Speaker 1: We got to think about our thinking and pay attention
Speaker 1: what we're paying attention to, because any behavior you pay
Speaker 1: attention to, you reinforced that behavior. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed are
Speaker 1: good Wolf, Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Dr Edith Egger, a Holocaust survivor who went
Speaker 1: on to graduate with a PhD from the University of
Speaker 1: Texas and became an eminent psychologist. Today, Edith maintains a
Speaker 1: busy clinical practice and lectures around the world. Today, Edith
Speaker 1: and Eric discussed her book The Gift Twelve Lessons to
Speaker 1: Save your Life. Hello, Dr Eager, Welcome to the show. Hello,
Speaker 1: I am really honored to have you on today and
Speaker 1: it is such a treat to get a chance to
Speaker 1: talk with you. Thank you. In a moment, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about your book called The Gift, but before
Speaker 1: we do that, there's a parable we read at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the show, and I'd like to ask you
Speaker 1: for your thoughts on it. In life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: wolf that wins is the one that we feed. So
Speaker 1: I'd like to start off by asking you what that
Speaker 1: parable means to you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do. The work I do is practical psychology,
Speaker 1: and those two are really fitting me beautifully because what
Speaker 1: we think we create and what we want to recognize
Speaker 1: that what we pay attention to. We have to be
Speaker 1: careful and study our thinking and what we're paying attention to,
Speaker 1: because when we have a goal, we want to be
Speaker 1: sure that what we focus on and pay attention to
Speaker 1: will be in alignment to get us closer to the goal.
Speaker 1: So I like to call it the error that I
Speaker 1: follow and to find always the way I think and
Speaker 1: find a gift in everything. But then I also look
Speaker 1: at things in terms of is it rational or irrational?
Speaker 1: Is this going to empower me for five minutes? And
Speaker 1: then I pay a whole price for it all my life.
Speaker 1: Like if I go cheat on my wife, okay, because
Speaker 1: it's not the sex, it's some dishonoring my wife. So
Speaker 1: I think we got to think about our thinking and
Speaker 1: pay attention what we're paying attention to, because any behavior
Speaker 1: you pay attention to, you reinforced that behavior. So it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful way for us to start. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful way to start. And it's very important to think
Speaker 1: about you're thinking before you say anything, and possibly ask
Speaker 1: yourself is it kind? Is it very important? At ninety three,
Speaker 1: I'm very very much thinking before I opened my mouth,
Speaker 1: and uh, I want to say something hopefully that is
Speaker 1: kind and it is necessary. Thank you. That's a beautiful
Speaker 1: way to start. So I think in order to frame
Speaker 1: up your life and your work, we need to sort
Speaker 1: of go back to your origin story, which is not
Speaker 1: a very pleasant one. Right, you are a Holocaust survivor,
Speaker 1: and whatever amount of that you feel like you want
Speaker 1: to share that would be useful for the audience. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend a ton of time there because
Speaker 1: I really want to focus on the amazing work you've
Speaker 1: done in creating your approach that you're calling practical psychology.
Speaker 1: I want to spend a lot of time there, but
Speaker 1: I do feel like it's important to give listeners a
Speaker 1: little backstory, So I'll leave it to you how much
Speaker 1: you want to talk about there, and then we'll move
Speaker 1: into your work and your psychology. Good. That's good. What
Speaker 1: I am talking to you about is that you told
Speaker 1: me I'm a Holocaust survivor, and I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: that it's not my identity. I am a human being
Speaker 1: who went through an experience. I refuse to be a victim.
Speaker 1: It's not who I am is what was done to me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a big difference because in some
Speaker 1: ways in history, we are all victims of victims. So
Speaker 1: that's why when I ask a child, why do you
Speaker 1: do that? A child would say, because I feel like it.
Speaker 1: Children don't care about consequences. As an adult, I still
Speaker 1: feel like it, but I don't act upon it unless
Speaker 1: it is in my best interest. So you know, you
Speaker 1: are brilliantly putting that wolf story beautifully so important because
Speaker 1: it's not what happens is the way we look at it.
Speaker 1: When I go to church, who is the little Jewish Boy?
Speaker 1: I talk about Jesus? Jesus and Jesus told us three
Speaker 1: things that I relate to love thy neighbor as thyself.
Speaker 1: What that prophet is telling us that you cannot give
Speaker 1: what you don't have. If you don't love you, You know,
Speaker 1: how can you love others everything you start with you?
