What if love, loss, and longing weren’t the end of your story, but the beginning of something deeper? In this inspiring episode of the You World Order Showcase Podcast, Jill Hart sits down with performer, teacher, writer, and truth-seeker Deborah Jeanne Weitzman.
From rediscovering an old diary that sparked her novel The Sinking of Leonardo da Vinci, to weaving her journey as a singer-songwriter, Alexander Technique teacher, and voice liberator, Deborah shares how creativity helps us meet anxiety, grief, and even the darker emotions that make us fully human.
You’ll hear about:
- The true story behind The Sinking of Leonardo da Vinci
- How breath, voice, and sound can regulate anxiety and unlock healing
- The balance between activism and escapism in today’s world
- Why embracing your creativity might just be the key to freedom and joy
🌐 Connect with Deborah: deborahjeanne.com | Substack
Want premium clients from your content?
Grab a free Client Acquisition Audit and I’ll show you exactly where your message, offer, and CTA are leaking conversions—and the 3 fixes to turn your podcast/Substack into a client pipeline.
👉 Book here: https://coachsalchemist.com
Transcript
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What if love, loss, and longing weren't the end of your story, but the beginning of a deeper journey into freedom, joy, and creativity?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the World Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients without chasing algorithms or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Head on over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. It's the first step to building a business where your clients seek you out, rather than having to hunt them down yourself.
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::eling and living abroad since:6
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Deborah is the author of Pandora Learns to Sing and her newly released novel, The Sinking of Leonardo da Vinci, which has been warmly received on major platforms. She helps others liberate their voices and discover how to live healthy, sustainable, and joy-filled lives while embracing both the light and darker emotions.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that make us fully human. Welcome to the show, Debra. It's great to have you here.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Thank you so much. Thank you.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, let's ask you the big question, are you ready? Okay.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, be an example of myself, as I think Gandhi said that, and yeah, be of service when I can.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. So, let's talk about your book a little bit.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Can I show it?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, please do.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For those of you just listening, she's showing us her book.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Sinking of Leonardo da Vinci. How did you come up with that title? It's kind of…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, you know, I realize it now, because all the time when I was working on this book, I…
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::Deborah Weitzman: the title was always metaphorical, and now that it's out, some people think it's a kind of Titanic story about a sinking, and it absolutely isn't.
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::Deborah Weitzman: The actual boat itself, there was once a cruise line, the Leonardo da Vinci, and it sucked.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Way after the story takes place, so it… it's more metaphorical that the…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, it sort of comes into the story, so I don't want to give it away. Yeah, so it has a more metaphorical meaning than another Titanic story.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Interesting. So…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So it's an actual boat, we're not talking about the artist? It's a boat named after the artist.
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::Deborah Weitzman: It's actually, yeah, the boat, right, right. When I was young, I worked as a travel agent, and it was a very different time, and the travel agents would go as fam trips to, like, they would get invited to a hotel, or an island, or a cruise.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And they would be on that trip for the whole, in my case, 11 days, and then go back to the travel agency and sell it. That was the thing.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, yeah, and I was very young.
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::Deborah Weitzman: very poor kid from New York City, with no nice clothes, so my boss had to give me money to buy nice clothing. And I went on this cruise, and that actually really happened in my life.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And,
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::Deborah Weitzman: It was a very strong experience. I mean, obviously, I fell in love on that boat with a beautiful, beautiful young Italian navigator.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And, you know, I remembered this story, but many years later, I had boxes in my mom's basement in the States.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And she was moving, and found out my boxes had been destroyed in a flood that she forgot to tell me about.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, my husband and I went with hazmat suits and masks way before COVID to try to see if I could salvage things, and everything was destroyed, except one diary.
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::Deborah Weitzman: One diary was, like, had, like, sparkles on it, and it was the diary of this story.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Of this love story, and there were letters in this diary, his name, and then I was living in Berlin at the time, Oslo and Berlin, and I was reading my own diary on the plane.
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::tails. And even at that time,:36
::Deborah Weitzman: I had a geology professor, who ends up being very important in my novel.
