November 6, 2025 • 48 mins
This week, Scott welcomes Dr. Elisabet Lahti—educator, applied psychology researcher, and founder of the Sisu Lab. Dr. Lahti is the world’s leading expert on sisu, a Finnish concept that embodies extraordinary courage, resilience, and determination in the face of adversity.
Together, they explore the meaning of sisu and how it can help us persevere even when we think we’ve reached our limits. Dr. Lahti shares her own personal experiences of struggle and growth, illustrating how strength and gentleness can coexist and create a more compassionate, resilient world.
This heartfelt conversation is a celebration of inner power, perseverance, and the human capacity to overcome hardship with grace.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Even though now this story that I'm sharing it sounds
quite unusual and it was a big feat. As you know,
healing from any trauma is a big feed. You know,
it's a trauma. Healing is always an ultra run for
all of us. But inside that journey, I would say
that it's a misconception to think that CISU is only
(00:20):
the big things we do. I personally think that it's
those micro moments in our ordinary life where we either
choose to, let's say, turn away from our family member
or partner or from a challenge, and or we keep
our heart closed instead of facing what is there or
(00:41):
feeling the tough emotion for example. It's those tiny little
things that actually really end up defining our future.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Today, it's a great pleasure to have doctor Elizabeth Lotty
on the show. Elizabeth is an awarded educator, applied researcher
of psychology, and founder of sisiu AB, which builds communities
and organizational cultures. CISU is a finished word which means
extreme courage, and it's all about persevering even when you
think you've had enough. Doctor Lotti is the world's foremost
(01:16):
researcher of this concept, and in this episode, we discuss
her own personal struggles and hardships as a great example
of sisu, as well as her vision for a peaceful
world that integrates the yin and yang of strength and gentleness.
I've known doctor Lotti for many years and it has
been a pleasure watching her grow and flourish. This episode
(01:37):
was a long time in the making, so that further ado,
I bring you doctor Elizabeth Latti. Doctor Elizabeth Lati, it
is such an honor and privilege to have you on
the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
This is super fun. I've always enjoyed our encounters, so
this is really a treat. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yes, this is a long time coming. This is a
long time. You've been studying this concept called sisu sisue
for a very long time and also embodying it and
living it for a very long time since the last
time we connected. I believe you actually changed your first name.
(02:16):
Is that right, am? I right about that?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah. I drew the line from Emilia to Elizabeth, so
it's my It is my official name. And I went
through a little process when I turned forty, and maybe
it had something to do with that, but I realized
the meaning of those two names. So Emilia comes from
Greek word that means to rival, to combat, to kind
(02:42):
of push really hard. And then Elizabeth comes from Hebrew
female name Elisheva, which means God is my oath. So
there is this kind of going from pushing and doing
things really the hard way into more of kind of
opening the hands and raising a bit more softer approach
(03:03):
to life. So I figured that is something that actually
describes the way I approach life nowadays. So yeah, I
go with Elizabeth nowadays.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Cool. Thanks for thanks for telling us about that. Yeah,
sometimes I think it's like people feel like they're not
they can't don't really feel an identity with the name
they were given, and some like a lot of people
call me by like a different name, and it starts
to make me think, well, people perceive me as that
other guy. Maybe I should change my name to that.
(03:33):
It's just something interesting. But you haven't changed your gender now, right, Okay, okay,
making sure that nothing else has changed, just a name. Okay. Cool. Well,
it's real delight to have you here. And I was
wondering if you could tell our audience a little bit
about this concept of CISU because you're it's a very finish,
a very finished thing. And I don't know how many
(03:54):
of our listeners are from Finland.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, yessu is. It's a really old word from Finnish language.
It's about five hundred years old and a bit of
part of the Finnish cultural history. What they often say
is that you can't understand Finland or a finn if
you don't know this word sisu. And the word comes
from word seesus. It's epymology and it literally means the
(04:19):
inside or the interior. And what it denotes is this
kind of very deep fortitude. I would call it the
fire in the belly in the face of adversity. So
when we come to that place where we come to
our preconceived limit of our capacities mental or physical ones,
(04:41):
and we yet don't give up, we might and often
feel this is what I would think William James meant
when he described the second wind. So in time of crisis,
we find this deeper reserve of energy within us. And
oftentimes when I describe seesu to four or an audiences
through stories, I see this light go off in people's
(05:05):
eyes because everyone who's been to that place, into that
dark forest, you know, we know how it feels.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Like dark forest. Wow, that's the dark forest of the soul. Yeah,
you're right. You're writing also has a little bit of
a poetic feel to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I draw a lot of operation, yes, and the kind
of mythical And I think, are we are such a
such a multi layered being, this this whole human experience
that I kind of tend to take all the help
I can get to parse together this puzzle and try
(05:44):
to understand it from different angles. And I think I've
also gone to so many dark forests that I've had
to had to kind of start also taking the soul
into consideration where my condition and my mind kind of
failed me.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So, wow, said, You've you've been in many dark fires
a while. Do you feel comfortable sharing a personal moment
where you felt your CSU was tested?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh my goodness, I think I'll be to pull a
library and pull something out of it. I mean, we
all have those places, and no one is immune to adversity.
The beginning point of Seizu, that is something that it's
already now far away, was fifteen years ago. But the
reason why I ever even started researching Seizu was when
(06:32):
I was living in New York. It was maybe about
five years before you and I met, or maybe a
little bit less three and a half years, and I
had moved there with a life partner at the time,
but the relationship turned very abusive. It was emotional abuse first,
but then it turned very physically violent as well. And
(06:54):
by the time it ended, and when I started this
really long journey to healing, which I didn't even really
realize at that time how long it would be. But
it also, I would have to say, it took me
on an adventure into myself and as I was rebuilding
that kind of lost innocence and trust, but I discovered
(07:17):
a lot of things from that place, and that is
really the root of what I do, is to try
to understand how we rebuild those parts and how can
that be extended the situation that we are now also
as a humanity we're facing. But the question that kept
me up at nights at that time after the relationship
was this thought that how do humans overcome extreme adversity?
(07:42):
How do we do that? Who overcomes who doesn't? How
might I find strength? What would be those tools? And
then the second part was also that because adversity is unavoidable,
we all have some kind of things that happened to
us that can can we sometimes use adversity as a fuel?
(08:03):
That was the second part of the question. But these
two led me on quite an adventure that has been
filled with serendipity, incredible encounters, and also really re establishing
and reinventing my own CISU and my life force.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, and you might still reinvent Yes. Yeah, your PhD
takes a phenomenological approach. Can you explain to our listeners
what or all that means?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yes, to use that lens is to really place yourself
inside or in the middle of the research. So it
is experiential research where you become part of what is
being examined. So it's a little bit different from the
positivist where you only observe things or you measure them,
(08:56):
but you actually allow your own narrative to be part
of it, which is that you of course you record everything,
but you allow that voice of the researcher be very
obvious part of it, which to me sounds quite honest
because always almost with everything we do, the researcher is
(09:16):
part of it anyways, in which our interests direct are
what we want to focus on, for example, and all
of that. So with SEISU. It seemed pretty obvious after
I did this survey first in which I asked people
that what do they even think what CISU is? Because
(09:36):
it was completely on research at the time, it was
very a little understood. When I asked people that what
is CISU In an ordinary conversation, I would get these
very obscure answers, and no one could really explain this
to me. And that's what kind of piqued my interest that, Okay,
(09:58):
we have this concept from five hundred years a go,
and there's something in it. And so I got a
lot of data. There's a research paper on it called
Embodied Fortitude, and it's really good. My mom recommends it.
And so I realized pretty soon that I had still
made many more questions that I had answers, and there's
(10:20):
something in this concept of SEESU because it is a
phenomenon that relates so much to our experience and feeling
when we are in that dark forest that I realized
pretty soon that I need to somehow get closer to it.
I need to take it on the road, and I
literally did actually and through this physical thing that I did,
(10:45):
so that was a way for me to gain data
on as it happens when I go to that place
where I'm stripped so bare from my by tactics and
my mental strategies, and I feel that I am already done.
