Find Your Voice: Getting Over the Anxiety of Public Speaking and Facing Fears with Dr. Doreen Downing

Eric Brotman: [00:00:00] Welcome to “Don’t Retire, Graduate”, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with purpose and passion. I’m your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman, and we have a very special guest today to end the calendar year 2022 and to be ready for New Year’s.

Dr. Doreen Downing is a psychologist and a confidence coach who specializes in the treatment of public speaking anxiety. She also hosts the “Find Your Voice, Change Your Life” podcast. Doreen once suffered from extreme stage fright, you’re gonna have a hard time believing that today. In conquering it, she discovered being connected to your authentic self as the key to relaxed and confident speaking.

In addition to coaching and online courses, she’s the author of Essential Speaking, the Seven Step Guide to Finding Your Real Voice, a book that teaches you how to transform your anxiety with presence and connection. Dr. Downing, I, I’m so glad to have you on the show. Welcome to Don’t Retire, Graduate. [00:01:00]

Dr. Doreen Downing: Oh, Eric, I’m glad we are finally got, get to continue our conversation. I know we started months ago on my podcast.

Eric Brotman: Yes. And, and I had such such a great experience on your podcast. It was almost like it was, it was like half an hour of therapy, which I desperately needed anyway. And I, I thoroughly enjoyed that. Why don’t we just start by, by by your sharing sort of your background and, and how you got interested in public speaking and in some of the anxiety issues, and, and then we can talk about your story of how you overcame it.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Well, I don’t know how deep you wanna go. I’m a psychologist, remember?

Eric Brotman: As, as, as long as it’s, as long as it’s a family friendly show you can go as deep as you want to go.

Dr. Doreen Downing: I would say that well most of us come out into the world naturally able to speak.

But something happens, you know, some of us may be more introverted like I was, but, or am. But I would [00:02:00] say that it might’ve started when my grandmother told me to be quiet or my mother was gonna go back into the hospital. My mom was depressed and my grandmother was taking care of us and I think there was kind of a sense of, “Ooh, I better not disturb my mother. I better hold myself back. I better be quiet.” Which is I think if, if we look at what roots are to anxiety, we see that people start to form, right, their sense of self early on. You know, they go, “hello world!”, you know, you’re just a little, little kid and the world– does it greet you or not? Does it say “hello” back you, you sweet, or lovely or powerful you mighty little one. And if it doesn’t, there’s often. “Ooh, I’m not good enough or I’m not…”, you know, I know what I’m talking about is very deep. So, [00:03:00] I mean, it’s before you even maybe even have words. So I would say for those willing to dive that deep, then we go back, but we don’t have to. I mean, a lot of times people are, have healthy families and something happens in high school. A loss, a parent dies and that’s disruptive.

And there are so many other reasons. I talk about them in my book. I list what I see as the major causes of public speaking anxiety, but I just wanted to start with a personal one.

Eric Brotman: Well, and, and I thank you for doing that, and I’m not surprised that you’ve shared so much of yourself already. There’s a lot of anxiety about public speaking.

There’s also a lot of anxiety about money. And so one of the things that we talk about on this show is the, the ways in which we interact with, with money and with family and how much how much baggage there is around that. And so I think there’s a common thread between the two. It’s been said some [00:04:00] people would rather, would rather be attacked by a shark than, than have to give a public talk.

You know, it’s like one of the scariest things it, it, it, it’s listed in the top couple of things that people are most afraid of. And as someone who loves to do that, I have a hard time understanding it. I love those butterflies in the same way that I love a rollercoaster. So how can you, how can we begin to compare the anxiety around public speaking with maybe the anxiety around other things in our lives, including money and finance and then starting to overcome them?

Dr. Doreen Downing: That’s a wonderful question. And I think if you look at neuroscience and just anatomy, anytime we are anxious, something happens in our bodies, you know, like the adrenals shoot adrenaline out. And that to me feels like whatever we in our minds are perceiving as something that’s a struggle for us. Whether it’s money, whether it’s [00:05:00] relationship, whether it’s public speaking, it feels like it triggers this what– hormonal, physiologic, I mean, it seems like it’s probably pretty simple to answer that question in terms of what goes on in our bodies. So what goes on in our minds though is, “oh my gosh!”- like with public speaking- “I’m not gonna be able to control this”. And then with money, it’s, oh, you know, whatever the issue happens to be. “I don’t have enough. I’m not gonna be able to pay my bills.”

