From Fear To Freedom: Tiny Brave Steps That Transform Your Life With Bernice McDonald (Inspirational)

What if the only thing standing between you and your purpose is the fear you've been trying to fight instead of befriend?

In this deeply inspirational and faith-filled episode, Reginald D sits down with Bernice McDonald—author, professional coach, and creator of the Tiny Brave Steps movement. Once stuck in the shadows of fear, disapproval, and toxic perfectionism, Bernice shares her incredible journey of breaking free, walking on fire (literally), and discovering that you don’t have to be fearless to live free—you just need to be brave enough to start.

From overcoming a 30-year battle with an eating disorder to creating a tool that empowers others to move through fear with grace and intention, Bernice opens up about real transformation, emotional healing, and the surprising power of small courageous choices.

This episode is more than just motivational—it's a call to action for anyone who's ever whispered, “I don’t know what to do”. Bernice’s story and wisdom will move your spirit, shift your mindset, and ignite your faith.

You'll Gain:

• Faith-Based Tools: Learn how the 90-Second Rule and Tiny Brave Steps can instantly help you reset fear-driven emotions and step into clarity.
• Emotional Breakthroughs: Discover how shrinking fear down to a “Fred in the backseat” can free your mind and heart to move forward with boldness.
• Daily Confidence Builders: Understand why small consistent steps build more courage than one big leap—and how to practice it today.

Tap play and start taking your Tiny Brave Steps today—because you were never meant to live in fear, you were created to live in purpose.

Bernice's Contact Infor:

Website:  https://www.bernicemcdonald.com 

Tiny Brave Steps Generator:  https://www.tinybravesteps.com

motivational, inspirational, motivational speech, faith-based healing, fear and faith, overcoming fear, women’s empowerment, purpose-driven living, courage, Christian podcast, spiritual growth, emotional healing, trauma recovery, confidence building, faith journey, fear to faith, mindset shift, real talk, Reginald D, Bernice McDonald, life coaching, fear management, mental resilience, personal growth, coaching podcast, motivational podcast, christian encouragement, spiritual coaching, overcoming perfectionism, emotional breakthrough, tiny brave steps, purpose podcast

Transcript

Reginald D: Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D.

On today's episode, I have Bernice MacDonald, an author, professional coach, and a powerhouse woman who turned years of fear,

pain and playing small into a bold mission of courage and authenticity.

Welcome to the show, Bernice.

Bernice: Great to be here, Reginald. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate your invitation.

Reginald D: Thank you. Thank you so much. So, Bernice, can you tell us a little about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?

Bernice: Sure. I grew up in a small town.

I'm sure you've heard that before. Many times.

I have to say, I think I kind of had a very quiet beginning. Although quiet maybe is not the right word, because I was in a house that was like 700 square feet.

There were five kids all close together. I was second oldest, so you can imagine it was a very busy place.

However, who I was was at this little girl that was just quiet and observing all the time.

From my perspective, I don't think I gave my parents a lot of trouble when I was little. I think I was mostly trying to stay out of trouble. It was a home with lots of love and lots of stuff going on.

But because it was so important for me to be a good girl and stay out of trouble, what happened, I think is that started looking for approval and I started to think and associate bad behavior with being a bad person.

And so, you know, that kind of led me into a vulnerable place where I was looking to everybody else to kind of tell me,

you know, you're approved, you're a good person.

And so when I was a teenager, the very first guy I dated said to me, when he broke up with me, you know, you'd be really pretty if you lost ten pounds.

And that was like just such a shock to me. I think I remember that as a pivotal point in my life because up until then I did not even realize that, you know, hadn't put it into a concrete sentence that said, you're only accepted if.

And so that became a big life statement for me. You are not good enough to be approved. You know, somebody thinks that you are too fat and so you're not lovable.

And that actually led me into a about a three decade battle with an eating disorder. You know, a real caution about not putting myself out there. The fear of not being good enough was so, you know, strongly implanted in me.