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::lking about climate change in:38
::Deborah Weitzman: And I… I was, like, kind of… I think my mouth was hanging open about my own life.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then I had… I had so many questions. I mean, in that time, when you said goodbye to somebody.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That's pretty much it.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I was always curious what happened.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Interesting. I lived overseas a lot when I was young, and I… my dad was in the military, so I understand that when you say goodbye, when you said goodbye to people, you never saw them again. You never expected to see them again. But my experience has been, I've run into a lot of these people
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Because of Facebook, honestly. And the internet has made it… has made it possible for us to reconnect with people that we couldn't.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and when I was first deciding to write a novel, which was…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Already now, 14 years ago. I mean, I'm not a fast writer, and I edit a lot, and change, and work with coaches, and…
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::Deborah Weitzman: And so I actually tried to find him on Facebook. I did, but he wasn't on Facebook, or any of the social media things.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, yeah. I did actually see this person again, which is another story, and that's not in the novel.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Good.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, at that time, when I started writing, I just was just one head of questions, you know?
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, what does a writer do?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Create the answer, right?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And sometimes that's even better than…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Then what has… the timeline that unfolded
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That you might not have remembered.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You can make up the ending however you want to remember it.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then also, I imagine, because I had left New York.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And then I was imagining, like, what would have happened.
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::Deborah Weitzman: if, you know, and the character is not exactly me, but yeah, she has parts of me, but I also gave her other things that I was really curious about, and what if, you know, she stays in New York?
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::Deborah Weitzman: She marries, you know, this other person.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then what happens to her, so…
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::Deborah Weitzman: And the book starts with this… This much older husband.
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::Deborah Weitzman: he dies.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then she's… she goes to… to Italy.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, partly to heal, partly to grieve.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Partly to see what… what's going to be… you know, she has a leave of absence, so that's… that's how the story begins.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Is she still a… a travel agent?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… I was a travel agent many, many years ago, like, almost 30 years ago.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: before the internet stuff started happening, so I was, like, the paper tickets and stuff. And, so when you're talking about this, and I was also a realtor, I've done a lot of things.
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::Deborah Weitzman: She doesn't… the older Joanna, because it's a braided story, so the younger Joanna…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Which actually came some from my diary. She works as a travel agent while she's at university, but then, yeah, then…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: She goes off and does something else.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And she actually becomes a music therapist, so she works as a music therapist in New York City.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So all of this… Sorry. Kind of comes around to, you help people Have a voice.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Through music, and through writing, and…
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I don't know if you know Alexander Technique? That's my other job.
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::Deborah Weitzman: It's a beautiful body, energetic work. It's actually quite old. It's sort of the, you know, so we say, the grandma or grandfather of many of the works we have now.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I learned it when I was having singing lessons many, many, many years ago.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And it really helps so much.
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::Deborah Weitzman: That, you know, I combined, so all the years I gave singing lessons, or in workshops.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I combined the Alexander work… Into the singing, into the moving, so it's all sort of organically together.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. Do you actually help people with that now, or is it…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How does… how does the coaching part of what you do… work.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, I mean, now everybody uses the word coaching, you know, so coaching, teaching, helping, I mean, it, you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're all kind of interchangeable.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, so I've been alive for quite some time, and I became a certified teacher
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::an: of Alexander Technique in:88
::Deborah Weitzman: Before that, I was just a music teacher. I went to university, studied music therapy and music.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And because I was, you know, maybe, maybe this is… you know, they have that adage, there's those who teach and those who do. And for me, it was still one more thing, because I, I, I also did
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I taught, because I was still learning.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So for me, teaching was a great chance to keep learning. I worked as a singer-songwriter. I mean, now I don't tour. I mean, I wish, but I don't… I don't have that many gigs like I used to. When I was young, and my hair was not gray, and I had long hair.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I sometimes looked a lot like Joan Baez, actually, so…
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, and I worked… I ended up getting a recording contract in the Netherlands, Also in the 90s?
