Terry Healey | At Face Value

September 20, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Terry Healey [16:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From his website:

Terry Healey is a cancer survivor who endured over thirty surgical procedures in an effort to reconstruct his face, which was disfigured by a fibrosarcoma. Terry has been published in Guideposts Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Psychology Today, and Coping Magazine. He is also a contributing author of Reading Lips, released in 2008, Make Your Own Miracle: Surviving Cancer, released in November 2004, and a contributing author of Open My Eyes, Open My Soul released in December, 2003. He is an Honorary member of the Board of Directors for The Cancer League, Inc., and serves on the Leadership Council of the Wellness Community for the San Francisco Bay Area. Terry is also the President of a sales and product strategy consulting firm called Ridgeview Consulting. Terry has recently appeared on ABC’s “Sunday on Seven” with Cheryl Jennings, Total Living TV Network with Jerry Rose, KTVU/Fox 2 “Mornings on 2″ with Ross McGowan, and appeared on over 30 radio stations across the U.S. Also a professional speaker, Terry regularly presents to corporate sales professionals, medical professionals, and students.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Motivation, Health, Medicine, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST

Paul McManus | The Seven Great Prayers

September 16, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is a day where many folks all around the world are thinking about Iran and about Michael Jackson, about Farrah Fawcett, Ed MacMahon. People are thinking about their mortality and all sorts of serious things in their lives. Of course, Iran’s been in the news and people are thinking about all the folks over there, including that woman Netta, who was needlessly killed, and it’s been an interesting show so far. We’re talking about gospel music and inspirational books. Well, here’s another inspirational book. I have my second guest on the show, his name is Paul McManus. He and his wife wrote the book The 7 Great Prayers: For an Abundant Life and For a Lifetime of Hope and Blessings. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Paul McManus: Hi Dr. Kent, hi guests.

Dr. Kent: And tell me about this book. What are these 7 great prayers?

Paul McManus: Well, the book of The 7 Great Prayers came out of a lifetime experience. I’m a big reader, and same with my wife, and back around the dot com bust, around 2000, life was good, everything was well, and I happened to have been working for an internet company. A lot of people going through tough economic times now, and I think our family just happened to get through it a little bit first. So you know, the company I worked for went under, I lost my job, my wife was out of work at the time, I started a business, and then 911 happened, it was a bad time to start a business, and real quick we went through all our life savings and got to the point where we just couldn’t pay our mortgage any more, and the bill collectors were knocking at the door, and things were just in a really, really negative state. And Tracey and I one night, you know, we just couldn’t sleep, and we looked at each other and said you know what, we’ve got to change our thinking, we’ve got to change out life, and it starts with our thinking and our prayers. And we started to give thanks and started taking the focus off of negative to positive. And that’s where the 7 great prayers was born. The first great prayer was “Thank you, God.” And it was just really simple, but it put us in a state of gratitude. And though we were losing our house and we were having tag sales to get rid of our furniture, you know, we counted our blessings. We were high school sweethearts, through all this adversity we maintained a positive attitude. We had three beautiful kids, we had our health. And at that point things started to turn around just with a simple prayer of thanks. The 7 Great Prayers are non-denominational, they work for all faiths. I tend to have read all the great books out there, or as many as I could get my hands on, and I kind of boiled down the different religions and philosophies, and self development to what I call 7 Great Prayers. And I developed these with my wife Tracey. So it all has to do with affirmative prayer and saying positive thoughts and positive prayers.

Dr. Kent: Well, and things are really rough for a lot of people right now, just like they were post 911, and in a sense the country isn’t quite as, let’s say it’s not quite as nationally depressed as we were after 911, that was a shocking event, but it’s a very similar time. What did you feel before, you know, when all of this bad stuff was happening. You know, you’re not quite Job, but you were going through some really hard times.

