Maggie Reyes:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited for the episode we are about to record. You all know that I am a shameless fan girl when I have someone on, I am not bashful. And our guest today is someone who I love, I admire. I am so deeply honored that she made time to be with us today and to share a part of her story and her wisdom with us.
And I am shaking a little as I, as I present you all with the introduction. So I just want everyone to know I’ll be shameless in my love and excitement and delight, and I’m so excited to introduce you to Jackie de Crinis. You may not know her, but you know of her work. Wait till I tell you all the things.
She is a life coach who helps people manage their stress and anxiety by developing better daily habits and learning to manage their own minds. Before she was a life coach. Jackie spent 30 years in the television business and she was working as an executive and she worked in all the amazing places. She worked for the USA Network, ABC, 20th Century Fox and Sony Television.
Many of the shows that she developed and supervised were awarded Emmys and Golden Globes and just changed the world with her amazing creativity that she helped steward all these beautiful, amazing productions. And I added that in, obviously. And she is an avid tennis player. She plays pickleball as well, and she also loves yoga and meditation.
And I know that she’s a very mindful person. Whenever I talk to her, I just feel calm. I feel the energy of the calm coming through her. She has raised three amazing daughters. She lives in Maui with her husband and a very spoiled, wonderful little dog who is our guest as well. So if you hear any barking on this episode, we’re just gonna go with that flow.
And she hosts the podcast called The Overthinkers Guide to Joy, the Overthinkers Guide to Joy. We will link to it in the show notes. Everybody needs to check it out. And it is specifically for people who tend to overthink, overanalyze, over worry, and over everything. Welcome, Jackie.
Jackie de Crinis:
Thank you. That was such a spectacular introduction.
I’m like, wow, I kind of, I find I kind of found myself blushing, which nobody can see cuz it’s a podcast. Yeah. But I’m, I’m blushing. Thank you.
Maggie Reyes:
Sometimes I feel like we all need a moment to see ourselves through somebody else’s eyes, cuz you’re just walking around the world being you and you’re just like, well, this is just me.
But it’s like, no, you’re amazing!
Jackie de Crinis:
Let me sit in the glow in the afterglow of the Maggie Reyes compliments. Thank you. I love it.
Maggie Reyes:
And for, for everyone listening, here’s what, here’s what I’m gonna invite you to do. I’m gonna invite you to imagine that you’re a guest on the podcast, how would I introduce you to the podcast. Like just as a thought exercise, just for fun.
Like I think that would be so amazing for you to think about how somebody else could perceive your accomplishments, the things you’ve done on earth, all those things. And just be in the celebration of them. Yeah, we’re gonna talk about it a little bit.
Jackie de Crinis:
I love that idea.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. That’s everybody’s price life coaching.
Okay. So I have the most amazing story to tell you all, and I’m so excited to tell it, like with Jackie on the podcast cause I’ve told this to Jackie already and I’ve had so much fun with it. So when I originally met her, we started talking and she said she, she mentioned sort of in passing, she’s a very humble, humble person.
And I always believe, you know, the greatest people on earth are the most humble people on earth. And she is one of those people who’s been like all these amazing things and you just meet her and she’s just very offhand and she’s like, oh, I used to work at USA and I had no idea like what she did there, or you know, what her career was.
And they said, Jackie, I need to run a theory by you. I have this theory. I need to tell you, since you worked there, maybe you could tell me what you think. So I used to love the. Royal pains. Oh my gosh. The CIA show. Covert Affairs. Covert Affairs, white collar. These are like my favorite. We would like make an appointment with the tv.
We would like not record them, we would watch them live or you know, like we were just obsessed with these shows. And I told Jackie said, you know, you sitting there had this era where everything they put out, I loved the vibe of the shows if they were wildly different. But I was just always into them and I, and I was telling her, I said, I think somebody over there was making these decisions.
And then they left. and everything went to shit . That’s my my opinion. My opinion is a viewer. I’m not saying that that’s what happened, but my opinion is a viewer is like then all of a sudden, like after like a couple years, like we used to watch USA all the time and then there’s not a single show that I currently in, in the present moment that I watch on USA and I understand like I’m not the target market.
Maybe they changed who the target market was, but I had this whole thing that my husband and I have discussed in depth. As you can all tell by the in depth, I’m telling you, you and I was like, I just have this theory that something happened and Jackie tell everybody. What it was that had happened.
Jackie de Crinis:
Well, I don’t know if I can take ownership of what happened, but I was there for 16 years in charge of development with a team of people.
So again, not single handedly by any means, and we had a brand filter in which we were the Blue Sky Network, and it was really an very intentional development strategy to try and create not alternative programming in the true sense of the word, but alternative to what were the darker, more procedural shows at the time.
So what was very in fashion and very successful, we’re not bagging on any of those shows. But there was the CSI franchises and there was the Law and Order franchises, and there was all of these shows that, by the way, made gazillions of dollars and hundreds of episodes and yeah, we’ll be in syndication forever.
So nothing wrong with that, but we couldn’t kind of find our foothold as a basic cable network competing with big broadcast budgets, big broadcast shows, and again, what is known as procedural, darker shows. And so we tried to zig where they zagged. That was a phrase we used internally and we thought, let’s create shows where it just feels like a, not only joyful to watch the characters, which is why we, where they ended up with the brand of characters welcome, but also just the aesthetic so that yes, people were beautifully dressed and it was shot in beautiful locations. And it was Burn Notice in Miami and it was Covert Affairs on a sunny day, you know, even though she was a spy internationally.
And it was Royal Pains in the Hamptons and it was Psych, which took place in Santa Barbara, you know, Monk in San Francisco. But it was always sunny. And, and so the idea was that it was visually aesthetically pleasing to watch these shows as much as it was to be with these characters.
