#185 He Forgot the Words, Then Found Himself

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 185 Fabio da Silva Fernandes

“He Forgot the Words, Then Found Himself “

 

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, and I’m welcoming you to the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. Here is where I get to have special guests who have had some kind of journey where somewhere along their lifeline they didn’t have a voice or something happened to them that took it away. Today, I get to introduce you to Fabio da Silva Fernandes.

One of the things I want you to pay attention to today, because I’ve already been speaking to Fabio, is the sound of his voice. There’s a resonance. I know people say that about me, but there’s just something connective about his voice that draws you in and makes you want to listen. It’s like he’s got a special magnetism, and you’ll get to hear his story today. Welcome, Fabio.

(01:03) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Thank you. That was such a lovely introduction. I really appreciate that, Doreen.

(01:08) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, you’ve touched me already, so I want my audience, my listeners, to experience that too. It almost feels like what you do, in the times I’ve spent with you, is bring a calming embrace to the moment. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to spend more time with you.

(01:33) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: I certainly try, that’s for sure.

(01:36) Doreen Downing: Yes. Good. Well, you did send a bio, so I’ll read that and then we’ll get launched into our conversation.

Fabio da Silva Fernandes runs a holistic wellness practice focused on resiliency, mindfulness, and Reiki. Fabio’s passion is helping others cultivate greater resilience as a speaker, writer, and consultant, and he hosts an inspirational podcast on wide-ranging topics.

After more than 20 years in the fintech industry, Fabio left the corporate world to start his own venture called Resting Bell Wellness Incorporated, which is now branded under the name of his noteworthy show, The Stumbling Spirit.

Already, what a name. Resting Bell Wellness. So, this is our time together. How was that, hearing me read your intro?

(02:53) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: It’s so wonderful to get that reflected back to me.

(02:57) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(02:57) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: It feels very real.

(03:00) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, isn’t it interesting that life can be encapsulated in just a few paragraphs, and yet there’s something that comes through to people, for sure.

(03:15) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely.

(03:17) Doreen Downing: Stumbling Spirit. What is that? And then, you know, the Resting Bell. These images of what we might find, relate to, and discover today.

Usually, what I like to do is get a sense of your background, your history, where you were perhaps born and grew up, because that’s usually where we start to develop our first sense of ourselves. The world applauds, yay, or they ignore you, or they hurt you in some sort of way.

It’s challenging being little kids in this society nowadays. Well, even back then. It’s just hard to have a family environment that is totally loving and supportive of who we are and who we’re meant to be.

So, anything that you might want to share about early childhood, moving yourself out into school, and what that was like for you?

(04:32) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Sure. I think I’d like to start by saying that voice has always been important to me, and also to my family. I was born into a family that really encouraged debate, and my father, in particular, was someone who really enjoyed reading the news.

The reason why I wanted to start off by talking about that is because I found my voice very early on within the household. My parents encouraged that not only in me, but in my siblings as well. Debate was encouraged, creativity was encouraged, music was playing all the time.

Of course, it wasn’t always picture perfect, but for a lot of my childhood there was a lot of activity and a lot of noise. My background is Brazilian, and so music is very much a part of the culture, as is dancing, expression, passion, and compassion, and all of those things that you can imagine.

Early on, because my parents were new immigrants to Canada, they arrived in 1972. My brother was 1 years old. I was born the following year in 1973. In many ways, when they arrived, they had to learn the language, and they learned the language with us as we were learning it.

They really immersed themselves in English, whether it was watching TV or reading newspapers or going to school or whatever it was that they needed to do to learn, in addition to, of course, working in a new country. So that was an experience that we shared.

Then when I started school, it was an interesting experience because my parents were not exposed to the educational system in Canada, so things were done a little differently. As I was learning, as my brother was learning, and eventually my sister, who was born 13 years after me, they were learning about the system, how it works, and maybe sometimes how it didn’t work really well.

Reflecting back on the topic that we’re talking about today, which is voice, even though I was connected to my voice early on, I was a very timid child, particularly in kindergarten, grade 1, maybe grade 2.

My real connection to voice was around singing. I sang a lot, whether I made up songs or whether it was with my classmates learning a song for the Christmas concert or whatever.

That’s the story I want to bring up now because I was in grade 5. I was probably around 11 or 12 years old, and I was basically tasked, or asked, to be the Little Drummer Boy for the Christmas concert.

I had to sing a solo with a backup choir, and I remember I had this absolutely amazing choir teacher called Mrs. Raku. I’ll never forget her. She was Austrian, and she was very passionate, and she had an opera singing background. She was the one training us to sing, and we were practicing with her.

