Natalie: Hello everyone! My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today, I have a very special guest with me who's written an amazing book called, the real brass ring. She's like a mid-life re-inventionist and she has a really inspiring story, so please welcome Dianne Bischoff James. How are you Dianne?

Dianne: Oh, I'm great. Thank you for having me Natalie.

N: It's actually my pleasure having you here. Now, Dianne was actually also on our member's only SSA call this month. If you'd like to find out more about our SSA membership and all our amazing things that come with that, there is a banner on this page and you can click on that to find out some more details about that. So, let's start first with your story Dianne, because it's a very inspiring story which I'm sure a lot of our listeners will really be able to relate to.

D: Okay, great. I was just like everyone else, I was 38 years old and I was working hard. I followed all of the rules I was supposed to. I was a marketing consultant. I had a big house across from the lake. I was married. I had a couple of kids and I was working day and night, night and day and I decided for my 38th birthday to go visit Sonia (1:15) which is right now, an international world renowned psychic. And she pretty much, during her session with me told me that absolutely everything that I'm doing with my life was wrong. Although I expected her to say that I was just, to cast me out and I was just fabulous, what she basically said was that your marriage is fraternal, you do not have a heart connection. She said, you're not pursuing the right path. Your career is what your dad want you to do, which is 100% accurate, and she said, you were supposed to be this writer, teacher, healer, author and she said, spend some time, every single solitary day writing your book so you can share your message with others. And I pretty much just stared at her, I started feeling sick to my stomach, I actually thought I was going to throw up. I was like, oh my God, what do you mean? You're giving me like a 0 on the minimum potential yard stick and she's like, you know you're an unlit Christmas tree. You only have 1 bulb firing in the right way. So, I took her message to heart and I took more than 10 years, it took about 12 years and rebooted my life. And since then I have become a saga actor. I still have my marketing business but I also wrote a book called, the real brass ring, about mid-life transformation. It's all about the good, the bad and the ugly about going through these huge shifts in life. I did end my relationship and I'm now engaged with a fabulous man and enjoying that and my kids have very successfully and very seamlessly gone through a divorce and now I'm launching a speaking career. And that's going very well, and I'm booked pretty much through the end of the year.

N: Yeah, that's fantastic. We need to back up a little bit because you mentioned you're now a saga actor. Now, well, I'm sure most people think to become an actor you need to start young and you need to be in your 20s, putting the hard yards. I'm assuming you're in your 40s when you revolved your acting career...

D: I was.

N: So you must be working against the grain there. Tell us that story.

D: Well at that time I was also hugely overweight. I was about 190 lbs and I had not been on the stage since high school. Well, of course, I was the high school superstar of acting like always, my dad said, that's a lousy career. You'll never make it. And so, I hang up my acting shoes. I hang up my acting shoes starting from college all the way, but I always had interest in it. So, I took a look at myself and I said, okay, well, you're very overweight, you don't have any experience, you don't have a head shot, you don't have a resume and quite frankly I don't have any experience on stage or on camera, but I decided that, that wasn't going to stop me. So I kind of laced myself up at that time, I also want to add that I went to this program called, the Hoffman Institute, where they helped me emotionally deal with the fact that I have not addressed anything authentic in my life. I found a new self. I found self-love. I found self-appreciation. So I took all these new found juiciness from inside myself, I knew I had great potential. I kind of cinched my belt up, I put boots on, I put on a big puffy skirt and I decided to audition. And I picked my birthday, which was a year actually after I've seen Sonya, and I went to audition for community theatre, because I had to start somewhere, so I had to start small. And I went to audition for Oliver, and for the first time, in about 15, 20 years, because I actually, in front of a group of 10 people, sang a song. I sang wouldn't it be lovely. And quite frankly, it was so bad (laughs), like crawlers crawled out of the room, I was embarrassed and I was screeching and pitchy all over the place, but I didn't really care, I was so proud that I just showed up that I went home and said, someone's going to call you. I know that they're going to call you and give you this huge part. And I waited, and then I waited, and then I waited, and I waited, I waited like 7 days, and I finally got the phone call and the woman said, we have a role for you. And I said, oh my God, thank you. And she offered me town's person 1, and I was just delighted, so happy to get the role of having like 2 words to say on community theatre stage. That was it, I won my academy award and my life was over. So I could celebrate the rest of my life and so, from that point, of course with these little baby steps, I did my town's person 1 role with joy. I lost 50lbs in that 1 performance because I was working so hard and so happy to be there. And then, that led to another role, to another role, led to another role and then I decided to do a camera work. Found my way into Chicago without any background and I did it all purely from the heart, purely because I love being there, and I think that's part of the reason that it worked for me. It was just barely, I was very lucky, very, very lucky. It was barely seamless.

