00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to my show, Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I'm your host with Sean McDonald. I recognize that we all have different definitions of success. For you, it may be the size of your paycheck. Mine is inspiring people to develop a plan to reach their dreams. It's time to stop reading other people's success stories and start writing your own. You can only exceed expectations by believing in yourself. People always like to talk about their gift for purpose. If you have a gift, lead with your gifts and don't let your friends, family, or coworkers stop you from planning or living your dreams. My guest is Shelly fan Fan Its fan Fan is the Florida State licensed Mental health Counselor. She is currently the chief executive officer of Harmony Mental Health and Behavioral Services for Children, adolescents and adults. Shelly is also the founder and sole owner of as Shelly Consultant, llc. Or. She consults with individual businesses, ministries, and organizations to maximize performance and productivity. Shelly's passion is to change the world, one life, one family, in one community at a time. Please work with the Money Making Conversation Master Class. Shelly fan Fan how you doing. I am well, hello, thank you for having me? Well you seem bright? Chipper is that it's a standard m for your personality? Absolutely, I got up this morning. I still have purpose. Uh, impact is my my my currency. So yes, there's so much more to smile about than there is to frown about. But you know, but you always get these people go, why are you so happy? Well, you know they want to bring you down, you know they want they feel there's a reason or dysfunctional role in your life to have this level of enthusiasm that I say that not even joking, because they have people like that. How do you how do you deal with people who who have that negative built in energy that they want to just spread instead of absorbing positivity. I try to be as positive as possible and make sure that I do that consistently. Because being for filled and being in purpose and finding a reason to smile is no longer a normal thing. It's quite abnormal. So when people respond to that, it's because they are expecting you to be defeated. They're expecting you to be discouraged, They're expected you to be at your wits end, And so it's not uncommon for people to ask me like, why are you smiling so big? But the reason why my mantra is lived in your smile is because I went through that stage in my life where I'm you know, you know, I spread the misery because I was so miserable on the inside, and so I am very intentional about spreading positivity. And when I deal with people or when I come to across across people who have that attitude, I just basically confunct them and encourage them to fix their focus, and um, I try my best to give them a different perspective and let them know that there's so much more working for us then there is working against us when you speak of that different perspective, because if it's based on who you meet, there's no cookie cutter game plan you can give to everybody. Otherwise you're not really servicing them correctly and also hearing their issues. You know, now, your name is that I introduced you with Shelley fan Fan was that born and raised name? It is? Okay? Cool? So you know, we go through life and you know, I remember when middle school at times I was bullied, okay, and you have a name, your name as a little oddity to a fan fan, So will you tease and when you would tease, did they lead to any bullying incidents that you can remember that you have to overcome or share with your parents or the teachers to to you know, keep you focused and enjoy going to school. I'm happy that you bring that up such a good question because I love my name. Now it works so well with campaigns because people are like, I'm a fan of fan Fan. I'm like, yeah, keep that energy going. But let me tell you, I never It took a long time for me to really race that name because I was bullied. Fan Fan is a very uncommon name. Is actually of Haitian descent. It's pronounced Fafa, but of course you know in our English language it is pronounced fan fan. That's what people get, that's how they are able to pronounce it. And so in school, I was bullied for having a very strange last name. I was bullied for being so skinny. I was bullied for being Haitian, all the things that make me me, and so it really impacted my capacity to self accept Now. You know, I know that I would when I look back in my life, I kind of went with the flow. You know, when I say that is that the things that people tease me about, I stopped doing it so I could fit in, you know, like they like my teacher used to always ask me to read publicly, you know, and in the classroom. And one I remember a couple of students they were very, very upset that I was always chosen to read. And that really hit me when I look back on it, and not not just started, you know, just started breaking up my words and saying aid instead of isn't so I can stop being the special student and so and so. I understand that because of the fact that when you start talking about mental health, people need to understand it doesn't start in high school. It just start as an adult. Sometimes you can go all the way back to you know, uh, preschool, how the adults allowed certain situations, the crying baby or the kid in the corner by itself, or the way the kids dressed, and because kids started a blank slate. So let's start at the at the at that age level that you start counseling and and and treating, so we can then we move up to adolescents, then teens, then adults, and adults are a whole new story. But sometimes if you don't get your adulthood with the proper guidance, then your disaster correct. Well, I'd like to take it back one more stage, and that's in vitro. And it's important for people to understand that mental health starts when you are in the womb of your mom. Because in your womb, in the womb of a woman, a child is developing. The brain is developing, there is a soul, they have the sense of hearing. I could go on and on about the fetus inside of a woman's womb. And a lot of the times when I'm dealing with individuals who are trying to overcome trauma, their trauma dates back all the way to when they were in their mother's womb. And it could be because the mother was a victim of violence herself, or the mother was a drug abuser. I could go on and on, and so it's important