Plus, that was the time, you know, I was in the church at that time. And there was a lot of rules about living in the church. You know, like, I grew up in that.

And so there was always still that seem. That pressure on you to always live up to the expectations and don't break the rules, or else God is mad at you too, not just people.

So I think that my real turning point didn't come till I was like, in my 40s when I took a course that taught me that I'm good enough just on my own,

that I don't need approval from anybody else, that actually I have some very valuable things about me. I think I started to see life. You know that book, Pilgrim's Progress,

that was written by. I think it was John Bunyan. Anyways, my grandma used to read that to me when I was little.

And I always had this picture of this path,

like we're walking on a path like in Pilgrim's Progress, you know, from birth to death kind of thing, to the celestial city in that book. And I started to see life kind of like that, that I am this individual walking on this path.

And all this stuff happens to me. And I thought that stuff happened to me because I wasn't good,

you know, and so I had to kind of come to the place. And in my 40s was really where I started to realize that God is actually the hero in my life and that he sees me as good.

He made me. I'm a good thing.

And that's when I started to realize that other people can't tell me who I am.

And so I discovered coaching and I discovered how I was made. And I began to start helping women to move from this place of feeling not enough to a place where they can be brave enough to live this life that they've been given, to tap into who they are and find all the gold that's inside and use that to fulfill the purpose for which they're walking this path.

So I went through,

unfortunately, a marriage for 24 years. Ended up divorced. Because I was always trying to prove that I was good enough,

never could. And, you know, I felt actually it was a. Almost a position of strength of courage for me to leave that marriage because just wasn't a good fit. And since then, I think I'm a slow learner, I guess, because I was already,

you know, at 50 at that point. And I think my life really started then,

you know, I came out of myself.

I started to learn so many great things about who I am and that it's okay to be me. And it really set me free. I am now married to my knight in shining armor.

I prayed that God would send me a knight from the Time I left my marriage and I just wanted to know what real love was like at least once in my life.

Right. And you know, we've been married now for 13 years and it's the most awesome. And I have to say too, sorry, I'm probably going on and on here, but.

But I asked God for a night and ironically,

my husband now rescued me when my car wouldn't start. So we kind of laugh about that because,

you know, it was like, okay, God has a sense of humor here. He actually answered my prayer in a realistic way, you know, and brought me somebody that rescued me.

So now I'm a coach and I work with women primarily, but I have worked with people,

you know, both men and women at all stages of life. And I help them to move from that place of not hard enough to brave enough in tiny brave steps, I call it.

So that brings us here today.

Reginald D: That's awesome. You know, and like I say, a lot of times, you know, life goes on and people say stuff that,

you know, I always tell people, be careful what you say because you could damage somebody and things like that because of selfishness, you know, selfish things. And selfish things you say about people that, you know, when a guy was talking about you, a beautiful girl, if you lose some weight or whatever.

But guess what? He missed out. Was all said and done.

Bernice: That's what I say now.

Yeah. You know, and culture too. You know, at that time,

thin was in. You know, that was like in the 70s,

when being as thin as you could be was culturally acceptable.

And,

you know, like, there's so many people that fall victim to those kinds of rules,

that kind of thing that, you know, you don't fit in. And so just like you say, it can affect who you are for the rest of your life if you don't become aware of it, if you don't know that that's what's happening.

Reginald D: Yes.

So,

Bernice, turning point. You said that when you was like 50.

So at 54, you walked on fire at a Tony Robbins event and also braved white water rafting while you were terrified.

What did those moments reveal about fear?

That theory alone never could.

Bernice: Oh, you know, like I said, my life really started at 50 when I started to realize when I came out of my divorce and I realized that I needed to do some work on myself, I realized how much fear had control of my life.

So I started to actually learn to be brave. I needed to bring that courage out. And I now have a four step process that I take women through. And the first one Is wake up your courage.

And without even knowing it, that's what I was doing at that time.

