Leadership Starts With You with Maureen Ross Gemme

With me today is Maureen Ross Gemme, ex-corporate girl, motorcycle adventurer, speaker, coach, leadership trainer and grandmother who is also an alcoholic and drug addict in Recovery since 1985.

Maureen used her experience of addiction recovery and starting over at a young age to build her programs, Recovery@Work and Personality@Work.  Listen in as we visit about how getting in touch with your passions and who you really are can change your life in every way possible.

Maureen has a leadership type quiz on her website as well as links to her podcast, Emerge, Evolve, Lead: https://emergeleadershipacademy.com/
Connect with Maureen on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emergentleadership/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emergeleadership/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCArtSJlSvO4SkATXyZkUJ7w?view_as=subscriber

DoTERRA Wellness Advocate
At Wholistic Natural Health Australia, we often recommend the use of high quality essential oils.

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Transcript

Magic Barclay: 1:00

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Barclay, and today I am joined by Maureen Ross Gem. We're talking about how leadership starts with you, Maureen has a Master's of Education and is the c e O of Emerge Leadership Academy, which began training leaders across New England in 2015 after a 30 year corporate. A motorcycle riding grandmother and personal growth advocate. Maureen trains and coaches, leaders who want to make an impact. She's passionate about helping her clients step into their full potential and develop others on their team as a personality expert. Maureen helps her audience own their own gifts and embrace the differences in the diversity of others to build better relationships. After living through her teenage years as a drug addict and alcoholic, Maureen stepped into recovery and created an awesome life. She has a deep compassion for helping others to emerge, evolve, and lead their best lives, and has created the Recovery at Work program. To help those who are ready. Welcome,

Maureen Ross Gemme: 2:17

Maureen. Thank you. Magic is very nice to be here.

Magic Barclay: 2:22

It's fantastic having you here Now. Motorcycle riding Grandma, tell us about that.

Maureen Ross Gemme: 2:30

Well, you know, they always say, pick a couple of really interesting things about you that might be different than other people. So I say, yes, yes, yes. I do love riding motorcycles. My husband and I have been riding for, about 20 years now and we're starting to wind down. We have a tri and we have been across the country, the United States a couple of times and had some amazing, amazing adventures. but I did sell my two-wheeler last year and now we're getting ready to sell the trike. We do have one more motorcycle left and it has a sidecar on it, so that will be fun. We'll still go out and tole around in that. I also have 4 little grandchildren under the age of eight and they live two miles down the street from me and they are a blast. Very fun. I

Magic Barclay: 3:20

imagine they're keeping you young and you know, giving you

Maureen Ross Gemme: 3:24

something to look forward to. Yeah, it really is such a blessing. I, I can't even tell you cuz I only had one daughter, so for her to give me four grandchildren just is just like such a major, wonderful blessing and I love, love, love the little ones. So gives me, a big opportunity to play. And that's one of my favorite things about my personality type is playing. I work hard and I play hard. I love it.

Magic Barclay: 3:54

And note to my sons who might be listening, I can't wait to be a grandma. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge. Okay, now look, Maureen, thank you for coming and talking with us here today. There's one thing I do and I ask all my listeners the same three questions, and I'm always astounded by the array of answers that I get. So here comes your first one. I know that you do leadership, but you have had your own recovery that you've been through. So what can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical health, but emotional and spiritual health?