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::Deborah Weitzman: And, I ended up moving to Europe, because everything is closer there. I don't really like to drive, and as a singer-songwriter in America, you're really driving, driving, driving.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So before that, you know, the tours in America were, you know, it's always like you can almost sing 500 miles between each gig.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So in Europe, it's also much more compact, you know, and you can take a train, you don't have to drive, so I ended up moving… that's partly why I moved to Europe.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, for the music.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, that's beautiful. And it is…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's… it's different when you're overseas, even as an American overseas. The… the ability to move around in community
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: is so different than it is here. I mean, if you take a train, which is very rare.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: even in…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't know. I haven't lived in New York, so you probably were used to the subways and stuff in New York, but it…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My… my vision of the subways in New York is scary.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Whereas I spent a lot of time on the trains in Japan when I was growing up, because I took the trains to school every day.
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::Deborah Weitzman: -Oh.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We lived on a base, and I went to school in Yokohama. So, it was like… I was young! There was no big thing for me to… I could go to Tokyo if I wanted. I did.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: at times go to Tokyo, and I wasn't even a teenager, I don't think, by that time. Well, I was just a teenager. I was very young. But it was just, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you didn't worry about stuff like you worry about now. I mean, it's like…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, I haven't been to New York for a while, but I was there a couple of years ago, and I took the subway all the time.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, it's a great way to travel. It's noisy. I mean, here in Oslo, our subway is quieter, newer, because, you know, people mostly only take public transport here.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So it's really important.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's just this different… different way of being, not having a car, or not having to depend on a car.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, I've driven since I've left, but anyway, there isn't actually, I realize in my novel, because I've been doing the audiobook now, so I'm almost… there is some scenes, there is some subway, in this book.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And actually, only one scene in a car, because most of it takes place in this area of Cinque Terra, where everything is walking, and they have this train that connects the town. So there's walking, trains, so I really love that. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that, too. It's… I like the… the ability to, encourage people to…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To get out of cars, there's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: even here, I live close enough that I can walk to the grocery store often, and I have a wagon, and I just take my wagon, do my weekly shopping. People laugh at me in the store, but I don't care! It's just, like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't really have to drive that much.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I like it.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Can I tell you a little funny story?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, please do.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Maybe it doesn't have to do with anything, but when my mom was living, she's passed away, she was in Florida, she was a snowbird, and, you know, Florida, you can imagine, you really do need to drive, but we didn't have a car, so we would stay with her for quite some weeks.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So I had this bicycle with a basket that I borrowed from one of my cousins.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And the shop was about, I don't know, a mile away, so it wasn't, like, undoable. Anyway, I had bought a little bit too much, and I kind of loaded everything into this bicycle, got ready to go, and the whole thing, you know…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Fell over, all my… all my groceries were everywhere, and this nearby… this man just came out of his car.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And started helping me, and he was so friendly, and seemed to really be enjoying it, that a little part of me thought, oh, is he gonna, like, flirt with me? But when I had my bike back up, and everything was there.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I thanked him, and I asked him… he seemed to be like, you really seem to be enjoying this. And he said, are you kidding? This is Florida! When does this ever happen?
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::Deborah Weitzman: That an attractive woman falls over with her bicycle, and I have to help her put her groceries back in the basket. Never, he said. This never happens. I feel like I'm in a TV show. So, that was really funny.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and you made somebody's day! I did, I think I made his day. And maybe, who knows how many times he told this story. You're not gonna believe what happened today! This woman…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Huh.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just… stuff like that. I saw a…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think it was a video that I saw of a guy who went to Walmart with his scooter, but it had a handle thing on it. It was like a motorized scooter, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He had all of his bags hooked to his body. He had these little hooks.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He had a get-up that had little hooks on them, so he could hang the bags all over his body, and then he gets on the scooter, goes home, and he must have weighed, you know…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: probably 100 pounds. I mean, groceries get heavy fast, but they're just, like, all over his body, and he's on his scooter.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You can be very creative when you, yeah, when you don't have the car, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That's fun!
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yep.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know? And you inspire somebody else to do something…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Out of the ordinary, instead of just, you know, the same old take your car, and… So.
