Beyond Survival: Mayer Wisotsky's Unique Advice For Enjoying Life

Prepare to be inspired as we sit down with the dynamic Mayer Wisotsky. Now 90 years old, his zest for life and wisdom shine through as he shares his insights on ways to manage stress and live more joyfully. 

This episode is our second interview with Mayer! It is a treasure trove of practical advice, as we talk about challenging life situations and the power of perspective. Mayer Wisotsky brilliantly highlights the transformative value of life’s tragic moments, reminding us of the power of decision-making even in the face of adversity. With his rich insights and unique perspectives, he offers valuable advice on not just surviving, but thriving at every age! 

Want more wisdom? Check out the first interview with Mayer Wisotsky and Margo Rose titled: The Benefits of Chosen Family. You can hear the first episode here

https://bodyawareliving.com/the-benefits-of-chosen-family/

Guest Bio/contact info:

Mayer Wisotsky, ‘The Woodcarver’ and the author of The Legend of the Twilight Owls.
He has worked in every kind of job from factory worker to hospital executive, from teacher to counselor, from actor and director to writer and musician, from salesman to manager, from bricklayer to woodcarver, from entrepreneur to consultant, from paperboy to selling vacuums. He has joined philosophical groups, political groups, religious groups, the military and was the president of a college faculty union. His years of living have given him a huge amount of experience to authentically understand the world. Poetry has been his safety valve. It is the way he can express his understanding of reality in an emotional burst of creativity.

Email address to be part of his free poetry list:
wisewoodcarver@gmail.com

The Legend of the Twilight Owls
From Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Twilight-Owls-Searching-Perplexed/dp/1735143855/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=mayer+Wisotsky&qid=1646689408&sr=8-1

From Lulu.com:
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/mayer-wisotsky/the-legend-of-the-twilight-owls/paperback/product-6kyrgm.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Margo Bio/contact info:

Would you like more practical wellness ideas?

Margo Rose has been a personal trainer for over 20 years specializing in functional fitness. She has also written a book called

Body Aware Grieving; A Fitness Trainer's Guide To Caring For Your Health During Sad Times.

Body Aware Living is a new blend of these two systems of healing and self-care. On this website you will find: the Body Aware Living podcast, articles and videos about wellness in Margo Media section and description of her coaching services

Website: www.BodyAwareLiving.com

Body Aware Grieving has been created to help you, or someone you care about, adjust to a loss or big life change. This link is one way to get the book quickly:

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Aware-Grieving-Fitness-Trainers/dp/0692459189

Also available from other vendors including this independent Bookshop organization:

https://bookshop.org/books/body-aware-grieving-a-fitness-trainer-s-guide-to-caring-for-your-health-during-sad-times/9780692459188

Follow Body Aware Living on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/BodyAwareLiving

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Body Aware Living Podcast. I'm Margot Rose, author of Body Aware Grieving, a fitness trainer's guide to caring for your health during sad times. We're together with kind and wise people from around the world. We're looking for practical ways to get through difficult challenges and to celebrate our accomplishments. It's important to remember that none of the comments made by myself or guests is meant to replace any legal or health services. Best wishes to you. Here we go.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Today on the Body Aware Living Podcast, we are welcoming for the second time the amazing and wise Meir Wysotsky. Meir is the author of the Legend of the Twilight Owls, a book of poetry for the searching and the perplexed. Meir is also a man I've known my whole life. He was my father's best friend since college and if you'd like to listen to the first podcast between Meir and I, we did one called Chosen Family that will be linked in the show notes below. Now, at 90 years of age and handling his own health issues, meir is here to help us learn skillful ways to handle stress.

Speaker 1: 1:21

What to do when something as dramatic as even your house burning down helps you learn how to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. The differences between getting old and getting older and a new project he's working on of ways to enjoy getting older. Please enjoy this interview and I wish you well. You know, while we have the camera going and while we've got the whole family here, can you mention a little bit? We had that podcast together and you got inspired to start this whole project that you're working on now. Can you tell us about the project, why you're inspired for it, what's the name that you have thinking about and what's going on with it?