Maureen Ross Gemme: 4:36

Well, I'll be honest. I think that spiritual and mental health is really the forerunner of all anything else that you have going on in your life, so, As a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, I learned really early on that, that lifestyle didn't work for me. So, when you have a major transformation in your twenties, you realize, There's so much more to life than just, well, for me, it was trying to get high or trying to get into a relationship or trying to find the perfect job or the perfect car, the perfect, you know, family, the perfect everything. And, and that's constantly what I was striving for, things outside of myself. And so, I grew up in a very Irish Catholic family where I was number three of six kids my mom had in eight and a half years, right? So I was one of the pack. I was right in the middle and I was told what to do and when to do it, and how to say it, and what to say, what not to say, what to eat, what not to eat, how to dress, you name it, right? All those rules were there for me. But as I began to break away in my teenage years, I learned very early, at least when my generation was growing up here in the States, it was all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And so I played right into that. I wanted to be one of the pack, and I got right into all of that peer pressure to do all those things. I wanted to be having fun, and I turned out to be, unfortunately, a very angry. teenager I was very angry, constantly shoving down those feelings of inadequacy, not feeling like I was enough, feeling like I didn't belong, and also of authority figures, people telling me what to do. Like I wanted freedom and I wanted freedom from my family and from my everything right from just school and any kind of work. But honestly, I had a strong work ethic. So as soon as I graduated high school, which I barely did by the skin of my teeth as they say, I was off and running. I did not go onto university. I went into the world of work because I needed money to support my habit. It was so bad in high school that like even my Junior year of high school, I spent my whole first week in detentions just making up for like the 60 some odd days I skipped the year before and all the detentions that I missed the year before. And I, that happened again in my senior year. So I, I never felt okay if I didn't have a boyfriend in my life. And anytime things went wrong, well it was either, it was that guy, or it was that boss, or it was my parents. And it was, a very hard life when you're constantly running away and trying to make things outside of yourself better, when really all I was doing was drinking, drinking, trying to stuff those feelings down and trying to make my life work. And I, I couldn't figure it out. I didn't know how. It was a vicious circle of hating myself, self-loathing, not being good enough, always trying to find somebody else to approve of me and give me the sort of support and love that I so desperately wanted. So I took what many of us do a geographical cure, I call it, and I moved halfway across the country. I'm from Connecticut. It's tiny. Little state up in the Northeast and I moved to Texas, one of the largest states in the United States, and it was filled with Mexicans. So I was very, how do you say, a minority there, a little Irish Catholic girl. Didn't really fit in. But I got a job in a bank and I got a part-time job in a bar and I was off and running. But you know what Magic? When I created all the same chaos down there in Texas that I had created up in Connecticut, I realized that the only common denominator was me, I didn't have anybody to blame but me, and that's when I realized that. Wow. I probably had a lot more control over my life than I was giving myself credit for or taking responsibility for, and I tried to begin to change things, but I couldn't change anything until. I got the help that I needed to give up my addictions. and that was a very, very hard thing to do at 24, you think, oh my God. But I'm just, I'm just getting going. I'm so young. how can I be an alcoholic? But I did, I, I gave it up. I joined a 12 step program and I got on this path of personal growth. And development, and I haven't really looked back. That was 37 years ago. Don't try to do the math. and I, I have really created an amazing, wonderful life for myself, but it's all been based on my spiritual growth and my commitment to myself, to figuring out who I am and to giving back as much as I possibly can to those in my life, to the people around me, so that I can create a better world. And of course, world peace starts with inner peace, right? So that's, that's the start of my spiritual life and I've really been having a good time while I'm doing it.

Magic Barclay: 10:29

So Maureen, from that journey, what are some things that came out that you can maybe share just some nuggets of that learning with the listeners about their health?

Maureen Ross Gemme: 10:42

So I think the very first thing for me was to. First, learn everything that you can about yourself, right? Because when it comes to health, we're talking about feeding ourselves right? And exercising and making sure Right, that we have a healthy body. So Recovery at Work is really a program where I help people step up in their career, but more than that, it's the basis of everything that is internal that you can do. There's so much. It's not about like fixing your resume up or learning how to do behavioral interviewing. It's really about forgiveness of yourself. Looking at your belief system and owning. what's happening in your life and managing your energy. So if I was gonna get the first big nuggets of information that I love to share with anybody who's willing to listen is learn as much as you can about yourself. What are your skills? What are your strengths? Really know who you are and your personality, because I do, I'm, I consider myself a personality expert and I can talk. all day long. Second, create a practice of excellent self. Including, you know, you have to change your thought patterns and really become more conscious of what you're thinking and how you're thinking, because your attitudes about yourself and how you treat yourself will either make you or break you. You know, Henry Ford, that old car mogul, he said, whether you think you can or you. think you can't. You're either way. You're right. And that is so true how we think is the basis for a lot of what's happening in our life. And so people get really frustrated. A lot of times they think, oh, well I am just so, my life sucks because of this or that, or this or that. And it's mostly. If they would turn it around. It's not blaming anybody outside of yourself that's, you know that nobody can change you but you. And it's that inner thought system that is so, so very important. And the third thing is to take full responsibility for every reaction to any events that really happen in your life. Taking responsibility for that instead of placing the blame on other people, places or things is what's going to help you begin to turn your life around when you start taking responsibility for reactions. So for example, how often have we heard somebody say, oh, they just made me so mad. They made me so mad. And I think a al always, I say nobody can really make you mad. You choose to be mad. We choose a lot of the times what we're feeling. It's sort of like the trigger, right? We need to know what our triggers are. And if somebody pushes your button, And you know that this is an old wound that you're gonna react in a certain way. You just have to take responsibility for that so that it doesn't hurt anymore. When they press those buttons. And a lot of that it comes from stuff that you were conditioned with in childhood. So some of the work is going back and really looking at your beliefs, why you believe certain things. Did you just accept it from the people who raised you and sort of programmed you? Are you willing to really look at how you think and how negative you think and how you're constantly blaming? Are you a victim in the world? are you gonna be a victor? Are you gonna take control? And that's the hardest thing. Magic right, is to take control of your thoughts. Cuz we think we don't really have a lot of control over it, but we have much more control than you think. That's kind of a roundabout, way to put it, but it's uh, it's so, so true because. in the beginning, especially when traumatic experiences happen, they'll roll over and over in our heads. For a long time and we think we can't control it, but in fact, you can if you know how. So one of the things I teach is how to really create a a positive inner support system for yourself cuz we all have an inner critic. Or an ego that can really bring us down. Once we take full responsibility for training that part of ourselves and sort of mining our subconscious, beliefs about ourselves, that's when we can really begin to make valuable, huge changes for the good, for the positive, and you can work, towards really creating amazing things in your life.

