what I did was then I decided that, instead of thinking about the focus you know that bad stuff I could think about the lesson I learned and would open up you know my mind a little bit, so that good energy could begin to flow in there. And then the second. The second one is to release the problem. You need to change your thinking. Everything starts with our thoughts. Right, yes, are your thoughts. We are our decisions, we are our choices. I mean just standing there, wherever we are, we are our thoughts.

Speaker 2: 14:31

So how do you? You know so when you, when you, the bad situation is a woman I use the example of she had to downsize. Right, she had to downsize because she got a divorce. But then anybody might have to downsize for any kind of relationship or whatever. It is Right, whatever the situation is. And this is counterintuitive, but this is true. What you have to do is do is okay, you have this problem here. You want to begin to notice, observe your thoughts, and you probably know that anyway. You know learning to observe your thoughts because, because what the masses do, what most people do, is they just react to life. Yes, you know, they just react to whatever the thoughts are. And you know what that self-talk is not thinking, right, henry Ford said thinking is hard work and why so few people engage in it.

Speaker 2: 15:29

And it's really true. You have to think, so there's a thinking exercise that goes with this. So the example I give is this woman has to downsize, so what she has to do. I told her to sit down and this is how you begin to change your thinking. You observe your thoughts. When you start to have that thought, you got to push it out of there and replace it with something else. But they always say, oh, replace it with an affirmation. But it's it's, it's not, it is an affirmation. But what you have to do and it's really hard is you have to sit down and write what is positive about this situation. Yeah, not, not the lesson learned, but what is positive about it. And then, when it starts to come in your mind, you observe, you say, oh, I'm having this thought, you know. And she said how am I going to write down what's positive about I have to downsize? I live in this great neighborhood. My kids have gone to great schools, you know, because she really and she really had to downsize.

Speaker 1: 16:34

I mean way down there Five bedrooms to one. Yeah, I mean way, way down there.

Speaker 2: 16:41

I've been rooms to one. Yeah, that's what happens to us, it happened to me, it happened to most of the women that I work with. That's what they have. You know, it's not just the trauma, it's the stuff family dynamics. You know the downsizing. So it was really difficult and it's difficult when to think about anything like that. What is the positive in this situation?

Speaker 2: 17:05

But when she started writing them down, she came up with nine, nine positives, and one of them was at her work. She, a friend of hers, knows a realtor that was is a really good realtor and trustworthy and all this stuff. But see, while her thinking was all messed up, she couldn't open her mind up to it, to the possibilities, I think, to the possibilities and opportunities that she could take a step forward with her. That stinking thinking is in there. And so when she had to write down the positives, I said, okay, now focus on one and that's the one. She circled about the realtor and that way it opens her mind up. She circled about the realtor and that way it opens her mind up. And this is a way when you can learn to observe your thoughts. Observe them and don't try not to get involved in them. See, you think, the thought and the thought creates the feeling inside, then you act and you get the results right.

Speaker 2: 18:07

So for her, she had a difficult time observing the thought. A lot of, a lot, of, a lot of, a lot of. When they first start this Right, they have a difficult time saying oh OK, I'm having this negative, you know, energy sucking thought, I'll push it aside. But a lot of times people can't do that. So what? What I do is I say to them I want you to write, you know, think about the situation and tell me what feelings do you feel inside from that situation? Right, those feelings inside are the triggers, that's to alert you. If you can't observe the thought, those are the triggers and they alert you to. You've got to change that, because I know we have, okay, we have the situation. It's still there, it's not changed. But if we can change the way we think about it, the way we focus, the way we think about it, then we can begin to move forward.

Speaker 2: 19:16

So for her, that opened her mind a little bit. Where she could oh, you know I will, I will do that something that I feel comfortable with, that resonates with me, and and then you know she had other ones. Um, a new chapter, you know a new. A new house Well, she had a little time, she got a little tiny house. A new chapter for my new life and just different things. You know, less taxes, they're not big, but there's something positive to focus on, because If there's a positive there's a negative, up down and out. It's just the law of polarity of the universe, you know. So then the last one is my third one is learning to change your attitude.