And we cornered the market in that, in that world for, you know, 16 years that I was there.
Maggie Reyes:
So, so Jackie was the person in part in the development team who stewarded. There was a whole team, you know, it takes hundreds of probably thousands of people to produce all these things.
So when, when Jackie said she was part of a team, there was hundreds of creative people making all of this happen. But she was that person who was the steward who would say, is it a blue sky? Come back, come back to blue. The sun is not shiny. And so she told me this story. I’m like, Jackie, it was you.
You were the one who left. And I’m like, I could not believe that I had had this theory for years about what happened to, you know, to these shows that I, that I loved. And then that I met you. And I’m like, thank you for all the hours and hours and endless hours of joy that the things you’ve worked. Gave me personally, I still, every time I think about it, I just get this overjoyed feeling and literally, I love that you mentioned Psych.
My husband, as you can imagine, quote Psych perhaps every other day. Oh my God, he still to this day been off the year runner. How long? And one of the things, if anyone who’s watched psych will remember this, one of the things that one of the main characters said is, oh, I’ve heard it both ways. Like it’s a ridiculous that like some ridiculous thing that you have not heard both ways.
No, I’ve heard it. Ways show my husband on a daily, daily basis. Like, ugh, I’ve heard it both ways to this day. That’s awesome. So quote, quoting things that’s awesome from those shows in our life. That’s awesome. So I just think it’s so amazing. . I wanted just say it . Thank you for all the hard work that it took to create that to Zig where people’s zagged.
I think no one that listens to the podcast will be surprised that I like all the blue skies study happy shows.
Jackie de Crinis:
Well, it’s who you are as a person. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I’m wearing Maggie’s color today. I’m wearing hot pink today. But it’s who you are as a person. You live in Miami.
You, love flowers. You love pink. You love sunshine. You’re always smiling. I mean, it’s who you are inside and out. So it makes sense that that brand spoke to you.
Maggie Reyes:
So, now that we’ve just talked about that, I think it’s amazing. One of the reasons I wanted to have Jackie come on the show is I wanted to talk about a couple things that I think I think would be interesting and useful for all of us, whether it’s in our marriages, in our careers, in our businesses.
I should, we just think through things in life. And I wanted to ask you, and we’ve never talked about this, so I have no idea what she’s gonna say. What comes up for you when you think about the role of intuition, in your career because even though you had brand guidelines and you had sort of a general direction in which to go in, there are so many success piled up after success after success that there’s this element of that guidance.
Like I think this’ll work, but this might not, I think we should go in this direction that this might not. What was just the role of intuition when you were doing that or what with what you’re doing now?
Jackie de Crinis:
I don’t know if there’s a common denominator in all of it. It’s such a provocative question and I so love your question.
It’s one of my favorite things about you as a coach is that you ask such great questions and I think part of being a great coach is not just giving advice or guidelines. It’s really asking provocative questions so that the client sort of finds the answers themselves. And you do such an amazing job at that.
Having been in masterminds with you and having been friends for so long. I love your questions. I love this question. I can’t say that you know, intuition by definition is not something that you have a recipe for cuz it’s by definition it’s intuition. It’s gut instinct. And I think, well, I can’t say that I always listen to my gut at times where, whether it was in the television business or even in becoming a coach.
I try to get quiet. I try and I’m not a quiet person. I’m, oh, I love words. I love talking. I love conversation. I love all the thanks. But I think that when I came to the U S A network, for example, in 2000, this was a long time ago, I was coming from a broadcast network. I was coming from ABCC, and cable was not.
It’s, it’s so funny to even talk about it like this cuz Cable has now since become something else then. But broadcast was king until 2000, so there were four channels, right? ABC, CNBC, CBS and Fox. And they ran everything and the only thing that sort of competed with them on a very small scale were premium channels, which was like HBO and Showtime.
But those were very elite and very small and subscription based and we didn’t really pay attention to them. Basic cable in terms of original programming, basic cable was just someplace you watched Runoff movies, you know, old movies. But it wasn’t a competitor in 2000 by any stretch of the imagination for original programming.
I think Lifetime maybe had one series, maybe U S A had a couple of small series, but there was nothing. So when I came to run development for USA. We were starting from scratch. There was no shows on the air. Part of why I took the job, because I was like, if I stay here for two years, which is how long my first contract was, if I don’t succeed and put a good show on the air, no one will ever know I was here because it’s not like they used to have them.
Right. And if I put one show on the air, then I’m a hero. And I did. I would just, I brought Monk over, which was a busted script from ABC, and it ended up being a huge hit. So anyway, but the instinct that you’re talking about is actually, I think comes from being quiet. I think it comes from sitting, I mean, this was long before I learned to meditate, which I only learned about five or six years ago.
But being with yourself and listening to your gut, whether that’s in the shower, whether that’s in the bathtub, whether that’s on long walks in nature, whether that’s meditating, whether that’s being alone, you know, in the absence of. Sound like television and stimulation and, and just seeing like, what does my gut say?
And when you really listen to your gut, it will answer back. So I think the decision to go to basic cable at a time when there was no business in basic cable, at least for original programming, was a gut reaction to maybe I can make a mark. The decision to leave television as an industry after 30 plus years in was, I’ve had enough, I’ve done what I can do.
As lovely as it was to listen to you, recap my resume, and as proud as I am of so many great shows and so many great showrunners that I got to work with, it’s a really dog eat dog business. It’s a very difficult business and you put on a suit of armor every day and you fight a battle.
It’s not quite as glossy and dreamy as it appears. It has all the politics of politics, it has all the feeling of an emergency room. So it’s like while no one is technically going to live or die, it feels that way. And it feels a lot like the military, which is you get your ass handed to you every day and you have to survive the next internal battle or external battle.
