Episode 59: Shelley Smartly on Creativity

Shelley Smartly is the Creator/Writer/Actor of the award-winning comedy TV series, THE SMARTLYS (streaming worldwide on Tubi and Plex TV, etc). She is also a 73-year-old arthritic widow who became a stand-up comedian at 69. Further, she retired as Founder and President of the nonprofit International Scleroderma Network last year. She had thousands of web pages in 23 languages, support forums, and published three books.

Shelley's humor and creativity are sure to inspire you in this episode!
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Transcript

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Blake Suzelis: Welcome back to the live lucky podcast! Thanks so much for tuning in today. We have Shelley smartly joining us and just gracing us with her presence. We're so just so appreciating, appreciative of having her here. But she's a creator, writer, actor of an award winning TV series. The smart lease

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Blake Suzelis: She was the founder and president of the nonprofit international network, an author of 3 books. and so today she is gonna talk to us a little bit about that, and somebody from her personal journey, of being a 73 year old arthritic woman who started stand up

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Blake Suzelis: comedy at the age of 69. This is amazing. I can't wait to hear your story today. Shelly.

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Blake Suzelis: Yeah, thank you, Blake. That was a wonderful introduction. I really appreciate it.

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Blake Suzelis: I mean, I can't believe starting. Stand up comedy at 69, and then doing all these other things I don't know which actually came first. But if you could just kind of share with us a little bit about your story who you are, how all that kind of came to be. I i'm all the

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Shelley Smartly: well. I think it's interesting that the name of your podcast is the the live lucky podcast. and I consider myself to be extremely lucky, and the opening line of our show. The smartly's Eric says we're the luckiest couple in the world.

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Shelley Smartly: I don't think there are very many shows that start off that way. but it's usually a parent dying right? Exactly. but I think that my luck or our luck was born out of an awful lot of tragedy and adverse experiences in life, and I think some people think that living lucky means.

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Shelley Smartly: you know, just happiness and joy rings down upon you every day, and your life is perfect, and you tiptoe through the tulips. And that's look, you know, and and so you know I show Eric and I win an imaginary 300 million dollars.

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Shelley Smartly: and we retire as King and Queen of the Minnesota Renaissance Fair.

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Shelley Smartly: and we move to La Hoya, California. We buy a luxury, beachfront complex where our entire family lives, and you think that this will be wonderful. You won 300 million right? I mean.

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can life get You're living on the beach and the most beautiful climate in the world.

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Shelley Smartly: but our family all decides that they're going to part us from our money

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Shelley Smartly: by hook or by crook. And so what you might think is lucky actually turns into a continuing sort of murder mystery in our comedy show.

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Shelley Smartly: which shows you you kind of the downside of all this good luck. but my luck was actually born of really severe illness.

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Shelley Smartly: When I was in my mid forties I was told that I had

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Shelley Smartly: a terminal disease, that there was no treatment and no cure, and then I had 3 to 5 years left to live. So that was this kind of go up snacking, and and if that's a what, not a wake up call I don't know what is

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Shelley Smartly: yeah and so the the doctor said I should put my affairs in order, so I I was wishing that I had some affairs. But

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Shelley Smartly: you wish you'd had all the fun you you could so but so I took my affairs in order. You know I plan my funeral, and and made sure that that was all. Okay, and then I set a pop thing about thinking.

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Shelley Smartly: What is it that I can improve in the world? What is it I can do? How can I help with? You know the remaining time and energy that I have, which was extremely little? I was bedridden in a in a wheelchair for a year.

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Shelley Smartly: and I suffered a 35 point IQ loss at the same time. So I was like, Whoa, you know Well, when life kind of put the breaks on me during the year that I was bedridden.

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Shelley Smartly: I

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Shelley Smartly: didn't have anything else to do. So I made a list of 100 things that I could do in bed.

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Blake Suzelis: No cute. That's amazing, you know, when you put your mind to creating your own luck.

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Shelley Smartly: It is amazing what you can do with nothing. and I was not even able to tolerate listening to music or watching the TV.

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Shelley Smartly: So I mean I really had time to fill being in bed.

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Shelley Smartly: so one of the things on my list was that I could write a book

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Shelley Smartly: well, but I had that 35 point IQ. Us going on. I couldn't spell for beings anymore, but on the positive side I could write at the fifth grade level, and that's the level of which romance novels are written. So I thought.

