Could your life be changed by a single decision?
Harness the power of choice and embody the idea that we can all become heroes in training by embracing daily habits that foster change and growth. Join Suzi, as she engages with the compelling concept of 'wisdom keepers' and dives into the profound influence of Dr Edith Eva Eger's Book The Choice: Embrace the Possible, which underscores the impact of choice in shaping our lives.
This episode is a heartfelt discussion filled with personal revelations and transformative ideas for personal growth. Get ready to be inspired!
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Could your life be changed by a single decision?
Harness the power of choice and embody the idea that we can all become heroes in training by embracing daily habits that foster change and growth. Join Suzi, as she engages with the compelling concept of 'wisdom keepers' and dives into the profound influence of Dr Edith Eva Eger's Book The Choice: Embrace the Possible, which underscores the impact of choice in shaping our lives.
This episode is a heartfelt discussion filled with personal revelations and transformative ideas for personal growth. Get ready to be inspired!
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi, and welcome to Be Crazy. Well, hi everybody, welcome to Be Crazy. Well, you know, there's some unbelievable books out there that have literally changed me and helped me change my life. I say that in that order, because I realize that I am responsible for changing my life, and I can choose some great people that can mentor me, that can pass on their wisdom. I can even watch them do something the way I want to do it. It's up to me, though, then to go back home and practice right, or to practice there with them, or to make a choice to keep trying, keep training, keep doing, to be different. It's amazing how much kids can do that until we actually criticize them so much, or we want them to do it differently, that they actually stop wanting to do. They are natural trainers. They want to train all the time. They want to do all the time, and if you don't believe me, you just think of how many kids actually learn to walk, talk and feed themselves, go to the bathroom, and even the ones that were born with some kind of special, a special way of having to do things, you will see them figure it out, want to figure it out and keep doing it.
Speaker 1:You know those moments in my life. I realized, as I got older and I felt the effects of my trauma more deeply and more consistently, that I didn't have that same commitment, that same, that same grit, that same desire, that same hopefulness. And I can remember doing things over and over again, that great expression expecting a different result. I remember giving up, I remember blaming others, I remember being hopeless. And I also know, though, that those times in my life, it's usually a time when I truly am ready. I truly am ready to do differently. I just have to stay in that stuck moment until I get sick and tired of being, sick and tired that. I get sick and tired of me. I'm tired of hearing my voice, I'm tired of watching me do this stuff and I make a choice. Now, I'm not saying I like it. I'm not saying that it's fun. I'm not saying I'm motivated. All the time I actually talked to a lot of wonderful motivational speakers. I was telling the same thing over and over again the hell with motivation. I don't trust it, I don't need it, I don't want it, I'm not going to depend on it. Why? Because most of the time it's not there when I need it. Most of the time it peters out and I just don't want it. I want to be able to make a choice and then piss and moan, complain and struggle to get up and go do it, whether motivation is there or not.
Speaker 1:I had the honor of meeting some POWs and one of the books that really changed my life in many ways. I went through it. I was there it wasn't in Vietnam, of course, but I was there when all the young men that we knew were being drafted and the protests because we knew that we weren't being told the truth about the war and all of that. Okay, I was there and I remember reading the book the Hanoi Hilton and I remember hearing about how Stockdale, the commanding officer, the prisoner who was the commanding officer, told all the men who were prisoners that they had one mission and of course the men thought it was like no matter how you're tortured, don't give up any information. Don't give up, don't be a traitor, don't at any cost, even dying, you should keep that information. He said, no, that's not your mission. Of course the men were obviously horrified, thinking well, how could that not be our mission, like we have intelligence that could hurt our brothers and sisters? He said that's not the mission. The mission is to get home. The mission is to survive, go home and thrive. That's the mission.