Paul McManus: Yeah, we were definitely going through hard times. And you know, life was good, I had a nice house, we live in Connecticut, we did, we lost absolutely everything. And we lost it while, at a time when other people still had it. You know, life was good for many, they were taking their home equity loans, the economy was doing well, but here we weren’t. And my kids, we barely, we literally scrounged around through the seats for lunch money sometimes. But you know, we really got down to basics and found out what’s important. And what’s really important is love for one another, love for family. We’re very spiritual, we, and I say spiritual. We’re involved in the community, we help people, and from that I literally just, I created these 7 Great Prayers, and I can tell them to you really quick. They’re all short. We literally wrote them on an index card. And carrying this card around, things started, our life literally got better. Good things started happening. And when you start, with all the things you just talked about, some great people passed recently this week, everything that’s going on in Iran, you know, it’s really easy to get in a negative state, and there’s one thing Tracey and I found. Thinking negatively really gets you nowhere, and if you’re going to think and if you’re going to pray, pray positively. And that’s really changed our lives. A lot of great opportunities have presented themselves, and we’ve had the good fortune in our book we share a story of how we were having problems even keeping my daughter in college. And a lady that we’ve reached out to for years, she was lonely on the holidays, we used to have her over, just out of the kindness of our heart, cause she had no family. For a good decade we used to have her over for the holidays, and she became a member of our family. When she heard things were going bad she just called up one day and my wife, she said, “You know what, Tracey, I want to pay for your daughter’s, a year of your daughter’s education.” So you know, you gotta keep your antennas up and you gotta keep helping people. And you know, what do you know, there’s a life and humanity comes back and helps you.

Dr. Kent: So I read in your bio that the first copy of this book was printed at Kinko’s. Tell me the story of writing this book.

Paul McManus: Ok, so here we wrote this, you know, these simple prayers for ourselves, I did come from the internet world, I built up a simple web page, placed a little ad on Google, and through the power of the internet and the power of Google, people started typing the words prayers, they came to my web page, I gave them a prayer a day for seven days, each of the 7 Great Prayers, free of charge to people. People loved the prayers so much they asked Tracy and I to put our story in a book. We put it in a book, we printed it at Kinko’s, we did a hundred copies. They quickly sold out, then we did another hundred. And we kept doing them in lots of a hundred. And when we added it all up, we had shipped out 60,000 books out of Kinko’s to 163 countries, over 20 million people came and downloaded these prayers and visited our website, and it was quite an experience, you know. And I don’t have any training in ministry, and I consider my wife and I just regular people with a simple message, and it really resonated with people. It’s just amazing how we just, Kinko’s is, we’d go there every morning and they’d just, they’d laugh cause it was a 24 hours Kinko’s, and I’d just put in my order for the night before. And the power of the US Mail, we’d ship these books everywhere.

Dr. Kent: You were certainly good friends with the folks at Kinko’s and USPS then.

Paul McManus: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then what we did is we created, had an idea to put the prayers, these affirmation prayers, you know, the first great prayer is “I love you, God.” The second great prayer is “Thank you, God.” And we put this prayers over baroque classical music. My wife and I recorded them ourselves, and put them on CDs. We kind of made our own bootleg CDs and shipped those out with the books as well, and people loved the CDs. And they’re all affirmations. The third great prayer is “God, you’re within me.” And then for each prayer we made other little affirmations, and they’re not all relating to God. Some are simple affirmations that say day by day in every way I’m getting better and better, you know. I maintain a positive mental attitude, you know. I feel happy, I feel blessed. And sometimes when people we’ve found that are going through either financial challenges, health issues, relationship problems, they even find it difficult to play, I mean to pray, and so with these CDs it’s as simple as pressing a button and hitting play. And people really, really resonated with these, what we call Prayer Power CDs.

Dr. Kent: And what’s the most surprising, I guess contact you’ve had? What’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen since writing this book and touching so many people?

Paul McManus: Ok, so you know, way back I was in the software business and all I dealt with was corporate people. Through the power of these emails and internet, we’ve had people, you know, again, you forget sometimes, you know, the breadth of the internet, but there are people that would go in Africa or in India and they couldn’t even afford a computer, but they could have a hotmail account or yahoo account. And I’d get emails from people that say, “Hey, just to let you know, I just hiked five miles to this Internet café to download my sixth great prayer. It’s given me great inspiration. I’ve printed it out, I’ve walked it back to my village, and shared it with my community.” So it’s really amazing how, you know, here we are in America, but touching lives with people back to Iran, Iran, or Iraq. You know, these Muslim countries that were downloading the prayers, Pakistan. So people from all around the world, I think that the thing that’s really struck Tracey and I, you know, we’re touching any priests downloading the prayers, pastors are, janitors are, executives are, people from all different faiths around the world. It’s been quite an exciting thing. It’s given Tracey and I a lot of purpose to ship these prayers to as many people as possible.

Dr. Kent: And how has your life changed since that time?