I don’t know if people who have too much money have anxiety, but I’m sure they do.

Eric Brotman: They, they do. Ah

You know, people with, Doreen, people with a lot of money have baggage around that too. They feel embarrassed sometimes because,

Dr. Doreen Downing: Ooh,

Eric Brotman: they don’t want anyone to know.

 Or, or they feel like, like they’re, they’re, there’s not gonna continue to be abundance.

They’re gonna lose it somehow. You know, there, there’s [00:06:00] lots of, lots of psychology. Behavioral finance has become its own field, and on this show we’ve, we’ve had some, some behavioral finance psychologists talk about the, the types of things that, that go in through the human brain. What’s interesting, I, years ago I took the Dale Carnegie course and this, this had to be, oh my gosh, it had to be close to 30 years ago now.

 And Dale Carnegie, there were three textbooks, essentially, they’re not textbooks, they’re books, but one of them was “the effective”… or, or “the key to effective speaking”. And it was all about getting outta your shell and doing public speaking. And this was written, you know, 80 years ago. And I’m sure that the science has improved and I’m sure that some of the some of the thought process has improved. So can you talk a little bit about maybe your steps of how to overcome this? Because I, I do think there’s a, a parallel here, here between one of everyone’s greatest fears, which is standing in front of a room and speaking, and some of [00:07:00] the other anxieties that we have in our lives, financially and otherwise.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes, well, I did do all those traditional, conventional public speaking programs to get over my fear and I do know how to make a speech now. I feel like I have the vocal variety and all the kinds of ways that we can present ourselves in public, but I do… the reason why I wrote my book, and the reason why I offer an alternative, maybe, a different way to find your voice, is because even with all those trainings, Eric, I still felt like I had a little, a little one inside who was afraid to come out.

It’s, it’s just amazing. It was just like I had this wall, I could stand on the outside of the wall and do a performance, but inside there was this little one who was still afraid to come out. And that was, I call that well, the [00:08:00] inner journey to find my voice. So, and that’s something what I mentioned earlier is like, what are the roots?

What was my root, how come I’m still anxious, even though I know how to give a good presentation? So how can I more fully show up in, in public? How can I stand in front of a group and be comfortable, you know, confident with just being myself, maybe my introverted self, and I don’t have to be, you know, dynamic and take up a stage and prance around and pound.

Maybe I’m a quieter speaker, and that’s okay. You know, Brene Brown does that. She, she advocates vulnerability. And so my, my steps, my process that I, well, what I dis—, I’m so excited to share it, because the first step is be still. And I’m not sure if you [00:09:00] in, in any of the programs that offer public speaking training, they, they say learn how to just quiet yourself in front of people.

And there’s a training I do where people stand in front of a group without speaking. So they learn to train their body to be comfortable in that setting without words so that you know, the whole animal thing that we’ve got in our brain, you know?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: They aren’t going to eat me. I’m safe here. Ah, learning to relax first when all eyes are on you is the first part of my program.

Eric Brotman: It’s a great, that’s a great lesson, and I, I’m rarely still, anyway, I’ve done, you know, meditated meditation retreats and yoga retreats and these kinds of things, and I love it, but it takes like three days to quiet my mind.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes, yes, yes!

Eric Brotman: It’s a skill.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes. Yeah, you are so, so, so right. And that’s [00:10:00] why my programs are three months long.

Eric Brotman: Ah, well that’s good cuz it takes me at least three days just to quiet the voices in my head. Yeah.

Which sounds, sounds very scary, but it, it’s really you know, sometimes your mouth gets ahead of your brain a little bit or vice versa. And, and there’s definitely some of that. So in a, in a situation where you’re giving a a public talk, there are stages of that that that some people think it has to do with either the size of the audience or the brightness of the cameras, or is it being recorded or… but ultimately even standing in front of five of your peers at a work meeting, even sitting at a conference table and sharing ideas with half a dozen people can be daunting.

And so I’m trying to translate that directly into conversations that are uncomfortable. And one of the most uncomfortable conversations families have is about money. It’s a very [00:11:00] uncomfortable topic. So if you take an uncomfortable topic and then you’re asked to be, to your, to your point, be yourself and be still.

 I think authenticity is the most important, but people are very hesitant to be authentic in vulnerable situations or topics where they don’t know if they can be vulnerable. So how do you, how do you get comfortable talking about things you don’t want to talk about? I mean, you in psychology, there’s lots of those.

