Worrier to Warrior: How Solo Moms Can Navigate Life's Challenges w/ Martin Salama

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 00:00 Hi, thanks for listening to SoloMoms! Talk. I like to bring different perspective to the show and, although my favorite is bringing the stories of solo moms, guests like Martin Salama brings a different perspective to other aspects of your life. So I hope you find these interviews interesting and, if not useful to your everyday life, at least it brings you some kind of entertainment. Also, I wanted to give you a heads up. If you're an empty nester or you're a solo mom looking to navigate the emptiness life, your kids are teenagers or they may already be out the house after college or wherever. I have some content for you. I have some stories for you as I navigate into this area myself. Listen out for more episodes about Solar Moms Talk, the emptiness years, as I share my personal experience with you and as I share the personal experiences of other solo moms who are facing an emptiness. Thanks again for listening to SoloMoms! Talk Tired weary, frustrated. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 01:32 What would you be doing if you weren't raising children alone? What's stopping you from living your best life? Now, On Solar Moms Talk, I discuss with Solar Mothers the challenges you face raising children alone. So if you're a working Solar Mom dealing with independent children, insensitive bosses, weight and health issues or even debt collectors, join us as we discover your path to get and stay healthy, increase your income and live with joy and purpose. In this battle of life, it's hard to keep your head above the water. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 02:24 So when there's fire, my guest today is Martin Salama, the architect of the Warriors Life Code. Welcome, Martin. Thank you, J. Rosemarie. Martin Salama Guest 02:35 I'm so excited to be here with you today. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 02:38 Thank you, my pleasure Okay, so before we get into the next episode. Okay, so before we get into what a life warrior is, our Warriors L.I.F.E Code is tell us who is Martin Salama.

Martin Salama Guest 02:52 So I am Martin Salama. I come from Brooklyn, New York. That's where I spent most of my life. J. Rosemarie (Jenn)Host

02:59 Hey, Brooklyn, yeah, I'm in Brooklyn, so. Martin Salama Guest

03:02 Cool. Well, in the summertime I'm down by the Jersey Shore, but I call Brooklyn home and love it there. So, yeah, I grew up in Brooklyn and spent most of my years there. Over the last 12 years, I've been a life coach, and that actually came about because of the crash in 2008, the financial crash in 2008. Before that, for about five years, my wife and I were working on a project to build a multimillion dollar health club and tennis center in New Jersey, and it took us five years because we were going through the whole process of finding the land, going through the feasibility studies, and then architecture and engineers and the city, and then all that and we finally got the approvals in the summer of 2008. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 03:52 Okay.

Martin Salama Guest 03:53 Which would happen to be my luck if it was 2006 or 2007,. When you were walking into the bank those days, it was kind of like you were going to Costco. On every corner there'd be somebody handing you free stuff. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 04:04 Yeah. Martin SalamaGuest

04:05 You know well, it stopped in 2008. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 04:09 Yeah, that it did yeah. Martin Salama Guest 04:12 So I went to the bank. I'm like, okay, I'm ready to start. I've put in over $3 million of my money and my investors' money for this $15 million project. And they're like, yeah, we're not lending right now. I'm like what do you mean? I mean I have everything invested in here. 04:28 You know well, you know. Things are changing. A month later, in September of 2008, Bernie Madoff, subprime loans. The financial world crashes like a house of cards. And I'm in the cards. I'm the joker on the bottom of the deck, but I wasn't laughing. I'll tell you this much.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 04:47 Thank you. Thank you for sharing, and I'm familiar with that because I was in real estate during that time and moved to Wall Street after that, so I'm familiar with it. Martin Salama Guest 04:58

All right, you get it. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 05:01 All right, so building emotional strength after going through a financial crisis like we did, then Can you dive in and tell us about what you do? Martin Salama Guest 05:15

Sure. So, as a life coach, you know there's many of us out there and many great life coaches out there, but for me, I feel like it's my job to help someone shift their mindset from lack to abundance, or lack or scarcity to abundance and greatness and, on a deeper level, from self-conscious to self-aware. Everybody thinks they're self-aware. They start talking to me and I explained to them the difference between self-conscious and self-aware. Well, I guess I've been self-conscious. 05:48 So building yourself, building your emotional strength, kind of comes from that whole mindset. But also, for me, the reason I even started practicing this and developing it was because when I decided to become a life coach, right before that happened, it took me about a year or so to get out of the depression of losing all that and figuring out what I was going to do next. I decided I was going to become a life coach and about two or three months before that I was going to start coach training. My wife asked for a divorce on our 24th wedding anniversary. Wow, and I'm like gee, and I didn't get you anything like that for our anniversary.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn)