Speaker 1: You're born alone, you die alone. There is something between
Speaker 1: birth and that cold life. Do you live a lifestyle
Speaker 1: or at that style? If I live a love style,
Speaker 1: I feed myself, give with good things, all right it
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have a doughnut for breakfast with coal.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I ask people to be good
Speaker 1: parents to themselves. I think you're saving the world with
Speaker 1: your world. You may not think it, but you want
Speaker 1: to teach from me that if you wait for someone
Speaker 1: else to make you happy, you're never gonna be happy.
Speaker 1: And in Auschwitz. Nothing was coming from the outside, so
Speaker 1: it was an opportunity for discovering the inner strength that
Speaker 1: they could put me in a gas chamber in a minute,
Speaker 1: just like now, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It's a very hard phrase to be in a limbo.
Speaker 1: But then I am also very much aware as to
Speaker 1: short term hiddenism or long term hiddenism. So when you ask,
Speaker 1: as I told you as at the child doesn't care.
Speaker 1: Even if I am diabetes, it doesn't matter. If I
Speaker 1: like the Hungarian chocolate cake, I'm gonna eat. And that
Speaker 1: voice is in me on my life because it's called temptation,
Speaker 1: and God gave us temptation. Why so I can practice
Speaker 1: the freedom of joy as an adult. I still feel
Speaker 1: like it, but it's up to me whether I act
Speaker 1: upon it or not. See, I had a woman calling
Speaker 1: me five o'clock in the morning as sudden girl. She
Speaker 1: called herself a sudden beauty and she's crying. Edy. I
Speaker 1: am in this guy's bed. I went to the bar
Speaker 1: and I pucked up this guy and I mean this bad.
Speaker 1: You know it wasn't me. I very quietly said, who
Speaker 1: was it? You know? The devil got into me, she
Speaker 1: tells me in a sudden accent. So freedom comes with responsibility.
Speaker 1: Freedom without responsibilities energy, And that's why I beg don't
Speaker 1: spoil your children, because they were the first one to die.
Speaker 1: It's very important for you to listen to your self
Speaker 1: dialogue early in the morning. So when I go to church,
Speaker 1: I listened to that the secondly. But I really admire
Speaker 1: that he was able to meet people where they are,
Speaker 1: And that's why I never ask people how are you?
Speaker 1: Those are social noises and people lie if you ask
Speaker 1: a question, how are you fine. I was just saying
Speaker 1: in my former interview that I was teaching. I was
Speaker 1: professor of psychology, and my students said that in America
Speaker 1: people are hearing, but they're not listening. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's test it. Tomorrow morning. When you pick up your book,
Speaker 1: someone is gonna say hi to you, and very quietly
Speaker 1: you say my mother died this morning. Sure enough, he
Speaker 1: comes back, said, I did what you told me, and
Speaker 1: I told him to say my mother died this morning,
Speaker 1: and he said, great, I'll see you this afternoon. People
Speaker 1: are hearing, but they're not listening. I think it's very
Speaker 1: important for you to listen to that voice. But most
Speaker 1: of all, I think what is most important that Jesus said,
Speaker 1: turned the other cheek, And he didn't say go back
Speaker 1: and do the same thing over and over again and
Speaker 1: expect different results, you know, which is the definition of
Speaker 1: insanity by Einstein. Thank God that little joke came to
Speaker 1: America and change world word too. So I think when
Speaker 1: he said turned the other cheek, he said, look at
Speaker 1: the same thing from a different perspective. See, you and
Speaker 1: I are good optomologist. We look at everything for an
Speaker 1: opportunity for discovery, not recovery. And that's how I talk
Speaker 1: about Auschwitz and the discovery of my inner resources, and
Speaker 1: not to allow anybody get my soul. They could throw
Speaker 1: me in a gash chamber any minute. I didn't know
Speaker 1: whether I take a shower, whether wouter or gas is
Speaker 1: going to come out. I didn't know four o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, when I stood in line they were counting head.
Speaker 1: I didn't know whether I end up in a gash
Speaker 1: chamber or not. And this is where we are now
Speaker 1: with the COVID. We don't know, we know that, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Really, we don't have any gethering tea. We
Speaker 1: don't have any certainty. I think we have probability, which
Speaker 1: one I feed because all people who come to me
Speaker 1: are hungry. They either have something that they don't want,
Speaker 1: or they want something what they don't have. People are hungry.
Speaker 1: That's why diagnosis hungry for affection, hungry for attention, hungry
Speaker 1: for approval. You've got to give up your need for
Speaker 1: approval of others. If you want to be free. You
Speaker 1: gotta give up the need to please anyone all the time.
Speaker 1: And most of all, you give up being a perfectionist.