Paul McManus: Well, it’s changed a lot. Tracey and I, we really have our values in check, or at least we try really hard. We did lose our home, we now rent. We happen to be in the middle of Main Street in a beautiful Maine wood town, and we couldn’t be happier. So we have a major focus on the day. You know, we let go of any regrets of the past. We’ve let go of fear of the future, and we focus on the moment. And that’s really helped us out, to just start thinking. And it’s given us great purpose. Now I’ve been blessed with an opportunity to work for an employer who allows me to, during the course of the day, to do an interview like this. My wife is incredibly blessed. Tracy now has a job, our kids are doing well in college and life, and just a sense of purpose now. Just helping people, you know, be it helping at a spaghetti dinner, or helping someone cross the street, it’s just, it’s a blessing. What could be better that this, to have focus.

Dr. Kent: So tell me, tell me about, I mean, the website is the7greatprayers.com, or people can Google it, of course, but it’s a great website, and tell me about these 21, The 21 Prayer Challenge, or 21 Day Prayer Challenge.

Paul McManus: Sure, ok. So, as you said, we have a website called the7greatprayers, and people can go down there and give us their personal email and download the prayers. Our book’s available in book stores all across the country and Amazon, etc. Now, the 21 Day Challenge is a big part of, you know, we want to make, or encourage all the readers to pray the prayers for 21 days straight, because researchers show that it takes 21 days of a particular habit, be it a good habit or a bad habit, of consecutive activity to make it a lifelong habit. So we encourage people to, you know, no matter how tough things are and how much you may not believe in your personal relationship with a higher power, or in positive thinking, you know, just try it for 21 days. You know, there’s 365 days in the course of a year, try this for 21 days and then see what kind of an impact it has on your thinking, and your attitude and your life. And we’ve offered again this challenge through the Internet. People sign up and get the prayers. I think right now we’re over 750,000 people have taken this 21 day challenge worldwide. And we have testimonies where people have changed their lives financially, through relationships, health, just by just keeping it simple and keeping it positive. So the challenge is try the 7 Great Prayers for 21 days and see what it does for your life.

Dr. Kent: And in clicking through to the final contact form there, of course on this beautiful website, the7greatprayers.com, there’s pictures of three dogs, and I assume your daughter. And I’m a huge dog lover. Do you still have dogs?

Paul McManus: Absolutely. I have a blonde golden retriever, her name’s Billie, and then the other dog is a, oh there’s a, one of them’s our friend’s dog. And the other one is half golden retriever basset hound, his name is Jasper. I love taking walks with the dogs, and I encourage anyone, when you’re going through tough times, you know, pet a dog, hang out with a dog, talk about, you know, I don’t blame you for loving dogs. I mean, they have the healthiest attitude on life.

Dr. Kent: Well, and the amazing thing about dogs, too, is especially, in my opinion, especially golden retrievers is they need nothing but love, and then they’ll love you back.

Paul McManus: Exactly, yeah. They are the most, of all the dogs, my dogs are just such a love freak. We’ve always had golden retrievers, and you know, dogs are quick to forgive, you know. All they want is love, and they’ll just give it to you and it’s reciprocal. Love to take walks, and I encourage, it’s a big part of our book, we encourage people to get outside, take walks, communicate, be open and listen, listen to your spouse, your family, your friends, co-workers, or listen to nature and God. God is with us all, right down to the animals and the plants.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been a real honor chatting with you. I think I’m inspired to do the 21 day challenge here, I think I might try it out, and I hope some other folks are, too. It’s a beautiful book and a beautiful concept, and keep doing this great stuff. What’s next on your plate?

Paul McManus: We’re going to continue to get this message out, I guess to have a Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of. We’re working on The 7 Great Prayers for Women, The 7 Great Prayers for Finances, and The 7 Great Prayers for Peace and Happiness to help people with depression and stress. And women love these 7 Great Prayers, so Tracey’s creating a CD set. Oh, we’re coming up with one other project for cancer recovery where we have people that have recovered from cancer and they’re recording the prayers, affirmations, and we’re going to share that.

Dr. Kent: Oh, wow.

Paul McManus: So I think that’s really inspiring and helpful to people.

Dr. Kent: Well, this is great. Everybody can check it out online again at the7greatprayers.com. It’s been my great honor to chat with Paul McManus, author of The 7 Great Prayers. Thank you so much.