to understand that our mental health lifeline actually starts when we were in the womb of our mother's The way that our mothers cared for them for herself, her mental health, how well she attended to her health needs while she was pregnant with you, has to do and it is included in the mental health lifeline. When we're working with preschool children or kindergarteners, those young because I treat from the ages of two to it's important to understand that there's so much um of there's so much involved in a child's development of self identity that incorporates their peer interactions. And so when we as parents and caregivers minimize when they come to us and say such and such was talking about meet all the things that we find trivial, it's very huge to a child, and so it's important to understand that those things create impressions. Everything creates impressions. Our brain is a huge recorder. Even those memories that we don't have access to have power. And so as we developed through those developmental stages and we are trying to find ourselves, it's important to understand that all of those experiences matter. They are impressions, and what we impress we will express. What we impress is what we express. So a lot of times when I'm working with adults, it's important for me to kind of go back to those learned experiences that cause those impressions and try to unlearn them so that they can find some freedom and the opportunity to relearn healthy connections and healthy ideas. We'll be right back with more Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Now, let's return to Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rashan McDonald. Absolutely. Now as I'm talking to doctor, excuse me, I'm talking to Shelley fan Fan. She is a license important, licensed mental health counselor and our reason like, I've been interviewed a lot of African Americans, people of color about mental health because in the community of black and brown we kind of shy way, you know, because just using street terms, I don't want to think I'm crazy, you know, I don't think you know, you know, people still use the word retarded and associated with you know, craziness, and you know, these are terminologies within our community that we have not wrapped our conversation around, and that that doesn't allow us to move forward. You know, we call our kids slow. You know, it's still humor tied to a child not functioning properly. That child may be discarded into the back of the house or or to a different conversation, or may not be included in part of the family conversation because of embarrassment. How do you deal with those because, like I said, we started to move forward now, because it's called participation, it's called inclusive awareness of a child, um intelligence, a child's social adaptbility, adaptability, and things like that. Talk to us well, it starts with education because our breakthrough is often on the other side of something we do not know. And so this idea of crazy. Usually when people say crazy, I asked them, what does that look like for you? And so most people will define like a person. Think of a man at a seven eleven who's talking to himself, you know, wiggling his fingers and responding to internal stimuli. Most of the time people see that as mental illness. When they think of the word mental health, they automatically think mental illness, the person who has schizophrenia, the person who has bipolar who's blowing up things, burning things, and having anger outbursts. And what I try to teach every opportunity that I have, especially to black and brown communities, is that mental health is a spectrum. It starts with being completely whole and emotionally well, and most of us do not fit into that category all the way to having a diagnosable mental health disorder. So what I try to teach is, what does it look like outside of that space, outside of the area that criteria from mental illness, What does the rest of that spectrum look like? The rest of that spectrum looks like your inability to commit to another person. It looks like your inability to get eight hours of uninterrupted rests. It looks like your self doubt. It looks like your fear and anxiety that keeps you stuck. It looks like your procrastination. It looks like that book that you haven't written. It looks like that song that you haven't sung. It looks like your inability to overcome your emotional issues. It's your inability to to communicate effectively without allowing your emotions to drive the car. It's your incapacity to manage your anger and be successful at work. It's your inability to manage your finances effectively. When we look at it that way, it changes our mind about what mental health really looks like, and then it expands the need in our communities for help. Right, Well, you know the thing about it is that you have an inner city, then you have which is which which is totally a lockdown, and well, you know, there's a lot of work has to be done. You're talking about the wealth gap, that's a mental gap too. That's we're definitely in the mind of city. But it's all about embarrassing how people feel the statue or the place they want to be recognized us within the community. And it starts with your children. And your children are your future. And so you know, we bring these innocent taughts or innocent people into our lives. And I always tell people to have a healthy child and that maybe define what you might call healthy into a life is a miracle. And in the process of the adults, this is the whole thing. You have an adult, you have the child, and then and the child may not be living up to the physical and mental expectations of their parents. How do you deal with that? So the love and the and the not lawering the standards, but raising the love and being able to push that child at that level to their maximum efforts. How do you balance that because you're dealing with all three. You're dealing with the ad lessons, you're dealing with the children, and you're dealing with their adults. So in parenting, when we are providing parenting training, one of the things one of the main lessons that we teach is that the love and affection, celebration of life, those things should not be contingent upon expectations or what we define as good behavior. It should never right. And so sometimes I'll have parents say, or what, we canceled his birthday party because he was blah blah blah blah right, he didn't listen, he got in trouble. And so we have to help