Speaker 1: When you are a perfectionist, you procrastinate. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your book, The Gift. In it,
Speaker 1: you talk about a bunch of different prisons, so you're
Speaker 1: using the allergy obviously, of you said it earlier. The
Speaker 1: Nazis could put you in prison, but they couldn't take
Speaker 1: away your freedom. And you talk about a lot of
Speaker 1: the prisons that we put ourselves in. I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: we just go through and explore a few of the
Speaker 1: different ones that you have, and I thought we'd start
Speaker 1: with the first one. You sort of touched on it
Speaker 1: a little bit, but you call it the prison of victimhood,
Speaker 1: and you say suffering is universal, but victimhood is optional.
Speaker 1: And then you also have a question that is so
Speaker 1: good you say ask what now instead of why me?
Speaker 1: That's right, and unfortunately I talk about the prison in
Speaker 1: our own minds. And it reminds me that I graduated
Speaker 1: cum laudn and I was told to pick up my
Speaker 1: cap and gun and meet the people at this and
Speaker 1: this and this place. And I never showed up for
Speaker 1: my graduation because I told my itself I don't deserve
Speaker 1: because they are dead. That's the prison that I created
Speaker 1: in my own mind and didn't even give myself permission.
Speaker 1: That's a good word to really go and celebrate that.
Speaker 1: I worked so hard. You know, I never finished high school.
Speaker 1: I begged the university to take me in on probation
Speaker 1: in January, and I made the this list and they
Speaker 1: forgot about me. And I worked so hard because I
Speaker 1: didn't speak English well, and I put things down in
Speaker 1: Hungary and a lot of the times and the basketball
Speaker 1: players who were told tal tal came to me because
Speaker 1: I sat in the first row so I can see
Speaker 1: the professor's throat. They wanted my notes and I told
Speaker 1: them it's Hungary. You see, you have to want to
Speaker 1: badly enough. You have to want to be a survivor.
Speaker 1: You have to want to recognize that life is difficult.
Speaker 1: There is no guarantee, there is no certainty of any guide.
Speaker 1: Marriage is the hardest thing. You enter into to empower
Speaker 1: each other with your differences. Rather than waiting with an
Speaker 1: empty cup, somebody to fill my cup and make me happy.
Speaker 1: It's not working that way. Self love, your self care,
Speaker 1: it's not narcissistic. It takes adults to get married. I
Speaker 1: beg young people to stay in school and don't mess
Speaker 1: with your brain. Don't smoke pot because it interferes with
Speaker 1: the natural growth of your brain. That takes twenty five years.
Speaker 1: So don't care your wonderful briands, and become a good
Speaker 1: parent to you. So I preach a little bit, because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm ninety three years old. I've been there,
Speaker 1: done that, and it's very important to revisit the places
Speaker 1: where we've been. And that's a work I do. I
Speaker 1: hold your precious and and we could go back to
Speaker 1: your bedroom when you were a little boy. And I
Speaker 1: remember I had a nine year old boy who had
Speaker 1: a dog, and the dog died and the boy died
Speaker 1: with that just about emotionally, didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: So he cried, and they cried, and father came in
Speaker 1: and yeared at the boy. We don't cry in this family,
Speaker 1: and grabbed the boy and took him to a pet
Speaker 1: shop and both a new puppy. And he said to me,
Speaker 1: Dr Eager, I'm fifty six years old and I have
Speaker 1: yet to shed a tear since some nine years old.
Speaker 1: See what comes out to our what it doesn't make
Speaker 1: us ill. Crying is good, it's healthy. When you have
Speaker 1: a broken heart, you grieve, you cry. But in many families,
Speaker 1: especially the white Anglo sex and protest and family, you
Speaker 1: have to control yourself. You're so controlled you're splitting at
Speaker 1: the seams. Real little hungarian screamed out. You got to
Speaker 1: have rage before you move into forgiveness. Mental Health Awareness
Speaker 1: Month is a worthy thing to celebrate, but it shouldn't
Speaker 1: just be our focus for May. It's important to be
Speaker 1: working on your mental health all year long, and one
Speaker 1: of the best ways to do that is talk therapy.
Speaker 1: It can create lasting change in all areas of your life,
Speaker 1: your relationships, your career, and your overall happiness. A therapist
Speaker 1: can help you identify the habits and patterns that might
Speaker 1: be holding you back and how you can move forward
Speaker 1: in the right direction. I wholeheartedly recommend talk Space for therapy.
Speaker 1: You can sign up online and start therapy the same
Speaker 1: day if you want. You can text, video, or send
Speaker 1: voice messages to your license therapist as well as have
Speaker 1: what we would consider traditional calls over video or phone.