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Shelley Smartly: Give me a piece of paper, give me a pencil and and and I sat in that by candlelight, and I rode out a a romance novel.

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Shelley Smartly: And so that's it. Several things one is it? It gave me a a challenge

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Shelley Smartly: rather than just sitting there. I could have just been laying there 24 h a day, thinking, oh, my God, I am so sick! Life sucks. Everything's over, you know.

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Shelley Smartly: or I could wake up in my imaginary world, you know, dealing with these characters, and the trouble that I was getting them into in the book and getting them out of and

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Shelley Smartly: look forward to live. Have something to look forward to every day.

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Shelley Smartly: And so, when you don't have something to look forward to in your life. You can create your thing to look forward to.

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Shelley Smartly: and at the end of that year I I got better.

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Shelley Smartly: and not all better, but enough better. So I wasn't 1024 h a day, and I put the book on the shelf

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Shelley Smartly: and forgot about it. And now after we developed the first season of the smart lease our director and producer read that book that I shelved over 25 years ago, and he absolutely loves it. And we're going to be making him a movie or a mini series out of the book.

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Shelley Smartly: Yeah, you really are the luckiest person in the world. Number one. I I live through all that. But another way in which I live through it, was obviously I found it the nonprofit agency

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Shelley Smartly: that didn't happen overnight.

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Shelley Smartly: I They had a terrible time finding as clear as my support group

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Shelley Smartly: the Internet was very new at the time, and and I looked for months trying to find a square from a support group near me.

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Shelley Smartly: and finally I found one. It was just across the street from me, which was amazing, especially for a very rare disease. You know there are very many support groups around for very rare diseases.

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Shelley Smartly: And so when I got to the meeting, I, the first thing I said was, you guys should have a web page, because it was really really hard to.

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Shelley Smartly: and they said, that's a great idea. Why, don't you do it? No, I I it was already out of the point when I was out of the wheelchair, so I couldn't use quite that excuse anymore. But.

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Shelley Smartly: I still did have the cognitive loss to deal with, and it took me 6 months to learn how to make my very first hyperlink

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Shelley Smartly: now back, then, the Internet was new, and you had to learn the HTML, and you had to code by hand, and so I did have some excuses, but not many for it to take 6 months.

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Shelley Smartly: but once I learned how to make a link. Then I I went around, and I created a web page called Scler Derma, from a to Z, and on one page I covered everything in the world that somebody should know about this rare disease called that can affect virtually every single part of the body.

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Shelley Smartly: and

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Shelley Smartly: it attracted a lot of attention from medical professionals all around the world.

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Shelley Smartly: because I was focusing only on quality medical information. You know things that could be proven. There were a lot of

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Shelley Smartly: unproven recommendations for spare term at the time, many of them which turned out to be

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Shelley Smartly: not good. It could hasten your death, you know, rather than prolong your life.

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Shelley Smartly: And 4 years later that

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Shelley Smartly: website was 1,500 pages in 22 languages.

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Shelley Smartly: We had a Medical Advisory Board from around the world.

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Shelley Smartly: we for and at that point we form the nonprofit agency called the International Square Drama Network.

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Shelley Smartly: So what I learned through there the context I made the people I made what my knowledge that I gained about square derma and the treatments for various symptoms.

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Shelley Smartly: You know, if you adequately treat a lot of symptoms for some diseases, you can prolong your life.

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Shelley Smartly: and if you have the confidence that you're not anxious or depressed about it.

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Shelley Smartly: and and find a community of like-minded people to support you.

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Shelley Smartly: That also, I believe, come from long your life.

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Blake Suzelis: And obviously as you see, i'm one of the lucky ones. I'm. Still here today.

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Blake Suzelis: No, actually there's a lot I can still do. I can even write a book.

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Blake Suzelis: Most people whose Iqs are normal and have normal abilities that's daunting to them. And you stepped into that. And I just this is amazing. Yeah.

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Shelley Smartly: Well, part of it is accepting where you are accepting more. You know that phase of life that you're in, I mean.

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Shelley Smartly: we. We all go through many different phases in life. None of us get out of it alive. and a a big part of my journey with illness was getting over the self pity. And so what I did to handle. That was. I created the world's first virtual pity party.