But because we always find the strength, I wanted to
understand that in that lived moment.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, you trained to run fifteen hundred miles across the
length of New Zealand. I remember watch following your I
remember watching your videos, and and you trained kung fu
in a martial arts academy in rural China. Wow, yeah
it was.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It was. It was fun and crazy. I would never
do either of those two again.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But you did it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
But I did it. Yeah, I did it. And I'm
so happy that I had this enthusiasm, which I also
believe is a form of life force, that it can
really drive us when we have a vision of something
we want to do. And with New Zealand it was.
There was also this social activism that was had to
you know, weaved into the campaign. So I did a
(11:56):
full trifecta. You know, I went to a country that
I felt like was spiritual home, which was New Zealand.
So if there was something that told me I had
a dream about running the length of New Zealand. So
that's how the whole thing got started, you know. So
it was this totally crazy idea, totally randomly picked the
number fifty days. Then I looked at the map and
I'm like, okay, that's about thirty miles a day, And
(12:17):
got to collect data from my PhD. And also I
combined it with this Season at Silence campaign to open
a conversation round how do we build compassionate cultures and
societies and reduce violence? How do we build more social support?
You know, so these things don't happen. So all those
(12:37):
combined created this perfect beautiful store for me that somehow
carried me through. And I wasn't a runner when I
got this idea. I trained for two years. And this
always stands as a testament and a testimonial of these
powers and strengths that lie in all of us are
(13:00):
oftentimes unexplored. And I think it was part of the
big trauma I had that actually really pushed me, because
I wanted to reinvent the narrative that we have of
overcomers or survivors of domestic violence, because when I was one,
I realized how many you know, there's often this question
(13:21):
of the people are seeing that week somehow, why didn't
you leave? It's a very complex, very nuanced question, and
I wanted to reframe anyone who's gone through any kind
of abuse of any sort, that you know, we're strong,
we have incredible capacity and strength, we have beautiful futures,
(13:45):
and so that was driving me to go through all that.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Hell. I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
comount called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself
and realize your full potential. In this book, I offer
a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your living
(14:14):
beliefs and take control of your life. Are you tired
of feeling helpless? This book will offer you hope, not
by identifying with the worst things that have happened to you,
but by empowering you to tap into the best that
is within you. Rise Above is available wherever you get
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(14:37):
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(14:57):
Human Potential dot com slash s a C. That's Center
for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. Okay,
now back to the show. Have you done a lot
of messages and like people writing you, thank you and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, it was, it was, It was truly amazing. It
was a very communal effort. We organized fifteen events along
the run in different cities, and in each we had
women's circles, men's circles. Somewhere. I gave talks after running
thirty miles on that day, for example.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And thirty miles wow, yeah wow, you know I remember
watching started from just.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Being able to Yeah it was, yeah, yeah, it started
with me being able to run a few miles and
then you know, extending slowly and then slowly in this
process of just going through the motion, which is really
this part of CISU that is not so mystical, actually
(16:06):
this inner strength that nothing has ever changed without action
or effort, and these very little tiny things and steps
stacked on top of each other bring us to the
to the finish goal of the endline.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
At some point, did you listen to podcasts while you're
running or listen to music?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Scott, I listened to every single podcast of the Psychology
podcast back then when I was training, so you were
with me. I listened to like seasons of different podcasts
and a lot of music. But sometimes I would first
run in silence for the first few hours, so then
I would kind of reward myself, you know, with music
(16:50):
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Amazing. Wow. Well, what's what's one of the biggest misconceptions
you think exists out there about CIS.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Well, I'd have to say that even though now this
story that I'm sharing it sounds quite unusual and it
was a big feed. As you know, healing from any
trauma is a big feat. You know, it's a trauma.
Healing is always an ultra run for all of us.
But inside that journey, I would say that it's a
(17:24):
misconception to think that CISU is only the big things
we do. I personally think that it's those micro moments
in our ordinary life where we either choose to, let's say,
turn away from our family member or partner or from
a challenge, and or we keep our heart closed instead
(17:47):
of facing what is there or feeling the tough emotion
for example. It's those tiny little things that actually really
end up defining our future, the present first, and then future.
So if we in those moments when we really feel
the poll to just abandon everything or be you know,
(18:09):
you know, in a bad mood to someone, what if
we actually use that inner strength to do the thing
that might even feel impossible, to face someone with kindness
or with curiosity, or open a conversation or a dialogue.
You know, that's that's often very tough.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, for sure. It's not exactly the same thing as great, right.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
No, these all these concepts are you know, they're in
the same family, sisters, brothers. However you want to say it,
and it's impossible to kind of draw a line, even
though we researchers and humans would like to put them
in a box that this is where seas begins and
something else ends. But I would say a couple of things.
(18:53):
For example of great research by Angela Duckworth, which is
passion and perseverance. So this very long term work toward
a goal, so it means there's passion and then there's
this day in, day out. But SISU is more like
(19:14):
it happens in the moment, so it's not about the
long distance goal, but it's actually in a moment when
we feel that we are at the limits of our
perceived capacities. It's almost like you come to the edge
of grand canyon and there's no way to continue the journey,
so you need to pull out some a bit more
momentous reserves in order to Let's say, in a marathon,
(19:35):
there's a thing that marathoners call the wall, which they
often call that it's impenetrable. But yet most of the
people who start the marathon they finish, So we draw
from something within us and we get to continue. So
it's SSU happens more in the moment, so we borrow
a bit of this embodied fortitude. But the second thing,
(19:55):
which is actually very curious is that whereas grit, perseverance, hardiness,
they are qualities of the mind. So CISU is what
I would call embodied fortitude instead of mental fortitude. That
it has a more of this flavor of something that
(20:17):
we don't quite even understand. But we do have more
research from embodied cognition of understanding how our body works
with our mind and our emotions, thinking of, for example,
our gut microbiome from gas tar anthology, where this microbiome,
(20:39):
through this unconscious process, influences our responses to stress, to pain,
to our emotions. So there's this very deep dialogue happening
at all times, and it's much more broader than we,
for a long time in psychology have thought that it's
you know, we're so obsessed with the mind, and so
(21:00):
was I. I had a long time of you know,
before I realized that CAESU was none about the same quality.
That it is something a little bit different, and it
complements this inquiry that we have about human strength and fortitude.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
You've thought a lot about this, I can tell oh.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I spent a lot of time with this.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yes, do you do you feel like some of the
academic aspects were unnecessary, Like you know, they're necessary to
get a PhD, but you know a lot of the
c suits in the doing of the CCU it's not
in the thinking about the CCU.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Right, Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's And a
lot of the work that I do is very I
work with trauma survivors, and you know, there's really very
little point to bring tables and research papers there. It's
so much about kind of being able to be present
(22:01):
when there's even no words for that. And so, but
of course you need the I'm so grateful for the
foundation that I have. And of course having such a
big framework of doctoral research in itself equipped me to
reach so high that without it, I would have never
(22:22):
done some of the things I did. So it all
works worked for the best, I'd say so. And now
I get to be called doctor Elizabeth Lafty by doctor
Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So it's doctor, doctor doctor. Yeah. Of course. Now you
have the book, it's called Gentle Power.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Is this true true story? Am I telling you a
true story?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
That's a true story?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yes? And in this book you highlight another side of
Soca that goes beyond your toughness. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yes? And it is a perfect bridge from the previous question. Actually,
and when you said that, wow, I've spent You've spent
a lot of time with this, and I don't think
I would have been able to be so excited. I'm
passionate about SISU for fifteen years if there wasn't this
other side, you know, this whole toughness thing, wouldn't propel
(23:19):
me to keep going with it. But what I realized
about SISU through my own process. First, when I was
in New Zealand, I had this really huge realization. It
was Day twelve and I call it the Miracle of
Day twelve because you know, at that time I had
ran these thirty mile days. I had a injury that
(23:41):
was developing on my right foot, so everything was a
little bit uncertain can I continue? It was really painful,
and that pain, you know, it took away my I
couldn't even observe the beauty around me, had a hard
time connecting when I was running with people, because you know,
pain makes us turn inwards because we need to manage it.