I mean, that’s a, you know, and this isn’t a therapy session I realize, but how do you get people to be comfortable talking about things that they either grew up hearing were taboo or that they just believe might be, how do you do it?

Dr. Doreen Downing: Oh, you talked about voices in your head. I think first you, you help people learn to listen.

Listen to what is going on inside of themselves so that there’s a, perhaps an observer, a a, a self that’s inside that isn’t acting out anything or speaking, but just [00:12:00] noticing. And I guess we call that mindfulness nowadays, right?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. We sure do.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Being mindful of those different voices.

That’s one. And then being able to identify what those fears are. You know, that seems to be the next thing that I, I would be working with people to do is like, what are you saying to yourself? We call that self-talk, right?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And then finding the other voice, which is, well you used the word authentic, but the, the truth.

What is really true going on in like, you are scared, yes. But what is it that you really wanna say and what are the consequences? Looking at if you did, what do you think would happen? You know, facing–

Eric Brotman: mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: facing that fear. There’s somebody who is on my podcast Billy Atwell, who has a book and it’s about facing, embracing, [00:13:00] replacing.

So, you know, the whole idea of face, what I’m talking about first is facing whatever it is that you’re afraid of and then just embracing it, saying, okay, I, you know, not making yourself wrong for being afraid and having been I don’t know, conditioned into that kind of, those kind of fears.

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

And then, alright, what are some, what, what are some alternatives?

Dr. Doreen Downing: You know, what could you say? And can you say it in a way that may in a, we’re back to vulnerability, aren’t we?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: What’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen? And let’s face it and plan or prepare for that. So if somebody walks out the door because you’ve said something that’s offensive, well, what next then?

So you, you go into the future and anticipate.

Eric Brotman: Not everybody can do that. I mean, that’s at least not naturally. That’s like the game of chess where some [00:14:00] people are 3, 4, 8 moves ahead of you and they will win. And others are just looking at the board the way it sits right now, and they will often not win.

 To be that far ahead, not of an opponent, unless you want to call that fear your opponent in this case, but to be that far ahead and sort of know what’s coming and know how you’re gonna deal with this I, I want to tie that back to the, the year we’ve had, I mean, 2022 has been, in fact the last three years have been something that if it had been a a a book, we would not have believed it.

 It would’ve seemed farfetched between pandemic and other world events. And now, you know, you throw in where where markets are and the economy around the world, and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of a lot of anxiety. And you know, this weekend, this weekend we’re ringing in 2023, we get a clean slate, which you and I both know is just another day except at the end of the day, it’s not just another day, it’s, it’s turning a [00:15:00] page and, and getting a fresh start if we choose. Now, New Year’s resolutions are, I think, a bit of a waste cuz no one follows them. If your New Year’s resolution is to eat nothing but vegetables and work out for four hours a day, it’s gonna last until the 3rd of January, and that’ll be that. On the other hand, it’s a great way, I think, to start rewiring, retraining your, your, your mind, your brain looking at your career, your family, your life. And so now that we’re headed there, how do we get some of the anxiety from the last couple of years out of the way, and how do we get a fresh start, literally this weekend?

Oh, I, I, when you started to talk about this aspect of this year and us having a fresh start, and I just went, oh, yes, Eric, you’re, you’re really speaking to the whole point of taking stock of. We have to not, we don’t have to do it, but I think that [00:16:00] it’s really wonderful to gather yourself at some point and lay out the pieces of your life and take a look and remake the readjustments.

 You know, cuz it, it’s kind of like a puzzle. Let’s, let’s make a new puzzle. What do, what do you want to the picture to look like next year? And you don’t have to make detailed, although, you know, eating vegetables for three days could be the start. But I would say as we look forward to next year, it would be a vision.

I like that word better than resolutions. What’s my vision as I move from this year to next year? And what is it that I see for myself? What do I wanna create? And it’s a little different than goals. You know, I plan to do this and I have steps and yeah, that’s a linear way, but I, I, [00:17:00] okay, so back to anxiety, you know, like, envisioning, imagining cuz imagination is very powerful.

We can visualize a future and we might even be writing about it. I think that’s a good technique. You know, what I want for myself, what I see for myself, what I plan for myself, and tuck it away. You hear a lot about people writing things down and then you know, looking back and saying, boy, I, I put that in place long time ago.