Speaker 1: Talk Space is also really affordable. It's a fraction of
Speaker 1: the cost of in person therapy. They've got thousands of
Speaker 1: licensed therapists with years of experience and over forty specialties
Speaker 1: including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, trauma, anger management, on and
Speaker 1: on food and eating. Whatever your issue is, talk Space
Speaker 1: has somebody that can help you, and they're matching platform
Speaker 1: is really good. It helps you find just the right
Speaker 1: person for you. So as a listener of this podcast,
Speaker 1: you get a hundred dollars off your first month with
Speaker 1: talk Space. To match with a licensed therapist today, go
Speaker 1: to talk space dot com. Make sure to use the
Speaker 1: code Wolf to get a hundred dollars off your first
Speaker 1: month and also to show your support for the show
Speaker 1: that's Wolf and talk space dot com. Go to talk
Speaker 1: space dot com for a hundred dollars off and use
Speaker 1: the code Wolf. Springtime means looking forward to brighter days ahead,
Speaker 1: but you may feel like your mental health is still
Speaker 1: stuck in winter. If you're feeling blue or need a
Speaker 1: mental reset, it's the perfect time to give Calm a try. Now,
Speaker 1: as many of you know from listening to Eric and
Speaker 1: I over the years, I am a Calm user. It's
Speaker 1: me along with one hundred million people around the world.
Speaker 1: They use the Calm app to take care of their minds. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm a particular fan of the Sleep stories, which everybody
Speaker 1: should try. But of course the Calm app is also
Speaker 1: heavily a meditation app, and you can use it to
Speaker 1: reduce stress or anxiety, improve your focus, and just overall
Speaker 1: life well being. Now, Calm, particularly the premium version, has
Speaker 1: so many options on it it's hard to even go
Speaker 1: into what you can find on there. It's an absolutely
Speaker 1: gigantic database, and there's so many meditations. I think I've
Speaker 1: used them for almost any situation. Many of them are
Speaker 1: read by Tomorrow Levitt, who is the head of Mindfulness
Speaker 1: at Calm, who has such a great and pleasant voice
Speaker 1: to listen to. Now, for listeners of the show, Calm
Speaker 1: is offering a special limited time promotion of forty off
Speaker 1: a Calm Premium subscription at Calm dot com slash Wolf.
Speaker 1: That is a huge discount. I think even at the
Speaker 1: regular price I was paying just under like six dollars
Speaker 1: a month. So go to Calm dot com slash wolf
Speaker 1: for off unlimited access to Calm's entire library. That will
Speaker 1: keep you busy for a very long time. That's Calm
Speaker 1: dot com slash Wolf. You say that the opposite of
Speaker 1: depression is expression that to day, so share your secret,
Speaker 1: Share your secret. What comes out of your body doesn't
Speaker 1: make you hear. You either vent anger, suppressed anger. I
Speaker 1: like you to dissolve the anger. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: how you dissolve the anger without venting the anger and
Speaker 1: recognizing that anger is not a primary emotion. That is very,
Speaker 1: very very true because I studied that when I'm angry,
Speaker 1: I give my power away. I asked people to reclaim
Speaker 1: your powers. You're angry because you expected more than you're
Speaker 1: getting less. It's really very important what you're expecting. So
Speaker 1: what I'm really talking about a lot of the times
Speaker 1: is the name rejection. So somebody, maybe like you, I
Speaker 1: come to and I tell you I I would like
Speaker 1: you to get to know me. Me Dye not dr eager,
Speaker 1: and you tell me that it's a very nice affect,
Speaker 1: and thank you. I'm not interested. So the best four
Speaker 1: letter word is risk. And I asked you and I
Speaker 1: didn't get it what I want. But I was not rejected,
Speaker 1: because rejection is just an English word that people make
Speaker 1: up to express a feeling. You don't get what you want,
Speaker 1: so give up the drama. One time a young person
Speaker 1: told me he rejected me. No, no one can reject you,
Speaker 1: so get rid of that word. For sure. No one
Speaker 1: has any power to reject you. But you just wanted
Speaker 1: something and you didn't get it. And that's what life
Speaker 1: is suffering. And when you suffer, take it from me,
Speaker 1: you become stronger. So who do you feed? Another of
Speaker 1: the prisons that you talk about. We touched on this
Speaker 1: just a little bit here, but I want to hit it,
Speaker 1: which is the prison of secrets. I love this. And
Speaker 1: Hungary we have an expression. If you sit with one
Speaker 1: butt on two chairs, you become half asked. That's a
Speaker 1: Hungarian saying in Hungarian, it's his son's funny. If you're jurious,
Speaker 1: you say you can't go to two weddings with one
Speaker 1: behind you know, and you cannot ends within two weddings,
Speaker 1: many many ways. How do you split yourself? How do
Speaker 1: I split myself? That I'm working, loving and playing. While
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you, I'm cooking a Hungarian dinner for tonight.