So that takes a big toll on your psyche, your physical body, your emotional wellbeing. Some people navigate through it better than others. People always say, but you were so successful. And I say, yeah, but at the expense of my health. Like I was so anxious all the time and I didn’t sleep for many, many years and I was kind of existing.
I always say, I think it says in my, on my website, I was surviving my life rather than enjoying it. And so when I got to a point where I could plan for, and I, I don’t use the word retirement as in, oh, put my feet up, eat bon bons and watch tv, but I could do less, right? I could dial it down a little bit.
Dialing it down in television doesn’t exist. There isn’t a sort of part-time or even kind of full-time job in television. Like you’re either all in, you live, breathe, eat it, or you don’t do it at all because there’s too many people who want to be in it. So when I decided to step off the very fast-paced treadmill, had a little crisis of conscious, which is, who do I wanna be?
What do I wanna be, what do I wanna do? And with great gratitude, I had some choices, right? I saved for those choices. So it wasn’t like I, I didn’t quit in a moment of fury and I didn’t leave and I didn’t plan at, cuz I was still pretty young to say, oh, I’m not gonna do anything. And I had to sit in the quiet.
That I was talking about again, and I’m not good with quiet. Like that’s why I learned to meditate because like it was uncomfortable to learn to meditate, but it was valuable to learn to meditate. And so I started writing a blog, which was called 52 Mondays, which was the last 52 weeks of my career. And then that became like this three year blog.
And I’m like, okay, I kind of like blogging. And then I took a yoga certification course just to move my body and just be in my body. And I was like, okay, maybe I’ll teach yoga for a little while. And I did that for about a year or two. And while doing that, I realized, no, that’s not gonna be enough. It’s lovely.
It’s all part of it. Blogging was lovely. Teaching yoga was lovely, learning to meditate was lovely. All good. There has to be something more. There has to be a little more meat on the bone for me. And that’s when I found life coaching. I hired a life coach. and within, I don’t know, two or three sessions, I’m like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is all of it. This is like intuitively, this is what the blogging was about. This is what 30 years in television was about. This is what taking a yoga certification course was about. This is what learning to all of it. I need to be a life coach and I need to help others manage their mind and their stress so that they can stop just surviving their successful lives, but enjoy them.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh, that’s so good, Jackie. Okay. I wrote down a couple notes of different things you said that I just wanna pull out and I want everybody to like focus, like I’m imagine like a camera. Let’s focus. I love, first of all, the juxtaposition between surviving versus enjoying your life. And for everyone who’s listening and who might be struggling in their marriages right now or wanna have a better relationship, it’s like, are you surviving?
Are you just getting through the day or are you actually enjoying each other’s company? Are you actually looking forward to coming home? One of my clients told me that when, when we first started working together, she’d hear the garage door opening and she would get this feeling of dread. And it’s like now she hears the garage door opening and she can’t wait to like greet her husband and welcome home.
And it’s such a different experience. It’s like for everyone, whatever it is that you’re going through right now, this juxtaposition of are you surviving versus enjoying or thriving in your life? One of the reasons I wanted to have Jackie on is to say, you can reinvent. You can take something that looks amazing on the outside, right, and didn’t feel as amazing on the inside.
And you can decide what actually feels amazing on the inside and go do that. Whether it’s your career, your marriage, your business, whatever it looks like. Sometimes it’s all of it, right? You know, I mean, I pivoted from an HR career where I was very successful at what I did and, and was renowned in my, in my little tiny industry that my little, I worked in ultra luxury hospitality and in that place, right?
It was like walking away from 15 years of all the respect and network and positions and all these things to do the thing that felt good on the inside. And that to me, that’s something that I always wanna be about. And then the other thing that I really loved is how you described that, sort of the brand guidelines that you had, and then you had your gut.
And one of the things we talk about on the podcast all the time is I give these parameters, the five star marriage or how you wanna feel in your relationship. Like what is thriving and within these parameters, what resonates for you? What does that look like for you? So I want everyone listening to just think about what are the parameters?
What’s your blue sky, right? What’s your sunny day? And then within those parameters, you can follow your gut. What’s gonna lead me to that blue sky what’s gonna lead me to that sunny day. And just that combination of, it’s not just our intuition sort of run wild. it’s our intuition and service of a goal or a value or a feeling.
Because once you said it’s blue sky, sunny day, it’s like, oh, anything that isn’t that. It’s a very clear, that’s not a match for what we’re creating here. So to me, I talk about having a thriving relationship. I talk about having, it’s a five star relationship. It feels like a sanctuary. It feels delicious.
It feels like sexy besties. Okay? So anything that isn’t sexy besties, this isn’t what we do here, and it gives you a place to direct that intuition. I just wanted to sort of unite that back for everyone. How your intuition can be in service of the thing you’ve decided matters to you.
Okay. I wanna ask you a little bit, you already talked about a little bit, but I wanna ask you even more about that moment when you are living something that on the outside doesn’t, it looks amazing. But on the inside, as you mentioned, you had stress and all of these things.
I think it’s really hard. When everybody on the, everyone who’s outside thinks it’s the most amazing thing ever. And I just wanna talk about that a little bit. I experienced just a tiny bit of that when I worked at a cruise line for many years and I was a recruiter and I would travel all over the world and I’d been to really fun, amazing places.
I went to Peru, the Philippines, Europe, like all of these amazing places. And my friends would be like, oh, you have the sexiest job. You get to travel, you get to do all these things. And really there was an element that had some good things, like everything does and, and amazing, you know, experiences and adventures and then there was an element that you’re like schlepping all over the world doing these things and you’re on flights at 2:00 AM and like there’s a part of it that really isn’t.