I did that with my book actually. I, I,

Oh, was, was your book something you, you had in, you know, in the works for a long time and then set it aside and come back to it?

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes.

Eric Brotman: Oh, wow.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Well, well, all my, I, I look back on my journals and I see, you know, I wanted to get a PhD. I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to do the work that I do with people, helping them [00:18:00] be more, more authentic. Transform…

Eric Brotman: mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: their lives. And I look back and buy a house. Just all the little- not little- but big things in life. And I, so I think that technique of writing down your vision and tucking it away is, is fun.

So your your

Eric Brotman: differentiation between visions and goals, I think is really powerful. Because we talk a lot about financial goals.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Mm-hmm.

Eric Brotman: I wanna save X dollars or I want to retire at such and such an age, or or I wanna own a home by such a time, or sell a business by such a time. And those are goals and they’re time and and, and they’re time sensitive and they’re smart goals and all that.

Vision’s totally different. And so when we talk about legacy with people and we spend a lot of time on this show and in our practice talking about legacy, on what’s more important than money, what you’re leaving behind, what your vision is for the [00:19:00] next chapter of your life, for the next generations of your family, for the next iteration of your business.

I think visioning is incredibly powerful and I can think of no better time than right now to sit and do that and start to think about a year from now.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Ah,

Eric Brotman: And not because we want linear goals, but a year from now we’re getting ready to turn to 2024. What will we not only have accomplished, but how will we have validated and, and moved towards our vision, and how will we have maybe grown, matured, evolved over the course of the next 365 days?

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes.

Eric Brotman: I mean, how do you do that? How do you, how do you break that down so it doesn’t feel like a goal that I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna work out and I’m gonna make more money and I’m gonna do all the things that people say they want to do. How do we separate and go straight to the, the visions? What do I want a year from now?

What do I want? If we’re having this same conversation a year from today, [00:20:00] what do we want to be different about that conversation based on what we’ve experienced, based on what we’ve done?

Dr. Doreen Downing: That’s a beautiful question. And I think that inquiry, that self-inquiry is something that’s so valuable, right? Right now. One of the things that I do that goes to kind of a different part of our brain is a I guess you call it a vision board where you get magazines and just start tearing out images and words and then make a collage, and,

Eric Brotman: okay.

Dr. Doreen Downing: and that collage is you know, somewhere around your room, your, your office perhaps, and it’s just reminding you every time you look at the image, it sparks different parts of your brain, different than, okay, there’s step number one, step number two, step number three. This is like, ah, ooh, I wanna travel, you know, and I have an image of [00:21:00] Italy, let’s say. Or, ooh, I wanna be on a stage giving a keynote speech somewhere. Ah, there’s, there’s an image of a microphone and, a group of people, an audience of a thousand, let’s say

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: But so that, I think that stimulates a different kind of growth of moving, having your, all of you moving towards it. And I wanna say one other thing about the steps. I talked about the “be”,

Eric Brotman: mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And this is what you’re talking or what we’re talking about now. It’s about “being”, cuz we’re so much into “doing”,

Eric Brotman: mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And my steps. Every single one. If people get the book, it’s “be”, be still, be connected, be present, and none of my steps say anything about speaking because people think that getting over public speaking anxiety is about doing. It’s [00:22:00] about being, and that’s a whole long, long conversation, but that’s why it’s a training.

Be yourself.

Eric Brotman: Well, I like that better than immersion therapy because I, I tell you, I don’t like spiders. And if you told me that my life would be better and I wouldn’t be afraid to spiders anymore if I was in a room with a thousand spiders, I would tell you that’s not right, because that would not be the way I would wanna face that fear.

I’d want to come up with a different way. So in, in this particular case, and I like the being versus doing because I, I do think that internalizes something rather than sort of check the box, which is important. Sometimes people will avoid the things that scare them the most, right? I mean, sometimes that’s fight or flight.

Well, sometimes if public speaking scares you, you should find a job where you don’t have to do that. That’s one option. Whether it’s the best option or not depends on the person. But in the year we’ve had, we have people who are you know, we had a guest on the show a few weeks ago who talked about student [00:23:00] loans and talked about the fact that people don’t look at them and don’t even open their mail because they’re afraid of them or they don’t understand them, or they don’t want to think about it. And not opening the mail doesn’t make it go away. Same thing with an investment statement or a letter from from, well, a note from the IRS that comes is rarely, “Hi, how are you?” It’s usually, “Hey, we’ve recalculated something and we want more of your money.” but you, you can’t make these things go away by ignoring them. All they’re gonna do is, is is grow in you, right? So facing your fear matters. But again, I don’t wanna be in a room with a thousand spiders. So how do you face fears,

Dr. Doreen Downing: Uhhuh.