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Shelley Smartly: and I made a webpage with songs about it, and feeling sorry for me, and invited people to send in their stories of how horribly sorry they felt for themselves. And we just, you know we we had a meditation for depression. If you weren't depressed enough to to join

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Shelley Smartly: the pity party. You know you. You could meditate on these black thoughts, you know, come down there to our level, properly full of pity, and that was that was taking humor and using it to tackle a very serious

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Shelley Smartly: aspect of of illness and of life. We all tend to feel sorry for ourselves. It's a human condition, but the sooner that we can face it and laugh at it and give it away the better off we are, and so is everybody else around us, too.

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Blake Suzelis: erez agmoni. Absolutely well, I mean you're saying there's 2 huge pieces to your journey that has allowed you to be lucky and creating that luck. I'm. Hearing Humor is a big part of this, but also creativity one

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Blake Suzelis: and just really becoming a Creator, right? whether that's writing a book or writing a a TV series or creating a web page, or I mean like, but all of this creativity and humor. I'm also hearing those are other keys that really helped you in your journey.

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Shelley Smartly: absolutely, and and I I have. I I think it's also a blessing if we take everything in our life and treat it as always the blessing, and then look at it and see where is the blessing in that, because you can see something like oh, my gosh! I have a terminal disease that's horrible! that's a judgment call

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Shelley Smartly: that's that's not necessarily horrible. You know, maybe the next life, whatever it is, is better than this life. You know that we don't have to put our judgment on it. But.

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Shelley Smartly: I just lost my train of thought completely. Well, I was actually just gonna add. So I don't think you probably know this about me. But about a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with leukemia. So again something very chronic there.

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Blake Suzelis: But at the same time I've also felt, and it's almost as if i'm hearing a parallel here. That that was

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Blake Suzelis: It's been one of the most helpful things to help me to grow and evolve as a as a human to really set up the assign the things that

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Blake Suzelis: maybe I prioritize that maybe didn't need to be a priority, and so I was able to re prioritize and learn new things, and grow in new ways that I never would have done. I don't know if that's been part of your journey. But I mean my goodness, what that's what I'm Hearing

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Shelley Smartly: definitely. I I consider it to be a blessing to have kind of this wake up. Call that, hey? Life is limited. You will not be here forever.

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Shelley Smartly: and the more seriously the people that we take things like that.

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Shelley Smartly: I I think it's a a fortunate thing. I I think that I was very, very blessed by sort of that. That wake up. Call that, hey? There's more to life than you know, and just

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Shelley Smartly: this other stuff. And

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Shelley Smartly: if that sense of urgency

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Shelley Smartly: that I think is lacking in a lot of lives when your life is going along normally, and everything is okay, and the sun is shining every day, and you know life is fine, and you can be lolled into inactivity, or or not challenging yourself, or finding goals, or

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Shelley Smartly: really looking at how it is you want to contribute to the world. What message do you want to leave behind.

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Shelley Smartly: I You know I'm sorry that you have leukemia. I'm glad that you had a wake up. Call: yeah, I'm: okay, yeah.

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Shelley Smartly: And so, and my health did not relent over the years it continued to get.

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Shelley Smartly: you know, go from bad to worse sometimes.

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Shelley Smartly: At the same time. My late husband was on oxygen for 10 years, and then had a lung transplant.

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Shelley Smartly: So that was an awful lot to cope with.

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Shelley Smartly: you know, on on top of my own illness and running the nonprofit agency.

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Shelley Smartly: So after he had his lung transplant, we moved from Minnesota

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Shelley Smartly: 2 beautiful San Diego.

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Shelley Smartly: 2 little kids in a candy shop, I tell you, with this beautiful weather, and and he just had the time of his life

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Shelley Smartly: which was fantastic. Because yeah, I hate to bring up this word again. But he then got leukemia

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Shelley Smartly: Which was the side effect of the transplant medications, and and he passed away from that. And so

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Shelley Smartly: when he passed away, I knew that I could survive because i'd been through an awful lot already.

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Shelley Smartly: but only if I could laugh again.

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Shelley Smartly: because my life has been too serious for too long.

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Shelley Smartly: And so, 2 weeks after he passed away, I went to my very first stand up Comedy show.

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Shelley Smartly: which is a very, very odd thing for a widow to do. But I I think the message in that is, you know, when you, when you know what it is you need. You need to seek it out.

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Shelley Smartly: and if you need to laugh as a widow or as a person in a bad situation. You need to seek out a laughter.

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Shelley Smartly: and and I did, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Stand up, comedy. Then I was able to lash

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Shelley Smartly: and accepted the fact that it was okay to laugh, Even if you're a widow, Even if you're chronically ill, no matter what's going on in your life, the more you can laugh the better.