Anyway, I was learning my lines, and I was ready to perform for the dress rehearsal at the school. We did it in the cafegymatorium. It was this all-encompassing space where it was the gym, the cafe, and the auditorium. They would rearrange it in such a way that for the dress rehearsal it became a theater.

They had the chairs set up and the proscenium stage, and there was a Cabbage Patch Jesus in a manger. It was all done up and ready for the performance.

What I needed to do was walk around the perimeter of the auditorium, walk down a center aisle, and step onto the stage as I’m singing and playing a drum around my neck. The choir was off to the side singing “pum, pum, pum,” and then I was supposed to start singing The Little Drummer Boy.

So I start singing, and it’s an afternoon dress rehearsal, so it’s in front of the entire school, and the kids started laughing right away.

I’m singing, and I’m not really drawn to the laughter at this stage. I’m just focused on singing. But then, as I was about to turn into the center aisle, I forgot my lines and I started to cry.

(11:06) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: The entire room was still erupting in laughter. I was shaking and crying, and I continued walking down the center aisle. I walked onto the stage, and I could see Mrs. Raku to the side, and she’s saying, “Sing, Fabio, sing.” All I could do was cry.

My dad was at the dress rehearsal, so he whisked me away from the auditorium to the nurse’s office, where I continued crying and stayed there until the remainder of the day and until every single student left the school. Then we returned home.

So that was the dress rehearsal. At that point, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to perform for the parents, which was going to happen not that evening, but the following night. I had to make a choice. Am I going to sing or am I not going to sing?

Through the encouragement of my parents, I did end up singing at the concert, and it went off without a hitch, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

That was really how… It was such an embarrassing moment, a humiliating moment, that it challenged my voice. It challenged my confidence.

In deciding to perform in front of the parents, in front of the school, the teachers, the principal, in deciding to do that, it allowed me to reclaim my power.

I think that singular moment is the reason why I find it so much easier to talk in front of people, and it takes a lot for me to be embarrassed by things. It takes a lot, because that really set a high bar for that.

(13:49) Doreen Downing: Yes. Oh, amazing to listen to you tell the fullness of the story. I felt like I was right there at that corner when you turned and then the collapse that you had.

The story you just told relates directly to the work that you do nowadays because it’s a story of resilience. You were able, in a very short time, to realign with something inside of yourself.

I’m thinking about the story you shared about your growing up and the earlier years. It was “not picture perfect,” is what you said, but I think of all the people I’ve ever interviewed, almost 200 here, it’s the closest to picture perfect I’ve ever heard around the creativity, the music, the permission, and the support for having different ideas and debating each other.

I think there’s something about those grounded seeds. Roots, I guess, is more what I’m thinking about. Early roots that helped you make that decision when you needed to make that choice about whether you were going to go on a bigger stage or not.

When you said it was going to be the parents, I just felt like it was going to be the world. Not just your community, but you were taking a stand for yourself.

So thank you for the details and for letting us be with you as you told the story so that we can experience it more fully.

(15:48) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity.

(15:51) Doreen Downing: Yes. And I think that in telling our stories… I watched you reflect on what that moment meant for you and how it relates to what we’re talking about today.

In telling our stories, there’s something that continues to get revealed and then affirm not only what happened then, but also how it seems to be related to what you do nowadays.

(16:23) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely. I just want to reflect back to the talk that I did at the conference where we connected, the 2026 Mindful World Summit. It was around the wisdom of resilience.

What is that wisdom? The wisdom comes from many different things, but what I was focusing on was the wisdom of storytelling and how sharing stories can not only inspire us, but teach us lessons and give us guideposts.

Maybe not necessarily tell us exactly what to do, but at least tap into the attitudes and approaches that were taken by someone else who went through an adversity that we might embody within ourselves.

(17:26) Doreen Downing: Beautiful.

Listeners, did you hear what Fabio just said? What are you taking from his story? What got ignited inside of you? What happened when you listened to him?

Could you see yourself in situations where you need to make a choice? Are you going to step forward? Are you going to step back and hide?

I know that a lot of my stories are about how I did hide. I had a PhD, I had a practice as a psychologist, and my office was a place where I got to hide out because I feel my listening is a gift. I was able to practice listening all day long.

But to actually go out into the world and share… how do you go out into the world and share your gift of listening?

Well, you create a podcast.

(18:26) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely.

(18:28) Doreen Downing: Never thought that, Fabio. I have never put that together.

(18:33) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely, and it’s a real gift. It’s not only a gift in terms of being able to listen to a guest, but it’s also a gift in communication as well, in terms of understanding what questions to ask or how to engage with the person that you’re talking with, not only through words, but through emotions and ideas.

