Guest 2: Jim Webber

Jim Webber is a Human Resources and harassment prevention trainer and public speaker by day and a stand up comic at night. His professional alter ego, Evil Skippy, has been promoting social distance at work since 2009. He produces and hosts “Late Laughs” every third Saturday at the Palace in Georgetown, Seattle.

Find Jim online with the links below:

www.evilskippyatwork.com

www.jimwebber.net

Insta: EvilSkippyatWork and JimWebberLOL

Twitter: @EvilSkippySays and @JimWebberLOL

Guest 3: Jim Kellner

Jim Kellner overcame severe stage fright, introversion, and being ‘painfully shy’ to become recognized as a dynamic and charismatic entertainer and speaker. Combing his love of helping people and performing Jim added trainings and public speaking to his resume. He’s been recognized as an expert in his field by being invited to speak at Grand Canyon University’s 2018 TEDx event, Magnum Opus. His TEDx talk, ‘If You Can’t Be Hypnotized, You Lose’ has received acclaim from fellow hypnotists and laypersons as well. He is one of only a handful of Hypnotists/Hypnotherapists to have ever spoken on a TED or TEDx stage. Jim has several talks and trainings in his repertoire and is available for keynote speeches as well. With his work as an author of plays, comedy routines, articles, and his book, ‘Navigating Success’, he can create custom talks and trainings, especially for your organization. He studied acting in college then transitioned to stand-up comedy and toured the Pacific Northwest as a featured act. THEN after using hypnosis to take off over 60 lbs, ease his depression, and remake his life, he decided to pursue another passion he’d had since a child, professional hypnotherapist and comedy stage hypnotist. He has since then helped thousands of people lose weight, quit smoking, sleep better, relax deeper, and much more and has hypnotized thousands of people on stage. He currently travels the US and routinely headlines the Northwest’s top comedy clubs.

Find Jim online with the links below:

JimKellnerHypnotist.com

Facebook.com/MentalMagicHypnosis

IG KellnerJim

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

Carole Freeman:
Hey, welcome everyone to our episode of Keto Chat. I have laryngitis, so everyone’s going to have a good laugh at how I sound today. My name is Carole Freeman. I am a Keto nutritionist. I’m a board certified ketogenetic nutrition specialist. I specialize in helping people be able to follow a ketogenic diet for lasting weight loss for a lifetime of lifestyle. And I’m here today. We’re launching our brand new version of our live Keto Chat show. We had a little bit of tech issues today, so we’re going to do a recorded version today. And my whole goal, I know it sounds really funny, doesn’t it? Am I a robot voice? Feel free to make fun of my voice. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not your-

Jim Webber:
Oh, we will. We will.

Carole Freeman:
It’s not you, it’s me. Whole goal here is to bring you experts in a variety of fields to bring you happiness and joy on a variety of topics so that we can offset all the anxiety and anguish and everything that’s going on in the world right now. And so tonight’s topic is how to shift from fear to optimism. We’ve got three amazing people here. I’m so excited. Let me just give you a little bit of an overview of who we got. We have Sarah Thorpe, she brings 30 years of personal and professional development. You know what, actually I’m going to do this. And so normally I would introduce you guys, but my voice is so froggy. I’m going to say each of their names and I’m, I’ll let them introduce themselves. So Sarah Thorpe, please tell us who you are.

Sarah Thorpe:
Yeah. Hi. Thanks. I’m Sarah, and like Carol said, I’ve got 30 years of professional and personal development and experience I bring to… I’m an intuitive coach and healer and I bring that to the table in working with women entrepreneurs.

Carole Freeman:
Excellent. I’m so glad you’re here. And then up next we have Jim Kellner. I’ll let you tell your bio, too.

Jim Kellner:
I’m Jim Kellner. I’m a comedy stage hypnotist and a hypnotherapist and aspiring fitness model. [inaudible 00:02:14] Freddy. I actually help people to do what they want to do with hypnotherapy. So whatever your goals are, hypnosis just makes it easier. And then the comedy hypnosis, I know a lot of people don’t understand what that is. Basically, tell a few jokes, hypnotize some audience members and make them do funny stuff. That’s about it.