parents understand what's healthy to have as contingencies because a lot of parenting is very performance based. And then we grow up as adults and we are over performers, we are perfectionists. We're not living happy lives. And where does that come from? That comes from performance based parenting? Where I love you when I say when I believe you're doing good, when the report cards all a's, when you got that trophy at school. It is at that point that I give you love a affection, or when you are not meeting my expectations, I withhold my love and affection. It causes children to understand that love depends on fill in the blank, and that's a that's a problem for a lot of marriages too. I always say when you say I love you, because everything after the word because becomes a condition. And so we have to actually teach parents how to unconditionally love and accept their children. And half the time parents who parent that way is because they were parented that way. And so it's about going back and breaking those generational understanding, those generational choices, those generational curses, in order to set the children free. One of the things also in addition to that teaching unconditional love in our parenting, we also have to teach that there's no such thing as good or bad parenting. It's either it's effective or ineffective. And when we are not raising children that are emotionally intelligent and mentally stable, there is some ineffectivity in the way that a person parents. And then it gives us an opportunity to teach parents new skills. New skills are really to keep. It's when they seen them. With a series of questions for me to include in my interview with you, I'm speaking with Shelly fan Fan She's a licensed in the state of Florida mental health counselor. She also has another organization called as Shelley Consultant, LLC, where she consults with individuals, businesses, ministries, and organization, the maxismized performance and productivity. That's how we talked about that productivity, especially coming out of the COVID experience, but also came out of the COVID experience was two words that I heard a lot, conflict resolution, and I heard it a lot in law enforcement. Confluence of course, you know, I Conflquence happens and everything happens in children, happens in relationships, happens in the two adults trying to get into the same door going into a seven eleven. So when you need to work conflict resolution, I'm sure that's been a prominent part of your conversations. How what exactly does that mean? Conflict resolution? Well, it means that it's it's basically a process by which we manage un met expectations. Because when you think about conflict, conflict is a problem. It's a nice word for problems. Problems are always rooted in an expectation that wasn't meant. Think of a problem right now, Think of problems that you dealt with. It always goes back to a an expectation that you had of someone something, an outcome that you were expecting, and the expectation wasn't met. And so conflict resolution teaches skill sets on how to manage that distress. If that conflict is with another person, Conflict resolution teaches how to have those courageous conversations and be solution focused in it. How do you manage your emotion? Is that disappointment, that anger, that frustration? How do you manage that in order to get to a resolution with someone that you want to preserve a relationship with. Sometimes the resolution is deuces, and that's okay too, But conflict resolution is about that. And one of the things that I teach as a corporate trainer is a lot of the time when we say conflict resolution, what we're trying to say is conflict management. Why because we may not always resolve our conflict the resolution maybe that we're just gonna agree to disagree. Is that a resolve? Well maybe not, But it's a way that we're managing conflict so that we can still be effective. We can still be partners, we could still be married, we could still be co parents, we could still you know, be effective and work towards the go. Conflict management is always the key. We'll be right back with more money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Now let's return to Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Conflict management can be sectioned off. You know, when you're when you're in a police officer, that's a separate conflict management. When you go in for mediation with parenting, that's a separate conflict management, real solution discussion. And well as in a girlfriend or a partner relationship or husband and wife relationship, because there's certain contractual agreements that you have when you get married. A lot of people don't realize you've signed a contract, you know, where when you're just a partner, a girlfriend, boyfriend, you can go do somehout, you know, depending on if you've moved in with that person, then that's a different duce. There's a certain mediation that's the conflict can get kind of kind of dicey. But and and and talking to you in mental health and and you know, it all goes back to stress. It always goes back to am I living up to my personal standards? Then then if you're not living up your personal standards, are you're living up to your kids? That are you living up to your job standards? So you can just put all this way on your back and like the little image of that guy holding up the world Atlas holding you can feel like that person and guess what, it may never come off of you unless you learn how to handle stress. Now, I've always felt that, you know, stressed. For me, I handled a lot of different ways. Uh, even when I when I bought a house in Atlanta, I made sure I had water near me. So I go near water. I just watched that calmness of the water, and it's just just seeing it. It just really brings me down. And so because I'm not a cigar cigar smoker, I don't drink wine, so everything's always one on me. And so how I deal with that. I love to bake. I love to cook, you know, because it's a short term window and I can see success. Sometimes stress is tied to goals. So and then in my office, I have a garden, and so I have this forty five day window where I can see tomatoes, I can see okraw, I can see colar greens. And so that's how ideal was stress. And as I'm just giving those examples of because there's so many different ways, but I tid I tend to tie short time, which short term windows too to be able, especially if you're goal order in person like me, and you have these