Magic Barclay: 15:37

What a fantastic answer. Now, would you also apply that to creating wealth, whether it be personal or financial?

Maureen Ross Gemme: 15:46

Absolutely It doesn't matter what you are creating. So for example, one of the very first books I ever read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And it was, an eye-opener because I thought the reason that my life. Was so crappy, was because I didn't have any money. You know, I was always looking outside of myself. Well, so how do I create wealth? How do I create more riches so that I could be more comfortable? And the truth is, it's a trap that we can fall into. True wealth comes from, Really understanding who you are as a person, finding what makes you happy. And when you do those things, then suddenly, the money will start coming in. The wealth starts coming in. And so the, the way to really. Be totally enriched in this life is to find out what makes you happy, what gives you passion, and what gives you the energy to get up every morning and put that smile on your face. Now, every day's not like that, right? We, there's a lot of days where, Life hurts and it can be painful and we have to look at stuff and we have to grow through stuff. But we also know, and probably if your listeners have been listening to your podcast for a while, they know that for every adversity there's a seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. And that was, I think, Clement, uh, stone said that, anyways, the, the thing about having to go through the tough time, it's like sort of the butterfly who has to fight has to struggle to get out of the chrysalis because in the struggle it pushes all the fluid out of its body and into its wings so that it can. If it doesn't, if you help that thing out, then it's just gonna be a, a blob and it's never gonna have appropriate, uh, wingspan because it hasn't gone through the struggle. And it's a great analogy for how we are in life. Some of the most successful people I know had incredibly difficult childhoods, but they, they came through because of that adversity. It's like the adversity of. You know, coal, that under extreme pressure becomes a diamond, right? It, it's all of that. But we have to manage it. We have to manage our emotional intelligence, and we have to manage our energy levels, right? And what it is that we're gonna focus on. and that's how you create it. When you focus on negativity and you're always focused on lack, then you're gonna get more of. So if you focus on wow, gratitude and look at all this abundance I have in my life, then you're gonna get more of that. So that's what I always tell people is focus more on what it is that you really want. And when those thoughts come in the negative thoughts, the poor mes, or the, I wish I had this, or I, it's not enough, or that's those sort of crappy, you give yourself just a couple of. To wallow in the pity party, and then you snap yourself out of it. You gotta, you know, change a muscle, change a thought, get up, move around, do something different, to make those thoughts go away. And I will share a little bit more later about how to manage that sort of critical inner voice, in your mind.

Magic Barclay: 19:23

Such a wealth of information. Thank you. Now we do talk about weight loss here. So have you ever battled your weight? If so, what was the trigger to losing it and what can you offer our listeners today to reduce their stress? Because we know that stress is a key issue in weight problems.