I said to my husband just after,

in fact, I don't even think we were married yet. But I said to him, you know, I'm on a mission to really learn to be brave.

I want to be courageous. Because I realized without courage,

you just shut down in life. I saw too many people in my life where that happened to, you know, they were older, but people that were very dear to me and they just stopped believing in themselves.

They stopped believing they had anything special about them. And so I said to him, I want to learn to be brave. And I've always wanted to go whitewater rafting. And he was just kind of like, you know, one of those conversations you have.

Well, he goes out and actually books us a white water rafting trip. And where I live, we're just like two hours away from the mountains. And it's rugged mountains where they have, you know,

rivers with rapids.

So this was not just a little river. So he said, I booked the trip. And he said,

uh, we're going to do this.

And I was terrified. You know, that was the first thing I did. And what I learned was, you know,

courage doesn't come just by saying, I'm going to be brave. Courage actually happens when you actually put your foot out to take that first step.

That's where courage kicks in. And so looking back on it,

I actually imagine myself like I had by that point started to see fear as this outside entity. It was almost like I needed to separate myself from it, which is a psychological phenomenon.

Like we need to do that in order to be able to make friends with our fear.

And so I saw fear coming down from being this fiery fear dragon in my life. I shrunk it down to this little guy I named Fred. And I began to have conversations with Fred.

Now, don't think I'm strange, I'm really not crazy.

But fear actually became, instead of this huge terrible thing in my life, it became like an advisor, almost an over worried friend.

And so I left him. I say, I left Fred in the backseat of my car. I got out, I walked, I put on my wetsuit, I went and listened to the instructions and I climbed into the raft.

Every one was a tiny step towards doing something I was very frightened about doing.

And I went on that whitewater rafting trip. That was the first adventure we went on.

And at first I was scared,

but then I started to logically think through, you know, these guides who are steering our rafts they know what they're doing. They're not going to let us tip over or fall in.

And I started to just enjoy looking at walls of that river and how beautiful it was and how fascinating the water was.

And by the time we posted out into the calm water and climbed out of the raft,

I was so proud of myself. Like,

this feeling of actually having done something scary was amazing.

So we started planning those things over a period of time. And one of them, we went to a Tony Robbins conference. And I don't know if you've ever heard of his workshops, but you walk on fire at one literally the first night that you're there at this five day conference with Tony Robbins.

And that was on my bucket list. I learned a lot from Tony Robbins and about fear and about who I am and about stepping out and finding your purpose.

And so that night we actually,

you know, I wasn't going to do it,

but I actually took one step, put one foot in front of the other and literally walked very quickly across those hot coals and made it to the other side. And my husband, of course, he's the bravest guy in the world, but he was just, you know, celebrating me that I made it across.

And again,

the exhilaration doing something that's so frightening.

You know,

those things have inspired me and helped me in my business to start to do the things that are scary. Even this being on a podcast, that's a scary thing. But because I did those other things and found out that I can do them, they're never as bad as you think they're going to be.

You know, you live through it and you build your courage muscles.

Reginald D: So let me ask you this, this one is for the listeners.

So for listeners wrestling with fear daily, what's the first step in shifting from fighting fear to befriending it?

Bernice: I think what always works for me because I practiced it for so long and is shrinking that fear down from something really big and ominous.

And asking myself, what is my fear saying? To me, you know, it's usually saying something like,

you're gonna die or.

And fear really, you know, we only have fear for two reasons. One is you really are in danger, right? It's a built in mechanism we've been given which I thank God for all the time to protect us and keep us alive.

Because, you know,

if we step off a cliff, we're going to die, right? We need to have some fear there. But the other side of that is that, you know, our fear doesn't know the difference.

That sensation in our brains doesn't know the difference between actually walking off a cliff and doing something where we're afraid we're going to be embarrassed or humiliated, you know, look like an idiot, you know.

So the first thing that I always do and what I always advise people to do is to ask yourself, what am I afraid of?