Speaker 1:I think he knew that none of us are truly 100% capable of all the time to be able to not break under the weight of our own guilt. Torture is one thing, and I've been molested and everything else and screamed at and hit. I get it and yet some of the things that I say and do to myself have always been probably the most harmful. So I think this was a smart man that said no, your mission is to get home and when they take you into torture and you give up all the information, forgive yourself and get back on the mission. So I'm always looking for those wisdom keepers, those people that go through something and figure out what are some of the best things we can do for ourselves and for the world. Because when you think about it, having those men and women and I don't know how many were prisoners of war as women, I'm assuming maybe some. I'm assuming that he knew that coming back, that they could keep on helping, giving, making this a better world, help their family, help their community, that to be of service meant to be of service. No matter where you were, you didn't have to be in the service to be of service. So I think that was part of what he was getting at, and I think that a wonderful woman, her name's Joe Slosky, and her husband, dan, are building a veteran retreat out in Missouri and it's called Guardian Hills.
Speaker 1:Now, I love that name, I do. You know, I'm one of those guardians of the galaxy. I love it, love it, love the soundtrack. When I thought, oh my God, guardian Hills. I'm on the board and I'm helping them create the curriculum and where our buildings are almost done, we're ready to, in the spring, to start having retreats. And they have a very different life than I do out in the middle of Missouri, and we have very different backgrounds in many ways. And yet there's something really special and very connecting, especially for Joe and I, and that's our childhoods.
Speaker 1:So when Joe offers me something or comes up with something or read something, she's, you know, one of those want to know people. She always is finding wonderful new information. In fact, I'll have them on. Be crazy Well, soon. And she handed about, talk to me about a book, a book I didn't know about.
Speaker 1:Now, a Hanoi Hilton man search for meaning like these were books that we used for the Warrior Path program when I was at Boulder Crest, so I'm very familiar with the idea of people going through horrific experiences. Horrific experiences Ones that I have not gone through not on that scale, not in that context, and certainly what happened this week in Israel and now what's happening in Gaza. I don't have a reference for that. All I have is the pain, the knowledge that I understand some suffering from my experience, and I understand some evil and violence. And I also understand that when my mother was attacked by a woman who knew her, I knew my family that after my mother was attacked in, a handful of her hair was pulled out by this woman. Weeks later that woman dared to come to our door and I'm the second born girl.
Speaker 1:I have a sister who's 18 months older, six inches taller, 100 pounds heavier, and I remember hearing my sister go to the door and I hear this screeching from somebody and then I hear my sister in a panic. My sister, who's much bigger than I am, say no, no, no, you can't come in, no, and I hear this fear in her voice and I look around the corner and there's that woman. She's actually come to our house and, as I'm talking to you now, as clear as I am right now, as calm as I am right now, I turned back into the kitchen, where I was. I opened up the knife drawer. I pulled out a knife. Well, first of all, I looked at them for a second, deciding which one grabbed the one I wanted Walk. I didn't run.
Speaker 1:I walked into the den that was leading to the front door and I remember taking my left hand the knife was in my right hand and I remember pushing my sister aside so hard me so much smaller that she stumbled back, and I remember hearing the thud of her back against the wall and I stepped forward and I put that knife to that woman's throat, like just about touching, like very close, maybe less than an inch, and I told that woman that if she even leaned forward, that I would kill her and that she was never going to hurt anybody in my family again. And I meant it and I was, like I said, as calm as I am now and as committed at that moment as I've ever been. Oh, by the way, I was 17 years old. I was a vice president of the student council, first girl to ever do that. I was head cheerleader. I had all days I was trying to be the perfect child, so that was pretty out of character for me. Yet it wasn't. I just had never been in that situation, and I remember that woman looking at me with terror in her eyes and I literally said to her just lean forward, you don't even have to step, and I will put this knife in you because you will never, ever hurt anybody I love again. Now I tell you that because I think sometimes we don't believe that we have the capacity, under certain circumstances or context, to be able to commit, commit violence, to truly hurt someone, even kill somebody. And I know I do, I understand it, I get it. I also understand that there are people, wisdom keepers, in this world that can share with us how they survived and thrived when evil was all around them and held them captive and tortured them, and how they came back from that and didn't become the perpetrator, didn't?