Host

06:29 No. Martin Salama Guest 06:30 I did not say that. 06:33 I was mad I was sad, I was hurt, I was like every emotion you could think of and I reacted very badly because that was the full tendency. That's who I was. I was somebody who reacted to everything to the point I was like a nuclear reactor where I'd freak out, leave fallout all over the place and then have to go back later and fix everything. Most of the times it was like I'm sorry, jay Rosemary, but you did this and you started it. That's not an apology. So when I started coach training, I started to understand what are these things that are holding me back in my life. I learned that I was a people pleaser, that I was a control freak, that I needed recognition for everything that I was doing because I was a people pleaser. And when all those things weren't happening, I took things personally and I would explode, I would react. So I had to learn to change that tendency that I had in me not to save my marriage, because that wasn't saveable. 07:36 I look back now, other than our four children, probably asking for the divorce was one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me, because it was the kick in the pants I needed to figure out how I'm going to move forward in my life. So I and I needed to change myself for me, and I started to understand that I didn't love myself, I didn't like myself, and that was probably one of the reasons why I was afraid of getting divorced, because I was like, you know, nobody's ever going to love me and that had to do with my own lack of self esteem. Yeah, so I started to understand that I needed to change, and I also understood that change takes time, because if you change too quickly, yeah, eventually you're just going to go back to who you were. So I had to understand what was playing a role in this. So in my, in my business, in my coaching business, the word life is an acronym and it stands for live incredibly full every day, and with that, I want to live a happy life and a meaningful life. 08:40 Yes, there's a difference between the two. You could be happy and not have meaning. Right, you could be happy and selfish, and it's good to be selfish, but meaningful means you're being selfless as well, you're doing for others, you're leaving a mark, legacy, something like that. So that's what I believe. So I took the word life and then used it in my build, your emotional strength, breakdown as well, and I just recently came out with a card deck called the warrior to warrior card deck how to go from being a warrior to being a warrior. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 09:16 You're the perfect guest for a soul of one's talk. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 09:19 Exactly. Martin Salama Guest 09:22 Exactly Right. So one of the cards in my card deck talks about the four steps of building your emotional strength. And also, by the way, just as a sense of plugging, I just recently came out with my own book. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 09:36 Oh okay, warrior to warrior, warrior to warrior. I like it, I love it. Martin Salama Guest 09:40 Shame those plugs. What can I say? 09:43 So L in this one for build your emotional strength, listen to your inner voice and acknowledge your emotions. So we all have emotions, yes, angry, happy, sad. There's a bunch of them. And then here's where the second one comes in the eye is identify your feelings. There's a difference between emotions and feelings. Okay, I believe. 10:10 To me, an emotion is something that's happens in the moment. I'm angry, and then the feeling is what kind of anger are you? Are you high level anger, like enraged, or is it low level, like you're a little ticked off Right? And once you start to use this and, by the way, for your audience, I'll give you a link at the end that they can download for free a worksheet that has these four steps on it for them to learn how to do it, because, as I said, it takes time, yes, you know. So once you start to put tangible words on these and write them down, you start to understand how they're affecting you and the people around you as well. So now you identify your feelings. So what you'll get is a worksheet and a chart with across the top will be the words that are the emotions, and then down each one will be columns with three sections strong, medium and light types of feelings so that you can look on the list and say, okay, what kind of feeling am I feeling towards this angry? And write that down. That's identifying the feelings.

11:26

The next one is find out why. Ask yourself questions, being like you're a prosecutor and you're also the witness on the witness stand. Cross-examine yourself. Why am I feeling this? Did somebody do me wrong? How did I affect it? Am I taking it personally? Is it helping me? Is it hurting me? And go through the whole thing. And then the last one E is engage and change and take action. So that doesn't necessarily mean you take action right then and there. So how about if I give you a practical example?

