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Well, hello and welcome to the show. It's Andy Pitcher for the new setup of Horizon Talk Radio. Today. We've got an excellent guest, Fast Rogero. He's got a book and it's on Amazon, and we'll get into that in
a second. I'll just read a quick bio. It's it's Foost So first, a Ragio professional career spans the most forty years, is diversified and compelling, and it has consistently established an exciting cut and edge counseling programs in its pursuit of professional excellent and the personal life enhancement is published,
researched or for clinical training and the therapist. He's worked in settings that have included clinics for deaf children, prisons and nurse and homes, substance aboose centers, impatient facilities, and as the president of the Community Psychological Center and Banger, Pennsylvania.
In that capacity, developed the processed way of life counseling program has developed it into a formal text presented book called Fix Yourself Handbook, and it says, on radio guest list help your listeners become strong enough to live in the new normal. Wellder the COVID nineteen virus. So let's see how COVID and fixing yourself sort of all comes into the handbook. You know, to Fix Yourself Handbook. Welcome
to the show. Forced This isn't my best area of expertise, but I do know that you know, through spiritual and sort of empowering yourself. I mean I kind of describe it as a bit like you're praying, but you're not kind of praying. You may be hoping for something better to happen, but if you don't spare yourself on. I know sometimes people are rock button, especially if they're in prison or they've got health problems. You rock bottom, But I think it's that spirit you need to get you
through this. I won't carry on, but I'll be there for questions. Just tell us a bit about yourself and then a bit about the book, and we'll see where that takes us.
Great Andy, thanks for inviting me on and as far as I'm concerned, I've been counseling for about four decades, all different kinds of settings. So I've been in private practice now for about thirty years, and everything from individual, family, marriage,
substance abuse, all that kind of stuff. And the last year, like everyone else, we've been dealing with the effects of the of the COVID virus and isolation and depression and alcoholism and all those things that are that are that are cropping up because of that.
Yeah. Absolutely. In one of your bits I've read, I think I agree that most people that I'll explain it in a different way. Yeah, most people do this. They get them in the morning. What's the time, I'm running late,
the kids got to go to school. I'm running to the bus stop or the taxi rank or getting in my car and there's traffic on the highway and it's you know, it's not not letting me through, and you know they're forever pressuring themselves and they need to slow down, basically, don't they, Because yeah, it just makes sense.
Well, that's the first thing I tell everyone to do is slow down a little. But you're not going to make any changes, and you're not even going to be able to think about making changes until you slow down and let your brain do some you know, let it, let it do what it's supposed to do.
And of course, you know, if you've got any problems, you do need to be brutally honest with yourself.
Yeah, that's that's the you know, those are the things I talk about in the beginning of the book. Slow down a bit so you can understand what's going on around you, take life off autopilot, stop just doing the same thing over and over again, and then ask yourself what's not working, what needs to change in your life, how you can make things better. And that requires a lot of honesty in people. You know, we don't always like to be honest. We like to be comfortable. We
have to be protected. But you know, you be honest with yourself, then you get the rate in information about what has to change. Then you can go from there.
Yeah. I guess a lot of people when it comes to these problems. Just another point at the beginning of the book, people's emotions get involved, I think as well, too much, because I mean, if you've got like a health problem and you know you don't know how to deal with it. The first thing you're going to think of is the pain or I'm not going to make it, you know, and that's going to get in the way of actually thinking about the positive side of that way.
You know, Okay, I might get an operation, I might get better and yeah, So emotion versus thought is going to be a big problem for a lot of people.
Well, I talk about that all time in the book and all the counseling I do. People get emotional and then they start reacting and then they stop thinking. And you know, with whatever you're going to do in life, if you have to have a plan for it, so you just make things work out. And if you're emotional, then you're reacting to things and it's hard to gather all the right facts. So I just tell people you can get your emotions into it later, but get your
emotions into it based on the facts. Get the facts first, have a plan to move forward. And that's what my people did through the virus. I said, Okay, let's take our emotions out of it, stop worrying about things. Let's get a plan to get you moving forward. And those that did that came through this fine.
Yeah, and a lot of this when you're going through that you know. I mean it's the fears of problem as well, and the anger, you know, because you wouldn't minute. You're beating yourself up because you know, you think it's your own fault, don't you. So that's part of the emotions feeling anger, I guess.