N: Right. Now, I know you also used Law of Attraction in this whole reinvention part of your life. So, tell me more about your manifestation process. How do you apply Law of Attraction to this?

D: Well, the first thing that I had to do is clean up my thinking. And I had a lot of stinky thinking. So, I was very clear up front that I was going to manage that and be careful in everything that I thought and everything I said. And one of my techniques is I put a band around my wrist and every time I was about to say something negative like oh, they're never going to call me in front to audition, I would snap it. So I had more awareness and I ended up snapping it for the first couple of months to the point where I actually bruised my wrist. But eventually, eventually I got very mindful about how I was crafting my thoughts, how I was crafting my words and I was always reaching for that next thought that was the next positive thought. So I used a lot of words like perhaps, like perhaps they'll find something in me that fits their mold or perhaps they'll notice that I really got the right voice or I'm just very enthusiastic about this. Same thing happened for work, if I wanted a new client or I needed some more money, I would use the what if, what if I had just enough money to support us for the next 6 months, imagine how relaxed I'd feel. And the funny thing is the more I re-crafted my thoughts and ideas and the way I spoke about things, the quicker things started coming in and I started making a lot of mental notes. And I have a lot of practices and techniques which I'm putting together actually for a second book that I'm working on right now. It's all about these specific techniques, I call the I want list. And I have a "I want" list and I put it some place that I always can remember. Kind of like your mind movies but it's just an old fashion, a few, key things and I put it in a place that I can always look it at and that's something I go back to. The funny thing is every 6 months, I've noticed that I am able to pretty much get almost every outline checked off of my list. Then I get to create a new one.

N: You know, I love that, because the I want list, you know, and when I talk to people about Law of Attraction and moving forward and creating different things. I mean, we create new things in our life, not because we need them or because we're greedy or because you know, whatever reason, we do it because we can. Because it's like this challenge that you can, you challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and to strive for something else. And to me, that's what life is all about. It's all about the experiences of, about the contrasts, that's all about stepping outside and really knowing that you're alive, which I really love (laughs).

D: (laughs) I totally agree. I totally agree and sometimes I do look at it as a game. I think people call me sometimes crazy, but crazy in a good way because I don't know if there are things that I can't do. I mean, because I, for example, we decided to offer inspirational, motivational products and just recently been going to expos, not only for I've been invited to speak but I said, let's become a retailer. And someone said, what are you doing becoming a retailer and I said, because I can. Exactly what you said, because I can and it's really fun and it's one of the way that I meet so many wonderful people. And I kind of just wanted to market test these products and see if anybody will like them and if they're attractive, and the next thing you know, we're out, sitting on a booth peddling wares and it's really fun for me and I really enjoy it. So I love experimenting.

N: Yeah, me too. I know that going through a change, you're out of your marriage, you're going to this new part of your life, I think for a lot of people who are faced with that situation, one of the fears they have is what if I make the wrong decision? What if I take the wrong path? So what are some of the signs or what are things that people can do so people will know that they are on the right, taking the right road?