Speaker 1: My children are here. It's called the sake Golage. It's
Speaker 1: about meat and sour crowd and sour cream. A lot
Speaker 1: of caravans, is a lot of paprika. And you said,
Speaker 1: we don't much potato. So I I am dividing myself.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I will never retired. I'm better
Speaker 1: now than I was years ago. If I don't know anything,
Speaker 1: I tell you and maybe we can look it up together.
Speaker 1: But I want to be the true me, not the
Speaker 1: image of me. And that's what we call the ego,
Speaker 1: the false self. You say, the honesty starts with learning
Speaker 1: to tell the truth to yourself. You look in the
Speaker 1: mirror in the morning and just say, I'm one of
Speaker 1: the kind. Look at Gandhi. Took one person to bring
Speaker 1: down the whole British Empire without ever shedding a blood.
Speaker 1: I lectured in that museum of Gandhi in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Speaker 1: I felt so, so wonderful to talk to people These
Speaker 1: people were called the y PEO, the Young President's Organization.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of money and they spend it
Speaker 1: on building all kinds of schools for the children, building
Speaker 1: homes for families. They are really truly my heroes, the
Speaker 1: Young President Organization. I was so beautifully, beautifully treated. You see,
Speaker 1: they don't give you money for what you do, but
Speaker 1: they treat you so that I traveled with an airline
Speaker 1: called Virgin Airlines. Have you ever been on Virgin Airlines? First,
Speaker 1: I have not been on it. I know what it is.
Speaker 1: They give you pajamas, they put you to bed in
Speaker 1: San Diego, and then I woke up in London. Fabulous, fabulous,
Speaker 1: fabulous treatment. I was treated beautifully and I was able
Speaker 1: to travel practically all over the world, and even today
Speaker 1: I am hoping that I can guide people to transcend
Speaker 1: there ego needs and recognized that Auschwitz was an opportunity
Speaker 1: to discover that life is from inside out and not
Speaker 1: to wait. People who were waiting for someone to come
Speaker 1: and liberate them. They didn't make it. All we had
Speaker 1: was each other then and all we have is each
Speaker 1: other now. So when I danced for Dr Mangarland, I
Speaker 1: closed my eyes and I imagined that the music qus Tchaikovsky,
Speaker 1: and I was dancing that Rome and Juliet at the Buddha.
Speaker 1: And today when a woman tells me I was sexually touched,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how to tell you either, because
Speaker 1: you were an Auschwitz, and I said, you were more
Speaker 1: imprisoned than I was, because I knew the enemy. So
Speaker 1: if you have a secret, share it, if you come
Speaker 1: to see me, you're gonna have to go to the
Speaker 1: twelve step. Because there were two drunk going to call
Speaker 1: Young in Switzerland and then Carl Young said, alcoholism, it's
Speaker 1: a spiritual issue, not psychotherapy. So I send people to
Speaker 1: the twelve step so they could be grown ups, so
Speaker 1: they could live a life of an adult. That freedom
Speaker 1: comes with responsibility. Yeah, well it saved my life. And
Speaker 1: one of the things we used to say in twelve
Speaker 1: step programs all the time is you're only as sick
Speaker 1: as your secrets, and you're thinking, thinking, yes, lovely, lovely
Speaker 1: words that I like to use about how you go
Speaker 1: to a meeting and recognize that all you have to
Speaker 1: do is sit there, and then they trigger things in
Speaker 1: you that you ran away from because you medicated your feelings.
Speaker 1: You medicated your grief. You don't drink when you're happy.
Speaker 1: You think you are happy, you want to be happy,
Speaker 1: But then you become a false you. You tell them
Speaker 1: that you are some kind of a king's son, and
Speaker 1: then you get so bad and then you think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I I feel so little. They call it
Speaker 1: a shame attack. I feel little, and you fluctuate it
Speaker 1: from helplessness to grandiosity. Yes, yes, that does appear to
Speaker 1: be a big part of it. You became now the
Speaker 1: one who does his calling. This is your calling and
Speaker 1: the alcoholism gift that you were able to turn tragedy
Speaker 1: into this kind of an opportunity. Now that you can
Speaker 1: tell people this is not the best you can do.
Speaker 1: We've all been stuck inside for a year, living amidst
Speaker 1: the really difficult conditions of this pandemic. We've had to
Speaker 1: change a lot about who we are in order to adapt,
Speaker 1: and maybe we've developed some behaviors in ways of thinking
Speaker 1: that aren't really serving us very well. This time has
Speaker 1: also brought up some fundamental questions about who we are,
Speaker 1: what matters to us, and how we want to live
Speaker 1: our lives. These are spiritual questions and they have a
Speaker 1: newfound sense of importance to many of us as things
Speaker 1: are starting to open back up. Now is the time
Speaker 1: for us to reevaluate where we are and rethink our
Speaker 1: habits and goals. We need positive, portive, and intentional paths
Speaker 1: forward to do that. We could benefit from some support.