You know, get to the thought,

what is it like? I feel this emotion of fear.

It's attached to something. A feeling is always attached to a thought. So what is the thought behind what are you afraid is going to happen?

And once you realize that, well,

I'm afraid they're going to think I'm not competent, or I'm afraid that, you know, I'm going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. Then you can start to work from that place and reason it out and say, well, what's the worst that can happen?

You know, if you do say the wrong thing, so what? Nobody's going to die.

You know,

you just will have not said the right thing.

But that is there. You can always learn from those things and then grow from that. And I think that that's the biggest thing is that sometimes I will actually say to my fear,

thank you very much for trying to protect me, but, you know, I need to do this in order to grow.

And even if I fall on my face,

I need to grow.

I need to fall on my face so that I can take the next step forward and get stronger.

And it's really that process has helped me to face so many things, to just be able to say, oh,

this is fear talking.

I feel it. I know it's there.

But, you know, I'm a smart person,

I'm an intelligent person.

I need to do this to grow. And so I'm just going to put my foot out. I'm going to take that first step.

And just doing that, you end up being able to do so many things you never thought you could. And you find out as soon as you take that first step, even it's not as bad as you thought.

I think probably just anticipating what might happen is the thing that is the most terrifying.

What do you think about that? Have you faced that?

Reginald D: Oh, yeah. Anticipation is the worst feeling. I mean, that's what makes people either go forward or go backwards or stay stagnant because of anticipation, you know.

Bernice: Yeah.

Reginald D: And that's one of the strongest things that I think every human being has to overcome. Is that part of it? Because if you get past that part.

Bernice: Yeah.

Reginald D: Then the rest is what it's going to Be.

Bernice: Exactly, exactly. Sorry, I. I was going to say the only way to get past that too, is to actually do it. That's the ironic thing, Right, Right, exactly.

Reginald D: So, Bernice, why did you feel compelled to write Brave Enough to Be Myself as the first in your little Books of Courage series?

Bernice: Well, because as I said, I think I was the most scared person alive.

And my heart breaks when I meet people now and I have found out about myself,

which is my second step in my four step process, by the way, is embrace who you are. That is so important in learning to be courageous.

But I have met so many people I just can intuitively sense are so afraid of life who do not like who they are.

They do not even want to see who they are. They don't. They're so afraid somebody's going to actually get to know them and find out that they're not, you know, that they're a fraud, you know, an opposer kind of thing.

So I think the first book that came to me when I decided to write my little Books of Courage was on that. Because really, I call that book My Heart on Paper.

Even though it's just a small book and there's lots of white space, I wanted it to be easy to read and easy to digest.

I wanted it to be a quick read because people don't take the time these days to actually read a heavy book. And so I want it to be more of a book that pulls people through the process with a lot of exercises and encouragement.

And because that had been such an important first thing for me, that became my first book.

Reginald D: Could you share one of your favorite deadly practices from the book that women can start applying, like right away or anybody, actually, any individual?

Bernice: Yeah, anybody. Because fear is a common. I mean, it's a human condition. Right.

So I think that the one thing to do is to realize that we're all afraid.

There's not a person on this entire planet. And that's something I learned from Tony Robbins,

that the biggest fear on this planet is that we're not enough. And there's nobody with skin on that hasn't felt that.

And the reason we fear that is because if we're not enough, we're not going to be loved, which is the second biggest fear of anybody on this planet.

And so I think to realize, to normalize fear, to realize that fear is always going to be with you, but you don't have to let fear control you.

You can be the boss of the fear, is how I put it in my book.

Fear is there to protect you in so many ways. But you can shrink it down from that fiery fear dragon. You know, I. I'm a romantic, so I always think of, like being the princess in the castle with a dragon flying around.

I imagine the princess makes friends with the dragon and, you know, and she wakes herself up and then the dragon becomes her friend. It's been protecting her all along, and it keeps on protecting her,

but they become allies.

So when you feel the fear, you start to say,

what am I afraid of? How can I grow past this?