(19:07) Doreen Downing: Yes, and listening to what is just on the edge of wanting to be said or revealed or known, discovered.

(19:22) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: That’s a brilliant point. Absolutely.

(19:25) Doreen Downing: Yes. I love that edge.

(19:30) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Me too.

(19:30) Doreen Downing: So here we are on the edge of, well, what’s next?

I do have the structure of, well, what was the challenge, and then how did you find your way through that challenge? You kind of captured both in that one story, it feels like.

It was definitely a 24-hour period, but still it feels alive. It still has meaning, and it’s not just something that happened years ago. The way you talked about it and shared it felt like it had so much energy in it.

(20:11) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: For sure. I would like to say that there are always going to be multiple moments in life where our voice is challenged.

Yes, I was very lucky that it was a moment that happened early in my life, but there were other moments that were challenging for me in terms of being able to rediscover my voice or connect with my voice in a different way.

Some examples are when I was 22, I came out as gay, and that was a very difficult choice for me to make at that time. It shouldn’t have had to be because that was, in essence, who I am as a person. But it was very difficult for me to be able to share my truth, and so that was really difficult.

Even outside of that, when I think about the fintech industry that I worked in for a very long time, I fell into that in a very accidental way because I was already working in the tech industry, and I was effectively headhunted by a colleague that I highly respected who worked for this organization that happened to do financial risk management.

I knew nothing about finance. I knew nothing about the world of risk management, so that was very foreign to me.

I worked in an organization with over 40 PhDs, and being able to navigate that world and find my voice in a way that was authentic to me, and to be respected in that environment, was a challenge that I had within myself.

But I was able to connect with my strengths, which were around people. I understood people, and I understood customer service, project management, team management, client engagement management, and all of those aspects that are also very important to an organization.

That’s where I was able to cultivate a career, and looking back, it’s one that I’m very proud of because I was able to connect with my voice.

(23:00) Doreen Downing: Yes, I think that what you just said about being in an environment that seems not like you, but how to bring you into an environment that is not like you…

I was going to say, well, how did you do it? But you already answered that by saying you focus on strengths.

(23:26) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely. But I also feel like even what we perceive as challenges…

I started off by saying that I knew nothing about risk management and finance. Well, I ended up learning some things about risk management and finance over those many years. It might not have been to the level of a financial engineer, but I learned conceptually these ideas, and that allowed me to have conversations with banks, senior management, my peers, and the people that reported to me.

(24:03) Doreen Downing: Yes. Again, this feels like a theme because of your passion around resilience. How to be in the unfamiliar. There was some resilience in you that wasn’t locked into “I can’t do this,” but instead, “How do I do this?”

This question of how do I keep learning and growing feels like it’s one of your values.

(24:36) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Learning, growing, adapting, and courage.

(24:43) Doreen Downing: Ooh, that’s a good one. Yes.

I feel like I just want to spend all day talking to you because you open up more, and I hear so much. I feel like the listeners today are getting so much more value than just, “How do we have a voice?” It is about how we become more of who we can be, and you’re giving us some really wonderful hints about that.

So let’s move more into what you’re doing nowadays. Mostly, when I interview people who have been in a corporate environment, it’s usually a negative experience. They couldn’t wait to get out, and they didn’t have a voice, and finally they left.

But you said you look back and you’re proud of what you did there, what you accomplished. There must have been some reason you left.

(25:45) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely. I had an inflection point in 2021 during the pandemic.

This is coming from someone that already had a personal practice of mindfulness and prayer, and I got myself into a very unhealthy cycle. Remember, at that time everything was shut down, or there was very limited movement. In Canada, there were a couple of restrictions that were imposed on the population.

It was early in 2021, and I got myself into a cycle of waking up in the morning, getting in front of my computer, working all day, grabbing a bite to eat, having a shower, and then repeating it all over again.

I remember waking up one morning and literally having this thought in my head: “I can’t do this.” I called my doctor and said, “Look, this is what I’m feeling. I have a sense that I’m about to hit a brick wall, and I need a leave of absence.”

The doctor agreed. He encouraged me to take time off work. I sent a note to my boss, my VP, and HR, and I said, “Look, this is the scenario. I’m going to take time off.”

I ended up taking a month off, and it was during that period of time that I did some really deep introspection and decided that I was going to start my own venture.

The interesting thing is that the mindfulness work and the Reiki work I was doing were always just for myself. I never had a thought or an inkling of opening a business around mindfulness or Reiki. It was always just about my personal development.

I returned to work gradually, and that would have been at the beginning of March. Then by the end of September, I left and started my business. So that’s what took me there.