And I was at the point of like, what do
(24:02):
I do? You know, I have set up this whole campaign,
we have events coming up, and you know it's this
age old question with our forty two that when should
we still push forward or should we now stop? It's
there's never an easy solution, and we kind of have
to learn, you know, and figure it out. But I
(24:23):
have this ongoing conversation with the road because I was
there alone and and this road kept asking me questions,
you know, and or my subconscious you know, and at
some point it said that, you know, Amelia, I was
back then that's like, Emilia, do you see that next
bend over there? And I said like, yeah, you know,
(24:45):
And then I heard the response that, well, you know,
when you run there, guess what You're going to see
more road and another bend and then more road. And
the pain will stop when you make it stop. Yeah,
And you know, at that point I started this process
(25:05):
of really going into these deep players of myself where
I realized that it actually was, or had been, easier
for me to be hard on myself than to be
gentle and kind and have mercy. Oh yeah, that's deep,
it was, you know, And looking afterwards, it feels like
(25:26):
this whole run for my own personal journey almost existed
for this day twelve two. Kind of if we think
of alchemy, which is I wrote a book for finished
speaking people and it's called the Alchemy of Cizu, And
you know, of course, taking a bit of a risk
with such a name, but for me because alchemy is
(25:47):
such a perfect word for this transformation that happens from
lead to gold, which car you, you know, spoke a
lot about this transformation of our psyche and the lead.
For it to turn into gold, it has to melt.
And what do we need for that melting is heat
And that's where this potential and the gift of adversity
(26:10):
also comes, even though no one wants it and we
resist it, but there is a process that we can
actually take away gifts from it. And so at that point,
what I did was I simulated myself at the end
of the fifty days that okay, let's imagine that I
get through all these days and I've done it. And
(26:32):
I used this question from Mark Allen, who's I think
he's a six time iron Man World champion, so a
total guru of sisu and physical capacity. And I asked
him that what's the one advice that you give me
for this run? And Mark looked at me and he
said that honor yourself. And I took this and I
(26:54):
looked into those past the fifty days that if I arrive,
can I say that I honored myself or did I
do it at all costs? And kind of reverse engineering
from there to that moment, it was actually very easy
for me to make the right decision and kind of
cut that consecutive days, which was the plan, and then
(27:14):
we went to see uh, went to the er to
look with the what was happening with the foot, you know,
and the doctor on call happened to be an ultrarunner himself,
so you know, it didn't bash me for being a
crazy person, but he understood, you know, and luckily all
that I needed was a day off, and then I
switched my strategy a little bit. There was no plan B.
(27:35):
The plan was to run. That was it. But at
that point I realized that, okay, we need to do something.
So I kept the adventure human powered and I cycled
some parts of it in the middle, so I caught
on those thirty miles I lost and thing and it continued.
So I was then kind of zigzacing, running and cycling
until my foot was okay again. But that changed everything
(27:58):
and the joy came back. I had my autonomy back
on this beautiful run that I had designed, you know,
and I learned a lot about taking care of myself
and combining this toughness with also gentleness, and so gentle
power is the It's the higher octave of cizu. It's
(28:21):
the constructive expression of cizu. Because we are often in
danger of pushing too hard, so we must balance it
with something that brings us again into that place of
where we honor ourselves and others. Also, because we can
easily be hurtful to other people as well through our cizu.
It can be hurtful to ourselves. We can end up
(28:42):
with burnout, you know, all kinds of things. We can
end up getting disconnected from our peers, our co workers,
you know, we are too harsh on them, and then
it can impair our thought process. So sisu must also
be informed by reason.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, I love that. I actually, just thirty minutes ago
got off a call with Susan Kin, who wrote the
book Quiet, and I was thinking, before I read your
book gentle Power, I thought you were making the point that,
you know, a lot of introverts can have grit. It
doesn't have to that grit doesn't have to be such
(29:23):
a growy thing to do. For lack of a better,
better way of putting.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
It, well said, that's maybe one of Tholso the misunderstandings
around CISU. But yeah, you know this, yeah, yeah, we
need balance with the toughness with the gentleness in order
to be wholesome, integrated humans.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
M yeah, the kind of self compassion with yourself. You
can have compassion with others even while you're quote dominating
the competition. I mean, people you know are gets gets
so obsessed with domin everyone's got to win an argument
these days. Politics is really horrifying to me right now
(30:09):
in America. Yeah, this notion that that this notion that
words are violence I disagree with. And you know, I
just wondering your your work with with with curbing violence,
do you you know, like what are your thoughts on
like the Charlie Kirk killing and all that you know
(30:29):
that happened in America, Like, you know, like I'm sure
that violence is quite broadly here against violence and violence
of words as.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Well, right, violence in all words. You know, I see
that we have a responsibility for protecting life. So anything
that diminishes cuts off emotional wings from another person. You know,
(30:58):
we need to Like one of the core things of
Season Nott Silence was this idea of zero tolerance to violence.
You know, and there's this because I've been thinking of
where do I take season silence now? Because it's such
a broad concept, you know, the juice courage over silence.
And it's not only this interpersonal violence, but it's in
(31:19):
school bullying. You know, it's at workplaces, it's in small communications,
it's online commenting, it's everywhere. And you know, there's so
much talk about toxic leadership nowadays because it is so
rampant all over the world. But what makes me really
(31:39):
curious or where do I kind of come? Where do
I go with this is the really untapped potential and
the real fulcrum of change is the bystanders, the masses
of people who also we allow bad, poor leadership in
our workplaces. When we form cultures where there is zero
(32:01):
tolerance to violence and we have those conversations, those tough
conversations directly and using gentle power, which means that we
balance the harshness that can come with the direct conversation sometimes,
I mean sometimes we need to be super tough to obviously,
but bringing in that humanity into all of that, you
(32:23):
know that we can rise to our best as we are.
What we need to see from each other now is
like the excellence. But I'm a huge fan of Jackson
Cuts and he's coined this. He's created a project called
the Upstander Project, and that is really about empowering and
(32:43):
inspiring and training you know, the bystanders how to stand up.
And of course though todkash Dan, you know, the art
of insubordination, all of that, and so using our CZU
a bit more for that. So I think there's a
place for every human in this global transformation that we
(33:05):
are going through now, you.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Know, can you elberate a little bit that when.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
We see something that is diminishing to humanity, when we
see violence, that we don't simply stay silent, but we
have the courage to to speak.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Up, speak out against it. M Yeah, yeah, I mean
it's yeah, it's free speech. Sounds like your pro free speech.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
So I have to say now that as a defined
free speech, I'm from it for Finland, so I might
be a little bit out of the concept the US.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah. Well, just having a diversity of viewpoints and that
being allowed, you know, in a lot of free speech,
the opposite of a of a like of a ttalitarian regime,
you know, where everyone has to have the same viewpoint
or us you're murdered, you know, like, you know, we
want to real democracy where we allow and defend other
(34:12):
people's right to speak their opinion even if absolutely disagree
with them. Yes, yeah, yeah. How can people develop their
CSU muscles? What are some tips.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Help help me nice seas of muscles? Yeah, that's a
good comparison, by the way, because you know we we
we do the exercises and that's how it starts. I
drew something on paper. I actually wanted to coin something
from SISU, you know, using the words uh it themselves
so it can be a little memory tool. So I
(34:47):
was thinking that how to develop SEESU. So the s
the first one, you know, it's like it starts now.
The best day to start uh draining our SEASU muscle
was yesterday. The second best day is today. And just
this thing that our brain learns and we change through repetition,
(35:08):
you know. Neuroplasticity is on our side with this one.
So finding what is that edge for you? Is it
an athletic one, you know, or is it some kind
of an emotional thing? Is it relational? Wherever that little
thing is where it feels that it takes one to
(35:28):
the discomfort zone, and we might avoid it so gently
I call it also you know that we take care
of ourselves when we do that, So go comfortably into discomfort.