Paul McManus: Thank you, God bless you and all your listeners. Bye now.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Motivation, Spirituality, Religion, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST

Paul Austin | Something for the Pain

September 15, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Paul Austin [25:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From Publisher’s Weekly:

With a relentlessly honest look at modern emergency medicine, Austin, a former firefighter now living in Durham, N.C., writes in his debut book of his transformation to a highly capable ER doctor struggling to stay one jump ahead of death in the crowded critical care ward. The book begins deftly with Austin, a sleep-deprived physician, trying to avoid mistakes stemming from fatigue by relying on his instincts, frequently both skill and luck, to treat patients with gunshot wounds, brain tumors, asthma, heart ailments and general problems. In a narrative blur of flashbacks, he tells of his career as a firefighter before landing in medical school, which was followed by an internship at a local hospital and marriage to a lovely nurse and having a family. What makes this inspiring medical memoir stand out is the courageous measure of Austin’s humanity in taking on the endless weight of suffering, and what he becomes to his co-workers, his patients, his family and his community.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Health, Motivation, Inspiration, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Candy Pfeifer | Getting it Right

September 15, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. There’s four guests on the show today, three authors and one musician, as always. Among the authors on the show are going to be Candy Pfeifer, the author of Getting It Right. And that’s about an author’s struggle to be in the spotlight. The second guest on the show is Paul and Tracey McManus, the authors of The 7 Great Prayers: For a Lifetime of Hope and Blessings. The third guest on the show is one of the contributors to the new novel Amplified, Cam King will be with us. And then John and James Abrams are the Abrams Brothers, they’re an incredible act. And they’re going to be with us at the end of the show with their unique brand of music. So without further ado, I’d like to speak with my first guest. She’s the author of Getting It Right, Candy Pfeifer. Welcome to the show.

Candy Pfeifer: Thank you, Dr. Kent.

Dr. Kent: Well, and tell me about this book a little bit. Give me a nutshell.

Candy Pfeifer: In a nutshell, it’s a book about people with, that deal and struggle with insecurities rooted in fear. I’m of the belief that most insecurities that we deal with, low self esteem, feeling like failures, that all of that is rooted in fear. And I pretty strongly believe that that’s a spiritual issue that can be taken care of.

Dr. Kent: Well, and one really interesting thing, when you talk about that very specifically, is the life of Michael Jackson. What are your thoughts about, here’s this very soft spoken guy that had all of these, all of these issues. Well, he was in the limelight since he was 3.

Candy Pfeifer: Right. My belief on that is that people are not made to be worshipped, and when people are worshipped then ultimately they can’t really handle it. It’s a high that people love and enjoy, but then when that starts to go away, then it’s just like a drug that they can’t get enough of, and I just, for the most part as I listen to the biographies of people at that height of popularity, that it’s always the same story. Cause God’s made to be worshipped, not people, and we can’t handle it.

Dr. Kent: That’s fascinating. That’s a really wonderful summary of it. Well, you’ve got an amazing family and you are well known for your music, and then of course for this book. Tell me about the importance these days of gospel music in the world. You know, most of us when we listen to the radio, we don’t hear the gospel music. I’m a big fan of bluegrass and I do hear gospel when I listen to the bluegrass channel. But talk about gospel music these days

Candy Pfeifer: Well I think probably the most popular form of gospel music these days would be what is tagged praise and worship, which there are so many mega churches in our country right now, and they have incredible praise and worship bands. But yes, I feel like the music in itself is something that will literally lead us into the presence of God. There’s a story in the Old Testament that talks about when Saul had evil spirits that would mess with his mind he would call for a musician that played well. And that was David. And David had rehearsed, as he was tending sheep, and he was a very, very good and accomplished musician. And when he would come into Saul’s presence and play, the Bible says that those evil spirits would have to leave. And I feel like that’s what gospel music does.

Dr. Kent: Yeah. And how about, so in your life story, how did you end up where you are today? Of course, you are a pastor’s kid, a PK as they call them. Talk about growing up.

Candy Pfeifer: Well when I was growing up my family, yes, my dad was a pastor, and my family, we loved music. We were the kind of family that would sit on the porch with guitars and sing at dusk, and we had, there was a lot of music in our church and studded singers in our choir loft. It was guitar players and horn players and drums and the whole deal like that. So we grew up surrounded by a lot of music, and it just kind of developed. My life developed into what it is today. It’s what I always wanted to do. We were also very involved in sports, but the thing I wanted to do all of my life was to be able to play music, and to be able to play gospel music for a living, and I’ve been really blessed to be able to do that. It’s been wonderful. I don’t have any complaints at all.