Absolutely, you know. And uh again I've been telling people for years, stop worrying about it. You know, the hardest part of going in anything that seems difficult is worrying about, uh, what's going to happen before you get there. Once we're in it, once you're stuck in it, then you're then you have to go into action. People then start doing what they have to do, but it's all this worry
about it before time, and that almost paralyzes you. You start thinking about what could possibly happen, and how it could go wrong, and what you're going to lose, all those kinds of things, and then before you know it, you stop doing anything because you're so uh taken taken up by your worry. It's just you know, again, have a plan, go slow, think about what you're doing, uh, and then you know, gradually look at take it one step at a time, and then work your plan.
So well, Uh, what's the word. What would you say to people? Then from sort of the you know, obviously we've gone for the early bits of it, which is, you know, don't worry, get the facts and all that and make a plan. What's the next step after that.
Well, what we're going to do now is we're coming through hopefully we're coming through this virus. The the antidotes are out the virus. You know, the shots are there. We're going to hopefully cure people of this. Then it's rebuilding. Then it's getting back out there and being social again. It's taking care of finances and whatever else you weren't being able to you weren't able to take care of. For some people, it's going to be dealing with physical problems.
But again, it's just like going through the virus. If you, I keep telling people, try to talk to yourself using positive language. This is a hard thing that we went through. It doesn't seem very positive. But in order to move forward, and it's just what you said, if you're having the surgery, you've got to be thinking of what you're capable of doing. Take it one step at a time and will you
will rebuild your life. But if you keep thinking negative and talking negative, then that's the way you're going to you're gonna behave well.
On an example, for the Corona virus. I mean, you know, I'm I've been doing radio on Freedom Talk Radio. Well just change the name. Actually that's what it's a new platform. But I was helping people in different mental health hospitals, prisons, just to kind of give them a voice, inspire them to talk out. But so I was kind of really strong and well learned in different aspects of that kind
of life. But you know, when this out of the blue bomb hit us, this coronavirus, I was as weakened as petrified March last year, twenty twenty as anybody was. So what I'm saying is these shocks can hit the strongest people or the weakest. They don't, you know, define who you are. And I'm telling you, you know, last year, for four weeks, I must have walked around like a zombie. You know, shock a bit like an accident where you've seen something terrible or you know something's gone really wrong.
And for four weeks, I don't know what we did. I don't know how we got through the four weeks. But then what we had to do and we'll say, well they're talking about testing trace, that must be a good thing. Then they talk about something else, and then it turned into vaccines maybe on the horizon. And so a little bit by little bit, step by step, you had to give yourself hotly stressful all this. You really do have to give yourself hope and small steps for sure.
Well you do, and you try not to listen to negative things. I mean, if you're going to listen to the media, then you want to learn, try to let what the facts are, what's the CDC saying, what's the World Health organ to say, and saying what are the good things you can do to help move this forward.
But if you're going to follow the shock media and all those people that love to you know, bring the drama along, because people get hooked into that and they get obsessed hearing that those people are going to lead you in the wrong direction. You know, I've been telling people, you know, turn the televisions off when it comes to the virus. Turn you know, the radio is off unless you're listening to something like we're doing right now where you're going to push it. Where we're trying to push
people forward. We're trying to give them a little bit of hope, but to you know, keep reporting deaths, and we keep reporting that this isn't going to happen, and we don't you know, there's going to be a collapse of this, and you know, we don't even know any of that. Later, you know, what we know is things are going to be redefined, and you know the world has been through this kind of stuff before, and we'll come.
When I was younger, I was very, very nervous to take that vaccine, the first one to the second one in two weeks. And how I got myself when it was a day before it starts. You started thinking, wearing, sweating, what if. And even on the day when they first give you the shot, your body feels cold inside and you started just for a few seconds. It's a bit like when they give you some doctors give you medicines to do something to your heart, and it really feels
like that. But you know, five minutes later after sitting down, hey, hey, I had no side effects whatsoever. And I'm unhealthy. I mean, if you know what I mean, I'm not as healthy as most people. So I'm unhealthy. And there was no problem with the fires of acting whatsoever. So people need to do exactly what you say and what the book says. You know, fix yourself really, isn't it.