The point isn't to be hard on yourself. You know,
sometimes we need to do that. But when we are
training seizu, it's enough to choose the little bit of
the discomfort thing because again it rewires our brain. So
(35:51):
when we are actually at the point that we need
our se zu, we have that runway that it's a
little bit more easy to actually go and base that
tough thing. And then the second one that I put
there into it, so developing those the somatic intelligence in us,
(36:12):
that intuition, because it can't be developed you know, over
time we can start to hear the subtle messages, and
that's the thing that our body knows what it needs
to support us in tough times. Our brain is always
in the past or in the future, you know, it's
raising there, but the body is in the present moment.
So finding that information there and giving them that to ourselves,
(36:37):
you know, to support ourselves, to support ourselves. And then
the third one is self care. So now we have
self care. Third super duper important to give ourselves the
rest the physical things that we need, you know, the
building blocks that we all know what they are, but
(36:59):
you know it's it's when I finally learned to sleep,
my life quality improved so much and so did my resilience.
So this is a building blocked to really kind of
put on a good place. And then the fourth one
is you. That's for unity, and that's the thing what
I think of it is to be a person who
takes care of their nervous system, who self regulates so
(37:22):
that I can be a safe person to you. And
when we all do this to each other, we can
create that collective seisu. Because sisu doesn't only live in you,
or it doesn't only live in me, but it actually,
in a weird way, is in that space in between
us where that those chemical messages, you know, and our
(37:44):
brain is constantly asking am I safe? And so when
I bring myself to any place that I signal that
I'm a safe human, that's how we can together come
from that place of unity, and that's where we really
find that that true length and the sea sue.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
So culture matters a lot. Having a culture of cis, yes.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
As it matters a lot. I mean otherwise because we
all have to use sezu. But why on Earth are
we constantly creating a planet where you know we are
we are forced to use our se su to simply survive. Like,
how about we learn how to collaborate and be good
to each other in kind so that we can use
(38:28):
se su for those feats you know, like how do
we build a better system somewhere, or how do we
build better education systems or things like that. You know,
But we have a long way to go, but you
know we're taking I believe in the power of small
steps repeated over time. So I come from a place
(38:48):
of hope. I believe.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, you're you are very interested in how SSU can
save the world. Well, let's let's let's talk about how
cister can help people who have mental health struggles. M
I think your thoughts there.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, I think what I've seen quite often is simply
to when I open, when someone opens the narrative about
seesu or or I speak of it, it helps people
to start to remember those moments when they have been strong,
even you know, doing this little seizu stories exercise of
(39:30):
thinking past back in the life where they overcame something
that was tough and putting them, even just with bullet points,
so that we can start to remember that there is
more strength to us than what meets the eye at
a given moment, because that is the first thing that
survival mechanism in a way attacks, and our mind gets
(39:52):
us on that downward spiral, so we we simply can't
see ourselves as wholesome beings who also have strengths because
the mind starts to, you know, focus on only on
those things that are wrong. So opening the conversation so
that we can even start to talk about that we
have this innate fortitude and every single person has it.
(40:15):
I believe it's a it's not a C. It's not
a finished thing. By the way, it's obviously a universal
capacity just have. We haven't have a name for it, but.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
It's you know, yeah, I mean, I just I feel like,
like athletes who are struggling with their mental health, the
last thing they want to be told is to just persevere.
So my gut felt like this isn't CESU is incompatible
(40:46):
And you're saying it's the exact opposite at least the
flavor of CC that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a good thing. To kind
of pinpoint so that those moments of remembering when we
were strong, they don't need to be accomplishments. They can
be strong. And when I remember, for example, how I
supported someone who was being bullied, for example, so there
was this element of okay, that's where I stood up,
(41:16):
or even remembering what happened, what allowed me was that
someone supported me. So remembering and seeing kind of that
interplay also of how the strength moves between us and
how we can support each other.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, your flavor of of your of CC it reminds
me of like the Buddhist concept of equanimity in a
lot of ways. And I'm a big fan of the
Buddhist concept of equanimity because it includes love and warmth
in presence and yeah, yeah, maybe it's extreme, we call
(41:56):
it extreme equanimity.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
I really appreciate that you bring up the term equanimity
instead of, for example, stoicism. Yeah, because toisism. I get it.
And there's that, But that also easily goes again on
the on the kind of shadow side of seizu, where
we rather kind of push away something and disconnect and
(42:19):
we're just uh, we pushed through that through the pain
without feeling anything so I would rather hope for myself
and for us to develop that constructive side of SIZU
that more vehers on the side of equanimity.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
If something yeah, yeah, I really like that. I really
like that. So we talked about how it can really
help with mental health. What about the collapse of democracy?
Can I help with that?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Absolutely? Yes, it can, because well here's the thing. So
as a cultural concept, so it's interesting that sense too,
that it's not just this word that denotes some kind
of capacity in a human but also as a cultural
concept in Finland, it has long routes of indicating something
(43:14):
that is about doing things really well, even if nobody
is watching. So it has this invitation to uphold a
good life so that we do things honestly with transparency.
(43:34):
So it invites the person who cultivates SISU to actually
look at their own choices. So that's also the reason
why I see that there is a lot of potential
with this concept in this time now, because it's not
just you know, mental toughness, be tough and overcome, have resilience,
but there's also an invitation to ask that how am
(43:57):
I living a good life? How is that built? If
someone wants to take it that far, and you know,
I assure do.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Mm hmm. Oh. Well, what's what's in the future for you? Doctor? Yeah?
What's where are you at right now? Where's your head
right now?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Well, I have to say my head is in a
My head and body and soul are in quite a
good place now. I was just thinking in alignment with each other. Yeah,
they feel they're in alignment, and I think there's been some.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
I feel it too. Oh.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I was going to say, I feel that you feel
like too, because you look like you look really calm
and integrated and good.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
So I thought that about you.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Of the mutual compliment called club here, I like it,
but that there's a there was. It was quite a
rough ride after the forties immediately, but I feel that
there was some kind of this a bit of this
union integration that happened afterwards that I was able to
bring some of those parts together. So now I'm able
(45:06):
to have this this resilience and this toughness, but also
with so much love, lovingness for myself, and my shoulders
are relaxed and I give myself the things I really
want to do, so I nourish my enthusiasm with creative writing,
(45:26):
I've had the permission from my ophthalmologist that I was
able to go back to aikido, back to the dojo,
which is I see ikido as a realization of love.
That's what we really do there is we learn how
to in an embodied way find like feel the energy
as it moves, and where do I tense, where do
(45:47):
I soften? And then how do I bring that embodied
feeling out from the dojo and into the world. How
do I do that in a conversation with let's say,
my partner, you know, or with my mother or or
anyone you know? And Yeah, so I feel excited. It's
a bit of a new page that's turning, and I
(46:07):
don't exactly know everything that's going to happen, but I
want to be on to be of service with what
I've discovered from this road so far. So if for
the first part I was building my CV, then it's
kind of time like what's the testament the legacy?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
You know?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
How am I how kind? How can I be of help?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
And where you know, will you still be conducting research
or are you kind of kind of put that?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah, I think I'm actually ready to go back. I
had to take a little break after the eight year
long PhD was over. Yeah, but now my life force
is back, so I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Wow. Great, And our other researchers picking and taking on
the mantle, are they carrying on the baton so to speak.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yes, there's a quite super interesting stuff happening here in Helsinki.
I got to advise the making of the SISU scale.
That's uh, that's around and validating it. And and then
there's a Marta Velasquez who is bringing SISU quite beautifully
to Spain. And he has this other concept called Rasmia,
(47:20):
which she's kind of exploring the connection of those two concepts.
And I keep hearing here and there where people are
applying it into mental mental health or therapy and this
and that. So it's really exciting to see where Cezu's
journey continues. You know, it's on its independent journey as
it always was, you.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Know, Yeah, more wonderful. It's it's been a delight watching
you grow over the years. You've come such a long way.