So I think that just understanding fear is always with us, but we don't have to let it control us. Is one of the biggest things that we can do to start to accept who we are.

Reginald D: Yes. So here's one thing I want to talk about.

Let's talk about. I think it's very important.

Let's talk about the tiny brave steps. Why do small actions build more confidence than one big leap?

Bernice: Well, you know, recently I've been reading Benjamin Hardy's books. I don't know if you've heard of him, but one book that he wrote along with a coach.

What's his name? Just a second. Dan Sullivan,

is called the Gap and the Gain. And that book perfectly illustrates this whole point.

When we have this, like, all of us have this thing we're trying to reach for, right?

It doesn't matter what the goal is. Unconsciously we want to be loved or we want to make a million dollars or we want to have a successful business.

All of that is always out there on the horizon. And this between us and that is this huge gap, right?

So what we think is that we can't. Like we, we think we've got to make this big leap to get to that gap. Like there must be some magic potion.

There must be something that we can do that all of a sudden going to whisk us there. We hear all these stories of celebrities that, you know are already there and how they got there.

But what we often don't hear is that the way that they got from here to there is by taking small steps and those small steps.

And this is something, I think that is so, so important about taking,

and I say no more than three steps in a day. You know, like, make those your priorities. Don't overwhelm yourself with a to do list of like 25 steps, because then that becomes a gap.

You know, you'll never get there. So do three things every day. That moves you towards your horizon,

but then look back over your shoulder.

That's called the gain.

And recognize and celebrate the fact that you took those steps in doing that.

You start to feel so proud of yourself. You start to realize that,

yes, I'm doing it.

So often we stay in that whole gap and think the things we do don't even matter because they don't feel like. Like it feels like a drop in the ocean.

It's only when we look back over our shoulder and say, wow,

I did that. I did this, and I did this. You know, we were talking about our busy day before we got on here, right?

These are the three things. These are three things I accomplished today. And that is pretty amazing.

That is what builds your confidence.

That is what helps you to realize that you're growing, that you know how far you've come. Because if you look back a week ago, how many steps did you take?

Right?

So you think, if I did that, then if I did that this week, if I keep going with those small steps, every day, I'm going to be getting closer to that horizon, to where I want to be.

So tiny. Brave steps. I call them brave because any step you take is a step of courage.

You're putting your foot out across that line, and you're moving forward,

and that is a brave step.

Reginald D: And that's what it's all about. As long as you're moving forward. You know, sometimes you can't see it all the way, but just keep going.

It'll come clear one day. It will.

Bernice: Yes. Yeah. Like, you think of when you learn to walk, right? Like, you didn't just give up because,

you know,

you got up and fell down.

You know, you kept trying and kept trying. You kept taking those steps, and finally,

you know, you learned to walk literally by taking steps, but you still weren't that steady. You fell down again, and so you started to take more steps, and pretty soon it was nothing to you.

And that really is a lesson for us in life, is that the more you do something,

the better you get at it. And pretty soon it's, like,

so normal to you, and then the next thing in front of you looks daunting. And so you just got to approach that in the same way.

Reginald D: Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about the 92nd rule, which is a practical tool. Can you explain how it works to reset emotions before they take control?

Bernice: Sure. Now, this is also something that I learned partially from Tony Robbins,

and it has worked so much for me that I teach it all the time.

When something happens, anything happens, we have a reaction to it, right? We respond. We can't help it. That's just the way we are. It's very, like, very rare that anybody would just not react.

So the beauty of the brain, again, is that when something happens, you have this little period of time in there where you get to think about how you're going to respond.

Now, a lot of times what happens, and you know what you need to do is to let your emotions be there for like 90 seconds,

feel that emotion, feel what you feel. If you're angry, be angry. If you're shocked, be shocked. If you're depressed, be depressed. But only let that sit there for like 90 seconds in that little gap and then make a decision to do something better.

So go beyond that emotion. You know, don't try not to feel that emotion because that never works for us, right?