Carole Freeman:
[inaudible] and also we have another Jim, Jim Weber.

Jim Webber:
Hi, I’m the not pretty Jim. I’m the other Jim. I am not a professional wellness person, or anything like that, but I have personal experience in dealing with depression, I have personal experience in dealing with stress, because I raised two women who were teenagers for a while, so I lived through that. I’m a harassment trainer, and a stress intervener by day, and a standup comic by night. So I’ve got all sorts of advice for how to stay sane.

Carole Freeman:
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you all for being here. And I’m just going to turn this over, first to Sarah. Sarah, share with us. What is it that you have for us today and the message on how to shift from fear to optimism?

Sarah Thorpe:
Okay. So I know that it’s a really shitty, shitty time, and we’re not saying that we’re going to just have some Lala lovely, we’ll just put you to bed and make you have sweet dreams. However, I do believe that it is in our own power to change our minds, to empower ourselves to feel more optimistic, more hopeful, and less stressed. And I ran a Zoom call this morning for some people, and I had come up with a template to ask questions, and so maybe I could just post some of these questions and then people can reflect on those, and give them a sense of what they have to work with. Their strengths and the resources that they have. And when we’re in fear, we often don’t think properly because our brain isn’t functioning. We don’t have access to the executive functioning part of the brain. Would that be okay if I ask some questions?

Carole Freeman:
Yeah. I think that’s great.

Sarah Thorpe:
Okay. So I know that people are resourceful and brilliant, and that we will all emerge from this stronger than ever. And so initially, are we committing to thriving, or are we committing to being a victim in our mindset? And I know that we’re… I was down on the floor crying this afternoon. I felt shitty, but I’m committed to thriving. So if you know that you can just declare that, then that goes a long way as you put your stake in the ground that you are going to get through this.

Sarah Thorpe:
So the first question is, what strengths do you have that you can rely on yourself for during the pandemic? So when people think about their own strengths, it helps them access the part of themselves that’s strong and capable. So if you have strengths that you can rely on yourself for, what would those be? Might be within your home, within your relationships, work, take note of those. And then, during this pandemic, what do you notice are your weaknesses that are coming to light? So sometimes we may have default patterns that are getting highlighted that you might consider that a weakness. What are the weaknesses that are being highlighted?

Sarah Thorpe:
And then how will it impact you and your life or your business if you don’t address these weaknesses? So, it’s okay to have weaknesses, and to be a puddle on the floor and to crumble, but we can’t stay there. So if we stay there, if we stay in our weaknesses, how will it impact our lives and our business? And then the next question is how long are you willing to wait before addressing the weaknesses? So I’m really calling people to find their own inner leader and make the choice to take the next step. And then the next step. And if you can consider what resources do you have to support you at this time? What resources do you have to support you in your health, in your money, and in your relationships?

Sarah Thorpe:
And what opportunities is this Covid 19 bringing? What opportunities are you seeing arising as a result of this pandemic? I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m just saying, is there anything that is an opportunity that you can see that you can do differently? And what skills would you need to build to move through this time gracefully? So that’s a whole bunch of questions, but it’s just designed to help you kind of calm down and find some tangible things that you can do. And if you can’t do them, find some help and support to get to the next level.

Carole Freeman:
I think that sounds really great, and you know, a lot of people are feeling frustrated because they don’t have a lot of power right now. They feel like they don’t have any control, but what you’re leading people through there is realizing you do have control of many things and tapping into what you do have control over and looking for the opportunities. So for example, being stuck at home for a long time, you can do a lot of things that you’ve put off for a long time. Right?

Sarah Thorpe:
Yeah. That could be an opportunity. One of my friends is a coach and she has young children and she was doing Facebook live yesterday. It cracked me up, but she was so mad. For a lot of women and men when they’re trying to take care of children, and run business from home, and do the home schooling that they’re supposed to be doing, it’s just super, super stressful. And she talked about, this is not the time for perfection porn. When you have pictures of your beautiful family, or your lovely lunch on your table, or your perfect garden, or the lovely yoga pose.