You just got to follow the fact, you know. You know a lot of these side effects are really that's telling your body that you're healthy. The body is trying to fight off a foreign substance, which is what the body's supposed to do. Once the body gets used to it and understands that it's in there to do its job, then the body will stop trying to fight it. And that's what we're finding a lot with that second dose
of the of the Maderna vaccine. So you know, again it's like you said, I've never been a guy for vaccines either. You know, why put all this stuff in your body. I don't get flu shots. I'm pretty healthy. But you know, it is a no brainer. There's a pandemic. This thing kills people, so we're going to do that, you know. But again, if it's interesting with all the people I know who took their emotions out of this and stopped reacting and stopped listening to all the negativity,
their lives, they said didn't change that much. Okay, they had to stay home, but it wasn't like they put him in a hospital or a prison. They were in their own homes where everything that they want is their families were there, you know. So I mean you can still go out, you have to wear a mask, you can't gather in places, but it's not like you're in a prison. We're just not looking at the positive parts of this. What we did is to try to stay
healthy and stay alive, and we'll come through this. Like you said, you hopefully come off lockdown in April. We're just you know, we went down now in Pennsylvania. Here in the United States, we're coming up a bit again because.
Everyone's around there on the internet and because of a had vaccine publish. It's the early days, the worries about you know, you can't touch this from Walmart, as you can't touch this from the postman, you can't touch this from the bin collection. So we got into that habit and I don't know what you want to call it, but even now we know it's not that bad now, you know, because the facts are saying you can't get the virus from letters, and you can't get it from
this and that. But we're still psychologically trapped INSI But because.
Are some of the things we doing. Uhh. When our emotions get into it, we start looking at things we shouldn't look out, like in the beginning of this where someone went on the computer and all the news reports and said, you better really take care of paper products. And then we couldn't find toilet paper. Of all things. Here we are in a in a pandemic, and what people thought was important was toilet paper. That's how that's
how far it can go, so you know. Uh. And then of course once they bought it all, then there was none to be had, and people were you know, trying to find something these paper products because everyone else bought them all up. That's what happens when we get emotional. Uh. You know. But when we think, and we think with the facts and we stay working as a team, things usually work out.
I might be asking you a silly question that we should.
For somebody the come something we don't have, and those are all just, you know, not good ways to be. I always tell people that make yourself strong, know what you want inside.
Uh.
Make sure that you you're you know, your world around you is good. You like what you've created, You like the world you live in. First, like yourself.
Uh.
You know then that that goes into that love yourself stuff, and then you could start getting into love. But love does not have to be this emotional dance that we make it and and make ourselves crazy. You know, if you love someone, it should be a nice, simple affection and you you like to be around them. Your emotion shouldn't be dancing all over the place. You can't make decisions, you're going too fast. Your stomach feel is in knots. That's not that's not love. That's just that's just emotion
taking over. And and you know when when when you really love someone, it's like you said with your wife, you put that person first and you do things for them and and and you think things through. And if you do, if you approach love like everything else I'm talking about, it's a much easier way to live. But this emotional stuff where we beat each other up and lead us. We look for someone that's uh, that has
something that you know, metaphysical stuff. You know, love is really a function of the spirit inside you, not your heart, not your brain. You know, it's it's a spirit. It's it's an unconditional giving kind of a thing. And again, we we don't understand it that way. We we have this hallmark kind of a definition of love where it's it's a function of the heart. You know, again, look at the facts. The heart pumps blood. That's what the heart does. Uh, you know, the brain looks for facts.
Love really comes out of medica.
That's so sure. Why are we beating ourselves up? You know, why don't you get to know the person before you judge them? Kind of thing? You know, we build wolves apace if you don't want to again, you.
Know, we're and we're in the begin looks like we're in the beginning of this conversation. We got to go slow. If there's any place in the world you want to go slow, it's with love. You know, get to know the person, make the person your friend first, be a friend to that person, and go slow, and everything's going to show itself. And then you're really going to see if this you and this person are a fit and if you're not, and you've gone slow, usually you can
part as friends. But we go so fast because it feels so good and we can't get enough of it. And you know, in two or three weeks we've just you know, we're planning our future with this person. You know, i'd go slow, take your time, make that one part of your life, not the main part of your life. If it's going to take off and be something that you really really think is important and can work, then
start putting more into it. But in the initial two or three months, take your time, go slow and think about what's going on here. Look for the red flags. If there aren't any.