Dr. Kent: So now there’s this book, which is a devotional, and it’s called Getting It Right. And it’s about you, but it’s also a devotional. Talk about the book, how it’s been to write it, how it came about, how you came to writing it, and all of that.

Candy Pfeifer: Ok. Well, I had journaled from 1992 to 2002. And at the end of that period I felt like I was growing, you know, maturing spiritually, and I looked back on those journal entries and I thought you know, those entries are very dark. That was a dark period of my life, when I didn’t seem to think straight in many instances. And so I just started to sit down and with each journal entry I would go to the Bible and try to find verses that would apply to that. And then after that I wrote a “for you” section, “For you today.” So what I did was, I just used those journal entries as life learning experiences, and what the Word says about those, and then what God had taught me about that now. And that’s kind of the way the book’s laid out and how it all came about. Cause I felt like that people, most people go through the same things, especially women, emotionally. We all seem to pretty much think the same way, and men as well.

Dr. Kent: Now what kind of response have you gotten?

Candy Pfeifer: Well, it’s been, it’s really been good. People that have read the book, they will email me or call me and talk about how they really feel like that things have been revealed to them in their life through the book that can help them to live a better life. More of a life of freedom and joy. So it’s, yeah, it’s been a good response, and I’m thankful.

Dr. Kent: What did it teach you, cause that’s the other interesting thing. I mean most authors, especially with a book like this, it’s very personally revealing. How did you change in the writing and release of this book?

Candy Pfeifer: Well, as I would read those journal entries, I would really see the truth of the matter. I know I keep referring back to the Bible, but that’s what I base my whole life on. And Satan is a great deceiver, and he tries to tear us down. The Word says he is out to kill, steal and destroy, and what I learned from it is a lot of what I’ve dealt with emotionally was just a lie. It was just all of hell itself trying to destroy me, and I learned a lot of truth about what our position is in Jesus Christ, and how we can live free of bondages. The bondage of fear, the bondage of low self esteem. It’s a prison. It’s a terrible, terrible mindset to be in, to feel like you’re a failure and nobody loves you and you have no self worth or any purpose in life. That’s just like a prison of our own building. And we can be free of that. And so, for me in my life it was just, it was a freeing experience, and how we can mature and grow up and see things the way they really are.

Dr. Kent: And that’s kind of what all of the music that your family does, that’s what the music is about, that’s what the book is about, is overcoming that.

Candy Pfeifer: Right. That’s right. We can live a good life, I mean, God has made available to us everything that he is. The Bible says that we have the mind of Christ, and that he’s give us everything that pertains to life and godliness. And I work on it every day, as long as I’m here on this earth and in this body I will have to continue to try to get it right. So every day I try to renew my mind in the truth of things, because I have not arrived, and I never will, but I’m a lot farther along right now than I was in 1992.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been a real honor chatting with you, we could talk all day. The website for the Pfeifer’s music is www.pfeifers.com. What else can we find on there?

Candy Pfeifer: All the events that we’re involved in. We do a cruise to Alaska with Dr. Charles Stanley, that’s coming up. We have a homecoming every year here in our hometown with a lot of great gospel music and artists and just all kinds of things like that. There are pictures, tons of pictures showing what we do and that sort of thing.

Dr. Kent: Well and of course then there’s also the book, which is also called Getting It Right. Go out and pick up your copy. It’s a really touching memoir and a book that can help you get through it as well, it’s a devotional. So thank you so much for being on the show, Candy Pfeifer.

Candy Pfeifer: Thank you, Dr. Kent.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Spirituality, TRANSCRIPTS, Religion, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST

Missy Jenkins | I Choose to Be Happy

September 14, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Missy Jenkins [15:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From her website:

It was one of the darkest days in America’s history—December 1, 1997. Freshman Michael Carneal walked into the Heath High School lobby in West Paducah, Kentucky, and started shooting, killing three students and injuring five. One of those injured students was 15-year-old Missy Jenkins, who was left paralyzed from the chest down.

But Missy never saw her disability as an end. Just hours after the tragedy, she forgave Carneal and took back her life. In the next decade she would graduate from college, become a counselor for troubled youth, get married, have a baby, and confront Carneal face to face about his actions that tragic day.

She would earn countless local and national honors over the years, from “Kentuckian of the Year” to one of Ladies’ Home Journal’s “Most Fascinating Women.” This is a story of love, forgiveness, courage, and determination—one that will leave people of all ages inspired to make the most of each day and never take life for granted.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Health, Motivation, Inspiration, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

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