But when you tell people, oh, I’m gonna leave that, I’m gonna go be a life coach. Like what?
Jackie de Crinis:
The pushback when I told people that I was leaving the entertainment business. The first pushback when I, cuz I was a producer for a short period of time after I was an executive.
Just as a transition. And I thought the independence and being, cuz you’re an entrepreneur when you’re a producer. I thought that that would be the thing I needed. Like just get out of corporate. And it didn’t, it’s the same, it’s the same grind just on the other end and without the infrastructure and the corner office and the staff and all the, you know, bells and whistles of being an executive.
So again, no criticism of producing cuz It’s a calling just like anything else. And no criticism of being an executive, but it didn’t solve the burnout problem for me. And so when I finally left the industry and, and said, I’m gonna be a life coach. there was a lot of giggles, there was a lot of laughter.
And people were like, really? That’s what you’re gonna, are you kidding? And ironically, many, many, many, many, many of my former colleagues, employees, colleagues and friends became clients.
Maggie Reyes:
They’re like, Hey, there’s something to this thing.
Jackie de Crinis:
And they, and they ended up being very supportive and, and referring many, many friends and many colleagues of theirs.
And nobody was laughing anymore. Everybody was saying, this is your calling. This is really what you should be doing.
Maggie Reyes:
I love, oh, first of all, I love that so much. And I used to work in a law firm, so before I worked in the cruise industry, I worked in a law firm. And when I became a life coach, I had this mindset about it that it’s like, there’s teachers, there’s doctors, there’s attorneys, there’s accountants, there’s life coaches.
Like to me, I was like, this is a profession. It’s a craft. We practice a craft. And I just have this thought about it. Even when people have other thoughts about it, I’m like, oh no. But the way I treat it It’s, it’s a profession. Just like, and it’s so interesting because when I was a recruiter, there was a lot of people who had had bad experiences with recruiters. and recruiters kind of like life coaching was in certain circles. It was like looked down upon like, oh, you’re a recruiter. Like a, like a used car still. It was that kind of energy. And I just thought, no, the, the way we do it here, the way that I practice it, we give realistic job previews and we have integrity and we get back to clients and then we get back to our internal clients and we get back to our candidates and we practice it like a profession.
This is not how we go. And it’s so interesting. Though when I came to life coaching, it was a little bit similar. I was like, well there’s a lot of different things on earth that people have thoughts about. And I was like, oh no, but this is what we do here. It’s a little different than that.
And what did you either, what was your mindset or how did you get through having so much , I don’t wanna use the word backlash, but having so much like peer pressure of people saying, what are you thinking? Because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will have a dream, a desire, a thing that they wanna pivot to, and maybe they have fancy titles, maybe they have years of experience, maybe they have all of this, this huge career behind them like we do.
And it’s like it takes a certain amount of fortitude to say, I’m just gonna do what feels right.
Jackie de Crinis:
It absolutely does. And I think immersing yourself with other people who do what you want to do and what you love to do, and learning from them how to overcome your own mind drama. I remember in our group, in our mastermind, or maybe even earlier, and there was a comment that somebody said, what do people think about?”
I don’t know if I raised the question or I answered the question. I can’t remember the term life coach, the title of life coach, as opposed to coach or as opposed to consultant or as opposed to executive coach, like Right. They’re, they’re all the same things, but the term life coach had this bad rap, like anybody could be a life coach and what does that really mean?
And some people are credentialed and some people aren’t. And, and somebody says, it’s your choice what you think about it. And I think that changing careers, pivoting to a creative career or pivoting just to a different career, it doesn’t even have to be a creative career. It’s what you think about it and how you embrace it that then will dictate how others think about it and embrace it.
I’ll give you an example. This goes back to marriage. So many, many years ago, 20 years ago, I was married to a different man and I had two little girls and the relationship reached its end point for me, and I had to make a decision. It was very nice on the outside. We had a beautiful home and two good jobs and two beautiful girls and two dogs and a cat and a hamster and all the things.
And it wasn’t working for me. The relationship wasn’t working. On paper it worked. It was everything I hoped for, worked for dreamed of. But that doesn’t mean that the relationship works just because you have all the trappings of a nice life. And when I decided that I needed to be separated, divorced, not an easy conversation, not an easy conversation to have with your partner, not an easy conversation to have with your children, not an easy conversation to have with your family and friends.
A lot of people were like, what are you doing? You have this nice life. And I did on paper, and my father at the time was the most concerned he thought. That no good could come from that, that it would be a bad impact on my children, that I would regret it, that it would just be too disruptive, that I had too hard of a job to be, you know, now juggling children in a divorce and you know, a new life.
And I said, I have to trust my gut on this. And it, by the way, it took a long time to make that decision. And my father came back after he was, stayed very close to my ex-husband because that was their dynamic and that was fine with me. And after six months, he came back to me and he said, you made the right choice.
Your girls are fine. Your ex-husband’s fine. You’re better than ever. And it was the right choice. And I applaud you for being in touch with your instinct and doing what was right for you. And it made it right for everybody else eventually too, because I didn’t waffle in it being right for me. So I think that whether you’re changing your career or changing your marriage or changing where you live or changing your care color or your whatever, like whatever big or small decision you need to do for you, it’s always okay if you own your decision and the more you are okay with it, people will follow.
And if they don’t, that’s okay too.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. I love that so much. Owning your decision.
Jackie de Crinis:
It’s very empowering
Maggie Reyes:
Not renting, it’s not subletting your decision. You’re owning your decision. Right. I think it’s so incredibly powerful and I had I, every year I choose a word of the year, and there was a year that I chose the word own.