long committed plans where you are it's a month of whale, is a year way, or you're not even reaching your goals. Well, I can go out to my guard and I can put me some chairry tomatoes and I'm happy. So when you say stress management, am I in the right direction, Shelley? You are absolutely you hit the veil on the head. Stress management is about under first and foremost understanding the importance of having practical wellness tools. Okay, what you just talked about our wellness tools. I garden. I make sure that I am living by the water, and you know I have these. I give myself an opportunity to achieve success. That's what that is like. I want to be able to see the tomatoes grow that success. These are wellness tools, and unfortunately many people don't have many. They may have one or two tools that they use. So if my tool is a glass of wine and sleep, that I'm not dealing with my stress because the tools that I'm using are very avoidant. And so we teach how to classify your stressors into two main categories. What stressors are avoidable and what stressors are unavoidable? Because the ones that are avoidable that we need to be strategic about avoiding them in a healthy way, because escape avoidance sometimes becomes very unhealthy. You're not really living life because you're just living in escape avoidance, just running from those stressors. So in a healthy way, how do we avoid those avoidable stressors? And how do we manage our stress in those unavoidable stressors? And I am telling you in the twenty four years that I have been in practice, there are so many people out there that do not know how to Here's a word. Here's a word, and that is decompressed. Like decompressed. What do you do to decompress? Because if you're trying to manage your stress, but you don't have the capacity to decompress, it's gonna be very difficult to manage the stress. So of course we teach, you know, a good planning, making sure that we teach harmony versus balance, teach make sure that you are around people that are going to pour life into your accountability partnership, set realistic goals. But but deeper than that has to be the capacity to decompress. That's your ability to take your anger from a ten to a six, your anxiety from a seven two a three, leaving your office and going at home and understanding you have to change roles. Now your hats have to change. There has to be an exchange made either at your front door or on your way home so that you're not bringing that energy into your sanctuary. Decompression is key, and there are people that don't know this. They have to learn how, and that's why therapy is so effective. Again, I'm speaking to Shelley fan Fan. I'm a fan of fan Fan, Okay, and then she's State of Florida Mental Health counselor and also she deals with what I'd like to talk about the conversation. We don't have children have mental health. They are not tied to the words that we use because there's so many stress levels the kids have to do. Because we have technology. You know, video games create stress. Just what being able to have apps create stress. The fact that your child and yourself are tied to a phone, so they're they're prevoud conversations while you're driving in a car. That was not privy when I was growing up and we drove, we drove, we got the car. Now you're in a phone. That child may want that a kitchen, but you're given all that attention to the person you're dealing on the phone. They may hear your stress levels and they pick that up. So I know that your world. Sometimes you're invite their stress into your child's life because of technology. So I want to close what you give me us. Some porters own overcoming life obstacles. Absolutely, And are you talking about in terms of children? Because you hit something, you hit, you hit the nail on the head. When you talked about children watching how their parents handle stress, how children learn by watching their parents managing their stress, managing conflict and things of that nature. And so a lot of times when parents come in and they sign up for therapy for their kids, do you know what we do? We asked them to sign up themselves first, because our children are sponges and it's very important that caregivers are tapping into their own mental health so that they can be better examples for their children. And that stress in childhood. I'm so happy that you mentioned that because it's key and all of this emphasis on gaming and winning and likes and shares and all of that. One thing that I want to say here and I could go on and on about this, but I'm gonna keep it brief. Parents have to encourage peer interactions. You can negotiate with your kids. Four hours of peer interaction gets you one hour of gaming. Like, we have to make sure that our children are still connecting with their peers. That's so important. That peer interaction is so important and alleviates a lot of the internal distress that children deal with on a day to day basis. And we have to make sure that children have the opportunity to express themselves. This idea that children should be seen and not heard, that's like a thing of the past that is unhealthy. It causes mental ill on this we have kids that are cutting themselves, they are self mutilating. We have to allow children to speak their minds and parents have to give them the space to do that. Well. I want to thank you Chilling. And like I said, I am based in Atlanta, Georgia. I know you're licensed in Florida. You make trips to Georgia. Please make time and come over. We can talk stress free. You know, I can show you my garden. I can make some sauce right in front of you with the holler opinions. I freshly picked the onions, I freshly picked the cilantro. I freshly picked in the hockey ChIL beef steak tomatoes that we're gonna straight up and enjoy. Of course, the chips are gonna be storeballed. I can't do everything, get okay, but again, uh I, I appreciate your smiles, appreciate you and the more important to honest conversation. That's why a couple of bringing on money Making Conversations master class. So no, you have a home here to be able to afform them, to be able to communicate, and I like to believe that the conversation I was able to deliver you was one of honesty and one that you was able to exp found on and deliver information for my audience. Okay, absolutely, thank you for having me. If you want to hear or see this interview on money making conversations, go to money Making Conversation dot com. I'm with Sean McDonald. I am your host