Speaker 1: We need to reconsider how our habits are helping us
Speaker 1: to become these new versions of ourselves. And that's why
Speaker 1: I've decided to again offer the Spiritual Habits group program,
Speaker 1: and it's open for enrollment from May four through May.
Speaker 1: Go to Spiritual Habits dot net to learn all about
Speaker 1: it and sign up to join us. Translating what we
Speaker 1: know into what we do requires intentionality and skill, especially
Speaker 1: in the realm of spiritual principles like mindfulness, compassion, and perspective.
Speaker 1: When you use behavior change principles to put powerful spiritual
Speaker 1: wisdom into practice, the result is a set of transformational
Speaker 1: spiritual habits. Spiritual habits are things you do throughout your
Speaker 1: day to remember and take action on the things that
Speaker 1: really matter, thereby experiencing greater meaning and connection. Spiritual habits
Speaker 1: build the bridge to a life where we thrive. Importantly,
Speaker 1: we learned spiritual habits best when we work with others.
Speaker 1: That is one of the core orienting principles of this program.
Speaker 1: When we work alongside other people who are building their
Speaker 1: own habits, we find inspiration, hope, and support for our
Speaker 1: own practices. In this program, we support one another. Because
Speaker 1: of how we structure the program, you'll build real connections, community,
Speaker 1: and friendships. We offered this program a year ago, and
Speaker 1: I know of deep friendships that started at that time
Speaker 1: which still exists today. Small groups that met then are
Speaker 1: still meeting now. Members of that community are still connected,
Speaker 1: still supporting each other. That's the type of community we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. So whether you're looking to develop a
Speaker 1: consistent daily meditation practice, or implement mindfulness practices into your life,
Speaker 1: or just to connect more deeply to what really matters,
Speaker 1: the Spiritual Habits Group program will give you the tools
Speaker 1: you need to turn this wisdom into daily and sustainable practice,
Speaker 1: and you'll do so in a community where you belong
Speaker 1: and feel connected. If you joined by Sunday, May ninth,
Speaker 1: you'll get access to the Early Bird Bonus I'm offering,
Speaker 1: which is an additional live sixty minute session with me
Speaker 1: on Sunday May. During this bonus session, I'll be teaching
Speaker 1: how to make time for Spiritual Habits, no matter how
Speaker 1: busy you are or what you've got going on in
Speaker 1: your life. To learn all about the program and sign
Speaker 1: up had the Spiritual Habits dot net. That's Spiritual Habits
Speaker 1: dot Net. I hope you'll join us. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: another of your prisons. You talk about the prison of
Speaker 1: guilt and shame. I'd like to talk about what is
Speaker 1: the way out of that prison. I can already tell
Speaker 1: you what I lived. Anything, I tell you I lived
Speaker 1: it first of all, my parents when it does son
Speaker 1: after two girls and I came along. So I came
Speaker 1: into a very talented family. My sister Magna played the piano,
Speaker 1: my sister Clara played the violin, and many people didn't
Speaker 1: even know I existed. I would say I'm Clara's sister.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I didn't have my identity. But my
Speaker 1: mother looked at me one day and said, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you have brains because you have no looks. I think
Speaker 1: it's very important for people to see what you carry
Speaker 1: in you. It's kind of like ShakespeRe. They put you
Speaker 1: somewhere and then you give a game, and they what
Speaker 1: happens that I took care of a military family and
Speaker 1: they just came back from Germany, and so they had
Speaker 1: these little dolls in the living room. And so when
Speaker 1: I came in, the mother introduced me to the children.
Speaker 1: This is the shy one. This is my giggle e one,
Speaker 1: this is my son, the doctor. And so we sit down,
Speaker 1: the shy shy, the giggles giggle, and I tell the
Speaker 1: shy one because I was painfully shy, I said, you
Speaker 1: have such a beautiful profile. And mother kicked me under
Speaker 1: the table and said, don't tell her that she'll be conceded.
Speaker 1: So you know right away in this family, you don't
Speaker 1: get positive reinforcement. And that's why you know. Many times
Speaker 1: your mother may tell you you're a very handsome boy,
Speaker 1: but you're fat, and but you're pimple e and you
Speaker 1: forget about before the what happened. So I tell people,
Speaker 1: given the boot, and I give you an end. Yes
Speaker 1: and yes. And so the little two year old was
Speaker 1: nagging on mother and she was washing dishes, and she
Speaker 1: was telling the little boy that she's busy. But the
Speaker 1: little boy is two years old. That I want and
Speaker 1: I want it now. That's what children want, want it easy,
Speaker 1: and want it now. And so the little boys stopped.