And I walked through my, my life that whole year when anything would happen, even if I didn’t, if on paper I didn’t really own it, I would ask myself, okay, well I don’t own this, but if I did, how would I handle it? What would my role be? What would I do? What would happen here? And it was so, it was such a revelation to go through, how much ownership I didn’t realize I had.
I just spent the whole year looking for anything I could own. And I just owning all the things.
Jackie de Crinis:
Let me ask you, given your massive love for Oprah Winfrey, was this before or after the own network?
Maggie Reyes:
This was after the own network existed, and I would love to see, it was inspired by Oprah, but it was really inspired by, I was teaching a lot about personal responsibility in my coaching.
And I was, we were talking about it a lot. It was coming up a lot and it, and it was something I was sort of investigating with my clients a lot, and I was like, what does it look like for me? What is my version of that? So it was really, I would say, inspired a lot by. Me thinking, well, I wanna go all the way.
Like I wanna go extra all the way into what this would be like for me. And then maybe 10% of that is what happens with clients or what happens in as we’re discussing things or whatever. So I really wanted to sort of live it inside and out. The ownership is, and it’s kind of funny that, that you asked me that because when I, back when I was a recruiter, as I mentioned, I worked with a cruise line and I had never worked on board, I’d never worked on a ship.
But I am that person who, first of all, I love everything behind the scenes that ever has existed. I always wanna know how things work. And I am that person that when I would get a new department, I would like visit the departement. talk to the people. So I remember I at one point hired firefighters, or actually firefighters on the ships, and I said, well, if I’m gonna hire for this position, I need to go on board and I need to talk to some of the firefighters.
And I was like, my, my boss was like, why? I’m like, I need to know what they actually do all day, not what you’re telling me they do all day Usually there’s a difference. So I would go and I would learn my departments like inside out and then people would ask me, so when did you work on ships? How long were you board?
I’m like, oh no, I’ve never worked on ships. They’re like, how could you possibly know all the things you just told me and never have worked on a ship? I’m like, I like to know things inside and out.
Jackie de Crinis:
So that, that speaks to one of my favorite, we talk about the model a lot in our coaching. I don’t know if everybody, all your listeners know.
But one of the things I love is when my clients are stuck on a particular circumstance and the negative thoughts are, racing and usually the feeling is fear, embarrassment, you know, all those things. Negative. I always say, what thought could we get so that we can feel curious?
Because I think curiosity, which is what you’re describing, I need to know what the firefighters do all day, not what you tell me. I think curiosity is one of the most buoyant feelings we can create in our bodies, and what it does is, I believe that curiosity replaces fear a lot of times. So people who have terrible social anxiety, oh, I’m going to a wedding, I don’t know anyone, what will I do there?
What, who will I talk to? What if, you know, I say stay curious. They’re, they’re curious about what. How did the bride and groom meet? What’s their family dynamic? Who are you sitting next to? What do they do for a living? Where are they from? Find something about someone and be curious about them.
So my brother always teases me. He says, it takes me usually like 10 minutes to talk to a stranger before I find out a common denominator between us. And I said, cuz it’s just 20 questions and it’s not the same 20 questions cuz that would be a dead end. But it’s, there’s 7.4 billion people in the world, right?
That’s a lot to navigate. But when you think we’re all human beings and we’re all connected by the same matter, like our bodies are made up, there has to be more connections. And so I’m always like you looking for the connections and the connective tissue of all of our brains and all of our energies.
And not to say that any of us are the same or even alike, but there’s something that we can all connect to. We all breathe air. We all drink water. We all eat food. We all sleep at night. We all do those things. And you know what? We all have stress and we all have anxiety, some to a greater lesser degree.
And your interest in interviewing the fireman or anything else is really just an expression of my favorite feeling, which is curiosity.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that you brought this up and that you said it’s an antidote to fear. I, I’ve never thought of it in that exact way. And what’s really fascinating to me is one of the things that I teach all the time is as curiosity as an antidote to defensiveness.
So in marriages, one of the things they teach, it’s called emotional weight loss tools. And it’s no complaining and no defending. And the reason they’re emotional weight loss is we remove those two things and we see what’s left in the relationship that really needs to be worked on or what’s really going on.
And when we talk about no defending the, the antidote, the thing you do instead of getting defensive is you get curious. So I teach almost the same thing from a completely different angle. Why did this affect this person? Why? Why are they upset about this? Get curious. Instead of saying, well, I did it for a very good reason, say, oh, what’s going on for you that this happened?
And the moment you get curious, you remove defensiveness. You’re having a completely new conversation with them.
Jackie de Crinis:
So it’s exactly the same thing. But just with a different angle.
Maggie Reyes:
So great. And I love thinking for fear that when I’m afraid, stay curious. I could stay curious.
I could turn my, I could go onto the curiosity channel. Where the sky is always blue in that channel, I can like, oh, what is here for me? What’s going on here? What’s hap, what can I engage with here?
Jackie de Crinis:
The other thing I like, the other powerful C word that I love is choice. I just did a podcast, I think it’s episode 51 on the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, but so it’s gonna air pretty soon or when this airs.
It’ll be a long time ago, but whatever, it’ll be out. So, but it’s about the power of choice and I, I don’t mean that in a political way. We’re not getting into the hot button of that word. So choice as a non-political word choice, sitting in I choose is actually the most empowering emotion you can have.
Because what happens is whether you’re in a bad job or bad marriage or bad situation, other than maybe being literally imprisoned where you have been arrested for something and people put you behind bars and then maybe, or maybe not, there was a choice before that , I don’t know. ,
Maggie Reyes:
There was a choice somewhere down the line
Jackie de Crinis:
Maybe it was a circumstance.