Sarah Thorpe:
It’s like, no, it triggers people’s shame, when we’re like, “Well, I don’t have my shit together like that.” And then we think there’s something wrong with us. So this is the time for us to be truly truthful and authentic. We do not have our shit together all the time. Maybe, if you have your shit together for five minutes during the day, then that might be fine. That’s fine. Maybe it’ll be six minutes tomorrow, but just really take good, good, good care, and find the strengths that you have and the resources that you have.

Carole Freeman:
Well based on how much toilet paper people have been buying, I’m sure they were expecting to have a lot of shit together.

Sarah Thorpe:
I know it’s crazy. And yesterday I found myself trying to think, maybe I should be calculating the number of toilet paper squares we have, and the number of butts that it has to wipe, and how long it will take to run out, and then should I be… My mind went completely to that crazy place.

Carole Freeman:
So basically, you know you have three years worth. You’re going to be fine. Right? Sarah, anything else that you want to add on this topic?

Sarah Thorpe:
Well, I’m a big proponent of creating a ritual space, meditation space. And I know that sometimes can sound like, yeah, just meditate. People are like FU if you meditate, but I’m not saying it’s going to cure everything, but I’m saying if you create a space that is quiet, that you can sit in some silence and be with yourself the beginning of the day or the end of the day, it will help to calm your body. It will help. And there’re loads of YouTube videos on meditation. You can just look one up. I made a new one yesterday and I posted it on my YouTube page, but there’s tons of them and if you just lay down at night listening to a meditation, it will help you sleep better, and we want people to be sleeping better so they’re not super stressed by lack of sleep during the day.

Carole Freeman:
Well we’ll have to put a link to that, available to people.

Sarah Thorpe:
Sure.

Carole Freeman:
Yeah, we’ll share that out.

Sarah Thorpe:
Thanks.

Carole Freeman:
Thank you so much for what you’ve shared. Well hang out to the end. I don’t know, I posted in our group if people have any questions. I don’t know that we’ll have any questions coming through since we’re not actually live today, but thank you so much for what you’ve shared and we’ll we’ll take a moment at the end to wrap this all up.

Sarah Thorpe:
Sure.

Carole Freeman:
All right, up next we have the world renowned aspiring fitness model, a TEDx talk talker? I don’t know what you call it. TEDx deliverer. A very dear friend of mine, Jim Kellner.

Jim Kellner:
Thanks everybody. Thanks for having me on Carol. And it was great listening to Sarah. I got to tell you folks, I do not have my shit together. As you can see [inaudible 00:13:00]. The sink is full of dishes. I’ve been going crazy, because I’m pivoting. We’re pivoting right now. We’re not panicking, we’re pivoting. And so I’ve pivoted to the online sphere, which is something that I wanted to do for a while anyway, so, fantastic.

Jim Kellner:
So I wanted to share three really powerful things that I think can help you all make a… Kind of come out of this in a different way. You know, it’s funny, because a lot of times I will have people tell me, and Carol, you’ve done hypnosis before. You’ve probably heard this before as well. I don’t want to go to a hypnotist, because I don’t want somebody controlling my thoughts. Here’s a crazy thing, people, you’re not in control of your thoughts, because the reason I know that is because you told me you don’t want [inaudible 00:13:49], but you still, or you don’t want to eat chocolate cake anymore, but you’re still eating chocolate cake. [inaudible 00:13:54] the corona virus, so you’re not in control of your thoughts, but I’d like to invite you to start directing your thoughts a little more.

Jim Kellner:
One of the problems with trying to direct our thoughts, because we get into habits. We go down these roads where we want to… It doesn’t feel good, but it feels comfortable. I was watching the news a lot for the last few days. All of a sudden I was like, “Why am I watching the news?” I’ll get the updates, but if you’re watching the news all the time, you’re going down that road all the time. Constantly going down that road. It’s the same thing. I don’t know about you Carol, I have friends that have diabetes and they’re constantly posting pictures of things like cake on their Facebook page.