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::Deborah Weitzman: That's a question that I… sorry, I probably did my…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You're good.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But, yeah, so I'm not a youngster anymore, so I, you know, and I do get a little pension, which is very nice, so I don't have to work like I did most of my life, you know, I just had to, had to, had to.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But I still really love to work.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I don't get a very huge pension. I think I get $400 from the U.S, because I was an artist, right? So, you know, at least they don't take very seriously. Anyway, so I still give workshops. I was just teaching in Belgium.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I have some people that come for private sessions, so I… yeah, I work at combination with them, helping them find their breath, helping them, yeah, if they're working on their voice, or maybe it's a character in a play.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, so it's… it doesn't only have to be voice, singing voice, or sometimes somebody who's a teacher, and they want to have a little more voice. I've also had people who are preparing for TED Talks to try to get a little bit more pizzazz and flow in their… in their voice.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, yeah, I do all these kind of things.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You were just talking about, you know, doing your audiobook. That's… that's a huge thing these days. A lot of people are writing, and they…
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, now that I'm almost at the end, I definitely can probably help other people, because it's… it's really quite a process.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is!
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, it's really something, and it's…
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, I have a lot of characters in my…
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::Deborah Weitzman: book, and I… I didn't realize I had so many characters with so many different accents, so… and sometimes they're in the same scene, and…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, I worked… I trained as an actress a long time ago.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So I can act, but you have to, like, do everything together. You have to have, like, all these characters in your head, all the different voices, and… you know, I'm not doing, like, extreme accents, because first of all, I think it's really, really hard, so I'm more giving the characters nuance.
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::Deborah Weitzman: A little… a little taste of where they're from. I did do a little bit more with the Australian and the Italian.
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::Deborah Weitzman: just because, in a way, it's expected, you know? They're almost like…
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::Deborah Weitzman: cliches by now, you know, the Australian person or the Italian person, so…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and people have it in their head. If they're reading it, their… those accents go off. Just like… I read… my husband and I read out loud to each other a lot, so when you talk about, reading.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: like, we read through series of books to each other. It's just, like, something we like to do. But when you talk about reading out loud, when you're creating an audible book, there's a lot to it. And the way that you can know this is just try reading a chapter out loud to somebody else.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 8?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's hard.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, sometimes I think I'm going really well, because I'm new at this, and I have a really young, sweet engineer who's helping me, and, you know, and then I think, oh, I did great!
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then… and then there was, like, a sound from my pants, or you had a… or I… sometimes I get animated, I… I think my body thinks I'm Italian all the time, so I'm moving my hands, and then I knock the microphone, and then I have to do the line again.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Or you get a little burp, or you get a…
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::Deborah Weitzman: A kind of, you know, wrongly pronounced word.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So it's, yeah, but I'm really happy. 20 pages to go!
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::Deborah Weitzman: Out of time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's a lot.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So I'm getting there. I'm getting there. And then, then we have to do the corrections.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But we're getting there, so…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Amazing.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yep.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, if you're out there, and you've written a book, and you would like to get it to be an Audible book, because, you know, Audible's the thing on Amazon.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Is it very popular now?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's very popular, and people… If you have an Audible book, Then you can,
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can listen while you're doing other stuff, which a lot of people like a lot.
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::Deborah Weitzman: you can listen while you're driving. That's how I got into it. I mean, we were talking earlier about driving. I don't drive here, but we have a camper car, and sometimes take trips
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::Deborah Weitzman: to the south, because here in Norway, you know, it's already getting to be winter. It's a very short summer. So, yeah, and I can't do the long winter here. It's really too long and too dark.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, we've been finding ways to, you know, live cheaply and take the camper. You know, we have a small camper.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Adventures.
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::ng the first… well, I think:185
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Come on!