But, but boring, literal imprisonment. And even then I have something for that. You are making choices. And if you sit in, I choose this like if you’re in a bad relationship, you can say, I choose to be here because And maybe the cause is I have a roof over my head, or I have running water, or I don’t wanna live alone, or I don’t like to sleep by myself at night.
Or I have somebody to go to the movies with . Like, whatever. Like it’s a choice. But rather than saying I’m stuck in this terrible marriage, or I tell this story that like the last executive job I had at USA cuz it, there was a promotion at the end where I got to be in charge of all the different development divisions of USA
And so I got to do reality programming and comedy and long form and drama and all the things and, and I knew it was my last contract. I knew it was the last executive contract I would take. So I was sitting in choice for the entire time, which was, I chose to do this one more round so that I get to explore all these different sandboxes.
And it was probably the most joyful time of my whole executive career. Also having, you know, a big position. But it wasn’t about the big position, it was choosing that this was the last block or timeframe. So when you can reframe to think about, well what choice do I have? You take your power back or what choice am I making?
Cuz it’s always a choice.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that we coach so similarly, we’ve never talked about how we coach, but choice is something that I talk about from so many different angles. When I teach the model, which we have an episode on thought work, we’ll link to it in the show notes. So this is the very first episode you’ve ever listened to of the podcast. We were talking about this tool called the Model. We will link to a show where I explained that in detail, but in the model we have a circumstance, a thought, a feeling, an action, and a result.
And that space between the circumstance and the thought, the space in between is where choice lives, where we get to choose how we’re going to think about this thing that’s happening. And one of the things that actually give us coaching homework, so everyone pay attention on a regular basis, is to go into your life and choose it. So what my hypothesis is, we make a choice, you know, 10 or 15 years ago for how things are gonna go. And then we forgot that we chose
We have amnesia and we react to our life as if we didn’t choose it. So you come to work with me and I’m gonna coach now, and I’m like, okay, so now you’re gonna go back into your life and all day long, like I choose this, I choose this lunch, I choose This meeting, I choose this job. I choose this person.
I choose. And one of my clients was doing this for homework. And she had to choose her husband. She had to choose him on purpose every day. So this is the funniest story. It always cracks me up. So she had this homework, she had been doing it for several days, and then they got into a fight, And in the middle of the fight at the top of her lungs, she’s like, I choose you.
In the middle. It was the best ever. She and the husband was like, what do you, what do you mean? She’s like, even though I’m mad at you, I choose you And. Completely dissipated the whole thing. And they went in a totally different direction. Like it was just being present.
And she was the, the exercise you, you do have mentally right. You don’t walk around telling your boss, I choose you, whatever. Right? But it had been so on her mind by that point. That she’d been practicing this. Oh, that when, when everything got all riled up, she’s like, I choose you. It was the most amazing thing.
Jackie de Crinis:
I love it. And that’s the thing I probably coach on the most often because I deal with people who are, you know, high powered in and not necessarily intelligent executives cuz I have doctors and dentists and real estate agents and housewives and all the things. Any adult who feels stressed or anxious or just wants to be happier.
And one of the big problems, one of the big problems that comes up, I don’t mean it’s a problem, is well I’m stuck or I have to do this or I have to do that. And I’m always like, where, what’s, which part? Can you, are you choosing? Yes, we all have to eat and drink and sleep and make money or pay bills. Maybe you don’t have to make money.
We all have to do that. That’s like part of the thing, but what are you choosing in it?
Maggie Reyes:
And one of the things I like to think about is I chose this thing, therefore I’m also choosing this other thing. So I chose when I was back traveling all the time, it’s like, well, I chose this job So even though maybe I don’t love traveling all the time, I’m choosing to, to have this thing I don’t love as much because of this other thing
Jackie de Crinis:
And that’s how we get back within alignment. Because what causes stress or anxiety is the dissonance between what we want and what we have. So I’ll say that again. Right. So like if you’re driving a beat up car and all you want is a new Mercedes, that can create stress or anxiety.
Cuz the dissonance is too, it’s just too much a part and you’re like, well I won’t be happy till I have my new Mercedes. You’re not in alignment because you’re not there. So then maybe it’s, well, if that new car is so important to you, maybe you are gonna work harder in a job that you don’t love because that thing is so important to you.
It’s will, you’re willing to work for it.
Maggie Reyes:
It’s choice. My last couple of years I think I already knew I wanted to become a coach and I already certified as a coach. I knew kind of like you, I knew this was gonna be my last thing before I went into this other thing. And I had so many thoughts around this job is financing the next thing. And I I would choose my job on purpose, like all the time. Thinking I’m choosing this and I had this other thing that this is fueling and that I’m, I’m happy to choose this even though it’s stressful or whatever’s done, whatever I’m feeling with, I’m choosing this for the higher purpose, for the bigger goal, the bigger dream.
Jackie de Crinis:
And so again, what it takes back is it takes back your power when you do that, it doesn’t change the circumstance. Nobody’s suggesting that you have to change the circumstance. It’s your thought about it by getting back in touch with which piece did I choose or what could I choose differently if this is too un 10.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. I cannot let you go without talking about the power of celebration, cuz I know you love celebration. Yeah. And I love celebration. I have a whole podcast episode on self-love, which will link to in the show notes where I talk about this hypothesis that I have, that when you celebrate something, you come into full ownership of it.
The moment you celebrate your accomplishments. something you love about yourself, a quality you have when you’re able to acknowledge yourself for it. It becomes a deeper part of you. You own it. Now when you have an accomplishment that you don’t celebrate, it’s like you’re renting or
Because you don’t fully own it. So that’s just something. And one of the things that I do on all my coaching calls and all the groups that I run is we start with celebrations. So we start with what are you proud of? What do you want to acknowledge yourself? Right?
Jackie de Crinis:
Oh, I love that.