Jim Kellner:
People, you’re directing your thoughts, you’re in control of that. And so what I would say is avoid all that garbage. So just start avoiding it, and you got to think about other things. And so what I invite you to do after this. Put it in writing. Tick off three of the things you’d like to think about. Think about that vacation you’re going to take when you are finally able to do vacations, or whatever, and start really focusing on directing them and just refuse to allow yourself to continue going down that direction. And I know, look, I was sulking the other day. 90% of my income for the next month evaporated. Just like this, just canceled all these events. And then I started thinking, it’s kind of a cool thing right now, because all in together everybody, I was thinking about, if you think about World War II, think about World War I, you think about the great depression, you hear stories about how everybody came together and helped each other. And we just have this unprecedented opportunity, and let’s face it, we’ve got Netflix. So we’re super lucky, and so I think just focusing on the gratitude.

Jim Kellner:
Now the other thing that I wanted to share with you, and this is something I came up with with a client one time. She was telling me about some stuff that was going on at an office, and she was frustrated, she was stressed all the time. And I started, it was hard for me not to laugh, because it sounded so ridiculous. It was absurd. And it got me on this idea. I said, “What if you started thinking about this, this stuff that’s going on at work, like you’re on an episode of Seinfeld.” And really, if you start thinking about instead of, because here’s the thing, [inaudible 00:16:33] a really good imagination is they can, they can make any situations scary, terrible, horrible. They can blow it up in bright colors. I’ll give you all kinds of details, but what you can do is you can use that at the office. So try to think of yourself like if you were in a Simon Pegg movie, one of those apocalyptic movies that him and his buddy have done, or think about, if you were in, you know what I mean?

Jim Kellner:
Because people, seriously, people are fighting over toilet paper. That is hilarious. It’s sad and troubling, but it’s freaking hilarious. We should be laughing about this. This is unbelievable, and people are dying of course. And that’s no fun, but you know, more bacon for the rest of us. I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice, but there really is just a great opportunity now. I’ve watched six movies in the last five days. I never get to watch movies. And, like what Sarah was saying, kind of reframing the situation, trying to just… And again, we’re not saying this is a good situation. Believe me, I’m not excited about it. But if you can just find one or two things, in every situation, really, you’ll find something good, and the way you can find that good is you go, “Wow, this is really terrible, but the good thing is,” and follow that up with something. The good thing is I got to watch six movies. Only two of them were good, but I got to watch six movies. So anyway, that’s what I have for you today for everybody. Thanks for having me on, Carol. I appreciate that. It’s always good to talk to you.

Carole Freeman:
Oh, thank you for the tips that you have. The good thing about having laryngitis is that I get to let you guys talk more. Normally, I talk a lot. So this is an opportunity for me to be quiet and listen and to let you all talk more. So thank you so much.

Jim Kellner:
I think it’s weird to just pontificate without any dialogue, but oh well.

Carole Freeman:
And I normally would have lots of questions, too, so along those lines for me, I had a pity party as well at the beginning, because I’m an extrovert. I need to be out among people. I also have a high need for touch. Before this self quarantine, staying at home, I would spend six or eight hours out every night doing standup comedy, and I got to hug everybody that I was with, and talk to them. That fills personal need that I have for my mental health. And so I had a pity party the first few days of poor me, poor me. How am I going to get my needs met? And you know, realizing flattening the curve, and for the best good for all, I embraced it. I’m at home with my two cats. I don’t have anybody that I live with and cat touch is not the same as human touch.

Carole Freeman:
But I took this opportunity. I’m going to be able to follow up with a lot of things in my own company that I’ve wanted to do, that I’ve been putting on the back burner for a long time. And also get the opportunity then to serve, put out these videos every day. So these episodes of being able to bring. So never before have we had so much talent at our fingertips, because everyone’s at home, and nobody has any bookings or obligations. They can’t leave. And so I have a wealth of talent available to be able to bring to all of you that are watching this now. And to be able to share that service to everyone out there, and try to bring hope, and positivity, and happiness to everyone that’s out there is the good that I’m seeing in all this. And my voice is trying to keep me from doing that, but I’m not going to stop yet. So thank you so much for sharing that. And now, now we’re going to go to the other Jim. The not fitness model, or the not aspiring fitness.

Jim Webber:
OJ.