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::Deborah Weitzman: So that book is called Italy with Nobody in It, but that's not out yet. So, I'm still… this one, The Sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And where can people find that book?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, obviously, it's on Amazon, it's on all the platforms, it's,
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, I think we're still gonna keep it a little bit longer, so it's… there's a… there's a promotion going, so it's…
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::Deborah Weitzman: yeah, it's not too expensive on Kindle, and all the, you know, all the different iBooks and all that.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then, I guess in a few months, there'll be an audiobook.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Exciting.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I still have some more work to do.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I have these other questions. I think I'm going to ask a couple of them, because I'd really like your take on them. So, one of them is, you talk about meeting our anxieties and darker emotions with creativity. What does that look like in practice, and how can we start?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, again, this is very much what the book is about, because as I have worked a lot with this, I have my character work with it.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, first of all, when we're in anxiety, we're often holding our breath.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You're having a panic attack, it's usually
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::Deborah Weitzman: Besides whatever is going through your mind, the body is needing breath, it's needing air.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So the first thing
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::Deborah Weitzman: if we can move out of it… I mean, often people will learn, when I was recovering from my panic when I was young.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, to count our breath. A lot of people practice, like, this box breathing, because just the counting of your breath begins to slow it down.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And you have more breath, and you allow more breath.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, any kind of moving. So, like, let's say one of the things I've started doing, even though I'm all wrinkled and, you know, no face work, you know, I'm in my golden years, but I've been…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I've been making these little recordings of improvisations.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So this kind of creativity, so for example, you're feeling… And you start…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, if you think, oh, I can't sing, I never did it, think of some food that you like.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Smell the food. Mmm! You know, there… oh, mmm, what delicious spaghetti. Mmm! So you start with this hum, and let that travel through you, and just start letting…
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::Deborah Weitzman: The sound just starts moving through, even if you have no idea. It will move through.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Making sound, moving.
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::Deborah Weitzman: these are so much part of our little bodies. I mean, of our bodies, especially when we were little. It all began, so it's all in there.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know?
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::Deborah Weitzman: So…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think when we hum, we hum at our own personal vibration?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Like, the healing high vibration that our body needs?
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::Deborah Weitzman: I think there's definitely a potential for that. I mean, it depends, like, sometimes when I work with a student, I mean, I just came from a workshop recently, and one student was very afraid, so her voice at first was… so then maybe it wasn't yet at the healing vibration.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But as, you know, I do some Alexander with her, letting the body expand a little bit.
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::Deborah Weitzman: it comes deeper in, and then absolutely, yes, oh, yes. All that is really good for us, sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I was looking into Transcendental Meditation a while ago, and they talk about… they give you a word that you say in your head.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But that word causes a vibration in your body.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Which I think impacts There's a lot of studies that have been done about
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Transcendental Meditation specifically, and that it's really helpful, healthful for you to do it, because it heals your body. But all of these things have to do with breathing, and regulating…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, you could even, if anybody's listening there, and you think, what the heck are they talking about? You can put your hand just here, and think that you're a little bit yawning inside, and you let your lips slightly touch.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So you don't want it like you're making the sound in your throat. I often think of, like, like you're an elephant, but then you can… you can actually feel it starting to vibrate.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So I have done Transcendental Meditation, but lately, I actually, well, the last years, I prefer the mantra that Tina Turner made famous.
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::Deborah Weitzman: It also has that… Vibrational element, and it's… oh, it's… all these things are great.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Absolutely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… I have a… a four-part…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: mantra sort of thing that I do, but… and it… it…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it is incorpor… I'm sorry, I'm just like, I can't get the words out. It incorporates breathing into it. I find that I'm breathing with it, in different ways. I usually do it at night when I'm going to sleep.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And… It helps regulate all of the…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The things that are trying to stay awake.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When you want them to go to sleep, starting with your mind.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, no, this stuff, I think it's great. I mean, I… you know, of course, when I was younger, and, still, you know, let's call it the younger part of me, wishes she got very, very famous, you know, that…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I could do a concert and everybody knew the words of my songs. I only had that a little bit. I was… I was a little bit famous, not big famous.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Hmm.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But now, you know, in my… yeah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: In my… in these… in these years of… I call them my extra years, because I never thought I would live this long.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I just sing every day. I just sing every day, because it's so good. You know, I have some asthma, which I think a lot of people have.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then asthma's really stealing your lung capacity, and the singing really helps, really helps.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, anyone out there, and especially if you have any forest nearby, because the trees resonate and make our voice sound so good, and when your voice sounds better, you feel more encouraged to make sound.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. I have to tell you, my husband, he's… I tease him, he's always got a song in his heart, and coming out of his mouth. He literally is always singing. And you can tell what he's thinking about because of what he's singing.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Looks like… Hmm…
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::Deborah Weitzman: That's good. That's good. That is really good. It keeps the… it's very good for all the fascia, and all the joints, and yeah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I think… I don't know if they've measured this, but… well, they have done some measurements that any kind of music is very good for the brain.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's good for your whole body, it's just the vibration that washes over you. I did hear that they changed the…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the frequency that they tune stuff to.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't know, a long time ago.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not like in the last few years, but it used to be at, like, 400 and some Hertz, and now it's at a 400 and different Hertz.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's.