You feeling the emotion and then making the decision about how you're going to respond from here on. And if you just give yourself permission in that little gap to feel what you feel,

it makes it a lot easier then to decide. Now, all of this goes along, of course, with you deciding who do I want to be?

Who am I going to be in this life? And so while you feel that emotion, you know, when you get to the end of that 92nd little period of time and you really say, now,

who do I want to be? Do I want to be this angry person?

Do I want to slip into this depression for the next three weeks of my life?

Or am I going to move forward and,

you know, find that warrior inside of me and start taking those steps forward that actually help me to look this thing in the face and make some really mature and concrete decisions about how I'm going to handle this.

Reginald D: That is great advice, and I think I needed that. This morning when I was talking,

things didn't go right, and I was on fire this morning. But,

but,

but no, it all works out. You know, like you said, the 92nd rule, it makes a lot of sense because at the end of the day,

you know, you can have your moment,

but then you gotta fix it.

You know, you got to go to the next step and what we gotta do to make this thing right and.

Bernice: Just to feel good about yourself inside, right? Like,

hopefully you're the person walking on that path, you know, from birth to death.

You are the only one that walks that path. I mean, you can have people that are close to you around you, but there's no guarantee that those people are going to be there for the rest of your life.

So ultimately,

what we have to decide is who we are going to be. I think of A stick figure walking on that path.

Who is that person? You know, who do I want to be? And every time you make a decision about how you respond to something,

you are making a decision about that future person,

right? Like 10 years from now, you are going to be the person you are because of all those little steps you took today.

So, you know, the 90 second rule gives us a chance to just say,

whoa, is this the person I want to be?

Sometimes you do. I mean, sometimes you do want to be that person. I need to be angry right now. I need to stand up to this person.

But you can do that in such a way so that you've got a really big why behind that. This is why I need to do it. I'm standing up for my values or I'm standing up for, you know, to protect somebody else or what, you know, all of that,

how that all comes together.

Reginald D: So, Bernice, in your 20 plus years as a coach, what was the most common sentence of something you've heard from women or anybody?

And how does your AI tool directly respond to it?

Bernice: I think,

I think. And even for myself, I think one of the most common statements I hear is, I don't know what to do. You know,

I think a lot of times that's the thing that keeps us stuck. And just saying I don't know what to do is often the thing that says we're afraid. You know, it's not really that we don't know what to do, it's that we're afraid that we don't know what to do and we're afraid we're going to make the wrong choice.

So my tool, the tiny brave step regenerator came out of that. It was actually really accidental that it even started because I have, you know,

defined over the last couple of years exactly what I wanted to do, and that's to be a curator of courage. You know, to start a courage movement for people so that they can tap into who they are and stand up for themselves and make their impact on the world without that stuff standing in their way.

You know, like to be fully the person that they're made to be.

And so when you let that whole sentence stop you, I don't know what to do. You're stuck, right? And a lot of people, I'm sure, you know, a bunch and maybe even yourself,

have just stopped acting, stop doing anything, because they think they don't know what to do.

So I put all of my information into this chat GPT, because you can make your own GPT now. Right.

And I loaded it all in there and I had a conversation with it.

Now it is called the Tiny Brave Steps Generator. And you can go there and you can tell it any problem you have. You can say,

I am feeling. I, you know, I, I don't understand why I'm feeling this way today, but I am feeling really low and I don't know what to do. I feel as if, you know,

my business is just going nowhere or this person said this to me and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to respond that I'm afraid this could be true.

The generator will talk you through it. It actually is kind of over sweet sometimes. And say, yeah, oh man, you know, that's. Thank you for being so honest with me.

That's usually how it starts out.

And then it will talk you through it and say, what is it that's causing you to feel this way? And so as you talk with it, it will ask you questions to lead you along.

And then in the end, it actually gives you three very small steps to take. The first one is a 90 second step where you actually, it's a mindset step.