Carole Freeman:
Yeah. And so-

Jim Webber:
OJ, the other Jim.

Carole Freeman:
… Somebody that I’ve met through comedy, a very dear friend of mine, and with my comedy community, I wanted to be able to bring on most of these episodes as well. Somebody from that community to be able to bring some humor and lightness and happiness to all of us as well. So, hey, Jim, welcome.

Jim Webber:
Hi. Hi. Well as a 62 year old member of your community, thank you for flattening the curve and all that kind of, I appreciate that. You know, everything that hypnotist Jim, pretty Jim said. Damn, he’s pretty, and Sophie. Those were all things that I embrace myself for dealing, just in real life, with depression and stress and things like that. And sometimes I simplify it as just remembering to breathe. When I start feeling overwhelmed, this is literally what I will do. I will stop and say, “All right, take a deep breath. Let it out. Do it again. You’re going to be okay.” I’ve done that before I walk on to do a set sometimes if I’m feeling nervous, or things are bad.

Jim Webber:
But for the purposes of the day, when I looked at the promo for the show and it said talking about being optimistic in a stressful time, I thought, “Carol, you picked the wrong second Jim here, because optimistic. Maybe I can be optimistic for 15 minutes of time, five times a day, maybe a minute. Dawned on me. That’s the lesson. And that’s pretty good, because we can’t, there’s no way, these days, we’re going to be able to be optimistic all the time. Sometimes it’s going to get hard and it depends on what happens to us. I found out late last night that my oldest daughter tested negative, not having it. She’s gotten tested because she had symptoms and she’s highly, highly risk because of past physical problems, and man, what an emotional roller coaster. But then thinking, well, this is just the first time, and we’re going to have a lot of roller coasters. So I have a tiny tip, all the things that Sophie talked about, and Jim, but this is my tiny tip that I had started doing-

Carole Freeman:
Sarah. It’s Sarah.

Jim Webber:
Sarah. Am I saying Sophie? You know, it starts with an S and I am name dysfunctional, and I embrace it. Sarah. Why am I saying Sophie? You know, probably some Netflix thing watch, I don’t know, but it was a compliment. It’s in my mind, it’s a good thing. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Okay, now I’m going to jump out the window of my apartment, but it’s not because of the pandemic, it’s because I’m embarrassed. Back to my tiny, tiny tip. Based on what Sarah said and, and damn he’s pretty, Jim.

Jim Webber:
I started doing this as a creativity trigger exactly 300 days ago, because today was my 300th day in the streak, and it came out of a book called The Artist’s Way. And Carole, I’ve talked to you about this before, but it’s called the morning papers. And I thought, this sounds like such a stupid idea. And the author said, “No, first thing you do in the morning, literally first thing is you sit down and you just stream of conscious write three pages. And so I started doing it religiously, and at first it was kind of a chore and a lot of my stream of consciousness said, “I cannot think of anything to write right now. Pause, pause, pause. I want to go to the bathroom.” I mean, nothing meaningful, but things would start slipping out, and as I got used to doing it, one thing I found is I like getting out of bed, because I look forward to doing it and I can’t have my coffee until after I’ve done it. So there’s that.

Jim Webber:
But I found that sometimes I’ll be writing stuff and then out of the blue, something I wasn’t thinking about. There’d be a thought I didn’t remember I thought before. And it will open things up to me, not just about being creative, but about things in my life. Things dealing with an ex, or love, or just whatever it is. And so it’s working now too, during the stress of now. I found when I’m writing it, and I realized this morning as I was writing, that’s my tip for this thing. Even if you hate journaling. Don’t call it journaling. You’re not journaling. It’s not a diary, you’re just talking to yourself.

Jim Webber:
And sometimes when we get stressed out we’ll think we’re talking to ourselves in the right way. We’ll think we know what the problem is, but there’s something about it that it’s there somewhere but it’s not where we can access it. And I think the morning papers have helped me do that, and it sometimes helps me come up with some good jokes too, but it’s self therapy, and as a way of somebody who’s dealt with depression in the past and whatnot, I’m alert to the signals of that. And being able to be honest with yourself is really important, and that is one thing that you can do. So speaking of therapy, crafts are important. I did this cross-stitch awhile back. So it says welcome to group therapy. So, I don’t endorse heavy drinking at this time, but do what makes you happy. Whatever sparks joy. So that’s what I say.