Speaker 1: Welcome to my show, Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I'm your host with Sean McDonald. I recognize that we all have different definitions of success. For you, it may be the size of your paycheck. Mine is inspiring people to develop a plan to reach their dreams. It's time to stop reading other people's success stories and start writing your own. You can only exceed expectations by believing in yourself. People always like to talk about their gift for purpose. If you have a gift, lead with your gifts and don't let your friends, family, or coworkers stop you from planning or living your dreams. My guest is Shelly fan Fan Its fan Fan is the Florida State licensed Mental health Counselor. She is currently the chief executive officer of Harmony Mental Health and Behavioral Services for Children, adolescents and adults. Shelly is also the founder and sole owner of as Shelly Consultant, llc. Or. She consults with individual businesses, ministries, and organizations to maximize performance and productivity. Shelly's passion is to change the world, one life, one family, in one community at a time. Please work with the Money Making Conversation Master Class. Shelly fan Fan how you doing. I am well, hello, thank you for having me? Well you seem bright? Chipper is that it's a standard m for your personality? Absolutely, I got up this morning. I still have purpose. Uh, impact is my my my currency. So yes, there's so much more to smile about than there is to frown about. But you know, but you always get these people go, why are you so happy? Well, you know they want to bring you down, you know they want they feel there's a reason or dysfunctional role in your life to have this level of enthusiasm that I say that not even joking, because they have people like that. How do you how do you deal with people who who have that negative built in energy that they want to just spread instead of absorbing positivity. I try to be as positive as possible and make sure that I do that consistently. Because being for filled and being in purpose and finding a reason to smile is no longer a normal thing. It's quite abnormal. So when people respond to that, it's because they are expecting you to be defeated. They're expecting you to be discouraged, They're expected you to be at your wits end, And so it's not uncommon for people to ask me like, why are you smiling so big? But the reason why my mantra is lived in your smile is because I went through that stage in my life where I'm you know, you know, I spread the misery because I was so miserable on the inside, and so I am very intentional about spreading positivity. And when I deal with people or when I come to across across people who have that attitude, I just basically confunct them and encourage them to fix their focus, and um, I try my best to give them a different perspective and let them know that there's so much more working for us then there is working against us when you speak of that different perspective, because if it's based on who you meet, there's no cookie cutter game plan you can give to everybody. Otherwise you're not really servicing them correctly and also hearing their issues. You know, now, your name is that I introduced you with Shelley fan Fan was that born and raised name? It is? Okay? Cool? So you know, we go through life and you know, I remember when middle school at times I was bullied, okay, and you have a name, your name as a little oddity to a fan fan, So will you tease and when you would tease, did they lead to any bullying incidents that you can remember that you have to overcome or share with your parents or the teachers to to you know, keep you focused and enjoy going to school. I'm happy that you bring that up such a good question because I love my name. Now it works so well with campaigns because people are like, I'm a fan of fan Fan. I'm like, yeah, keep that energy going. But let me tell you, I never It took a long time for me to really race that name because I was bullied. Fan Fan is a very uncommon name. Is actually of Haitian descent. It's pronounced Fafa, but of course you know in our English language it is pronounced fan fan. That's what people get, that's how they are able to pronounce it. And so in school, I was bullied for having a very strange last name. I was bullied for being so skinny. I was bullied for being Haitian, all the things that make me me, and so it really impacted my capacity to self accept Now. You know, I know that I would when I look back in my life, I kind of went with the flow. You know, when I say that is that the things that people tease me about, I stopped doing it so I could fit in, you know, like they like my teacher used to always ask me to read publicly, you know, and in the classroom. And one I remember a couple of students they were very, very upset that I was always chosen to read. And that really hit me when I look back on it, and not not just started, you know, just started breaking up my words and saying aid instead of isn't so I can stop being the special student and so and so. I understand that because of the fact that when you start talking about mental health, people need to understand it doesn't start in high school. It just start as an adult. Sometimes you can go all the way back to you know, uh, preschool, how the adults allowed certain situations, the crying baby or the kid in the corner by itself, or the way the kids dressed, and because kids started a blank slate. So let's start at the at the at that age level that you start counseling and and and treating, so we can then we move up to adolescents, then teens, then adults, and adults are a whole new story. But sometimes if you don't get your adulthood with the proper guidance, then your disaster correct. Well, I'd like to take it back one more stage, and that's in vitro. And it's important for people to understand that mental health starts when you are in the womb of your mom. Because in your womb, in the womb of a woman, a child is developing. The brain is developing, there is a soul, they have the sense of hearing. I could go on and on about the fetus inside of a woman's womb. And a lot of the times when I'm dealing with individuals who are trying to overcome trauma, their trauma dates back all the way to when they were in their mother's womb. And it could be because the mother was a victim of violence herself, or the mother was a drug abuser. I could go on and on, and so it's important to understand that our