(28:36) Doreen Downing: Well, it sounds like stress or burnout is what people experience, and at least it feels like you paid enough attention to say, “I need to do some self-care.” You didn’t realize it was more than self-care. It was self-transformation.

(28:58) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: It really was, and I feel like there were a lot of people during that period of time in the pandemic that had their own realization about what they needed to cultivate in their own lives.

It might not have been as drastic as what I did, but they certainly made some changes.

(29:17) Doreen Downing: I spent those 2 years doing art, watercolor.

(29:26) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Beautiful.

(29:27) Doreen Downing: Yes. I’ve got those little chills now. Whoa. I’m finally getting back to it because all my art supplies are locked away in boxes on my shelf.

(29:44) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Wow.

(29:45) Doreen Downing: Isn’t that something? I’m just so chilled all over my body right now. Something’s happening to me right now about a connection and a realization.

Thank you for that, my partner in discovery here. Living in the moment.

(30:05) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Maybe what you’re sensing is inspiration.

(30:08) Doreen Downing: Yes, there you go again. Inspiration. Inspiration is an embodied feeling and an experience, isn’t it? Oh, yes, and truth, I think. I think truth inspires, so if you get the little tinglies, that means there’s inspiration, and it’s coming from truth.

Pay attention, girl, to that truth. Okay, thank you.

(30:39) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely.

(30:41) Doreen Downing: Oh, I hate to come to the end. So what are you doing nowadays, and how do people find you?

Other than just having these beautiful conversations, what do you do with people?

(30:57) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Well, I focus on mindfulness and Reiki and resilience cultivation, and I offer that through consultation.

I work primarily with groups, and so my focus right now is corporate, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be corporate. It could be nonprofit. It could be any kind of organization where I can help cultivate greater resilience within the organization, elevate mindful leadership, and enhance trust and collaboration.

There are many different aspects that can help elevate a company or a group to become more cohesive and more mindful.

I also have a podcast called The Stumbling Spirit. That’s also the branded name of my business, though it relates to Resting Bell Wellness Inc.

I should mention to listeners that a resting bell is another name for a singing bowl, just in case you’re unaware. It is the same object.

Why my podcast is called The Stumbling Spirit is because that is the essence of resilience. The essence of resilience is that we stumble through life, and what is it that gets us off the ground again? It’s our spirit.

However you think about spirit, whether it’s a vital life force that we connect with, or for other people it might be their soul, if they believe in one. For others, it could be something much bigger than themselves, whether it’s Source, whether it’s God.

Whatever it is that people feel they tap into, that’s what helps them move forward and continue.

(33:32) Doreen Downing: Yes. I felt that as soon as you told the story about the Little Drummer Boy, that it was a life lesson you learned in that early moment of your life.

Also, when you talked about what you do currently with resilience in groups, I was reminded of how you talked about your family. It felt like you were like family. You like family getting along and having connections and playfulness and a lightness of being that is possible in a family.

Like you said, not a perfect one, but a very good family. A healthy environment is what I felt you at least had roots in, and now you’re bringing wisdom to groups to help them become healthy environments, healthy families.

(34:30) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Absolutely. I should say that it’s also important for there to be a little bit of friction.

In most families, there is a little bit of friction that exists, and I think that’s good. In every environment, whether it’s a home environment or a work environment, some sort of friction or tension helps us learn, grow, and become malleable, flexible, adaptable, all of those things.

It also increases our compassion, not only for ourselves, but for others as well.

(35:14) Doreen Downing: Beautiful.

I was going to ask you to take this last moment and see what wants to be said based on what we’ve talked about today. Let’s just take a breath together and open up for this moment where we are about to say goodbye, but I’d like to hear just a little bit more.

(35:54) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: I think that we’re living in times right now where people are finding it very difficult given what we’re hearing on the news, what we’re seeing on the news, and in our social media feeds. It might be really difficult to see what is coming next.

I would invite everyone to connect back within themselves and recognize that we do have our own personal power to be able to change the world in our own way.

When things seem insurmountable in terms of what we’re witnessing in the world, I think we can bring it back to basics and try to be the best human beings and spiritual beings that we can possibly be, and navigate that with resilience in mind.

We’ll be able to move to a better place within our lives.

(37:25) Doreen Downing: Yes. With the guidance that you just gave us, it feels like then we, like you and I today, are connected.

The more that we come back to ourselves and find other people that are coming back to themselves, it grows. The positivity grows.

So thank you for being such a positive spirit today. Thank you.

(37:53) Fabio da Silva Fernandes: Thank you, Doreen. It’s been such a pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

(37:57) Doreen Downing: You’re welcome.