Changing the vibrational energy in your body. So I just did an episode on this, I think episode 50 or 51, which was, what are you, or celebrating yourself.. And it’s all about that. I mean, it started with, because this is our birthday month, we’re both Leos. But changing. So I used to put too much pressure on my birthday, right.
I’d be like, I hope this year my husband remembers to get a cake and like, I don’t know, buy the perfect gift. And he’s just not wired that way. Like he always says like, where would you like to have dinner? And there’s always a lovely gift and he’s very thoughtful, but it’s like a token. Like, we took care of your birthday cuz I made a dinner reservation.
And so it always feels like a little anti-climactic, like that was it. And it’s not his fault he’s doing his best. Best and he’s very kind. But then I, this year I noticed like a bunch of my friends were like, it’s my birthday month. And I’m like, birthday month you have a birthday day.
One day. And then I thought, oh no, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna adopt that philosophy that August is my birthday month. Sorry cuz I know this is out of
Maggie Reyes:
order but Oh yeah. We’re you gonna listen to this at some other point in the universal time? Continuum. But we’re recording this in August.
Jackie de Crinis:
So, but, so I love that like anything that good happen this month, I was like, yeah cuz it’s my birthday month. or if somebody was like, do you wanna have lunch? I’m like, oh yeah, it was my birthday last week. Not that they have to treat me or take me or buy a gift. It’s not about that. It’s about sitting in the celebration of that and then that being a metaphor, cuz it’s really not about the birthday or August or anything else.
The metaphor of remembering to take stock in something that like you do with your clients at the beginning of your coaching mastermind to celebrate. So I really like that, but it’s hard because we’re conditioned, first of all, as women, but also of a certain generation, to not celebrate yourself, to fly below the radar, to not be too needy, to not be too showy, to not be all these things.
That’s just how we were taught. And so it’s a little bit of a new skill. To learn to celebrate yourself without being adulatory, without being a narcissist, without being selfish, without, and just kind of letting go of those other stigmas and still celebrating your wins, your accomplishments, or even your birthday month.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, I think that it’s like a revolutionary act, like a liberatory act when women can acknowledge and celebrate themselves and each other in a culture where we’re told to basically stay quiet and not do that. So it feeds into my sort of rebellious, does that rebellious part of me. It’s like, oh yes, I am gonna celebrate.
Yes, I am gonna do these things. And I also think because I worked for so many years and sort of the prison industry, which there was a lot of engineers, there was a lot, you know, these massive ships that have all of these different things. We had a lot of like after action reports, like when something would go wrong, we would find out how we, how do we make sure this never happens again?
What, what was the troubleshooting piece like? There was a lot of technical stuff like that, and I always remember thinking, why are we not dissecting the things that are going right? And that’s something that I also believe is so important about celebration, is you acknowledge yourself, you acknowledge an accomplishment, equality something that you are proud of for whatever reason.
Like what created that? What mindset, what intention, what feeling did I put into that that made that possible so that we can learn from the things that are going well?
I find it to be so powerful because another thing that a lot of us have is that imposter syndrome. like, do I belong here?
Should I have this? should I, whatever the thing is that’s going on. And one of the ways we like the antidote to that is knowing how you created it. like when we go through six months of every week, you know how you created something, you know, it was not a fluke, it was not an accident, it was not a mistake.
It didn’t happen to you. You actually did things in the material world that helped that thing happen.a hundred percent.
Okay. I always love asking a question from the questions for couple’s journal. And I’m so curious to know this. Today’s question is complete this sentence, the secret to a thriving relationship is …
How would you complete that?
Jackie de Crinis:
So let me ask you something, cuz of course I can’t just give an answer. One answer. Is it have to be one adjective? Does it have anything you want to be?
Maggie Reyes:
Anything. Anything you want.
Jackie de Crinis:
So the first word that comes to mind is the secret to a thriving relationship is communication. that would be like the just visceral, I only got to choose one word, but if you allowed me to explore and dig a little deeper than that, that still would be my answer.
But I think it’s also about self-care. I think what happens is, and this is the, you know, obviously. The entire principle of my coaching philosophy, which is if you don’t take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, all three, you can’t begin to take care of anybody else.
You might, but not for longevity. I mean, it’s not sustainable. So I would say that it’s really important to be passionate about yourself as well as being passionate about your partner. And I think if you lose one or the other, the relationship can wither.
Maggie Reyes:
It will for sure. I mean, it’s, you say it can very tentatively and I’m like, no, a hundred percent, yes.
It will wither.. Communication, self-care and then cultivating that passion with your partner, that connection with your partner. I think a hundred percent. One of the. Most powerful tools that I’ve created in coaching is called Soul Centering Communication. Because I used to run a free Facebook group for several, two or three years.
I think it was three years. I ran this group, and I would ask people, what’s your biggest challenge in the relationship? 98% of the people said communication. And then 2% said all the other things. Right. But almost everybody, and they’re like, okay, so tell curiosity. I was like, where do you get stuck?
Is it the talking? Is it the listening? Like, what happens? Tell me more. Right? And after observing, I don’t know, hundreds of people, thousands of people that were in that group, but hundreds who answered that question. I sat down with myself one day and I said, what is a communication tool that will help with all the places people get stuck?
And that’s how Soul Centered Communication was born. And we have a podcast episode will link to it in the show notes if you wanna hear me. I give the overview there and then I teach it in depth in the Marriage MBA. But it’s like without communication. , there’s not a lot of places for us to go We need to get that sorted out.
Number one, and I’m gonna ask myself the the question just because I have a cheeky answer. The sentence, the secret to a thriving relationship is, so I have this philosophy that is the core philosophy of all the coaching that I do, and it’s four P’s. It’s perspective, partnership, pleasure, personal power.