Eric Brotman: Whether they’re financial fears or speaking fears or other types of fears without necessarily immersing yourself in you? How do you, what do you do?

Dr. Doreen Downing: First, you make it safe. And so I would say that what people tell me about my coaching is that I make it safe for them to face their fears. It’s almost like you gotta hold somebody’s hand, you know?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Just like a little kid who’s saying, [00:24:00] “mommy, I’m afraid”, you know, and letting them know that there’s a, they are not doing it alone.

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And I have a story quick here about

Eric Brotman: please

Dr. Doreen Downing: having snakes, yuck. But I was part of an, an experiment at Stanford when they were developing systematic desensitization. And there was a way of going deep down into a relaxed state and then visualizing a hierarchy. So first it’s “s”. and the s, as soon as I knew it was gonna be snake, I would get afraid, and then I would breathe and calm my body down, breathe, calm my body down.

And then pretty soon I could see myself doing “s”. And this is on a board. I just, what I’m talking about now is called [00:25:00] visualization. Putting your body into a deep, deep relaxed state so that you begin to train your body to get closer to that. I mean, I could, I could work with you and overcome the fear of spiders, if, if you really wanted to be challenged by that.

But you have to do it slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. And it’s a visualization. But I have to tell you, by the time I got through with that process, I had a snake crawling all over me.

Eric Brotman: Okay, well I’m gonna crawl under the table now and that’ll be that thank you for Thank you for doing that to me. I am no longer comfortable.

No, it’s it’s fine.

Dr. Doreen Downing: No, let’s, let’s, let’s go back to that question actually.

Eric Brotman: Yeah.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Is that it? What I said initially is you have to make it safe so you have to help

Eric Brotman: mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: somebody be calm as they approach the whatever make makes them anxious. And you could [00:26:00] do that in your mind first.

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And you don’t flood ’em, you just do it gradually.

Eric Brotman: What about

Dr. Doreen Downing: baby steps, Bob.

Eric Brotman: What about, what about rationality? Is, is… Certain fears are conjured up and certain fears are legitimate. For example, and, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna stick with money because that’s the, the theme here. It’s often been said that to be young and broke is an inconvenience, but to be old and broke is a tragedy.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Oh.

Eric Brotman: I think the greatest fear people have- financially- is running out of money. And it’s something we, we deal

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yeah.

Eric Brotman: with on a regular basis, working with people.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yeah.

Eric Brotman: It’s one thing to be young and not have any money in your bank because you’ll go make more. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to be at a stage in your life where it’s either difficult or impossible to make more, and you feel like there’s a scarcity.

And so we can throw stats out all day and say, look, you’re not gonna run out. This is, this [00:27:00] is what we’ve done and here’s the plan and here’s all the logic, rational stuff. But at some point, some of that fear is some of it’s irrational. What do you do with that? How? Help me help the folks we work with when it comes to that. Because in some cases we have to say, yeah, no, you have a legitimate reason to worry about this. Let’s take some steps. Other times it’s like, you couldn’t spend this if you tried.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yeah. Eric, can I come on your team?

Eric Brotman: Well, maybe, maybe I need, I need a snippet now.

Dr. Doreen Downing: I can get at the root of that. That’s, that’s like you say … the neuroscientists say that this part of our brain is wired differently than the back part of our brain. So, trying to convince somebody rationally isn’t working, because guess what? The fear is lodged maybe in the unconscious. So that’s why we have to [00:28:00] go deeper, do a deeper dive, and go to where perhaps that fear originated, you know?

Eric Brotman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Doreen Downing: I could get , and then once they go, “oh yeah, yeah.” You know, early on my family lost everyth.

Eric Brotman: Right.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And I was poor.

Eric Brotman: Well, and chil- children of the Depression era have memories of that, that, that have stuck with them.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes.

Eric Brotman: And, and younger people, younger generations who haven’t gone through something like that. Even the, the financial crisis, in ’08- ’09 was nothing compared to that. And so,

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yeah.