Great Yeah, I mean I must have known I was different. And I don't know if you call it lucky, do you call it compatible? But I don't know. I met my wife in ninety one in October. It was my birth stay in the late part of October ninety one. We married in February ninety two, twenty six, and March twenty twenty one. She's another room. So yeah, we rushed it, but I think her hearts took over her head to
start with. And then you know, you get married, reality sets in and you know, I don't really know you do a hang. I just married you, you know, and it's but that was kind of fun because your heart taken over for me anyway was good. It was That was the best part of it. And then getting to know people. I suppose wasn't as good to start with, but then, yeah, you get more for life anyway, don't you.
You're doing it even if you go slow, you still have all the time in the world for the excitement and all that stuff of the heart. And then you know you're doing it with the person. And for some people it's going to take a couple of years. Some people may go be able to do that as you have. But you know, you know, I for me, I like to go a little slower, and my wife and I took our time, and you know, and now it's you know, we've been you know, we're together all these years and
it's still a romance. It's still I still look forward to going, you know, leaving the office and going home and being with her. So when you can have that longevity and it feels good all the time, well that's a real nice way to live life.
Yeah, when we first met, I mean this might sound silly, but this was our way of doing it. Even though we didn't have children. For seven years, we had many holidays or breaks away from each other even though we were married. I know it sounds silly to most, but I think people also need the space, you know, as well. As the the being togetherness and looking forward to going on. You need a better space too in the early days anyway.
Well, I think you do. I think even as you're married a little while, it's nice to take an afternoon and do something separately, because when you know you miss each other, you come back and you're kind of rejuvenated and ready to go again. You know. Again, that's taking it slow. That's that's taking your time, and you do things for yourself and you do things for the relationship. I've always advised that to people, don't be with each
other twenty four to seven. Uh, you know, spend a little time a part and have a few interests that you know that are your own.
Okay, what have you done for other people? Then? Have we helped people in prisons and you know that kind of environment institutions?
Well, I started really a nearly part of my career. I was working in a substance abuse facility just to come out of graduate school, and I got an offer to just go into the in for a few hours a week and do some interviews and help them diagnose people. So I went in and it felt good. You know, it was a place that needed people like me to be there and do something. So and I went in This is in eighty four and I stayed till eighty nine,
so it was five years. And you know, the way you help people there, first of all, is just to help them understand that they're not Most of them are not bad people. You have you have your people that are just you know, they're just evil people. But for the most part, people are in prison because they made a mistake or they had a bad breaker. They just came up without the you know, the support many of
us have had. So you try to get them to see that they in fact can go out there and they can go and have a good life, and that there is a good person inside them. So, you know, I spent five years doing that, and you know, very rewarding for me and for them, you know, because they someone finally said, hey, you're not bad. You don't have to be locked up. You can go out there and make something of yourself and give something back back. And people understand that that's you know, that they have the
capacity to do that. It's very much life changing.
Yeah, I can't imagine being that person that helps that. I couldn't imagine being you helping the other person I mean, I know how I'd want to help them, but I just worry that I guess that there would be too negative of the support they get in you know, how can a therapist fix my problems? You know, when I'm in prison, I've yeah, I made a mistake, I've robbed the shop, or I've whatever you've done. You know, you've
got ten years in jail, something quite serious. But this man comes along and he's going to try and fix me. Is it about making that I think you've already said that. Actually, Is that about making them feel that they can can do it and they can go back into the society.
Or is it about them opening up and making them selves sort of admit what they've done wrong and make them look forward to the Foodsure, and then you just you know, help them with with that rather than the yeah, do you get them to help themselves or do you help them? That's it?
Well, well, you know it's actually both. You know, we've all had or may many of us have had. We can go back and say, there was that one person that came into our lives, maybe said something or did something or helped us, and that was just that one person that said, hey, you're a good person, you can make it. And it changed the way we thought about ourselves for a moment. And you know, somebody it took the time to say, hey, you're a good person.
Uh.
You know. So it starts there and then there, and then after they build up a little trust and you know you're seeing them a couple times a week. Uh, then they look forward to seeing you because that's the positive that they're getting in their life. And and then a lot of times they start to normalize that, they start to realize that, Okay, this could be something that I can I can do in my life, and then
they start to work with it. But it's it's that initial person that said, hey, I can't be concerned with what you did. I'm going to be concerned hopefully with helping you move in a different direction. And you know, they don't get a whole lot of that. So if you can give them that in the beginning, you know, they're people. You know, that's why I look at it now. I'm not their judge and I don't intend to judge them, but if I can help them, I'll certainly try to do that.