And when I first started the podcast, if you go back and listen to episode one, I had three P’s. I had perspective, partnership, and pleasure. And that’s what I taught for years. And as I was teaching that I realized if we don’t have personal power, Can’t do the other three
Jackie de Crinis:
That’s the self-care component. That’s the self-care component.
Maggie Reyes:
Correct. And for personal power, my question and my hypothesis is, what if I treated myself as if I matter? Right. If I treat myself as if I matter in this relationship, in this job, in this situation that I’m in, in this family, whatever it is, then what?
Because we often treat ourselves as if we don’t matter.
Jackie de Crinis:
Oh, absolutely. All the time.
Maggie Reyes:
Perspective is like, how am I thinking about this? Right? The whole idea of thought work and the thought model questioning my thoughts, how am I thinking about this? Is that serving me or not? Partnership. Am I cultivating teamwork or are we two completely independent entities right here?
And then pleasure is an interesting one because it’s in, in the terms of coaching is where I talk about sexual pleasure and connection and things like that that we do, but it’s also so many people put fun enjoyment, not just physical pleasure, but any kind of pleasure. Oh, absolutely. Last or not on the list at all.
Jackie de Crinis:
I know people hear pleasure and they think it means sex.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. And it’s like, wait, hold on. Also, if people are struggling in a relationship, they’re often like, we have to resolve these 54 things before we can have any fun at all. Before we can joke around, before anything else can happen. And I’m always saying, it’s not this before that.
It’s this and that. Yeah. We still have to resolve that thing and we can still joke around and have fun and plan fun things because usually in that fun moment is how we start resolving the things.
Jackie de Crinis:
Play, play, play.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh my gosh. I am gonna misquote this completely. Somebody who’s listening can just look it up, if you’re curious.
But there’s this research that says it takes X amount of hours to learn a new skill, but if you add play, it reduces it to almost no hours. It’s the, it’s the most amazing thing. I’m gonna ask you how people can find you and while I ask you that, I’m gonna look up the, the statistics okay.
Of like, I think it’s so amazing. Okay. But tell us, people are now in love with you. The way that I am still tell us how people can find you with all the things.
Jackie de Crinis:
Okay. They can find me through my website jackiedecrinis.com and I will spell that for you. It’s j a c k i e D e C R I N I s.com. So that’s my website.
And there you can find my podcast, which is the Overthinkers Guide to Joy. You can find the link for that. You can schedule a consult with me through my website. You can read my bio on my website. You can read my blog on my website. You can sign up for my Instagram, follow me on Instagram or Facebook. So all the things, all roads lead back to jackie deis.com.
Maggie Reyes:
So we’re gonna definitely link to that in the show notes. And what is your Instagram handle?
Jackie de Crinis:
I knew you were gonna ask me that. I’d love that. I don’t know me now I gotta go look.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. I just like the play. It’s just me. I’ll read the play thing and then you’ll tell
Jackie de Crinis:
You read the play thing and I’ll look.
Maggie Reyes:
So here’s the quote. It’s by Dr. Karen Pervis, and this is what she said. Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse synapse. I don’t know, to create a new connection in the brain unless it is done with play, in which case it takes between 10 to 20 repetitions.
Blows my mind. So when we talk about pleasure, play, playfulness. Joyfulness. Anything in the family of play. It helps you in so many levels.
Jackie de Crinis:
Well, and also you have to remember, when you play, you’re creating different neurotransmitters. You’re, you’re releasing serotonin and dopamine, which are the happy chemicals in your brain.
When you have dopamine and serotonin firing, you have just like, dopamine is relaxing, right? So your muscles relax because you’re getting happy. And when you’re happy, you can take more information in. You can connect more When you’re tight and your adrenals are glowing, gr I’m sorry, glowing. Now, when your adrenals are going, there’s the word like you’re running from a bear.
It’s very hard to make decisions because everything is blocking the neurotransmissions in your brain. So happy or play is always going to create better connections, better problem solving, all the things.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. Okay, did you find your
Jackie de Crinis:
Yes, it’s of course my name Jackie De Crinis.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, perfect. Okay, so she’s on Instagram.
I’m at themaggiereyes on Instagram. We wanna hear your favorite takeaways. Tag us. We’ll link to both of our Instagrams in the show notes so you can tag us easily. We wanna hear what was your favorite part of the episode. We wanna hear your favorite takeaway. If you’re doing any of the homework that we talked about, the different things that we discussed, we wanna hear, so let us know.
And I just wanna say to Jackie, Thank you for this moment in time. We got to share it together. Thank you for all of your 30 years of hard work that brought so much joy to so many people on earth. Thank you for all of us.
Jackie de Crinis:
Well, I wanna thank you for inviting me on your podcast. I adore you. I adore listening to you.
I adore learning from you. I adore being your friend, and you are just pure sunshine. Somebody once said that in our mastermind about you, that you are just pure sunshine, and it’s true. You are just radiant and I’m, I’m gonna just share with your audience what I said to you right before we jumped on. One of my favorite things that Maggie gave me when we first started becoming friends, and we did some peer coaching together was she said, always choose what’s easy.
Like when you’re struggling with a decision or you’re, you have feel like something’s insurmountable or you have too much on your plate. She said, choose easy. And I thought that was just such great advice and so, but it also goes to. Again, your personality, which is sunny and sunshine and bubbly, and I just love you and thank you, and I loved being here, and I could talk to you for hours,
Maggie Reyes:
We will, we will find a reason to bring Jackie back. Everyone we will, she’ll be back on this podcast at some point. But anyway, thank you all for listening. We can’t wait to hear your takeaways. I hope all of you have a beautiful blue sky kind of day.Bye everyone.
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