12:05

Okay sure, so it makes it a little easier. Yeah, so a couple of years after my divorce my son was getting married. By now I was back in Brooklyn and my ex-wife was living in New Jersey. Okay, and we have a custom. I come from an Orthodox, modern Orthodox Jewish community so we observe the Sabbath, don't drive on Saturday and stuff like that. So there's a custom sometimes in our community to make a lunch the Saturday before the wedding and the boy goes to the Torah, goes to the synagogue and goes up to the Torah and there's some nice things. But it's not something that everybody does and so I don't know. We were both not in a great place financially, so I just didn't think it was happening. And to know anything, I didn't hear anything. So that weekend my son went to New Jersey to be by his mom, because sometimes he was in college. At the time he was finishing college, which was in New York, so he spent a lot of time with me. So he was out of New Jersey, which was fine by me. He comes back and he says "'Dad, I am so embarrassed. "'mom made the lunch on Saturday, invited my in-laws, "'there were people there and you weren't there'".

13:16

Now, the old me would have picked up the phone and ripped the new one into my ex-wife. How dare you? Who do you think you are? Blah, blah, blah. Now, what would have I accomplished at that moment, two days before the wedding? I would have accomplished turmoil throughout the families, both families her family, my family, my future daughter-in-law's family and everybody would have said oh, there's Martin again losing it and not caring about anybody else but himself. So I thought about it. Now, this is the new me, this is Martin 2.0, as I call myself. So I said Caesar, that's my son's name, it's not you. Thank you for telling me it's okay.

14:03

So now I'm saying to myself I'm feeling angry. What kind of angry. I'm enraged. Find out why. Why am I feeling this way? Well, my ex-wife disrespected me, she didn't think of me, she left me out of the picture and my children are now looking at this. All those emotions are coming in. I'm writing it down, I'm fervently writing it down. And then comes the E engage and change and take action. So for me, the new me is okay.

14:32

When is the best time to do this? The wedding this is Monday. The wedding is Wednesday. I think I'll wait till Friday. Is anything gonna happen different by my telling her on Friday no, I'm still, but I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing. So I said I'm gonna put it out of my head, I'm gonna focus on the wedding, I'm gonna focus on the happiness of my child, all right, and nobody was the wiser. I went to somebody close to me and I also spoke to a coach of mine and I told him how I was feeling and what I was thinking about doing, and I even talked about what I would say. So then we went to the wedding beautiful wedding, everybody was happy.

15:18 Friday I called my ex-wife and I said to her listen, you did this. You have your own reasons why you did it, but let me tell you I'm not happy about it. I had a controlled anger. This is the message you sent to our children. This is the message you sent to the new in-laws. You know everything. And I ended the conversation by telling her thank you for divorcing me. For me, that was a closure. That was a closure moment. J. Rosemarie (Jenn)