I remember my first ever meeting with you. I remember too,
I feel like you're a different person.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
It's been a it's been a long road, and I
always remember how you were the first one to invite
me to speak, you know, and do this our and
half long presentation on c suit to your students at
the Yeah you pen so you rock that. I remember
all your people who opened the doors in the beginning.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
You were awesome back then and you're still awesome. But
you're you're more integrated. You're way more integrated and grounded.
Your energy is much more grounded. It's wonderful, wonderful to
see the journey. I'm glad we got you on the
Psychologic podcast. Thank you so much, and yeah, I wish
you all the best to make your continued journey.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Thanks God,
Even though now this story that I'm sharing it sounds
quite unusual and it was a big feat. As you know,
healing from any trauma is a big feed. You know,
it's a trauma. Healing is always an ultra run for
all of us. But inside that journey, I would say
that it's a misconception to think that CISU is only
(00:20):
the big things we do. I personally think that it's
those micro moments in our ordinary life where we either
choose to, let's say, turn away from our family member
or partner or from a challenge, and or we keep
our heart closed instead of facing what is there or
(00:41):
feeling the tough emotion for example. It's those tiny little
things that actually really end up defining our future.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Today, it's a great pleasure to have doctor Elizabeth Lotty
on the show. Elizabeth is an awarded educator, applied researcher
of psychology, and founder of sisiu AB, which builds communities
and organizational cultures. CISU is a finished word which means
extreme courage, and it's all about persevering even when you
think you've had enough. Doctor Lotti is the world's foremost
(01:16):
researcher of this concept, and in this episode, we discuss
her own personal struggles and hardships as a great example
of sisu, as well as her vision for a peaceful
world that integrates the yin and yang of strength and gentleness.
I've known doctor Lotti for many years and it has
been a pleasure watching her grow and flourish. This episode
(01:37):
was a long time in the making, so that further ado,
I bring you doctor Elizabeth Latti. Doctor Elizabeth Lati, it
is such an honor and privilege to have you on
the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
This is super fun. I've always enjoyed our encounters, so
this is really a treat. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yes, this is a long time coming. This is a
long time. You've been studying this concept called sisu sisue
for a very long time and also embodying it and
living it for a very long time since the last
time we connected. I believe you actually changed your first name.
(02:16):
Is that right, am? I right about that?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah. I drew the line from Emilia to Elizabeth, so
it's my It is my official name. And I went
through a little process when I turned forty, and maybe
it had something to do with that, but I realized
the meaning of those two names. So Emilia comes from
Greek word that means to rival, to combat, to kind
(02:42):
of push really hard. And then Elizabeth comes from Hebrew
female name Elisheva, which means God is my oath. So
there is this kind of going from pushing and doing
things really the hard way into more of kind of
opening the hands and raising a bit more softer approach
(03:03):
to life. So I figured that is something that actually
describes the way I approach life nowadays. So yeah, I
go with Elizabeth nowadays.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Cool. Thanks for thanks for telling us about that. Yeah,
sometimes I think it's like people feel like they're not
they can't don't really feel an identity with the name
they were given, and some like a lot of people
call me by like a different name, and it starts
to make me think, well, people perceive me as that
other guy. Maybe I should change my name to that.
(03:33):
It's just something interesting. But you haven't changed your gender now, right, Okay, okay,
making sure that nothing else has changed, just a name. Okay. Cool. Well,
it's real delight to have you here. And I was
wondering if you could tell our audience a little bit
about this concept of CISU because you're it's a very finish,
a very finished thing. And I don't know how many
(03:54):
of our listeners are from Finland.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, yessu is. It's a really old word from Finnish language.
It's about five hundred years old and a bit of
part of the Finnish cultural history. What they often say
is that you can't understand Finland or a finn if
you don't know this word sisu. And the word comes
from word seesus. It's epymology and it literally means the
(04:19):
inside or the interior. And what it denotes is this
kind of very deep fortitude. I would call it the
fire in the belly in the face of adversity. So
when we come to that place where we come to
our preconceived limit of our capacities mental or physical ones,
(04:41):
and we yet don't give up, we might and often
feel this is what I would think William James meant
when he described the second wind. So in time of crisis,
we find this deeper reserve of energy within us. And
oftentimes when I describe seesu to four or an audiences
through stories, I see this light go off in people's
(05:05):
eyes because everyone who's been to that place, into that
dark forest, you know, we know how it feels.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Like dark forest. Wow, that's the dark forest of the soul. Yeah,
you're right. You're writing also has a little bit of
a poetic feel to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I draw a lot of operation, yes, and the kind
of mythical And I think, are we are such a
such a multi layered being, this this whole human experience
that I kind of tend to take all the help
I can get to parse together this puzzle and try
(05:44):
to understand it from different angles. And I think I've
also gone to so many dark forests that I've had
to had to kind of start also taking the soul
into consideration where my condition and my mind kind of
failed me.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So, wow, said, You've you've been in many dark fires
a while. Do you feel comfortable sharing a personal moment
where you felt your CSU was tested?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh my goodness, I think I'll be to pull a
library and pull something out of it. I mean, we
all have those places, and no one is immune to adversity.
The beginning point of Seizu, that is something that it's
already now far away, was fifteen years ago. But the
reason why I ever even started researching Seizu was when
(06:32):
I was living in New York. It was maybe about
five years before you and I met, or maybe a
little bit less three and a half years, and I
had moved there with a life partner at the time,
but the relationship turned very abusive. It was emotional abuse first,
but then it turned very physically violent as well. And
(06:54):
by the time it ended, and when I started this
really long journey to healing, which I didn't even really
realize at that time how long it would be. But
it also, I would have to say, it took me
on an adventure into myself and as I was rebuilding
that kind of lost innocence and trust, but I discovered
(07:17):
a lot of things from that place, and that is
really the root of what I do, is to try
to understand how we rebuild those parts and how can
that be extended the situation that we are now also
as a humanity we're facing. But the question that kept
me up at nights at that time after the relationship
was this thought that how do humans overcome extreme adversity?
(07:42):
How do we do that? Who overcomes who doesn't? How
might I find strength? What would be those tools? And
then the second part was also that because adversity is unavoidable,
we all have some kind of things that happened to
us that can can we sometimes use adversity as a fuel?
(08:03):
That was the second part of the question. But these
two led me on quite an adventure that has been
filled with serendipity, incredible encounters, and also really re establishing
and reinventing my own CISU and my life force.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, and you might still reinvent Yes. Yeah, your PhD
takes a phenomenological approach. Can you explain to our listeners
what or all that means?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yes, to use that lens is to really place yourself
inside or in the middle of the research. So it
is experiential research where you become part of what is
being examined. So it's a little bit different from the
positivist where you only observe things or you measure them,
(08:56):
but you actually allow your own narrative to be part
of it, which is that you of course you record everything,
but you allow that voice of the researcher be very
obvious part of it, which to me sounds quite honest
because always almost with everything we do, the researcher is
(09:16):
part of it anyways, in which our interests direct are
what we want to focus on, for example, and all
of that. So with SEISU. It seemed pretty obvious after
I did this survey first in which I asked people
that what do they even think what CISU is? Because
(09:36):
it was completely on research at the time, it was
very a little understood. When I asked people that what
is CISU In an ordinary conversation, I would get these
very obscure answers, and no one could really explain this
to me. And that's what kind of piqued my interest that, Okay,
(09:58):
we have this concept from five hundred years a go,
and there's something in it. And so I got a
lot of data. There's a research paper on it called
Embodied Fortitude, and it's really good. My mom recommends it.
And so I realized pretty soon that I had still
made many more questions that I had answers, and there's
(10:20):
something in this concept of SEESU because it is a
phenomenon that relates so much to our experience and feeling
when we are in that dark forest that I realized
pretty soon that I need to somehow get closer to it.
I need to take it on the road, and I
literally did actually and through this physical thing that I did,
(10:45):
so that was a way for me to gain data
on as it happens when I go to that place
where I'm stripped so bare from my by tactics and
my mental strategies, and I feel that I am already done.