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Shelley Smartly: And I was enthralled by the comedians and their stories, and there's no comedian on earth that didn't get there

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Shelley Smartly: without sadness or tragedy affecting them.

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Shelley Smartly: And that's the primary motivation Most comedians is dealing with something very adverse that's gone on in their life

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Shelley Smartly: and trying to transform that into something that will brighten the world.

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Blake Suzelis: Hmm.

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Blake Suzelis: That that transmutation that's a beautiful process there.

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Shelley Smartly: and so for the next several years I continued going to stand up comedy nearly every night of the week.

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Shelley Smartly: because it was good for me. It was healthy, i'm naturally introverted, so it's not what I wanted to do.

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Shelley Smartly: but that's an important thing for us. Introverts is to force ourselves into circumstances where we can be around other people.

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Shelley Smartly: especially when we're we need to heal from something.

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Blake Suzelis: Hmm.

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Blake Suzelis: It's too easy to give you. And then just sit there at home, and you know, read a book, or watch TV, or something like that.

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Blake Suzelis: do something different than all of those things, you know. Figure out what my body what I need, and then just do it regardless of any should, and and comedy wasn't. The only thing I did at the time. One of the things that I realized was that people who had dogs had a better social life than I did.

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Shelley Smartly: because they were out walking their dog, and they got to meet other dog owners in the neighborhood, and things like that, and I thought well, my cat wouldn't like it very much if I took up with the dog.

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so I did the next best thing.

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Shelley Smartly: and I put a sign out on my patio, saying, Free treat for neighborhood dogs who do tricks.

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Shelley Smartly: and so then, when the neighborhood dogs came by to get their treat, I would run out and have them do a trick and give them the treat, and they could help themselves if I wasn't there. But

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Shelley Smartly: that way I got to meet a whole lot of my neighbors and expand my social life rather than just saying, oh, I only have a cat. I can't get out there. I don't have a dog. I can't go for a walk. All those dog people are lucky.

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Blake Suzelis: Yeah, it's like you're finding creative ways to get your needs met it. It's very out of the box. And again, this kind of points right back to that that for you. It seems very innate that creativity, that just kind of flows out of you that's so cool

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Shelley Smartly: but you but well, it it's nice to say it flows out of me. I think it's also a matter of really listening to your intuition really listening to your gut.

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Shelley Smartly: I think we all have this small little voice saying something that

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Shelley Smartly: we feel inspired to do, or or that we should do, or

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Shelley Smartly: it is not a Sh. I don't think following should is a very good idea. But

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Shelley Smartly: inspiration. One: yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. There is this little small voice that we all have, whether it's saying that you know you should get up and go for a walk right now. Some sunshine would be good for you. Well, we can listen to that voice, or we can tune it out

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Shelley Smartly: and

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Shelley Smartly: I think through recovering from chronic illness, and i'm not recovered yet, but maybe living with it, would be the crime, the proper word.

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Shelley Smartly: You have to learn how to be in tune with your body

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Shelley Smartly: and with what it needs, whether it needs rest or whether it needs nutrition, or whether you need sunshine, or whether you need company.

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Shelley Smartly: in order to heal, you have to be in touch. And I think that being in touch or making myself get in touch with myself through illness is what is actually help me

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Shelley Smartly: into the creative field and into creating that the TV series today.

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Blake Suzelis: Yeah.

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Blake Suzelis: And I'm: curious for your own personal journey. And I've talked to a lot of other people, but really separating their identity

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Blake Suzelis: from the illness, or whatever them I look like. And and for me that's even kind of the point of I am not my body.

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Shelley Smartly: you know. I'm just it's the vehicle i'm driving around. But I am not my body, and that's really helped me. I'm just curious like your thoughts on that

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Shelley Smartly: anytime anybody ever asked me how I was, and I they still do this. I say that i'm dynamite, and I just love. It brightens me up. It gives me energy because the other person energy, you know, it gets us on a

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Shelley Smartly: out of any kind of negative track that we might be on, and what I felt really bad about when I got sick was I felt like I didn't feel entitled to tell people that I was dynamite anymore. You know it felt like this great, big, huge lie.

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Shelley Smartly: but I decided to claim it anyway.

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Shelley Smartly: and I would even tell my doctors. I'm dynamite get over it, you know, with me, but i'm tied to my.

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Shelley Smartly: That's right. I also felt I was an entrepreneur, and I, at the time when I became very seriously ill. I owned a desktop publishing business.