Carole Freeman:
Oh, thank you so much. I love that.

Jim Webber:
I didn’t see a red light. Was I okay?

Carole Freeman:
That’s the comedy thing. I wasn’t timing anyone today, so we have more freedom of mic, since we don’t have any hecklers here to ask questions of us.

Jim Webber:
Ahhh.

Carole Freeman:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. All right, well ideally when this was going to be live, we were going to have people asking us live questions. I did post to see if anybody… Let’s see if there’re any comments that have come in.

Jim Webber:
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Sarah.

Carole Freeman:
Let’s see.

Jim Webber:
I’m so embarrassed.

Carole Freeman:
Well I debated whether I should just let you keep calling her Sophie, or it’s like, do you tell them there’s a booger in their nose or not? And they probably would feel more embarrassed to know that that was there the whole time.

Jim Webber:
Yeah, I could tell you were flinching and I didn’t know why.

Carole Freeman:
Well, I was like, wait, is he talking about somebody else? Is this in a book that he’s talking about. All right. Why can’t I find the event? Let’s see. This one. All right. Today. Anybody comment? Discussion. There we go. I mean, find my own comment. All right. I don’t see any. I don’t see any there, so, all right, well let’s wrap this up. When I do my… I love that…. I just want to say that Jim’s dog reminds me of… The hairdo reminds me of the other Jim. I don’t know. That’s terrible, isn’t it?

Jim Webber:
What?

Carole Freeman:
Your hair is way better, Jim. Never mind.

Jim Webber:
I think I’m being triggered.

Carole Freeman:
Find the positive. All right, well let’s wrap this up. When I do coaching with my own clients, we do group meetings, and I call it the lightning bolt round. So lightning bolt is share your aha, your takeaway, or something that you just want to say as the last thing you want to say to the group here, or to everyone who’s watching

Jim Webber:
Who’s first?

Carole Freeman:
It’s popcorn style. So whoever wants to go, although, in my Keto coaching we don’t call it popcorn style, because that could be a trigger food. So we call it lightning bolt. So it’s whoever would like to go first.

Jim Webber:
Oh, okay. Well I’m going to just go then. My aha is listening to Sarah, even professionals have meltdowns. And so the fact that I cried at Safeway and bought three boxes of Oreos is okay. So my take away is it’s okay not to be okay sometimes.

Sarah Thorpe:
Yeah. I think you just gave me my takeaway. That’s the lasting message that I want to take for myself and for anyone else’s, is that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s truly okay not to be okay. And we shouldn’t be pretending that we’re okay when we’re not okay these days.

Jim Webber:
That’s okay.

Jim Kellner:
Yeah, I will steal that one too. I like to tell myself, you don’t have to be perfect yet, so I can still strive, but I’m not there yet.

Carole Freeman:
You can be pretty and not perfect.

Jim Kellner:
It’s true. Yeah. And what stands out to me then is Jim’s realization that you can have moments of positivity and shifting into optimism. It doesn’t have to mean that you have to spend your entire day trying to be optimistic and positive the whole time. Yeah.

Sarah Thorpe:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Jim Webber:
You have to relax. Yeah. Breathe. Meditate. Have a cookie.

Carole Freeman:
Yeah. You guys are all amazing. Thanks for sticking with it for the tech issues. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing.

Jim Webber:
Oh, thank you, Carol, for doing it.

Carole Freeman:
You’re welcome.

Sarah Thorpe:
No, thank you. You’re amazing, too.

Jim Kellner:
Thanks Carole.

Carole Freeman:
You’re welcome. Thanks everyone for watching. Please send in your comments and questions and we’ll figure out the tech side soon so we can do this live.

Sarah Thorpe:
Yeah.

Carole Freeman:
Thank you everyone.

Sarah Thorpe:
Thank you.

Jim Webber:
Thanks guys.

Carole Freeman:
Thank you. Bye.