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::Deborah Weitzman: 440.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 440.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I don't remember if it was higher or lower, but it used to be different, that's right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and that, the difference has affected us as humans.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I found that interesting, too.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I'm curious, well, I hope in a good way. Well, who knows? It's a pretty crazy time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Could be good, could be bad. I don't know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And vibrations affect water, too. I mean, you just took a drink of water, but water is, like, one of those other things that it's just, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When you sing and hum, and you energize yourself in a positive way, it really helps the water that's in your body that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We are mostly water beings, and it just… it helps everything build
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Just work the way it's supposed to, in a beautiful way.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, it's great. Oh, it's a pleasure to talk with you, Jill. Yeah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, it's funny that we're sitting here on the screen, suddenly I forgot I was going to reach for my coffee, like we're having a coffee here, this is great.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But yeah, I never know where these conversations are gonna go.
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::Deborah Weitzman: God.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, you also talk about, activism and escapism. Do you… do you need… do you believe we need both, or…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How do you find the balance between them?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, you know, with this, with this novel of mine, I mean, some of the different people, the endorsements.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, I sent it to, yeah, quite a famous writer, and…
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, he wrote, do you need a chance to escape into a sweeter world? This is the novel to take you there.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So this is a book to escape into, but what I like about it is it's not only escape, because in it, because of the different characters, there's themes of climate change, of living sustainably, of finding community, also big questions about love and…
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::Deborah Weitzman: family. So, in the escaping.
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::Deborah Weitzman: it's, you know, I won't say it's an Alice in Wonderland kind of thing, because it's a realistic story.
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::Deborah Weitzman: But, you know, the different characters that she meets are bringing up different themes, so I, you know, I've really been enjoying it myself, doing the audiobook, because it's not, it's not over your head.
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::Deborah Weitzman: You know, but it's kind of like little bits of sensible information. Like, for example, I mean, one of these things I love.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Now, when we're burning fire, like, like you have a bonfire.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's the ancient sun energy being released.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Interesting.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Isn't that beautiful?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is beautiful.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Things like this in the book. You know, little… little weavings, so it's not…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Too much, and it takes place…
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::Deborah Weitzman: After 9-11, you know, one of the stories.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Huh.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And, it's not heavy about that, it's not anything, you know, like, what happened and everything, but just…
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::Deborah Weitzman: you know, because one of the characters she meets is a journalist from Holland, actually, and also in Italy.
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::Deborah Weitzman: you know, and just some of what Bill, you know, was part of the story of the politics, you know, not just in the States, but… and I… I found it very interesting.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So, you know, cause it's…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, now we have a lot of historians that are kind of guiding us in this time, and there is something about sort of connecting it into what led us here, what led us here, and how can we, you know, hopefully move in a more positive direction, I hope.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I hope so, too, and I think that's really… It's important.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That we weave What we remember about these experiences into the things that we're bringing forward, because
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Young people don't remember what the world was like pre-internet.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Or back in the 60s and 70s, when things were… things were fundamentally different. I mean, we didn't have microwaves. I remember when microwaves were, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: $1,000, and they were huge!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you didn't…
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::Deborah Weitzman: I've never had one in my whole entire life.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm so proud of you. I don't have one. I haven't had one in years, but
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I remember when they came out, and, you know, VCRs, and the whole…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: People binge movies now on their television sets, but
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It didn't used to be like that.