Speaker 2: 2:06

Okay, sure, the project is how to grow old and enjoy it. So many people have these negative feelings about growing old. It's always complaining about the problems that you're having, like my ears I can't hear as well, I can't see as well. I'm breaking down somewhat in terms of my physical self.

Speaker 1: 2:30

At age 90, you're going to be 90. Right, exactly, yeah, you're 90.

Speaker 2: 2:37

And people at 50 start to feel this way. They've got 40 years to think about it, but the project is, I realize there are 11 things that you have to be aware of if you want to grow old and enjoy it, and that's the idea is that growing old should not be a life of complaining about everything, even though there's plenty of things to complain about.

Speaker 2: 3:14

And living in each moment means, like I was saying at our Pesach Seder, this may be the last Seder I'm at. Did you ever think about it that whatever you're doing may be the last thing last time you do it, because you may not make it. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. So, especially when you get older, it gets more possible that you might die. So, consequently, you should treat every moment like it's the last time. It'll be. At that event or that situation, this is the last time I may see you. This is the last time I may see you. I want to make sure it's a real connection and not just a superficial one, where I was being trying to be very nice and rather open my arms and say hey, I'm concerned about you, you're concerned about me. We worry about each other, we give each other reasons for being and that's a gift.

Speaker 2: 4:23

I think that you have, that you can help people actually feel that sense of I know why I'm here, I know what that feels like and I'm living in that moment. So I found out these 11 things. The first thing I talked about the 11 things that are about joyful aging. Yes, and are you calling it?

Speaker 2: 4:47

joyful aging you need to know about and work on if you want to have, if you want to have enjoyable aging. Enjoyable aging. There's a difference between saying I'm growing old and I'm growing older. You want to grow older because the implication of I'm growing old means that there's a place where you can go, where you can be old, and I'm at that space. But you're growing older. This means I now have more thoughts and experiences about living that are still really important to me.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Can I relate to someone at my age and still get the same or get a different but important thrill out of that kind of relationship? You know, I actually express my love to this person and let them know that I care about them and that they're part of my life and I can live that moment, just like we talked about living, those moments when you met the Grand Canyon or had an experience that was so moving that you just can't forget it. That kind of thing, and that's what your life should be filled with all these moments of really being there, really exposing oneself to another person. You know that kind of the thing that makes life worth living.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Vibrant. Yeah, yeah, it gives the juice.

Speaker 2: 6:35

Yeah, exactly, and everybody recognizes that when they finally get to see it and feel it. And who is the messenger that lets you have it? A lot of times, see, if you know anything about chemistry, there's you can have two things coming together, hydrogen and oxygen, to make water, but a lot of times you need a territory or it's in between, that helps drag these two things together. See, and that's what they call that in chemistry.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Like a conduit or something, no it's got another name, I'll think of it. But you're helping that happen by just being there, bringing these two people together that they wouldn't be able to talk. It's what good psychologists do for their couple counseling. You know what counselors do? They're just the third party who help get you to look at each other and relate to one another. And that's, you know, the idea that a person can wield a situation so that two people can relate to one another, and I think that's an important aspect for growing old. So you've got these 11 things and I'll just give you the idea.

Speaker 1: 8:08

The first thing I tell people is you've got to get rid of stress in your life.

Speaker 2: 8:16

See, everybody feels I got to just stress my way through it, I just got to fight my way through it, and that's what you want to get rid of all the stuff that's stressful, because that all the stress that you go through in life doesn't go away when you know, when you're not having the pain from it. It still leaves a scar someplace in your body.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Can I hop in just with some curiosity?

Speaker 1: 8:43

here, so when you say getting rid of stress, like suppose two really common situations are people are not having as much money as they need just to kind of get through their basic needs, right, and people often are not having enough health that they need just to get through their daily activity. So if let's just use an example of someone which is a lot of someone's who are stressed over those two sort of things just getting through each day without enough perhaps money or health, so so how are you recommending a person?