Speaker 1: I watched that little boy thinking click ad click ad
Speaker 1: click and goes to the living room and just about
Speaker 1: touching one of those dogs, and mother comes in grabs
Speaker 1: the boy, picks up the boy and said, didn't I
Speaker 1: tell you not to touch that? You see, what do
Speaker 1: you pay attention to? Just like which one which world?
Speaker 1: And you know, yeah, he got picked up one way
Speaker 1: or another. And that's what children do. They go to
Speaker 1: a most elegant restaurant and you may sell to your mother.
Speaker 1: If you don't give me this now, then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say the effort you immediately. Don't want to be seen
Speaker 1: as some kind of parents, So we look at the
Speaker 1: firstborn child usually are the responsible ones. Most of our
Speaker 1: noble prize winners are either only children or firstborn children.
Speaker 1: Middle children are like peacemakers, like Kissinger. They want everybody
Speaker 1: to get along. I guess that's what you're very good at.
Speaker 1: But young people in a family we call charming manipulators.
Speaker 1: And I was one of those charming manipulators. If I
Speaker 1: wanted money, I asked money from my father when he
Speaker 1: was playing billiards, and he wanted to look very generous
Speaker 1: in front of him I couldn't do that with my mother.
Speaker 1: Very different response. So which one are you teaching people
Speaker 1: to be? As survivor not a victim of anything or anyone.
Speaker 1: No one can put you down but you. No one
Speaker 1: can reject you, but you. You have as much power
Speaker 1: over other people as you give them permission allow them.
Speaker 1: And that's why I ask people to reclaim that innocence.
Speaker 1: And for that I had to go back to our
Speaker 1: Schwitz and go back to that lions then and go
Speaker 1: back and look at that lion in a phrase, and
Speaker 1: go back there and reclaim my innocence and begin to
Speaker 1: forgive myself that I survived. That's the hardest thing to
Speaker 1: forgive you. And that's why I didn't show up for
Speaker 1: my graduation when I graduated with honors. So you see,
Speaker 1: we can be our own worst enemies, and hopefully you
Speaker 1: can recognize that you and don't do what we say.
Speaker 1: They do what they see. So the best thing, again
Speaker 1: for children is a happy marriage. I hope you are
Speaker 1: in a happy marriage. I am with a partner and
Speaker 1: I am very happy. Yes, she and I are very happy.
Speaker 1: I am very happy that you're a good romather also
Speaker 1: to others, the way you treat the children. Want to
Speaker 1: know how you treat their mother, and you are good
Speaker 1: roma to the children. Let's talk about the prison of judgment.
Speaker 1: You tell a pretty powerful story in the book about
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, you're doing court appointed therapy and
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old boy comes to you. Do you
Speaker 1: want to tell that story? I think what comes up
Speaker 1: for me is the fourteen year old young boy who
Speaker 1: was part of the white supremacy group, was part of
Speaker 1: a group called David Koresh in Texas. He ended up
Speaker 1: being bombed by the government. But he came to my
Speaker 1: office and he told me he's a boot boy in Texas.
Speaker 1: And I acknowledged his boots, even though I know nothing
Speaker 1: about boots. And then he got up and he'd put
Speaker 1: his elbow on my desk and said, hey, Doc, it's
Speaker 1: time for America to be white again, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill all the Jews and all the using the N word,
Speaker 1: and all the Chinkles and all the Mexicans. Now, there
Speaker 1: is a difference between reacting or responding. If I would
Speaker 1: have reacted, I would have dragged that boy the corner.
Speaker 1: I would have stopped on him and I would say,
Speaker 1: who do you think you're talking to I was enough
Speaker 1: with My parents died in a cash chamber. But I
Speaker 1: I live by the idea that somehow I was in
Speaker 1: Auschwitz and here is this young boy coming to me.
Speaker 1: And I operate on the idea that people don't come
Speaker 1: to me, they're sent to me like you are. So
Speaker 1: I went to God as I did in Auschwitz, and
Speaker 1: I said to God all that, and God said to me,
Speaker 1: find the bigger than you. And I told God, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. I am not a biggert at all. I
Speaker 1: came to America in nine team forty nine, and I
Speaker 1: worked in a factory. It's called a sweatshop. I got
Speaker 1: seven cents per dozen, cutting God boxer short and I
Speaker 1: became the breadwinner because my late husband ended up in
Speaker 1: a TV hospital. He died of TB two. Came back,
Speaker 1: but when I went to the bathroom, I saw a
Speaker 1: sign colored. Imagine. After Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, I
Speaker 1: come to America to find democracy. So love is not
Speaker 1: what you feel, it's what you do. I gathered the
Speaker 1: women of color. I asked them to take me to
Speaker 1: a meeting. And guess what. In nineteen sixty three you
Speaker 1: may find myself among all those people with Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King singing, we shall overcome. You're too young to understand that.