Host 15:47 Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that I am going to say I'm very, very proud of you. Thank you and as someone who's been divorced and it's very difficult to see, to envision a man who would take responsibility like you did. Because that's what you did you took responsibility for your own self and I'm very proud of you for that. Martin Salama Guest 16:17 Thank you so much, and these solo moms. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 16:18 They're not all bad, See. Martin Salama Guest 16:20 Well, we're not all bad. We're not all bad. Listen, I fixed myself up so well that a few years later I was so happy with the love in my life, with the love I had for myself, and I liked myself and I came up with that life acronym for Live Incredibly Full Every Day. I started dating again and I'm very happy to say I've been married to a wonderful woman for the last five years and I have a great co-parenting relationship with my ex-wife. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 16:48 Cool Well, congratulations on the new marriage. And your life framework is, it sounds like, as you were unfolding it, like it's a great way to build self-awareness. Yeah, yeah, okay, All right, thank you Absolutely, and, like I, said for me, there's a big difference between self-aware and self-conscious. Yes, okay. All right, so tell us what the difference is. Martin Salama Guest 17:13 All right, so it's on one of my cards. Okay, all right, so I'll read it to you. Self-aware, I'm going to make sure, if there we go. Self-consciousness comes from a place of negative energy, guilt, conflict and doubt. Self-consciousness is more outward directed. It's being more concerned about what others are thinking of you and how the situation is going to affect you. You probably react to situations, uncomfortable situations. Instead of respond, when you're self-conscious, you're usually questioning your decisions. There's a little more to it, but you get the gist. I get it. I get it. Yeah Now. Self-awareness comes from a place of positive energy, acceptance, contentment, self-assuredness. Self-awareness is more inward facing. You have an accurate and realistic understanding of how you are responding to situations and how you feel about things. So for me, self-conscious is the ego taking over, looking to please everybody, looking to make sure you're the best or whatever. Self-awareness comes from a place of humility and self-assuredness. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 18:22 Oh, cool, nice. Thank you. I really think that there's a lot of value in this and, speaking from the the Space, as a solo mom who's been through I have three adult sons and I've been through the aggravation of, you know, dealing with my own feelings of self-worth and and trying struggling not to push it off on the other guy. You know the other person and I can relate to how you you've worked through your situation, so I appreciate you because this resonates. Martin Salama Guest 19:04 Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you, j Rosemary. What you're doing here for the solo moms is fantastic, thank you, you know. To all the solo moms out there I want to say I was a divorce recovery coach and that was understanding the emotional pains that you go through through a divorce, whichever side it was. Whether you ask for it or you're asked, you have emotional pains. 19:24 Yes, when I was doing that work, my thing to the, to all my clients and most of my clients were women was you got to figure out what's going on within yourself. Yeah, because if you don't, you're gonna start dating again maybe, and you'll end up dating the same man, just in a different body. Yes, you know it's. You hear it over and over again. I had one client who came to me and after doing some work with her and she I have this assessment I told her you're not allowed to date because, looking at your thing here, you were, you were verbally abused, right, she goes. Yes, and I was physically abused. I said, okay, bye, and it was so. She was already divorced twice, she said, by my father and my two ex-husbands. I said, okay, you've got it. We've got to figure out what's going on here so that you have self-esteem, self-love, so that you don't go into another relationship like that. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 20:13 Yes, absolutely. I wish I had you 20 years ago, my third divorce. Martin Salama Guest 20:20 Gotcha. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 20:21 Yeah, okay, all right. So can we discuss the concept of abundance versus lack? Yes, it's another one of those things that plague solo moms. Martin Salama Guest 20:34 Yeah, absolutely. So. You know, it's very easy for someone to get down on themselves to say, oh, I can't do this, how am I gonna get this done? I can't believe it. So if you're able to step back and Say, what if I just changed the way I'm speaking, right, and start speaking it out loud and thinking it, maybe things will change. For example, instead of saying I can't, what happens if you say, well, how can I do this? How can I in a positive way, or I can, how can I figure out to get this done? Oh, I can't afford this, or what can I do so that I can afford it? How can I figure out to afford it If, once you start with those things, you're making the beginning of the shift from lack to abundance? The more you say, oh, I wish I had what that person had, the more the law of attraction is gonna keep it from you. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 21:34 Yes. Martin Salama Guest 21:36 So it starts with simple things of new self-thinking and new self-talking. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 21:42 Yes, thank you. Thank you for that, and I'm gonna let you go shortly, but tell us how to get in touch with you. Martin Salama Guest 21:49 Okay, well, I've made it very simple. I have a site called connectwithmartincom and when you go there you can find out about my cards, you could find out about my book. You could also download that free gift I was talking about to build your emotional strength. There's a link to buy the book, a link to buy the cards, a link to get that free stuff, okay. And also there's a link if you wanna find out more about me or have a conversation so that we can maybe have a little bit of breakthrough question. So I make it simple. One area connectwithmartincom. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 22:22 Thank you and I'll put the link in the show notes so people could connect with you. I appreciate you coming and talking to us today. Before you run off, can you tell us what is Martin grateful for today? Quickly and one parting shot, a parting piece of advice for a solo mom. Martin Salama Guest 22:40 Okay. So for me, today, I'm grateful to have a woman in my life who understands who I am and is not trying to change me, and I'm not trying to change her either. Right, when I was 23, 24, 25, getting married oh well, this isn't so great. Well, I'll change her later. Even if I wasn't saying it consciously, deep down inside I was. You were thinking it, right. So that's what I'm grateful for today, and my message to the solo moms out there is don't take anything personally. It could be something going on in the other person's life that they're projecting onto you and because you're already feeling vulnerable for whatever reason, you're taking it personally. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 23:29 Okay, all right. Thank you very much, martin Salama, for coming and talking to us today. I hope you'll come back and talk to us, because this is very deep and I could talk a little bit longer, but thank you. Martin Salama Guest 23:41 I appreciate you. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 23:41 Okay.