D: Well I look at all of that pretty much as a cellular discovery, because I can feel it now. I can't say I always could. I was trained to not feel for most of my life, probably 48 years of my life, everything I felt was wrong. And I literally just shut it down, put it away, stuff it, get rid of it. Now, I actually kind of try it on. It's like trying on a new pair of shoes. I try, I love to look at everything as an experiment because if you try on that new pair of shoes, no matter what it might be, whether it be literally trying on playing the piano or doing something a little bit different. I believe that there is actually a formula that works for each of us in every situation, and so, I'm always trying to look for my formula. And what I found is when I find my formula, that formula seems to stick for me, whether I know that I don't do well if I don't get 7 hours of sleep or I know how to talk to my kids in a way where I know I'm going to get a good result. I actually try to share with my children to, what their formula is that's successful to them. Each of these little kids have a successful formula, for us personally. So I'm always experimenting and trying to craft it and if I find that it doesn't work, or the formula is not working, I literally put it in a light category and I'm like, yeah, we tried it on, didn't work. Those shoes didn't fit and I put them off to the side and I just don't even think about it again and I try something different. So, I'm very big on keeping everything very light and very fun and not taking it all so seriously. I think that helps too.

N: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we also want to talk about a little today some of the fears that you faced. I know we spoke earlier on that before the call, I know some of my fears that I had to face after my separation from my husband was that I was a failure now, so why would anyone listen to me because I'm supposed to have all the answers. So, what was some of the fears that you faced and how were you able to move through them?

D: Well, I think I faced all of the fears, if there's a big bucket of fears, I think I've had them all. I think I've had, I actually had the fear of course that I'd be alone for the rest of my life. I've had the fear that no one, of course, want me. I've had the fear of actually being successful. What would happen if I do get what I want? And then I've had the fear, which is one of the bigger ones, what if everybody hates what I put out there in the world. What if everybody hates what I do and I'm a huge failure? So I think there's two sides to every fear stick and I think I've covered pretty much all of them. I also had a lot of fear which was pretty interesting. I've had fear that either socially I'm just going to be rejected or my family is going to hate me or my family is never going to talk to me again or my life would never be the same. I've had every single one of them that you could possible ever imagine. And one of the things that I was able to share on the show is, I like using different techniques that kind of moved me through the fear. So I like to imagine myself like if the fear is a smokey, dark fog, I like to face it straight on and I kind of walk through it and I try to dissipate it. And the funny thing is, it really seems to work for me. Sometimes I turn around and then I walk back through the fear again, whatever that fear might be and it does get a little lighter and you walk through that fear again. And literally kind of, in my mind's eye, I imagine it completely dissipating, and then, the second part of it, of course, I always go to what's the worst case scenario? And one thing came, when it came to writing the book, I was terrified that everybody would hate it or they find it stupid or nobody would like it, and then, I remembered a really, really simple goal. I made my goal very manageable, very small (14:20). I said, if my daughter and may be one of her friends, finds that this helps them in their life, I kept it really small, then I win. So, two people, just two people find this to be valuable or positive, then this is a winning case scenario for me. And the truth is, my goal is so small, it's pretty easy to accomplish. And since then, it's been very, very positive. I've had so many men and women coming and say, I can relate to the fact that I have to go and make and face some very difficult choices in my life, I've had to change my career, I lost my house. I've had people say they've lost relationships. They had friends that they had to shift out of because they're not healthy relationships or they had to go through all kinds of crazy dating relationships, and I've been through crazy on the dating side, there were some great guys and some crazy guys, and so it was nice because I just found that because it was relatable, that was enough for me. That just made me happy. So I try to keep everything in more of a giving and a light perspective.

N: Yeah. Excellent, excellent advise. Now, we are at the end of our show, and as I predicted, this went very fast. But if people want to find out more about you and may be purchase your book, where can we send them, Dianne?

D: I have a website, it's called liveyoureverything.com and it has, it's a sanctuary for midlife transformation. And it's brand new so we'll be growing but it has motivational, inspirational products, tips and I kind of want to be an integrator and help everything that helps people stay young, alive, happy and joyful on this site. And the book is also available through the website which you could go right through amazon, the book is called, the real brass ring.

N: Wonderful. Thanks again Dianne for joining me. Now guys, I encourage you to share this video. You can do that by clicking the Facebook and Twitter share buttons on this page. Also, download the app if you haven't done so already so you can watch the shows on the go. You don't necessarily have to be in front of your computer. And if you haven't done it already, make sure that you leave your email on the box on this page, because I'd like to send you the manifesting with the masters video e-course. It has masters like bob proctor, john assaraf and joe vitale. It's actually valued at $87 and I would love to send it to you for free. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. We'll see you soon.