But because we always find the strength, I wanted to
understand that in that lived moment.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, you trained to run fifteen hundred miles across the
length of New Zealand. I remember watch following your I
remember watching your videos, and and you trained kung fu
in a martial arts academy in rural China. Wow, yeah
it was.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It was. It was fun and crazy. I would never
do either of those two again.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But you did it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
But I did it. Yeah, I did it. And I'm
so happy that I had this enthusiasm, which I also
believe is a form of life force, that it can
really drive us when we have a vision of something
we want to do. And with New Zealand it was.
There was also this social activism that was had to
you know, weaved into the campaign. So I did a
(11:56):
full trifecta. You know, I went to a country that
I felt like was spiritual home, which was New Zealand.
So if there was something that told me I had
a dream about running the length of New Zealand. So
that's how the whole thing got started, you know. So
it was this totally crazy idea, totally randomly picked the
number fifty days. Then I looked at the map and
I'm like, okay, that's about thirty miles a day, And
(12:17):
got to collect data from my PhD. And also I
combined it with this Season at Silence campaign to open
a conversation round how do we build compassionate cultures and
societies and reduce violence? How do we build more social support?
You know, so these things don't happen. So all those
(12:37):
combined created this perfect beautiful store for me that somehow
carried me through. And I wasn't a runner when I
got this idea. I trained for two years. And this
always stands as a testament and a testimonial of these
powers and strengths that lie in all of us are
(13:00):
oftentimes unexplored. And I think it was part of the
big trauma I had that actually really pushed me, because
I wanted to reinvent the narrative that we have of
overcomers or survivors of domestic violence, because when I was one,
I realized how many you know, there's often this question
(13:21):
of the people are seeing that week somehow, why didn't
you leave? It's a very complex, very nuanced question, and
I wanted to reframe anyone who's gone through any kind
of abuse of any sort, that you know, we're strong,
we have incredible capacity and strength, we have beautiful futures,
(13:45):
and so that was driving me to go through all that.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Hell. I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
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a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your living
(14:14):
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(14:37):
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(14:57):
Human Potential dot com slash s a C. That's Center
for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. Okay,
now back to the show. Have you done a lot
of messages and like people writing you, thank you and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, it was, it was, It was truly amazing. It
was a very communal effort. We organized fifteen events along
the run in different cities, and in each we had
women's circles, men's circles. Somewhere. I gave talks after running
thirty miles on that day, for example.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And thirty miles wow, yeah wow, you know I remember
watching started from just.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Being able to Yeah it was, yeah, yeah, it started
with me being able to run a few miles and
then you know, extending slowly and then slowly in this
process of just going through the motion, which is really
this part of CISU that is not so mystical, actually
(16:06):
this inner strength that nothing has ever changed without action
or effort, and these very little tiny things and steps
stacked on top of each other bring us to the
to the finish goal of the endline.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
At some point, did you listen to podcasts while you're
running or listen to music?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Scott, I listened to every single podcast of the Psychology
podcast back then when I was training, so you were
with me. I listened to like seasons of different podcasts
and a lot of music. But sometimes I would first
run in silence for the first few hours, so then
I would kind of reward myself, you know, with music
(16:50):
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Amazing. Wow. Well, what's what's one of the biggest misconceptions
you think exists out there about CIS.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Well, I'd have to say that even though now this
story that I'm sharing it sounds quite unusual and it
was a big feed. As you know, healing from any
trauma is a big feat. You know, it's a trauma.
Healing is always an ultra run for all of us.
But inside that journey, I would say that it's a
(17:24):
misconception to think that CISU is only the big things
we do. I personally think that it's those micro moments
in our ordinary life where we either choose to, let's say,
turn away from our family member or partner or from
a challenge, and or we keep our heart closed instead
(17:47):
of facing what is there or feeling the tough emotion
for example. It's those tiny little things that actually really
end up defining our future, the present first, and then future.
So if we in those moments when we really feel
the poll to just abandon everything or be you know,
(18:09):
you know, in a bad mood to someone, what if
we actually use that inner strength to do the thing
that might even feel impossible, to face someone with kindness
or with curiosity, or open a conversation or a dialogue.
You know, that's that's often very tough.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, for sure. It's not exactly the same thing as great, right.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
No, these all these concepts are you know, they're in
the same family, sisters, brothers. However you want to say it,
and it's impossible to kind of draw a line, even
though we researchers and humans would like to put them
in a box that this is where seas begins and
something else ends. But I would say a couple of things.
(18:53):
For example of great research by Angela Duckworth, which is
passion and perseverance. So this very long term work toward
a goal, so it means there's passion and then there's
this day in, day out. But SISU is more like
(19:14):
it happens in the moment, so it's not about the
long distance goal, but it's actually in a moment when
we feel that we are at the limits of our
perceived capacities. It's almost like you come to the edge
of grand canyon and there's no way to continue the journey,
so you need to pull out some a bit more
momentous reserves in order to Let's say, in a marathon,
(19:35):
there's a thing that marathoners call the wall, which they
often call that it's impenetrable. But yet most of the
people who start the marathon they finish, So we draw
from something within us and we get to continue. So
it's SSU happens more in the moment, so we borrow
a bit of this embodied fortitude. But the second thing,
(19:55):
which is actually very curious is that whereas grit, perseverance, hardiness,
they are qualities of the mind. So CISU is what
I would call embodied fortitude instead of mental fortitude. That
it has a more of this flavor of something that
(20:17):
we don't quite even understand. But we do have more
research from embodied cognition of understanding how our body works
with our mind and our emotions, thinking of, for example,
our gut microbiome from gas tar anthology, where this microbiome,
(20:39):
through this unconscious process, influences our responses to stress, to pain,
to our emotions. So there's this very deep dialogue happening
at all times, and it's much more broader than we,
for a long time in psychology have thought that it's
you know, we're so obsessed with the mind, and so
(21:00):
was I. I had a long time of you know,
before I realized that CAESU was none about the same quality.
That it is something a little bit different, and it
complements this inquiry that we have about human strength and fortitude.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
You've thought a lot about this, I can tell oh.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I spent a lot of time with this.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yes, do you do you feel like some of the
academic aspects were unnecessary, Like you know, they're necessary to
get a PhD, but you know a lot of the
c suits in the doing of the CCU it's not
in the thinking about the CCU.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Right, Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's And a
lot of the work that I do is very I
work with trauma survivors, and you know, there's really very
little point to bring tables and research papers there. It's
so much about kind of being able to be present
(22:01):
when there's even no words for that. And so, but
of course you need the I'm so grateful for the
foundation that I have. And of course having such a
big framework of doctoral research in itself equipped me to
reach so high that without it, I would have never
(22:22):
done some of the things I did. So it all
works worked for the best, I'd say so. And now
I get to be called doctor Elizabeth Lafty by doctor
Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So it's doctor, doctor doctor. Yeah. Of course. Now you
have the book, it's called Gentle Power.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Is this true true story? Am I telling you a
true story?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
That's a true story?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yes? And in this book you highlight another side of
Soca that goes beyond your toughness. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yes? And it is a perfect bridge from the previous question. Actually,
and when you said that, wow, I've spent You've spent
a lot of time with this, and I don't think
I would have been able to be so excited. I'm
passionate about SISU for fifteen years if there wasn't this
other side, you know, this whole toughness thing, wouldn't propel
(23:19):
me to keep going with it. But what I realized
about SISU through my own process. First, when I was
in New Zealand, I had this really huge realization. It
was Day twelve and I call it the Miracle of
Day twelve because you know, at that time I had
ran these thirty mile days. I had a injury that
(23:41):
was developing on my right foot, so everything was a
little bit uncertain can I continue? It was really painful,
and that pain, you know, it took away my I
couldn't even observe the beauty around me, had a hard
time connecting when I was running with people, because you know,
pain makes us turn inwards because we need to manage it.