It's, you know, something that is picked up in your conversation and it will tell you something that you can do to change how you're thinking.

Then it will give you two five minute steps that are really easy for you to do so that you can take action and actually start to move yourself forward so you're not stuck in the I don't know what to do.

It gives you a bit of advice. It will help you to figure that out according to whatever your problem was.

And so at least you're not standing there doing nothing.

You have some momentum and you can talk to it further. It can give you more advice, more steps if you want to, but you can stop right there and at least have a couple of steps to take.

So,

yes,

it's an awesome tool.

Like the times we live in, like sometimes it just amazes me.

Reginald D: Right,

right,

right. So I'm thinking about this.

What would you say to a young Bernie's 19 years old that was going through this? Say 19, going through the things you were going through. If someone was out there feeling the way you were feeling,

didn't think they were good enough or things like that, what would you say to them right now?

Bernice: I would say,

first of all, it's very normal to feel that way.

We all go through that.

And second of all, I would.

My temptation is to say, don't feel that way because it's not true,

it's a lie.

But, you know, that doesn't always help.

So I think what I probably would do is to ask them to look back over their shoulder and see some good things that they have done.

Like to see why,

you know,

when you're talking to people,

when you've felt really proud of yourself,

when you have felt that sense of fulfillment that nothing else, when you've been having the most fun in your life,

what is happening, what was happening in those moments, what do you see about yourself?

And you know, and get them to sort of start to talk about that so that they start to see that there are good things about them. They have gifts, they have what I call their strange jewels, you know, things that they don't even think are gifts.

To start to draw that out of them and say, you know,

you might think that's common, but not everybody has that.

And you know, you need to just be thankful that you have that intuition or you have that ability to cheer people up or you listen, you're such a good listener to your friends,

you know, those sorts of things and start to help them to just catch a glimpse of that gold inside, you know, the person that they are.

And you know, it's interesting she'd asked me that question because I was exactly 19 when a friend did say to me,

Tell me three things that you like about yourself.

And I was so down on myself I could not even list one.

In fact, I felt like it was prideful. I felt like I'm not supposed to see anything good in myself.

So, you know, that moment has always stayed with me. And I thought, how sad. At that time in my life, I could not even say one thing I liked about myself.

Took me a lot of years to get to the place where I could start to see that I had gifts, you know, so that's definitely what I would say to a 19 year old who's struggling with that.

Reginald D: Yes, absolutely on point. So finally, where can listeners connect with you and try out your tiny brain steps generator?

Bernice: Well, it's real easy,

tiny. BraveSteps.com is the site they can go to. It's free.

So they can just go and sign up there and then they will have access to the tool and it'll take them, it'll give them the link, actually, it takes them right to the tool and they can start,

you know, asking a question,

doing whatever and it'll start guiding them right from there.

Otherwise Also I have BernieMcDonald.com which is my website that has other,

that Just talks about what I do and who I am.

Reginald D: So.

Bernice: So. And a YouTube channel. So all of those places. Yeah. And if anybody would like to just connect with me, I would love that. So.

Reginald D: Absolutely. Absolutely. There you have it.

Bernie McDonald, thank you so much. This is so powerful. I really, really enjoy what you're doing and. And your walk in life, man. I think, you know, story always motivates people.

You know, when you tell your story and they see what you overcame,

because a lot of people just see where you're at, but they don't know where they took to get there and all the struggles and stuff like that. So it helps people who's trying to get to the next level in their life or trying to move forward in life, let them know that,

man, you know,

it's real. Fear is real. You know, it's real. Being scared is real. You know, but like you say, you got to keep moving forward.

Bernice: Yes. And thank you for what you do, Reginald, because I know that that's what you try to do, is to help people to understand that you can overcome anything in life and adversity is normal.

It's what you do with it that matters the most. And I love the stories that you have on your podcast. So keep it up.

Reginald D: All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you for tuning in with Real Talk With Reginald D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk With Reginald D, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. See you next time.