Speaker 1: 20:01

That is one of my big ones attitude Attitude.

Speaker 2: 20:27

It is. It is. It is because, I mean, you know, all three of these are important, but that attitude is where it all begins. Right, it's the thinking, yes, but the attitude. So, if you, I can remember, but I remember, you know, when I said, remember, I said I needed to do.

Speaker 2: 20:32

What I figured out that I had to do was just as soon as I woke up, because you know when you're kind of groggy and then the thoughts will start coming in there and you can't deal with it, right, so you have a poor attitude, and so you know how that snowballs, right? Yes, for another, what I would do is I get immediately up and I bought myself a little cushion, I put it on the side and I never meditated in my life. I put that little cushion and as soon as I woke up, those feet got on the floor and I sat on that and there's a it's called insight timer. It's a little free, it's not? It's. It's free for just like timing or little little meditation, guided meditations, and I would put that on. That would be the first thing that I did, you know, to get my mind and, um, how I really, the way that I changed my attitude and how I do. Uh, how I work it with my clients is, um, is I give them what I did. It's called self-empowerment routine log. I teach them that it's important to have a routine, right. You know, develop a self-care routine for yourself. You know, like it's meditating, it's journaling, it's self--care and that is non-negotiable. You've got, you got to eat right, you've got to sleep, and you really do. You know, you really do have to do these things. So the chart that I made for myself, someone can take that and adjust it to themselves and make a little game of it. You know, give yourself points and then gratitude, because that's one of the easiest ways to raise your vibration up. So you're in a low vibration with the attitude, right. But if you're grateful from right, where you are, with what you've got, there's always something you can be grateful about, right. That's the third step in my process. I have courses for that and that's my coaching, you know, okay, and I call it. It's called reconnecting with self. So it's self-care. There are four pillars to self-care it's the physical, emotional, spiritual and and intellectual. Those are the four.

Speaker 2: 22:53

Okay, I made an assessment so they could figure out well, which area am I lacking? Because you know, when you're lacking, there's no balance and harmony. You got to get that. I don't believe in focusing on the past. I want you to focus on your vision and your dreams of the future. This is still here. You still have to deal with all this crap, but okay. So you want to go over here.

Speaker 2: 23:13

So I created a timeline where they have to put all the negative things, situations that have happened in their life, right, so that above the line is all the positives that they can think of of significant situations, people, whatever it is in their life, and below is the negative. And by doing something like that, you can figure out where are themes, where are patterns. You know, and it's a good way to look at your past life so you can figure out. You know I don't want to be doing this again. You know I want to learn the lesson because you know, sometimes we learn the lesson. I didn't learn the lesson with men. It kept hitting me in the head. It kept hitting me.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Right there with you.

Speaker 2: 24:01

I wasn't learning anything. I was blaming everything out there. You asshole, what an idiot. I wasted so many years. I was a victim, I played the victim. I had a pity party. It was years before I moved and did all this stuff Took me a long time, but now all I want to do is teach it to other. You know, help other people and let them know that they, you know, if they can change those three things, they can begin to move forward.

Speaker 1: 24:41

Listen. That's it for this special episode of Selfie. Sunday, my heart is full and I've got an assignment. I have to study this whole raise your vibration thing and add some value to your life and mom. And let's see what's in view at One Degree to Victory this week. All right, click the link for 31 Days of Wellness Challenge beginning August 1st. Head over to One Degree to Victory and click the resources tab. There's lots in store there for you the free webinar at Where's my Stuff, and you will find the link to the Limitations to Liberation course, and that's only $27. And if you enjoy what you're hearing, go ahead and become a subscriber. That way I can stay in this space, because I truly enjoy helping you make the hard parts of life a little easier to bear. And a shout out to all my current subscribers Listen, don't forget to go to our Facebook, instagram and TikTok pages Like, follow, share and remember, beautiful souls, to love yourself a little more than you did yesterday. I love y'all. I gotta go.