Speaker 2: 9:14

who's?

Speaker 1: 9:14

legitimately dealing with that.

Speaker 2: 9:16

So I'm going to worry about I don't have any money. I'm going to sit there and think about what it would be like to have money and and then worry about the fact that now I'm really miserable because I don't have any money. So I'll just playing with something that you don't have to play with. You can just say Either I'm gonna make a decision to do something about getting money or I'm gonna stop thinking about it and the stress you see keeps you thinking about it and that's where the problems come in. If you're gonna think about Making money all the time, you could say I wasted that time thinking about that and worrying about that.

Speaker 2: 10:00

The past you Stress is what happened from, is what that's gonna happen in the future. We're usually worry about what's gonna happen in the future. So it's worrying about the future that the that's You're dealing with. The past is the guilt, all the things I did and I know and I feel guilty about I shouldn't have done them. But that's in the past, it's gone. You're not gonna relive that, you're not gonna capture that. You're not gonna. So why do you keep worrying about it? You know, why do you keep beating yourself up? So you got to get rid of the guilt. So the guilt takes care of the past, the stress takes care of the future.

Speaker 2: 10:47

And then you have to say Now, what do I know about living right in the moment? Because that's the only place to where there's reality. The reality of your feelings are right there in the moment. Two hours from now, that may be gone, but right then you, you had an attempt to learn about yourself, to be about yourself, to feel about yourself, all those things that you could have had if you just were in that moment. Living that moment.

Speaker 2: 11:15

It's like getting on a yeah, not a Ferris wheel, but the the roller coaster, when you're, when you're, when you're getting ready to get on the roller coaster, I don't ever felt that You're sitting there, you're waiting, you know, all of a sudden you start up and now you're gonna go and bingo, all of a sudden, now I'm into that moment. I'm screaming as I go up and screaming as I go down. You know, and, and that's being right there, and then you have to know about that, you have to know what, what it is to say. I got to live life right now, in this important moment. It's got to say these things, I got to do these things, I got to feel these things and being aware of them.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So I'm gonna hop in and be be kind of picky here for a minute, cuz I I want you know. I guess at this point we're doing an interview. I guess at this point we're doing an interview, we're probably gonna find a way to share this with the body where I live in community, right? So the body where I live in community is always about practical ways to get through each day. You know, practical ways to care for your health during the best and worst of time. So so you're giving advice about stress.

Speaker 1: 12:26

You're saying to I think you're saying, stay in the moment, this is all you can do something about. So what about? What would you say as advice to a person who's like, okay, in this moment I mean, it's the last day of the month, rent is due, these bills are due I, I, today is the day I realize I don't have the bills. I need to start this next month perhaps even and you know I'm dealing with health challenges so much, for example, that I used before I'm dealing with so many health challenges I don't know how I can increase my income quickly because I'm limited, you know. So boom that moment, that day that you know 30th of some month, when those things are happening. What? What's your advice to someone to handle that with the least amount of stress? Like Well you?

Speaker 2: 13:13

know. The first thing is to say if I'm gonna work on Getting money, then I should be working on getting money. In other words, that should be my total moment. I'm in the process of trying to get money. That that will solve the problem of worrying about money. If you're trying to get it, you're doing something about it, and that's being in the moment, as opposed to saying I'm just gonna sit here and worry about these. It's coming and I don't know what I'm gonna do. It doesn't come.

Speaker 2: 13:41

I could say okay, I got a plan, I got a plan B, I got plan C, I got plan D, you know, whatever, whatever you have planned to go out and get some money, I'm gonna call my mother, I'm gonna call my friend, I'm gonna go get a job. You're gonna do something. You made a decision. Once you make the decision that you're gonna do something, you see, and I can't do that till tomorrow. Okay, now I stopped worrying about it. Yeah, I stopped stressing out about it because I I've already said I'm gonna get the job. I'm gonna call them tomorrow. I can't call them today because it's a Sunday. You know something on that order, and the thing is to say Get rid of the stress by taking a deep breath and saying I'm here in this moment, what am I doing and how am I enjoying it or how am I relating to it?