And I was at the point of like, what do
(24:02):
I do? You know, I have set up this whole campaign,
we have events coming up, and you know it's this
age old question with our forty two that when should
we still push forward or should we now stop? It's
there's never an easy solution, and we kind of have
to learn, you know, and figure it out. But I
(24:23):
have this ongoing conversation with the road because I was
there alone and and this road kept asking me questions,
you know, and or my subconscious you know, and at
some point it said that, you know, Amelia, I was
back then that's like, Emilia, do you see that next
bend over there? And I said like, yeah, you know,
(24:45):
And then I heard the response that, well, you know,
when you run there, guess what You're going to see
more road and another bend and then more road. And
the pain will stop when you make it stop. Yeah,
And you know, at that point I started this process
(25:05):
of really going into these deep players of myself where
I realized that it actually was, or had been, easier
for me to be hard on myself than to be
gentle and kind and have mercy. Oh yeah, that's deep,
it was, you know, And looking afterwards, it feels like
(25:26):
this whole run for my own personal journey almost existed
for this day twelve two. Kind of if we think
of alchemy, which is I wrote a book for finished
speaking people and it's called the Alchemy of Cizu, And
you know, of course, taking a bit of a risk
with such a name, but for me because alchemy is
(25:47):
such a perfect word for this transformation that happens from
lead to gold, which car you, you know, spoke a
lot about this transformation of our psyche and the lead.
For it to turn into gold, it has to melt.
And what do we need for that melting is heat
And that's where this potential and the gift of adversity
(26:10):
also comes, even though no one wants it and we
resist it, but there is a process that we can
actually take away gifts from it. And so at that point,
what I did was I simulated myself at the end
of the fifty days that okay, let's imagine that I
get through all these days and I've done it. And
(26:32):
I used this question from Mark Allen, who's I think
he's a six time iron Man World champion, so a
total guru of sisu and physical capacity. And I asked
him that what's the one advice that you give me
for this run? And Mark looked at me and he
said that honor yourself. And I took this and I
(26:54):
looked into those past the fifty days that if I arrive,
can I say that I honored myself or did I
do it at all costs? And kind of reverse engineering
from there to that moment, it was actually very easy
for me to make the right decision and kind of
cut that consecutive days, which was the plan, and then
(27:14):
we went to see uh, went to the er to
look with the what was happening with the foot, you know,
and the doctor on call happened to be an ultrarunner himself,
so you know, it didn't bash me for being a
crazy person, but he understood, you know, and luckily all
that I needed was a day off, and then I
switched my strategy a little bit. There was no plan B.
(27:35):
The plan was to run. That was it. But at
that point I realized that, okay, we need to do something.
So I kept the adventure human powered and I cycled
some parts of it in the middle, so I caught
on those thirty miles I lost and thing and it continued.
So I was then kind of zigzacing, running and cycling
until my foot was okay again. But that changed everything
(27:58):
and the joy came back. I had my autonomy back
on this beautiful run that I had designed, you know,
and I learned a lot about taking care of myself
and combining this toughness with also gentleness, and so gentle
power is the It's the higher octave of cizu. It's
(28:21):
the constructive expression of cizu. Because we are often in
danger of pushing too hard, so we must balance it
with something that brings us again into that place of
where we honor ourselves and others. Also, because we can
easily be hurtful to other people as well through our cizu.
It can be hurtful to ourselves. We can end up
(28:42):
with burnout, you know, all kinds of things. We can
end up getting disconnected from our peers, our co workers,
you know, we are too harsh on them, and then
it can impair our thought process. So sisu must also
be informed by reason.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, I love that. I actually, just thirty minutes ago
got off a call with Susan Kin, who wrote the
book Quiet, and I was thinking, before I read your
book gentle Power, I thought you were making the point that,
you know, a lot of introverts can have grit. It
doesn't have to that grit doesn't have to be such
(29:23):
a growy thing to do. For lack of a better,
better way of putting.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
It, well said, that's maybe one of Tholso the misunderstandings
around CISU. But yeah, you know this, yeah, yeah, we
need balance with the toughness with the gentleness in order
to be wholesome, integrated humans.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
M yeah, the kind of self compassion with yourself. You
can have compassion with others even while you're quote dominating
the competition. I mean, people you know are gets gets
so obsessed with domin everyone's got to win an argument
these days. Politics is really horrifying to me right now
(30:09):
in America. Yeah, this notion that that this notion that
words are violence I disagree with. And you know, I
just wondering your your work with with with curbing violence,
do you you know, like what are your thoughts on
like the Charlie Kirk killing and all that you know
(30:29):
that happened in America, Like, you know, like I'm sure
that violence is quite broadly here against violence and violence
of words as.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Well, right, violence in all words. You know, I see
that we have a responsibility for protecting life. So anything
that diminishes cuts off emotional wings from another person. You know,
(30:58):
we need to Like one of the core things of
Season Nott Silence was this idea of zero tolerance to violence.
You know, and there's this because I've been thinking of
where do I take season silence now? Because it's such
a broad concept, you know, the juice courage over silence.
And it's not only this interpersonal violence, but it's in
(31:19):
school bullying. You know, it's at workplaces, it's in small communications,
it's online commenting, it's everywhere. And you know, there's so
much talk about toxic leadership nowadays because it is so
rampant all over the world. But what makes me really
(31:39):
curious or where do I kind of come? Where do
I go with this is the really untapped potential and
the real fulcrum of change is the bystanders, the masses
of people who also we allow bad, poor leadership in
our workplaces. When we form cultures where there is zero
(32:01):
tolerance to violence and we have those conversations, those tough
conversations directly and using gentle power, which means that we
balance the harshness that can come with the direct conversation sometimes,
I mean sometimes we need to be super tough to obviously,
but bringing in that humanity into all of that, you
(32:23):
know that we can rise to our best as we are.
What we need to see from each other now is
like the excellence. But I'm a huge fan of Jackson
Cuts and he's coined this. He's created a project called
the Upstander Project, and that is really about empowering and
(32:43):
inspiring and training you know, the bystanders how to stand up.
And of course though todkash Dan, you know, the art
of insubordination, all of that, and so using our CZU
a bit more for that. So I think there's a
place for every human in this global transformation that we
(33:05):
are going through now, you.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Know, can you elberate a little bit that when.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
We see something that is diminishing to humanity, when we
see violence, that we don't simply stay silent, but we
have the courage to to speak.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Up, speak out against it. M Yeah, yeah, I mean
it's yeah, it's free speech. Sounds like your pro free speech.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
So I have to say now that as a defined
free speech, I'm from it for Finland, so I might
be a little bit out of the concept the US.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah. Well, just having a diversity of viewpoints and that
being allowed, you know, in a lot of free speech,
the opposite of a of a like of a ttalitarian regime,
you know, where everyone has to have the same viewpoint
or us you're murdered, you know, like, you know, we
want to real democracy where we allow and defend other
(34:12):
people's right to speak their opinion even if absolutely disagree
with them. Yes, yeah, yeah. How can people develop their
CSU muscles? What are some tips.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Help help me nice seas of muscles? Yeah, that's a
good comparison, by the way, because you know we we
we do the exercises and that's how it starts. I
drew something on paper. I actually wanted to coin something
from SISU, you know, using the words uh it themselves
so it can be a little memory tool. So I
(34:47):
was thinking that how to develop SEESU. So the s
the first one, you know, it's like it starts now.
The best day to start uh draining our SEASU muscle
was yesterday. The second best day is today. And just
this thing that our brain learns and we change through repetition,
(35:08):
you know. Neuroplasticity is on our side with this one.
So finding what is that edge for you? Is it
an athletic one, you know, or is it some kind
of an emotional thing? Is it relational? Wherever that little
thing is where it feels that it takes one to
(35:28):
the discomfort zone, and we might avoid it so gently
I call it also you know that we take care
of ourselves when we do that, So go comfortably into discomfort.
The point isn't to be hard on yourself. You know,
sometimes we need to do that. But when we are
training seizu, it's enough to choose the little bit of
the discomfort thing because again it rewires our brain. So
(35:51):
when we are actually at the point that we need
our se zu, we have that runway that it's a
little bit more easy to actually go and base that
tough thing. And then the second one that I put
there into it, so developing those the somatic intelligence in us,
(36:12):
that intuition, because it can't be developed you know, over
time we can start to hear the subtle messages, and
that's the thing that our body knows what it needs
to support us in tough times. Our brain is always
in the past or in the future, you know, it's
raising there, but the body is in the present moment.