Yeah. I like some of these quotes as well that you've got in the handbook. You can be limited, limitless, but the world likes to tell you otherwise. Trust the spit inside you. I mean that one on his own is very good. I think I like the third one. Beware of using angers a tool in your life. You may get what you want, but the cost of your spirit is a high one. There's something in fact. All of them are good quotes to motivate yourself every day.
Own opportunities to make changes in your life. Let go of yesterday, embrace for today, and change your life. Well it's quite simple, but when you actually read it, it feels more important.
You know. I didn't want to write a book, and the book is really based upon my career as a psychologist, but I didn't want to create something new that people had to try to figure out. What I put in the book is just the things that we all can do. It's all the stuff that's really inside us. We just have to learn how to go get it and work with it. That's really all I did. Anyone in the world who reads this book can do it. It's it's
it's not just written for some people. Anyone who really wants to change life and really wants to be you know, more capable, more powerful on the inside, more happy, more loving, all those things. Can do all these things because what I've done at the end of each chapter, the thirty six chapters, and at the end of each one, I've given the exact steps that we can take to change to make the changes. So and I think that's what
was missing in the literature. You know, you get a whole lot of things like love yourself, and then people say, well, how do I do that? Well, it's in the book. This is these are the things you have to do. If you do these things, you're going to move in that direction. So you know, it's not a complicated program. It's very simple. It's very logical when you look at it. It's just I took the time to put it, to put it into a format that that makes sense. That's all.
Yeah, there's a lot of I mean, was trying to promote your book here, but I was just thinking the other side of it. There's a lot of people that don't like reading books. But I guess whether you listen to it in audio, whether you read a book, or whether you just ask somebody about it, it's all the same message, but in a different way. I'm a bit what's that word? Oh? Yeah, So I answer that one first, and I've just got another question. Yeah, so go ahead, yeah, first,
go ahead. I was just I was going to give another question, but I thought you want to answer that one first.
What I tell you know, people don't like to read books, some of them. The way I wrote the books, so it is for the people that don't like to read it because the chapters are only four or five pages long. I didn't want a long, drawn out kind of a presentation. So when I wrote it, I put the problem like getting honest with yourself. Then I'll give three or four pages of the things that we you know, the important information. Then I go right into okay, now'll start doing these things.
So and usually the people that don't like to read other men, you know, so men are reading this a lot because all of a sudden somebody said, okay, I don't like to read a lot, but gee, it's only in it's only three or four pages. I could read that. I could read three or four pages a day, and you know, almost anyone can do that. And then look at what I need to do to start changing some
things around. So when you take those things into consideration, and you write a book, then you're you're getting at those people who may have a difficult time reading.
Yeah, I was just thinking if somebody really was not well for whatever health reason, or they've had a major loss in their life, or you know, a marriage split up, somebody died, that kind of thing, like one of the major sort.
Of it's a very practical way to look at so easy mine.
I've certainly enjoyed every second.
Thank you, so have I. And you can get the book on Amazon have it in the UK, Amazon Barnes and Noble. Uh. If people want to go to the website, it's my name Fasterregio dot com, or you can type in the Fix Yourself handbook and you'll find the website and then once you get there, it has everything about the book, and it has all the interviews I've done
that you know that we're posted. Is about eighty of them on there, so they could hear a lot of what's going on this chapter outlines for there, as I said, excerpts from the book, so they can look at it and see, Okay, is this something that I think is going to help me make some change? So uh, you know again, Amazon Barnes and Noble or my website.
Well, I suppose I should have asked this at the beginning. It's probably obvious, but what made you come up with the total? How you know how to fixure? You know? It's it's probably self explainatory, isn't it. It's a brilliant nicely.
Is what I wanted people to do is? Yeah, I wanted to understand people understand that you can do this yourself, you know, you just it's it's a it's a program for life. It's something you can work with every day. Once you start to get the hang of it, it becomes fun. Uh. And you it's not like you and it's not that you're broken. It's that everything around needs fixing, you know. But people try to fix the external world and and that's never gonna happen. So you know, no
one's going to cooperate with what we want. So I always say, why not fix what you what you're dealing with, and then be happy yourself? Then the chances of being happy outsider are just a whole lot better.
Ah the wait, it's been brilliant talking to you, And I hope the book sell goes well. And if you're bringing any more books, out we can chat again.
That sounds great. I appreciate you asking me.
No problem at all, It's been brilliant. Take care.
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