Eric Brotman: Unless you’ve been through it, it’s hard to identify.

It’s kind of like if in 30 years there’s a virus and there’s concern that we’re gonna have a pandemic, the, the folks who are 20 years old won’t have any context for that.

And the folks who just endured the last three years and went through all of this will be like, “Oh, I know what this is, and, and I sort of have some, some, some grounding for it. But Doreen, we’re running out of [00:29:00] time. I could talk to you for six weeks and, and I know, I know we, we will talk again. But I, I have to ask you first and foremost, because I, I’m just very enthusiastic about your answer specifically to this question, which is what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Dr. Doreen Downing: Well, I wanna be…. Okay, I get to say it right? I wanna be Tina Turner. I wanna be a singer. I wanna be a singer.

Eric Brotman: Oh my gosh!

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes.

Eric Brotman: Well, you know, you know if that’s one of your fears, we could overcome that right now, acapella. Would you like to do that live for our audience?

Dr. Doreen Downing: I don’t have a singing voice. In fact, I took a, a program once for those who don’t have a singing voice.

And we did get up on stage. It wasn’t pretty, but it was fun.

Eric Brotman: Oh my goodness. Well, I, I will tell you, I can sing, I can sing with the best of them, but don’t ask me to dance. It scares me more than spiders. So we’ve covered that ground. We need an extra credit assignment and I, I wanna make sure people know how to, how [00:30:00] to get your book and how to find your show and how to learn more about you if they want coaching services or they just wanna read some of your material.

So first, the extra credit assignment, and then how do folks find out more about you.

Dr. Doreen Downing: The extra credit assignment because this is the beginning of the year is breathing, I would say. And we have all sorts of techniques, but I, my favorite is just taking a full breath in and let it out all the way.

When I work with people and then I ask them to take a full breath, they just kind of gulp and don’t let it out. So, and then count backwards from 10 to one because I think ooh, letting go, you know, releasing the tension from this last year, but also opening up to possibilities that are, that’s we’re, we’re headed to.

If we’re envisioning a positive future, a positive this year then this breath kind [00:31:00] of clears the space and clears our, our bodies and clears our minds. So full, deep breath.

Eric Brotman: Great advice. Great advice, and a perfect way to start the new year. I, I thank you. How can folks learn more about you? We’ll put all of your stuff in our show notes, but if they’re interested in learning more about you, getting a copy of your book, what’s the best way to do all of that?

Dr. Doreen Downing: Well, Doreen, D o r e e n Doreen’s seven Secrets is a way that they can get the list of my secrets that I write about in my book.

Eric Brotman: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, we’ll put that in our show notes.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Dot com, actually, it’s

Eric Brotman: dot com.

Dr. Doreen Downing: It’s a u. Yeah. Doreen seven secrets.com.

Eric Brotman: Doreen seven, is it, it’s at the number seven, right?

Not the word, not spelled out.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Yes. Yeah.

Eric Brotman: Doreen7secrets.com check it out. It’s the way to get these secrets of being not doing. This has been great. Thank you so much for being here. Last question, just because I’m the host and I get to do this, what’s your favorite Tina Turner song?

Dr. Doreen Downing: [00:32:00] Simply the best, better than all the rest.

Eric Brotman: Great.

Dr. Doreen Downing: And that’s how, that’s how I brought visualize the, my, my perfect mate that I’ve been married to for a long time now.

Eric Brotman: Oh, lucky mate. Thank you so, so much for being here. Happy New Year continued success. I, I wish you all the best and I, and I hope folks will check out your work as a result of spending some time with us today.

Dr. Doreen Downing: Uhhuh. Wonderful. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Brotman: Absolutely. I’d like to thank all of you for listening and watching today, and we would love to hear from you. So please send us a message or leave us comments at dontretiregraduate.com or on social media. If you like our show, please don’t keep it a secret. Tell your friends and family, they can join you on your journey to financial freedom.

And leave ratings and reviews for us on your favorite podcast platform. They are priceless to us. We’ll be back next week with another installment of Office Hours and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you don’t retire, [00:33:00] graduate. Don’t retire, graduate is part of the Evergreen podcast network.

Narrator: Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, L L C. Kestra IS, member FINRA, S I P C. Investment advisory Services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, l l c. Kestra AS, an affiliate of Kestra IS. Kestra IS, or Kestra AS are not affiliated with Brotman Financial or any other entity discussed.