mental health lifeline actually starts when we were in the womb of our mother's The way that our mothers cared for them for herself, her mental health, how well she attended to her health needs while she was pregnant with you, has to do and it is included in the mental health lifeline. When we're working with preschool children or kindergarteners, those young because I treat from the ages of two to it's important to understand that there's so much um of there's so much involved in a child's development of self identity that incorporates their peer interactions. And so when we as parents and caregivers minimize when they come to us and say such and such was talking about meet all the things that we find trivial, it's very huge to a child, and so it's important to understand that those things create impressions. Everything creates impressions. Our brain is a huge recorder. Even those memories that we don't have access to have power. And so as we developed through those developmental stages and we are trying to find ourselves, it's important to understand that all of those experiences matter. They are impressions, and what we impress we will express. What we impress is what we express. So a lot of times when I'm working with adults, it's important for me to kind of go back to those learned experiences that cause those impressions and try to unlearn them so that they can find some freedom and the opportunity to relearn healthy connections and healthy ideas. We'll be right back with more Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Now, let's return to Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rashan McDonald. Absolutely. Now as I'm talking to doctor, excuse me, I'm talking to Shelley fan Fan. She is a license important, licensed mental health counselor and our reason like, I've been interviewed a lot of African Americans, people of color about mental health because in the community of black and brown we kind of shy way, you know, because just using street terms, I don't want to think I'm crazy, you know, I don't think you know, you know, people still use the word retarded and associated with you know, craziness, and you know, these are terminologies within our community that we have not wrapped our conversation around, and that that doesn't allow us to move forward. You know, we call our kids slow. You know, it's still humor tied to a child not functioning properly. That child may be discarded into the back of the house or or to a different conversation, or may not be included in part of the family conversation because of embarrassment. How do you deal with those because, like I said, we started to move forward now, because it's called participation, it's called inclusive awareness of a child, um intelligence, a child's social adaptbility, adaptability, and things like that. Talk to us well, it starts with education because our breakthrough is often on the other side of something we do not know. And so this idea of crazy. Usually when people say crazy, I asked them, what does that look like for you? And so most people will define like a person. Think of a man at a seven eleven who's talking to himself, you know, wiggling his fingers and responding to internal stimuli. Most of the time people see that as mental illness. When they think of the word mental health, they automatically think mental illness, the person who has schizophrenia, the person who has bipolar who's blowing up things, burning things, and having anger outbursts. And what I try to teach every opportunity that I have, especially to black and brown communities, is that mental health is a spectrum. It starts with being completely whole and emotionally well, and most of us do not fit into that category all the way to having a diagnosable mental health disorder. So what I try to teach is, what does it look like outside of that space, outside of the area that criteria from mental illness, What does the rest of that spectrum look like? The rest of that spectrum looks like your inability to commit to another person. It looks like your inability to get eight hours of uninterrupted rests. It looks like your self doubt. It looks like your fear and anxiety that keeps you stuck. It looks like your procrastination. It looks like that book that you haven't written. It looks like that song that you haven't sung. It looks like your inability to overcome your emotional issues. It's your inability to to communicate effectively without allowing your emotions to drive the car. It's your incapacity to manage your anger and be successful at work. It's your inability to manage your finances effectively. When we look at it that way, it changes our mind about what mental health really looks like, and then it expands the need in our communities for help. Right, Well, you know the thing about it is that you have an inner city, then you have which is which which is totally a lockdown, and well, you know, there's a lot of work has to be done. You're talking about the wealth gap, that's a mental gap too. That's we're definitely in the mind of city. But it's all about embarrassing how people feel the statue or the place they want to be recognized us within the community. And it starts with your children. And your children are your future. And so you know, we bring these innocent taughts or innocent people into our lives. And I always tell people to have a healthy child and that maybe define what you might call healthy into a life is a miracle. And in the process of the adults, this is the whole thing. You have an adult, you have the child, and then and the child may not be living up to the physical and mental expectations of their parents. How do you deal with that? So the love and the and the not lawering the standards, but raising the love and being able to push that child at that level to their maximum efforts. How do you balance that because you're dealing with all three. You're dealing with the ad lessons, you're dealing with the children, and you're dealing with their adults. So in parenting, when we are providing parenting training, one of the things one of the main lessons that we teach is that the love and affection, celebration of life, those things should not be contingent upon expectations or what we define as good behavior. It should never right. And so sometimes I'll have parents say, or what, we canceled his birthday party because he was blah blah blah blah right, he didn't listen, he got in trouble. And so we have to help parents understand what's