Maureen Ross Gemme: 19:41

Yes. You know, I have kind of an interesting story that I wanna share with your listeners about weight. When I was a kid, My nickname that my mom had for me was Skinny Mini And when I was grown up, my metabolism was fast and I was thin. I could eat basically whatever I wanted, which meant a lot of candy and sugar and crap and whenever I wanted, and then I was drinking like a fish and popping pills and doing all kinds of things. And still, I somehow, You know, stayed relatively healthy as the young body, you know, bounces back. But I had my daughter when I was 30 years old, and after that I started putting on weight. Like not a lot of weight, but when I got pregnant, I was like 1 25. And when I had her, I was like 1 55. And I will tell you that I now way more than I did, even in my full term of pregnancy. So all my life through my thirties and forties and fifties, I battled trying to run but I never could change the way I ate because I had. Not an eating disorder that you've probably heard of. I was not binging and purging. I was not not eating. I had a fear of food, so I had what a lot of you see it in children all the time. I brought this into my adult life where I just would tell you that my taste buds were defective and I didn't like so many things, and guess what? The things I didn't like, I didn't like. barely any vegetables. I'd say, oh, but I like corn That's not even a vegetable. It's a starch. Right. So I was, it took me a long time to learn how to eat like lasagna. That's a wonderful, you know, past, it's filled with things maybe that some people would say are not healthy at all. But to me that was like a healthy food. I basically lived on pizza and cheeseburgers and french fries and that sort of thing. Fried foods all the time. Hot fudge, sundaes, candy. And, you know, once I quit drinking, then sugar became my addiction. So I battled my weight. I would go up 20 pounds and down 20 pounds. I tried different diets finally when I was 50, that was, 10, 12 years ago, I lost 35 pounds. I went on a special diet and I, you know, it was South Beach Diet, that's what they called it. And I worked that for six months. I lost 35 pounds. My husband lost 35 pounds as well. And we kept it off for about four years. And I felt so good in my body. And finally, for the first time, I was not thinking about my. For the first time in my adult life, and it felt really, really good. But little by small because I couldn't do the long-term changes, I kept going back to those old crappy foods that were not good for me. I started to put on the weight again. And about three years ago, I did something that changed my life. I went to a hypnotist and I allowed him to hypnotize me. It was amazing experience, and he changed my taste buds. He changed the way I experienced food, and so now I. All kinds of vegetables, and I love them very much. I, uh, it's just amazing. I would never eat onions before, and now my husband can chop up a whole onion, throw it in with a bunch of veggies, fry it up on the grill, and I, I'm just like gobbling it up. I eat. Very, very well. Now because I finally got past this fear that I had, that I wasn't gonna like something or that I was afraid to try it. I had overcome some of it in my adult life, but I'll tell you, I'm just so thrilled and. In addition, I did not lose a ton of weight just because I started eating healthier, but I started developing better muscle mass and better feeling in my body about who I am. So I don't look at the scale anymore. Magic. I think that that's a trap that we fall into, that health comes from within. and it comes from how much you, uh, that your body can do. And I, I don't stretch it to the limit. I'm in my sixties now, but I still feel really, really good. I work out, you know, four or five times a week. I have a Apple watch and I count my, you know, I count my steps and I close my rings, but I don't worry about like, if I wanna have a little bowl of ice cream or if I. You know, going to splurge and have a couple pieces of pizza for dinner, but I don't eat that way all the time anymore. I eat much, much healthier now, and I feel so much better about who I am. And it really just took a couple hundred dollars going to hypnotherapist, and I did go back for one booster after that. And I just love food now. I love the way I can nourish my body and it makes me feel really, really good. One more thing I wanna say about reducing the stress associated with all of it is again, the self-talk. How you tell yourself, now when I eat something that I really like That society says is not good for me. I don't allow those thoughts to come in when they say, oh, you shouldn't be eating this. I say, no, no, no. I have made a choice. I'm gonna enjoy every morsel, and then it just somehow takes all the calories away. I don't worry about that stuff anymore, I don't get on the scale anymore. I do affirm my body all the time. And I constantly work on self-love and self-acceptance because that's really the answer. It's the key. It's not what does else think about my body? It's what do I think about it? Does that make sense?

Magic Barclay: 26:07

It totally does. There's some, uh, great information there. Again. Thank you. Now, Maureen, we do love freebies here. We offer the listeners freebies all the time. So what can you offer the listeners to help them find their magical

Maureen Ross Gemme: 26:22

life? I have a website. At Emerge leadership academy.com and on the website there is a quiz that you can take it is a personality type quiz, and you can learn what animal best represents your leadership style. So if you think about yourself and how you are at work, and just answer these like seven, maybe it's nine, seven questions, I don't know, seven or nine questions. you will find out what animal best represents your personality and your leadership style at work, and some great information. I highly recommend it.

Magic Barclay: 27:02

Wonderful. Now people can find you on LinkedIn at Maureen Ross Gem. So that's Maureen, r o w s g e double m e. You're also on YouTube. How can people find you

Maureen Ross Gemme: 27:14

there? You can find me on YouTube under Emerge Leadership Academy, as well as, you know, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Yeah. Fantastic.

Magic Barclay: 27:25

So Facebook is emergent leadership. Instagram Emerge Leadership. Now tell us about this podcast.

Maureen Ross Gemme: 27:33

I have a podcast called Emerge, evolve Lead, and it's for people in recovery, and it could be recovery from anything. You know, porn, gaming, alcohol, drugs, shopping, love. there's so many things that we do become a. Addicted to things that fire off those, positive or happy emotive centers in our brain at first. And then when we become addicted, pretty soon it overtakes us and they, we don't get the same kind of hit off it anymore. But anyways, the bottom line is, my podcast is really. People who are in recovery from whatever they're addicted to and are ready to step up in their lives and really, give back to others and step into more leadership roles. And so I have some amazing guests on there and I would love it if you would listen. You can find that also on emerge leadership academy.com/podcast.

Magic Barclay: 28:33

Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Maureen. You will be joining us in our next episode, which is all about creating a dynamic inner support system. I can't wait for that one. Listeners, thank you so much for your time. This was your episode 1 76. Go forth and create your magical life.