Speaker 1:So Joe gave me this book and I'm just going to show it up to you here and I'm going to tell you what it's called. See if I can get the camera to look at this. Oh, maybe back here. Where are we? Oh, wait, wait, can I do this? Maybe not, let's do it. Oh, there we go. Perfect. Good job, suzy. It's called the Choice. It was written in 2017. It's called the Choice Embrace the Possible. So when you say embrace the possible, remember it was possible for me to actually want to kill somebody and if she had stepped forward, we wouldn't be talking right now.
Speaker 1:And this is a mind-blowing memoir of surviving Auschwitz. I can't imagine a more important message from modern times. The book is by Dr Edith Eva Eger and I want to read you part of the introduction because I think sometimes not just the author, not just the person who went through something, the people that know that person oftentimes gives us some wisdom and information about them that maybe even the person who's gone through it and has written the book doesn't quite see themselves that way. So it's nice to know and ask people how they experience you. So here's from the introduction, the forward, I should say, of the Choice. I'm going to read it slowly and I might even repeat a couple of sentences.
Speaker 1:Like the most important books about the Holocaust, dr Eger's reveals both the darkest side of evil and the indomitable strength of the human spirit in the face of evil. But it does something else too. Perhaps the best comparison for Edith's book is to another show, a memoir Victor Frankel's brilliant classic Man's Search for Meaning. Dr Eger shares Frankel's profundity and deep knowledge of humanity and adds the warmth and intimacy of a lifelong clinician. That's right. She's a therapist too. Victor Frankel presented the psychology of the prisoners who were with him in Auschwitz. Dr Eger offers up the psychology of freedom. She was in Auschwitz at 16 years old. I'm going to continue In my own work and I should tell you people, it's important that you know who's writing this about her.
Speaker 1:This is by Philip Zimbardo, phd, and he's with the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 and has written other books himself. Just so you know who's telling us this. In my own work I've long studied the psychological foundations of negative forms of social influence. I've sought to understand the mechanisms by which we conform and obey and stand by in situations where peace and justice can be served only only if we choose another path, if we act heroically. Edie has helped me to discover that heroism heroism is not the province only of those who perform extraordinary deeds or take impulsive risks to protect themselves or others, though Edie has done both of these things.
Speaker 1:Heroism is rather a mindset or an accumulation of our personal and social habits. It's a way of being and it is a special way of viewing ourselves. To be a hero requires taking effective action at crucial junctures in our lives To make an active attempt to address injustice or create positive change in the world. To be a hero requires great moral courage and each of us has an inner hero waiting to be expressed. We are all heroes in training. Our hero training is life, the daily circumstances that invite us to practice the habits of heroism, to commit daily deeds of kindness, to radiate compassion, starting with self-compassion, to bring out the best in others and ourselves, to sustain love even in our most challenging relationships, to celebrate and exercise the power of our mental freedom. Edie is a hero, and doubly so because she teaches each of us to grow and create meaningful and lasting change in ourselves, in our relationships and in our world.
Speaker 1:I don't even have to read the whole book after that. I mean, I can tell you. How is it that I'm offered this book? And not only did Joe tell me about it, he sent me a copy. Now, that's a great friend and that's someone that I'm going to listen to, because if you're going to send me a copy, then I'm really going to read it, I'm going to jump in, never mind, it's called the choice.
Speaker 1:Now I know I know sometimes we can't choose. I know sometimes people choose for us. I know sometimes that I'm incapable of making the choices I would like to make for myself and for others. I remember when I was a young mom and I was still running on the fuel of my life and my choices. It was the adrenaline and the lack of hopefulness that I had deep inside of me that I didn't understand. When I say hopelessness, I think this idea that I didn't really believe or deserve and believe that I deserved to have a better life, that it was ingrained in me through my trauma that I was always supposed to struggle and that I would only struggle so far and I would only get someplace so far. Not only was that not helpful. Obviously and he calls it the negative influences, because sometimes we are a worse negative influence I hid that for most people. What you'll find in the book the choice is that Edie did the same thing. She did not tell everybody about being 16 and in Auschwitz and what happened to her. She kept that secret and that hidden for a long time, and so did I.