healthy to have as contingencies because a lot of parenting is very performance based. And then we grow up as adults and we are over performers, we are perfectionists. We're not living happy lives. And where does that come from? That comes from performance based parenting? Where I love you when I say when I believe you're doing good, when the report cards all a's, when you got that trophy at school. It is at that point that I give you love a affection, or when you are not meeting my expectations, I withhold my love and affection. It causes children to understand that love depends on fill in the blank, and that's a that's a problem for a lot of marriages too. I always say when you say I love you, because everything after the word because becomes a condition. And so we have to actually teach parents how to unconditionally love and accept their children. And half the time parents who parent that way is because they were parented that way. And so it's about going back and breaking those generational understanding, those generational choices, those generational curses, in order to set the children free. One of the things also in addition to that teaching unconditional love in our parenting, we also have to teach that there's no such thing as good or bad parenting. It's either it's effective or ineffective. And when we are not raising children that are emotionally intelligent and mentally stable, there is some ineffectivity in the way that a person parents. And then it gives us an opportunity to teach parents new skills. New skills are really to keep. It's when they seen them. With a series of questions for me to include in my interview with you, I'm speaking with Shelly fan Fan She's a licensed in the state of Florida mental health counselor. She also has another organization called as Shelley Consultant, LLC, where she consults with individuals, businesses, ministries, and organization, the maxismized performance and productivity. That's how we talked about that productivity, especially coming out of the COVID experience, but also came out of the COVID experience was two words that I heard a lot, conflict resolution, and I heard it a lot in law enforcement. Confluence of course, you know, I Conflquence happens and everything happens in children, happens in relationships, happens in the two adults trying to get into the same door going into a seven eleven. So when you need to work conflict resolution, I'm sure that's been a prominent part of your conversations. How what exactly does that mean? Conflict resolution? Well, it means that it's it's basically a process by which we manage un met expectations. Because when you think about conflict, conflict is a problem. It's a nice word for problems. Problems are always rooted in an expectation that wasn't meant. Think of a problem right now, Think of problems that you dealt with. It always goes back to a an expectation that you had of someone something, an outcome that you were expecting, and the expectation wasn't met. And so conflict resolution teaches skill sets on how to manage that distress. If that conflict is with another person, Conflict resolution teaches how to have those courageous conversations and be solution focused in it. How do you manage your emotion? Is that disappointment, that anger, that frustration? How do you manage that in order to get to a resolution with someone that you want to preserve a relationship with. Sometimes the resolution is deuces, and that's okay too, But conflict resolution is about that. And one of the things that I teach as a corporate trainer is a lot of the time when we say conflict resolution, what we're trying to say is conflict management. Why because we may not always resolve our conflict the resolution maybe that we're just gonna agree to disagree. Is that a resolve? Well maybe not, But it's a way that we're managing conflict so that we can still be effective. We can still be partners, we could still be married, we could still be co parents, we could still you know, be effective and work towards the go. Conflict management is always the key. We'll be right back with more money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Now let's return to Money Making Conversations Masterclass with Rushan McDonald. Conflict management can be sectioned off. You know, when you're when you're in a police officer, that's a separate conflict management. When you go in for mediation with parenting, that's a separate conflict management, real solution discussion. And well as in a girlfriend or a partner relationship or husband and wife relationship, because there's certain contractual agreements that you have when you get married. A lot of people don't realize you've signed a contract, you know, where when you're just a partner, a girlfriend, boyfriend, you can go do somehout, you know, depending on if you've moved in with that person, then that's a different duce. There's a certain mediation that's the conflict can get kind of kind of dicey. But and and and talking to you in mental health and and you know, it all goes back to stress. It always goes back to am I living up to my personal standards? Then then if you're not living up your personal standards, are you're living up to your kids? That are you living up to your job standards? So you can just put all this way on your back and like the little image of that guy holding up the world Atlas holding you can feel like that person and guess what, it may never come off of you unless you learn how to handle stress. Now, I've always felt that, you know, stressed. For me, I handled a lot of different ways. Uh, even when I when I bought a house in Atlanta, I made sure I had water near me. So I go near water. I just watched that calmness of the water, and it's just just seeing it. It just really brings me down. And so because I'm not a cigar cigar smoker, I don't drink wine, so everything's always one on me. And so how I deal with that. I love to bake. I love to cook, you know, because it's a short term window and I can see success. Sometimes stress is tied to goals. So and then in my office, I have a garden, and so I have this forty five day window where I can see tomatoes, I can see okraw, I can see colar greens. And so that's how ideal was stress. And as I'm just giving those examples of because there's so many different ways, but I tid I tend to tie short time, which short term windows too to be able, especially if you're goal order in person like me, and you have these long committed