Speaker 1: Right nineteen sixty three, June or July, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I know it was summer. It was very hard.
Speaker 1: So so when someone is not going as well as
Speaker 1: you want to, I ask people to say to themselves,
Speaker 1: I don't like it. It's inconvenient, and it's temporary, and
Speaker 1: I can survive it. Don't say, but say and because
Speaker 1: everything is temporary, I'm gonna be very happy in my death.
Speaker 1: But I know. I know because I live life to
Speaker 1: the fullest. Every day I finish everything on my plate.
Speaker 1: Take me out to lunch, and believe me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: eat of everything on that plate. And if you leave
Speaker 1: something on your plate, I'm going to either eat it
Speaker 1: or take it home with me. It pains me to
Speaker 1: throw away. So Auschwitz was an opportunity to really discover
Speaker 1: that inner strength. That they could throw me in agains
Speaker 1: Amber any minute. I have no power over that. They
Speaker 1: would be to me, torture me and never ever touched
Speaker 1: my spirit. So that's what I bring to you, that
Speaker 1: spiritual freedom that no matter what you tell me in
Speaker 1: the English language. When you're angry, I'm gonna hear the
Speaker 1: word you. You are stupid. You know that's what bullies
Speaker 1: do in school. You are whatever they call you, and
Speaker 1: all you say to yourself. The longer they took, the
Speaker 1: more relaxed I become. You take the negative stimuli, immediately
Speaker 1: turn it into positive. And you say, I'm practicing my
Speaker 1: low frustration tolerance level. That's a fift cent word from psychology.
Speaker 1: That I cannot change the stimulus, but I'm sure allowing
Speaker 1: to where that my spirit. Ever, so you don't make
Speaker 1: me angry when you hear somebody tell you. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is just change it to eye. I
Speaker 1: make me angry because your behavior is unacceptable minded. So
Speaker 1: I went went back to that boy, and I created
Speaker 1: the environment that you create that people can feel any
Speaker 1: feeling without the fear of being judged. And I looked
Speaker 1: at him as lovingly as I could. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't kill you with my eyes, and I can love
Speaker 1: you with my eye. And I said three words, tell
Speaker 1: me more, Please tell me more. He never knew a
Speaker 1: think about my past. And that's my experience that I
Speaker 1: was remembering when I saw at the capital, the people
Speaker 1: who were the white supremacist and herring a shirt six
Speaker 1: million was not enough. How do you think I feel?
Speaker 1: But I don't let fear rule my life. But you know,
Speaker 1: people trigger things in you. I watched the movie the
Speaker 1: other night. It's called a Miracle Worker. It's the life
Speaker 1: of Helen Keller. She's deaf blind. And then one time
Speaker 1: when they have dinner, after months and months and working
Speaker 1: with this child, Helen Keller was taking a picture and
Speaker 1: going out with the teacher and as she was getting
Speaker 1: the water the first time she began to talk and
Speaker 1: she said water. It took like ten minutes at least water.
Speaker 1: And what triggered in me that when I was liberated,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to right. And I remembered practicing
Speaker 1: a capital G for hours and hours. See, when we
Speaker 1: were liberated, people would go through the gate, but then
Speaker 1: they would come back and see talks about the positive psychology.
Speaker 1: We were free. What we didn't know and he calls
Speaker 1: it learned her personers And that's very very true. I
Speaker 1: did not know how to write, especially the capital GY.
Speaker 1: So you're guiding people now that maybe something is gonna
Speaker 1: trigger that you have not finished and you got to
Speaker 1: go back and relive that experience and you go through
Speaker 1: the value of the shadow of that. Don't get stuck
Speaker 1: in there because when you constipate it, you concentrate on
Speaker 1: a movement. So that's why my daughter calls it idyism.
Speaker 1: Are you revolving or are you you worring? So we
Speaker 1: li about the fly and shed that chrystalis so you
Speaker 1: can't fly freely like a bother fly. Well you look
Speaker 1: lovely and I think that is a great place for
Speaker 1: us to wrap up. Thank you so so much for
Speaker 1: coming on and sharing so much of your wisdom and
Speaker 1: kindness and love with us. I it's been a real
Speaker 1: honor for me. God Bless, God bless. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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Speaker 1: of saying thank you for your support. Now. We are
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