Speaker 2: 14:30

one of those that kind of thing, because once you come to the point where you say there's nothing I can do today, for whatever reason, then you have to stop worrying about it. But people don't. They keep worrying about it all the time.

Speaker 1: 14:44

Well, then they have insomnia, and now you're sleep deprived and now you really can't heal your body, you really can't impress anyone with your and you're really, or however, you're gonna ask someone to help you out financially.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Or organization, because there are. There's like maybe people you know, maybe organizations you know, maybe something really lucky is gonna happen and you can't tell. And you know something I happen to know about you and maybe it Plays into all this maybe you learned this is that sometimes it all gets burnt to the ground, like literally. Sometimes the worst-case scenario does happen, like literally you and you and your wife Maryl, you guys had your house and everything you cared about in it completely burned it. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, everything goes to the ground and that worst-case scenario does happen. And then there's about rising, rising like a phoenix from the ashes absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:31

And how do you know how that Phoenix feels rising from the ashes? Because if you've never felt it, you don't have a clue. And Once you have felt it, you've got something really strong to kick, to center on. And that's what when when the fire was going on, we were sitting across the street watching and say, okay, what are we gonna do now? Okay, we better, we better figure out what we're gonna sleep tonight. You know, went straight while the house is burning.

Speaker 2: 15:58

We were sitting there thinking about what we're gonna, what, what we do to you to take care of ourselves for the next 24 hours, and it was how we got to find a place to sleep. We have to get what you know find out what our insurance is going to be. We got a lot of things we got to do, but we're not sitting there saying, oh my God, my house is burning down. How do I feel? And all the other people who's it's not their house that's burning down, but they're projecting themselves into those and saying, oh, this is so terrible. It's work, you know, and we watched them during the fire. They did not have to feel the same thing we were feeling.

Speaker 1: 16:41

What was the difference between what they were feeling and what you were?

Speaker 2: 16:44

feeling. They were feeling the how tragic the situation is, how tragic the moment is, and they were feeling that they have just been, you know, given the last blow of their life, hit across the skull with a hammer, you know, and they were into the feeling how bad it is, you know how bad it is to see their house burned down.

Speaker 2: 17:16

And we were not doing that. We weren't seeing how bad it was. We were talking about okay, well, we got to get our drugs, we got to get our. You know, we were already practically doing what had to be done In order to make it through the next day.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I you know, when you mentioned these, you know these the idea that there are these like life changing moments that often can be perceived at and feel at the time like and are what we call tragedies. And I feel like sometimes these tragic moments, especially if there's like a really clear and our first interview we talked about how the feelings and experiences of tragedies end up locked in and our whole body like just a full body experience, when you go through something that dramatic and it may or may not ever fully come out of the cells of your body.

Speaker 1: 18:03

That moment, and I feel like those tragic moments, like you know sitting there, like you have a clear recollection of sitting there watching your whole house burn down and you're both artists, so your whole, you know life work up until that time was you saw it be, you know, burned up your whole, all those hours of creating beautiful art. And I feel like those the moments become almost like this big rock that you can then figure out how to just stand on top of that rock with the wind blowing in your hair. The next time there's something challenging, you can stand on the top of this rock. The wind is blowing, the storm is going in every direction, you don't know what's happening next in some future challenge, and you can stand on that rock and go.