Speaker 1:You know it's a interesting 12 step says we're only as sick as our secrets. I don't really like the word sick when we talk about the effects of trauma. I don't like pathologizing the thing. So we, we struggle as much as our secrets. I think of that. We suffer because of our secrets and I can't help but feel and think and act because not just feelings that all of us, if we could, if we could encourage each other to continue to choose. I'm going to say that continue to choose. I don't care how many times you fail, I don't care how many times you don't believe that you deserve it. I don't care anymore. I now an at a point where I get to choose. I get to choose how I'm going to respond. I get to choose how I'm going to deal with a situation, how I'm going to deal with a person, even in the face of possible death.
Speaker 1:I had another experience when I was at Boulder Crest. We had a very, a really struggling young man. He was a combat veteran. He came through Boulder Crest. He had to be paralyzed from the waist down. He had a, went back to his place where he lived. He was struggling with his own mental health. He was struggling with fiancee and we heard that he had a gun, assault rifle and that he was driving up to Boulder Crest and we I had already talked to the fiancee and you know we made a safety plan for her and she was able to leave and that and we just were not sure what kind of mindset this young man was in and I remember him as truly struggling. I also remember him having that.
Speaker 1:You know, we used to talk about the, the two wolves inside, and this idea that you have two wolves inside of you and one is that desire for self-destruction, that side that we want to hurt others and ourselves. We'll call it evil, if you want. And then we have this other wolf inside of us and it's looking for working for struggling for the idea to take care of yourself and others. And the young boy asks the dad well, if you have two wolves inside of us, we're in the having a fight which one's going to win? And of course his answer is the one you feed. And I don't know. I didn't know what this combat veteran was feeding himself.
Speaker 1:I knew that he was in a terribly desperate situation, so I happened to be at the retreat. I was the only one up at the lodge, or on what we would call the main campus, and we had 100 volunteers, 100 wonderful people from a corporation down the hill, around the road and down towards the horse arena and they were doing some wonderful volunteer work down there and I was going to go down and join them. I was just doing something up at the lodge, I don't remember, and I look out and I happened to see a car come up the driveway it's kind of a pretty long driveway and you can kind of see when they come around the corner and I recognized that it was this young combat veterans cheat. I have 100 volunteers down there and I thought of that moment when I was faced with danger from that woman when I was 17 years old. I was different now and I realized I had a choice and that I could handle this in a way that hopefully he was safe, I was saved and those 100 volunteers were safe and I knew he was mad at us. We had already gotten that thing that somehow he believed we had convinced his fans they believe.
Speaker 1:So he pulled up and I decided to greet him. I wasn't going to have him greet me, so I came out of the lodge and I big smile on my face and went right up to the driver's side door of the Jeep and I greeted him and told him, oh happy I was to see him, as I was eyeing the AR-15 right next to him on the seat, and he just glared at me and I said I know you're struggling, I get it. I'm so sorry about what's happening. It's horrible, it's the worst, and I'm so grateful you're here and whatever I can do to help right now, right this minute. And he asked if he could see the executive director and I said he wasn't here. I was the only one here. Now, of course that was a lie and I've told my grandson many times tell the truth, Always tell the truth, except you have two times, you don't have to. And he said what's that, jima? And I said to save your life for the life of others.
Speaker 1:So, not knowing exactly the I would say the intensity of this young man's fear and sadness that turns to rage and murder, I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to help him go to a place that was safe and to get some time. I knew that he'd just driven all the way up from North Carolina to Virginia. So I suggested look he's not here, I will let him know you're here. Here's what I suggest you do Go down into the town and get a hotel room and freshen up, take a nap, do whatever you can do, do some deep breathing. And I promised you, you have my phone number and I will contact the executive director and let him know that you're here. I didn't say anything else about what I would do or wouldn't do, because I really felt I wanted to be as honest as I could under these circumstances and for some reason he I don't know if it was just how much I was authentic that I really meant that I wanted him to go and take some time and rest up and take some deep breaths.