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::Deborah Weitzman: If you wanted to watch a television show, you better get there on time, or you're out of luck. I waited once a week, right? Yeah. I remember Sunday nights watching Bonanza when I was a kid, you know? Yeah! Right, right. I know, it… it was… it does feel like it was a simpler time, but…
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I remember I had a boyfriend, I was quite young, I did a lot of folk dancing, and I had a boyfriend from… for a short time from MIT before the computer came out, and he told me.
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::Deborah Weitzman: you'll see, in a few years, it's all gonna be computers, and then 20 years from now, people won't be able to be without their computer. And I said, oh, no, that can never happen.
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::Deborah Weitzman: I mean, I can't be without my phone or my computer, right?
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::Deborah Weitzman: It's crazy, but…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to type on a typewriter with, you know, the old one with the striker keys, and you probably know the answer to this, but I'll bet a lot of our listeners don't. Do you know why the keyboard is set up the way it is?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Because of those age-old typewriters, that I know, because I learned how to type on them. Yeah. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Because they…
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::Deborah Weitzman: There was such time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, but when you're… if you get going really fast, and you had to have really strong fingers to do it, you could get those keys to stick. And they would stop you, because you have to untangle all your keys.
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::Deborah Weitzman: It's funny that you said that. Yesterday, here in Oslo, I had my second book event, which was really fun.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And it was really a charming little bookstore.
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::Deborah Weitzman: you know, I'm not any kind of famous writer, but, you know, I did what I could to put it out there, and I made cute posters, and so it was getting full, and there was one woman who came with two little kids.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And she said, okay, before we start, my little daughter, I think she was 4 or 5, they actually had an old typewriter, and she was banging away, and she said, I promise I'll get her to stop when you start your reading, because it was like, it's really very noisy, those…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, they were really noisy, and they were… it's a really, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, to hit those puppies hard!
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, yeah. I've actually never seen it, but there's a game that I know is very popular in America, you'll know what I mean. It's not… it's from Ping Pong, but, you know, where people are…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Pickleball.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Pickleball, right. It almost sounds like the pickleball.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I didn't get pickleball for a long time, either.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, we don't have it here in Europe, but again, when I was visiting my mom, I would just hear it, you know, I would do… she was living in one of those condominiums, and I would do, like, walking loops.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And then I would pass the pickleball court, you know, you could hear all that bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think they're, like, plastic balls or something. That's kind of funny.
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::Deborah Weitzman: So it was, like, a little bit like a typewriter, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, how do people get in touch with you, Debra?
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::Deborah Weitzman: Well, I'm on Facebook with Deborah Jean Weisman. My Instagram is Debra, Deborah Gene New with a W, so I have J-E-A-N-N-E-W.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I have my website.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Deborah… D-E-B-O-R-A-H-J-E-A-N-N-E dot com. Yeah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And I'm on… right, I'm on Substack, that's right, yeah, yeah, and I'm really enjoying it. I do… I do a newsletter once a week.
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::Deborah Weitzman: And usually on Friday, although today I was in the studio all day, but I usually put in improv, something with me, with my ukulele, or sitting at the piano. Yeah, I may put one out tomorrow.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Yeah, so I have that music, and I do some notes, and yeah, I've really been enjoying meeting people like you. I think this is my…
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::Deborah Weitzman: third live, or this kind of thing I'm doing, and I… I love it. Yeah, I would love to do more, so anyone out there, who has a podcast, I'd love to be a guest on your podcast.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Awesome! Well, we'll see what we can do about that.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Thanks so much for joining us today, Deborah.
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::Deborah Weitzman: Thank you so much. Okay, bye.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about Debra, and to learn more about liberating your voice, please consider subscribing to DeborahGeneWeitzeman.substack.com, and we'll be sure to put the links to both sites.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In the show notes below. Thanks for tuning in today to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple. Head to thecoachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. Be sure to join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency, and remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: get visible.