Speaker 1: 18:44

I got this. I've been through worse than this. I got this. I'm going to stand here on this rock. This wind ain't going to blow me off. I'm going to do this and I've been here. I'm going to go somewhere else. I'm going to do something else like this again. I'm just going to keep letting these storms pass by and I'm going to keep thriving, Right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Well, that and and what you have now is an intimate knowledge of being at the edge of the brink. Yes, yeah, you have this intimate knowledge the wind is in your hair. Right and and you may or may not ever use it again. Probably won't use it again because it's going to be different the next time you face, you know, a big problem and if you go through your life you'll find all these things that you could have done this or you could have done that. You know you could. Your whole life can be a.

Speaker 2: 19:44

it's like a Freud psychotherapy you have to bring you through your life to show you all these different things that could have happened, and and you have to go through those and and kind of relive them or not relive them, but live them in a new way, you know to to get rid of them because they're affecting your whole life. And that was his, his, approach. I'm saying what, if you want to get older and you want to have still be, you know, have, still be enjoying life, then what you have to do is you have to start getting rid of these things as they're happening. You can't let them, you know, bury, because then then you don't have any control at all and you, your body, just tells you you can't do this or you can do that, and and and you feel it, you know it.

Speaker 1: 20:34

Yeah, almost like a liberation of knowing that. Yeah, sometimes the worst thing possible does happen and people get through it. The worst thing imaginable does can occur and people get through even the worst thing imaginable.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Exactly. And then the thing is usually you don't know what the maybe a really small thing that you, that that trigger, all those stuff. And one of the things that do to get rid of the stresses is not so much that you can get rid of what you already did, but you can remind yourself not to get that stress in the beginning. In other words, if I can not get, if I can not stress myself every day, then I don't have to worry about the stress that I have because I don't have it. In other words, I don't have the stress if I didn't, you know one through today, if you don't stress the small stuff on going and the chronic stuff.

Speaker 1: 21:31

then you have that energy for when you actually need it, perhaps in the form of adrenaline to power out of something that legitimately it's like okay, now I need my best self, now I need my most energy self.

Speaker 2: 21:43

And so what? What life does for you a lot of times just gives you an experience dealing with stress without letting it settle into the body. And when I worked at the hospital, I remember going through divorce and whatnot all kinds of problems in my life. My neck was so. I was so stressed out that my neck was hard as a rock. All the muscles in there are always squeezing tight. That's one of the aspects of stress is that the muscles tend to think I got to be ready to act right now, so I got a tense up, ready for this, and ironically they can't move when they're already shortened, when your muscles are already contracted.

Speaker 1: 22:30

There's no elasticity and you actually can't move when you're all tensed up, like that for sure, physically.

Speaker 2: 22:35

So knowing that I, I'm not worrying about that, that's over there, you know, and just not building that, settle in your body and tense up those muscles and you just relax. You took a nice shower, you took a nice steam bath, you did something to relax all of this. You know that's.

Speaker 1: 22:53

Are you ever like? Are you ever like stuck in traffic or something and instead of like, starting to let the stress, the stress of that moment, accumulate, maybe even your wife even look at each other and go. Could be worse your house could be burning down, you know well, we don't, we don't.

Speaker 2: 23:08

I don't remember thinking about it in exactly that way, but that's really what it is is that we've been there and now I don't have to worry about it Because I know that you know I'll deal with it like I dealt with it before, and people have this again a bad understanding of what that moment is like, like you were saying. I could and when it does, it destroys fear.

Speaker 1: 23:38

Destroyes fear.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Because it's the fear of not knowing how that moment will come off that there's really bad on you. You know I got really fearful and you can. You can be debilitated by it, but it destroys the fear to know that that's not. I don't have this fear. I just go and do what I have to do.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Hello, we're back with Mayor Wysotski finishing up a little bit of this. What turned into a spontaneous interview and we were talking about your project for joyful aging enjoying aging. What's the name of the title that you're?

Speaker 2: 24:24

going to have Right how to grow old and enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 24:27

How to grow old and enjoy it. So you said there's 11 categories. The first one we started talking about with stress and we went into like a whole podcast that turned into a whole separate interview. What are? What are those other 10 categories that?

Speaker 2: 24:37

Let me read them to you.