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Shelley Smartly: and which I had to close.

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Shelley Smartly: you know, with my cognitive issues.

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Shelley Smartly: but I felt so deprived of an identity down

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Shelley Smartly: that. What I did was.

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Shelley Smartly: I decided. Okay, if I can't do anything at all, I can just lay here in bed I can identify myself myself. I needed an identity, so I actually made business cards

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Shelley Smartly: it, said Shelly. Blah blah blah

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Shelley Smartly: artist.

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Shelley Smartly: I didn't have to say what kind of an artist I was. I didn't know what kind of art I did. It didn't even matter.

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Shelley Smartly: But I had a card that I could give to people. They said, Hello! How are you? Who are you? What do you do? I can say Here I am.

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and I didn't have to talk about being sick.

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Blake Suzelis: Yes, yes.

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Blake Suzelis: well, and i'm also hearing it. You know you're kind of going to instead of looking at the question of what's not possible, and all the what can't I do? I'm hearing full go like what is possible? I'm going to look at that question and the answer to that question. What can I do.

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Shelley Smartly: and that is absolutely the only question for any of us in life. And that's why I consider my limitations, or what people will call a limitation to be another form of a blessing.

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Shelley Smartly: because it's steering you away from what you can't do

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Shelley Smartly: into what you can do, and it isn't the only thing that matters at any moment in our life. What it is we can do at that moment.

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Yeah.

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yeah.

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Blake Suzelis: my goodness so you've just given us so much to think about, and so much inspiration and hope for what is possible. I mean, like all all the things that you were working through and overcoming. And just with a smile and laughter and creativity, I mean, like

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Blake Suzelis: truly, are a lucky and inspiring person and and I know we're just about ready to close it out here. But is there any last things that you would want to share with the listeners today?

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Shelley Smartly: yes, When I became a stand up comedian at 69 I was facing one of my biggest fears in life, which was not only public speaking, but standing up on the stage and trying to make people laugh. I had to watch stand up comedians every day for 4 years.

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and I was terrified of ever doing anything like that.

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Shelley Smartly: and I think it's the best thing that I've ever done in my life was facing that fear, and that

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Shelley Smartly: dramatically and quickly led to me creating the television show called the Smarties.

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Shelley Smartly: which

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that wasn't

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Shelley Smartly: I I had no training or background in doing TV shows so to if you can imagine creating, writing and performing and developing an entire season of a TV show, launching it and having it win over a dozen international film awards. Within a few months

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Shelley Smartly: I mean Eric worldwide when you're 73 years old.

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Shelley Smartly: It's just astounding and we're so blessed. Now we're

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Shelley Smartly: 85% done with production of season. 2 of the smart lease we've launched as a podcast. we're going to be launching a musical stage production for the Smartlys, and Of course we have the movie, and in process.

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Shelley Smartly: So my life is entirely focused on fun, exciting and challenging things. Now.

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Shelley Smartly: that sounds like a lucky life. Yeah, but I it it all happen from where you have to be in touch with myself, following myself and looking what I can do, not what I can't do. And

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Shelley Smartly: and it's okay to have limitations. It's okay to have bad things in your life. I I don't like the idea of defining luck as being

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Shelley Smartly: a perfect life. It's it's what you perfectly make out of life.

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Blake Suzelis: That's right. Yeah. And I abolished the work perfect from my vocabulary. It's it doesn't even I got it perfect as a very crazy making word.

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Blake Suzelis: Well, if if someone wanted to find your show, or just, you know, find your work like, how would they do that?

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Shelley Smartly: we have a website called the smartlys.com. That's smart Lys

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Shelley Smartly: and you always put the the in front of it, and you can Google us. We're on to be TV. We're on flex TV. We're on

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Shelley Smartly: Well, we're on pizzas TV. We're and we're available for rent on exposure plus TV plus we're a podcast on all your major podcast channels. It's an audio track of our TV show, which is

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Shelley Smartly: hilarious. That's what the reviewers say, not me. They say it's hilarious, and we have just the most marvelous cast and a really fun story to tell.

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Shelley Smartly: We're going to be creating 8 seasons of the smart lease, and and we hope you join us.

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Blake Suzelis: Well, silly thanks again for coming, and everybody listening. Just thanks for tuning in here, and we're just going to continue to learn how to be living Lucky More next time. Have a great day, everybody.

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Shelley Smartly: Thank you, Blake.