plans where you are it's a month of whale, is a year way, or you're not even reaching your goals. Well, I can go out to my guard and I can put me some chairry tomatoes and I'm happy. So when you say stress management, am I in the right direction, Shelley? You are absolutely you hit the veil on the head. Stress management is about under first and foremost understanding the importance of having practical wellness tools. Okay, what you just talked about our wellness tools. I garden. I make sure that I am living by the water, and you know I have these. I give myself an opportunity to achieve success. That's what that is like. I want to be able to see the tomatoes grow that success. These are wellness tools, and unfortunately many people don't have many. They may have one or two tools that they use. So if my tool is a glass of wine and sleep, that I'm not dealing with my stress because the tools that I'm using are very avoidant. And so we teach how to classify your stressors into two main categories. What stressors are avoidable and what stressors are unavoidable? Because the ones that are avoidable that we need to be strategic about avoiding them in a healthy way, because escape avoidance sometimes becomes very unhealthy. You're not really living life because you're just living in escape avoidance, just running from those stressors. So in a healthy way, how do we avoid those avoidable stressors? And how do we manage our stress in those unavoidable stressors? And I am telling you in the twenty four years that I have been in practice, there are so many people out there that do not know how to Here's a word. Here's a word, and that is decompressed. Like decompressed. What do you do to decompress? Because if you're trying to manage your stress, but you don't have the capacity to decompress, it's gonna be very difficult to manage the stress. So of course we teach, you know, a good planning, making sure that we teach harmony versus balance, teach make sure that you are around people that are going to pour life into your accountability partnership, set realistic goals. But but deeper than that has to be the capacity to decompress. That's your ability to take your anger from a ten to a six, your anxiety from a seven two a three, leaving your office and going at home and understanding you have to change roles. Now your hats have to change. There has to be an exchange made either at your front door or on your way home so that you're not bringing that energy into your sanctuary. Decompression is key, and there are people that don't know this. They have to learn how, and that's why therapy is so effective. Again, I'm speaking to Shelley fan Fan. I'm a fan of fan Fan, Okay, and then she's State of Florida Mental Health counselor and also she deals with what I'd like to talk about the conversation. We don't have children have mental health. They are not tied to the words that we use because there's so many stress levels the kids have to do. Because we have technology. You know, video games create stress. Just what being able to have apps create stress. The fact that your child and yourself are tied to a phone, so they're they're prevoud conversations while you're driving in a car. That was not privy when I was growing up and we drove, we drove, we got the car. Now you're in a phone. That child may want that a kitchen, but you're given all that attention to the person you're dealing on the phone. They may hear your stress levels and they pick that up. So I know that your world. Sometimes you're invite their stress into your child's life because of technology. So I want to close what you give me us. Some porters own overcoming life obstacles. Absolutely, And are you talking about in terms of children? Because you hit something, you hit, you hit the nail on the head. When you talked about children watching how their parents handle stress, how children learn by watching their parents managing their stress, managing conflict and things of that nature. And so a lot of times when parents come in and they sign up for therapy for their kids, do you know what we do? We asked them to sign up themselves first, because our children are sponges and it's very important that caregivers are tapping into their own mental health so that they can be better examples for their children. And that stress in childhood. I'm so happy that you mentioned that because it's key and all of this emphasis on gaming and winning and likes and shares and all of that. One thing that I want to say here and I could go on and on about this, but I'm gonna keep it brief. Parents have to encourage peer interactions. You can negotiate with your kids. Four hours of peer interaction gets you one hour of gaming. Like, we have to make sure that our children are still connecting with their peers. That's so important. That peer interaction is so important and alleviates a lot of the internal distress that children deal with on a day to day basis. And we have to make sure that children have the opportunity to express themselves. This idea that children should be seen and not heard, that's like a thing of the past that is unhealthy. It causes mental ill on this we have kids that are cutting themselves, they are self mutilating. We have to allow children to speak their minds and parents have to give them the space to do that. Well. I want to thank you Chilling. And like I said, I am based in Atlanta, Georgia. I know you're licensed in Florida. You make trips to Georgia. Please make time and come over. We can talk stress free. You know, I can show you my garden. I can make some sauce right in front of you with the holler opinions. I freshly picked the onions, I freshly picked the cilantro. I freshly picked in the hockey ChIL beef steak tomatoes that we're gonna straight up and enjoy. Of course, the chips are gonna be storeballed. I can't do everything, get okay, but again, uh I, I appreciate your smiles, appreciate you and the more important to honest conversation. That's why a couple of bringing on money Making Conversations master class. So no, you have a home here to be able to afform them, to be able to communicate, and I like to believe that the conversation I was able to deliver you was one of honesty and one that you was able to exp found on and deliver information for my audience. Okay, absolutely, thank you for having me. If you want to hear or see this interview on money making conversations, go to money Making Conversation dot com. I'm with Sean McDonald. I am your host