Speaker 1:We had had a wonderful relationship when he was at the retreat. I remember watching him climb a rock wall, one of those rock climbing walls, and he's paralyzed from the waist down and he wheeled his chair up to it and grabbed onto those rock holdings and just climbed up with just his arms. I remember how he had been in our track chair and he had gone into the pasture and led one of the horses while he was in the track chair. So I remembered things about him that were also that goodness, that struggle, that wolf, that wolf that was struggling and trying and wanting to be good. So, for whatever reason he did it. He said okay, and I could see his face often, I could see his body soften and I watched him as he drove out of the driveway and if he had taken a right he would have gone down into the arena area of the horse pasture where 100 people were working, and he didn't. He took a left and he went out and I did call the executive director and he did call him and we were able to help this young man get back into his heart and his way of being that he deserved to be.
Speaker 1:That was my choice and I've had some other choices in my life recently where I have to make choices for me, not just for others, and, as you know, I'm a therapist, so I sit down a lot with people or walk with them or whatever we're doing, or be in the gym together at the boxing gym and we talk a lot about choices and I think making a choice and how you make a choice is a practice. It's a wellness practice. I think that in my training as a child. It was so chaotic, it was so dangerous, it was so filled with crisis after crisis that I think I did not know how to make a choice. I did not understand what I needed as a foundation to make better choices for me and for others, and I think that part of the healing for all of us is to slow down, take some deep breaths and then really understand how we deserve to make heroic choices.
Speaker 1:When I was talking about this book yesterday at the treatment center that I consult with one of the young men who is there for addiction and he battled cancer stage four cancer for many years. In fact, he had to drive up six hours go get a test while he was at the treatment center to make sure that he's still in remission. He's been in remission for six months. And when I said that they were all heroes as well, after I read this about what the new definition of hero is, he said no, no, no, no. I'm not a hero. I didn't do anything. I didn't carry people on my back from a burning building. I don't agree with this. Those are people that do like even this woman, they do like unbelievable things and all that. And I said wait, whoa, whoa, you just battled stage four cancer to live so that you could help take care of your children. But that's an unbelievable heroic act to not give up, to fight hard, to be there in the face of horrific pain and discomfort. How is that not heroic and a choice? And I watched him look at me and go I want to push back, I'm not. And then I'm standing by the whiteboard, by the way, because we're writing down these things and I said so again, tell me what are some of the heroic choices that you've made? That? And he said fighting cancer. We got to agree on that.
Speaker 1:I remember my grandson making heroic choices. Sometimes a heroic choice is to walk away. Sometimes a heroic choice is to give up something. Sometimes a heroic choice is telling your secret, and that's what this woman did. She tried to hide it for years, she tried to ignore it, she tried to help other people and then she decided to do the most heroic thing, which was not just survive some of the most unbelievable things a 16-year-old, whatever have to survive. It was telling the story, it was sharing the story, it was making the choice to be authentic and honest and I'm eternally grateful.
Speaker 1:I have one more book in my life that I now can say and has helped me a lot, and I'm sharing it with you, and I so appreciate that you listened to this podcast in order to create the person you deserve to be and the life you deserve to live. That's what you get to do, that's our choice every day. We won't do it perfectly, and yet you'll have another choice, and even when I haven't got any more choices, or the last choice is coming, which is how I leave this earth. I may not know when that's going to happen. I may not know how it's going to happen. It may be an accident.
Speaker 1:I will tell you this, though, if it happened, if I stopped this podcast and I'd keel over, I can honestly tell you that my family, the people I love, the people I care about, there won't be one that will question how much I appreciate them, because that's the greatest choice I have is to show, share and give appreciation and let people know how much they are important to me and affect me.
Speaker 1:Now, that's it. That's one choice I make every day, and when you have an 18-year-old grandson that won't get off the phone or leave the house without saying I love you, g-mom, I love you, mom man. We should pay more attention to that wonderful generation that we would love to criticize so much because they're so much on their phones, and I can only tell you that I'm so grateful for the younger generation and I'm so grateful for the wisdom keepers For all of you that are coming into your elderhood. I hope that you'll join me in being a wise-ass elder, and certainly I hope that you will make the choice to get the book the Choice Until next time. Be crazy well, and be your best self. That's what Calvin Love shares in our theme song Be your best self, make the best choices you can. All right, have a great week, you all.