Speaker 1: 24:38

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 24:40

There's stress, there's guilt, there's power to act. Fantasy, reality change essence, your essence, that is the body, the mind, life and death.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Well, that's just a little something to think about. So you're, you're, you're coming up with a project that gives us just like a little sort of suggestions on each of those categories that are going to help us live a little happier.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Exactly All of those categories are necessary for you to enjoy life, understanding them and practicing them, and so what the podcast will do will explain it in terms of what it is and what it's supposed to do and how you're supposed to relate to it, and it's a. It's a class in itself, because every one of those things could take in depth involvement for weeks, but we'll try and boil them down to the essence.

Speaker 1: 25:54

Wow. So this is a summary of you know, 90 years of wisdom that you've actively pursued you have it in the passive about wisdom. You've been very questioning and consolidating about how to live better. So when you say podcast, you're talking about your own podcast, you're thinking about starting. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 26:10

Right, I'm going to. I'm going to put one out I don't know exactly when it's going to come out, but very shortly and it will be an audio podcast, although I don't know if I'll have anybody to talk to, like you, but that that may be the better way to go, and I have to think about that. But it's the fact that these 11 things that I've boiled down, boiled life down to in terms of what you have to understand in order to make it joyful for growing old, and that's the key is that you're not going to change life, but you're going to change the way you face it, the way you present yourself to the life that you're given, in a sense of what you're doing and how you're living your life now.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Excellent. So if people of the body were living podcast, well, how I can help keep people connected to what you're doing next if you want to. So if people want to go to the bodywarelivingcom website and they want to offer their email address to me, I will make sure to keep people updated and forwarded as Meier's project come along.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Right.

Speaker 1: 27:33

And if somebody, you also have your. We mentioned this on your last interview we did together. We mentioned that in the meanwhile you have poems that you share to people on your.

Speaker 2: 27:43

Right, and you have a great list of followers to my poetic attempts.

Speaker 1: 27:52

And that was the email address that people want to connect with you is.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Is wisewoodcarver at gmailcom.

Speaker 1: 28:05

All right, so there's going to be.

Speaker 2: 28:07

That's wisewoodcarver.

Speaker 1: 28:09

That email address is wisewoodcarver at gmailcom. So there's a bunch of ways that.

Speaker 2: 28:15

Yeah, if they get on my list, then when I send out the poems, they will automatically get the poems that are coming out at that point.

Speaker 1: 28:26

So this is right now, even before you move forward with the podcast.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:31

That goes on right all the time, all right. So what would you say for someone who's not 90 and they're saying they're too old for whatever they're picturing doing next? What's your final parting words to people less than 90 who think it's too old for some kind of progress they want?

Speaker 2: 28:45

The thing is, I think it's If you start thinking earlier on about growing old, I think you'll do much better, because getting rid of stress and doing all the other things that I just mentioned takes some time to get used to, and if you keep putting it off, it'll allow the problems that come with getting old to get worse than they should. So you want to get as soon as you can, as soon as you hit 50, that's a good time to start.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Okay, so the challenges of getting older are going to happen at their own pace, so we need to speed up the rate at which we learn how to enjoy your time and minimize our frustrations.

Speaker 2: 29:35

Right.

Speaker 1: 29:35

To offset some of this potential decline that starts to happen.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Exactly as soon as you get started on taking care of the things that have to be taken care of in order to get that sense of joy with being alive, the better it'll be for you, and I'm a living proof of it. I guess I have to say it that way.

Speaker 1: 29:56

All right, enjoyment and wisdom. Get yours now. Start early, start early and subscribe often.

Speaker 2: 30:05

I'll send you a certificate.

Speaker 1: 30:07

A certificate. It's all possible, all right. Well, mayor, thank you one more time for all of your wisdom and time, and we will just keep on chucking right. We're going to just keep on doing it.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 30:19

All right, thank you so much. We'll talk again soon. Bye-bye, bye-bye, thank you.