So finding that information there and giving them that to ourselves,
(36:37):
you know, to support ourselves, to support ourselves. And then
the third one is self care. So now we have
self care. Third super duper important to give ourselves the
rest the physical things that we need, you know, the
building blocks that we all know what they are, but
(36:59):
you know it's it's when I finally learned to sleep,
my life quality improved so much and so did my resilience.
So this is a building blocked to really kind of
put on a good place. And then the fourth one
is you. That's for unity, and that's the thing what
I think of it is to be a person who
takes care of their nervous system, who self regulates so
(37:22):
that I can be a safe person to you. And
when we all do this to each other, we can
create that collective seisu. Because sisu doesn't only live in you,
or it doesn't only live in me, but it actually,
in a weird way, is in that space in between
us where that those chemical messages, you know, and our
(37:44):
brain is constantly asking am I safe? And so when
I bring myself to any place that I signal that
I'm a safe human, that's how we can together come
from that place of unity, and that's where we really
find that that true length and the sea sue.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
So culture matters a lot. Having a culture of cis, yes.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
As it matters a lot. I mean otherwise because we
all have to use sezu. But why on Earth are
we constantly creating a planet where you know we are
we are forced to use our se su to simply survive. Like,
how about we learn how to collaborate and be good
to each other in kind so that we can use
(38:28):
se su for those feats you know, like how do
we build a better system somewhere, or how do we
build better education systems or things like that. You know,
But we have a long way to go, but you
know we're taking I believe in the power of small
steps repeated over time. So I come from a place
(38:48):
of hope. I believe.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, you're you are very interested in how SSU can
save the world. Well, let's let's let's talk about how
cister can help people who have mental health struggles. M
I think your thoughts there.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, I think what I've seen quite often is simply
to when I open, when someone opens the narrative about
seesu or or I speak of it, it helps people
to start to remember those moments when they have been strong,
even you know, doing this little seizu stories exercise of
(39:30):
thinking past back in the life where they overcame something
that was tough and putting them, even just with bullet points,
so that we can start to remember that there is
more strength to us than what meets the eye at
a given moment, because that is the first thing that
survival mechanism in a way attacks, and our mind gets
(39:52):
us on that downward spiral, so we we simply can't
see ourselves as wholesome beings who also have strengths because
the mind starts to, you know, focus on only on
those things that are wrong. So opening the conversation so
that we can even start to talk about that we
have this innate fortitude and every single person has it.
(40:15):
I believe it's a it's not a C. It's not
a finished thing. By the way, it's obviously a universal
capacity just have. We haven't have a name for it, but.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
It's you know, yeah, I mean, I just I feel like,
like athletes who are struggling with their mental health, the
last thing they want to be told is to just persevere.
So my gut felt like this isn't CESU is incompatible
(40:46):
And you're saying it's the exact opposite at least the
flavor of CC that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a good thing. To kind
of pinpoint so that those moments of remembering when we
were strong, they don't need to be accomplishments. They can
be strong. And when I remember, for example, how I
supported someone who was being bullied, for example, so there
was this element of okay, that's where I stood up,
(41:16):
or even remembering what happened, what allowed me was that
someone supported me. So remembering and seeing kind of that
interplay also of how the strength moves between us and
how we can support each other.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, your flavor of of your of CC it reminds
me of like the Buddhist concept of equanimity in a
lot of ways. And I'm a big fan of the
Buddhist concept of equanimity because it includes love and warmth
in presence and yeah, yeah, maybe it's extreme, we call
(41:56):
it extreme equanimity.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
I really appreciate that you bring up the term equanimity
instead of, for example, stoicism. Yeah, because toisism. I get it.
And there's that, But that also easily goes again on
the on the kind of shadow side of seizu, where
we rather kind of push away something and disconnect and
(42:19):
we're just uh, we pushed through that through the pain
without feeling anything so I would rather hope for myself
and for us to develop that constructive side of SIZU
that more vehers on the side of equanimity.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
If something yeah, yeah, I really like that. I really
like that. So we talked about how it can really
help with mental health. What about the collapse of democracy?
Can I help with that?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Absolutely? Yes, it can, because well here's the thing. So
as a cultural concept, so it's interesting that sense too,
that it's not just this word that denotes some kind
of capacity in a human but also as a cultural
concept in Finland, it has long routes of indicating something
(43:14):
that is about doing things really well, even if nobody
is watching. So it has this invitation to uphold a
good life so that we do things honestly with transparency.
(43:34):
So it invites the person who cultivates SISU to actually
look at their own choices. So that's also the reason
why I see that there is a lot of potential
with this concept in this time now, because it's not
just you know, mental toughness, be tough and overcome, have resilience,
but there's also an invitation to ask that how am
(43:57):
I living a good life? How is that built? If
someone wants to take it that far, and you know,
I assure do.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Mm hmm. Oh. Well, what's what's in the future for you? Doctor? Yeah?
What's where are you at right now? Where's your head
right now?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Well, I have to say my head is in a
My head and body and soul are in quite a
good place now. I was just thinking in alignment with each other. Yeah,
they feel they're in alignment, and I think there's been some.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
I feel it too. Oh.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I was going to say, I feel that you feel
like too, because you look like you look really calm
and integrated and good.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
So I thought that about you.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Of the mutual compliment called club here, I like it,
but that there's a there was. It was quite a
rough ride after the forties immediately, but I feel that
there was some kind of this a bit of this
union integration that happened afterwards that I was able to
bring some of those parts together. So now I'm able
(45:06):
to have this this resilience and this toughness, but also
with so much love, lovingness for myself, and my shoulders
are relaxed and I give myself the things I really
want to do, so I nourish my enthusiasm with creative writing,
(45:26):
I've had the permission from my ophthalmologist that I was
able to go back to aikido, back to the dojo,
which is I see ikido as a realization of love.
That's what we really do there is we learn how
to in an embodied way find like feel the energy
as it moves, and where do I tense, where do
(45:47):
I soften? And then how do I bring that embodied
feeling out from the dojo and into the world. How
do I do that in a conversation with let's say,
my partner, you know, or with my mother or or
anyone you know? And Yeah, so I feel excited. It's
a bit of a new page that's turning, and I
(46:07):
don't exactly know everything that's going to happen, but I
want to be on to be of service with what
I've discovered from this road so far. So if for
the first part I was building my CV, then it's
kind of time like what's the testament the legacy?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
You know?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
How am I how kind? How can I be of help?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
And where you know, will you still be conducting research
or are you kind of kind of put that?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah, I think I'm actually ready to go back. I
had to take a little break after the eight year
long PhD was over. Yeah, but now my life force
is back, so I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Wow. Great, And our other researchers picking and taking on
the mantle, are they carrying on the baton so to speak.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yes, there's a quite super interesting stuff happening here in Helsinki.
I got to advise the making of the SISU scale.
That's uh, that's around and validating it. And and then
there's a Marta Velasquez who is bringing SISU quite beautifully
to Spain. And he has this other concept called Rasmia,
(47:20):
which she's kind of exploring the connection of those two concepts.
And I keep hearing here and there where people are
applying it into mental mental health or therapy and this
and that. So it's really exciting to see where Cezu's
journey continues. You know, it's on its independent journey as
it always was, you.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Know, Yeah, more wonderful. It's it's been a delight watching
you grow over the years. You've come such a long way.
I remember my first ever meeting with you. I remember too,
I feel like you're a different person.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
It's been a it's been a long road, and I
always remember how you were the first one to invite
me to speak, you know, and do this our and
half long presentation on c suit to your students at
the Yeah you pen so you rock that. I remember
all your people who opened the doors in the beginning.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
You were awesome back then and you're still awesome. But
you're you're more integrated. You're way more integrated and grounded.
Your energy is much more grounded. It's wonderful, wonderful to
see the journey. I'm glad we got you on the
Psychologic podcast. Thank you so much, and yeah, I wish
you all the best to make your continued journey.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Thanks God,
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