March 30, 2022 • 39 mins
In our season finale, Eve and Aditi bring all of the lessons and discussions of this season full circle to discuss what it means to live an “active legacy” – how we spend this one precious life we have to live, why we choose to spend our time the way we do and how it shapes the way people remember us. They are joined by Nora McInerny, author of It’s OK to Laugh and No Happy Ending and creator of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Nora, who writes and speaks about grief, brings her perspective on legacy through her experience of losing her husband and what it taught her about empathy, time and the importance of living authentically in every moment. To learn more about Nora, visit www.noraborealis.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the
New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space,
activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator.
And I'm Doctor add In the Rucar, a physician and
medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience,
mental health, and burnout. We're here to peel back to
(00:24):
layers around why it's so easy for society to guard
men's time as if it's diamonds and to treat women's
time as if it's infinite like sands. And whether you
are partnered with or without children, or in a career
where you want more boundaries, this is the place for
you for all family structures. We're here to take a
time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim
(00:49):
our time. High d D Hi, Eve, I'm feeling a
little nostalgic today because this is the end of our
first season and this has been such a fun and
a really interesting ride with who we've been able to
(01:11):
talk with. So as I was thinking about the end
of the season, I really wanted us to address this
idea of legacy, what we're remembered for because at the
end of the day, you know, it's not always the
things that we spend our time on. That's why we're
here in the Time Out podcast right to scrutinize and
(01:32):
encourage people to make active decisions about how they spend
their time. So the story I wanted to tell you
today has to do with my day job, which I
don't talk about that often on this podcast, but for
over ten years, as you know, I've been a philanthropic advisor.
I work with families on their legal matters and their
governance related to family businesses, family foundations, families that look
(01:54):
like the HBO show Succession. As we've laughed and said,
and as we said to our listeners, you should feel
bad for me. But one story that really stood out
to me was right before the pandemic, one of my
clients in the Pacific Northwest called me and said, I
was thinking about you today. I was at a funeral
(02:16):
and so I said to my client, well, thanks, it's
really nice of you to think of me when you're
at a funeral. What made you think of me? And
he said, well, I'm at a funeral of a colleague
and my client is a tighten of business in the
Pacific Northwest. This was another tighten of business in the
Pacific Northwest. He had passed away. There was a packed church,
and my client was there to pay his respects. In
(02:39):
the church, something happens where all three of his daughters,
the man who passed away, all start to approach the
podium where they were going to speak, and they say
things that are silly, childlike poems. So the first daughter
goes up, she recites a poem that's like a Shelf
Silverstein poem, rhyming and beautiful and funny, and the audience,
(03:04):
the mourners start laughing. And then the next daughter comes
up and she does the same thing. It's a different poem.
And then the third daughter comes up and also reads
a really funny, silly, beautiful, rhyming poem that again sounds
like it was published by someone. And then everyone in
the audience is very confused. My client tells me, and
(03:25):
then all three daughters lean into the microphone and say,
those were poems our father wrote for us as the
tooth fairy. Wow, he was our tooth fairy. And what
my client was reflecting on after leaving the church was
that nobody talked about his business career. What people were
(03:48):
remembering from that day were his poems, the fact that
it was probably strange back then for any man to
be the tooth fairy. Even now in my data, that
usually is done by women and heterosist gender partnerships. But
(04:11):
on top of it, what my client said to me was,
I had no idea, working with this man for years
and years that he was a poet, such a beautiful,
skilled poet. And it got me thinking about how we're remembered,
what do we spend our time on and why, And
(04:31):
so I would love to hear your thoughts, because we're
going to get to hear from our amazing guests, Nor McNerney,
who really speaks so deeply about issues of legacy, grief, existence,
existential meaning. But I'd love to hear from you about
(04:52):
this idea of an act of legacy. I read about
it and find your unicorn space, this idea that we
can't control how we're remembered, whether it's this titan of
business who will be remembered in that room for his
poems and other things. But I do know that we
can start to think about our values and how we
(05:15):
live our daily lives that will shape how people remember us,
and I wanted to know what are things that you
think about in terms of what we can focus on now,
what our priorities can be now as we think about
how we will be remembered in the future. So first,
before we talk about this idea of an active legacy,
(05:38):
they think back to this Harvard study it's called the
Harvard Happiness Study. And more than money or titles or
positions of power or all of the things, you know,
many of these men were titans of business, as you say,
and yet when it came down to the end of
their life and they reflected back on their life, the
greatest marker for happy enus was the quality of relationships
(06:02):
that these people had over seventy five years. So when
we think about leaving an active legacy, it's less about
the doing and more about the being. There is another
really beautiful book that speaks to this, written by a
woman named Brawny, where the Top five Regrets of the
Dying And she was a palliative care nurse and spent
(06:27):
years sitting at the bedside of people as they took
their last breath in hospice care. And she asked these
people as they were dying, what do you wish for,
what do you regret? And everyone said their most common
regret was in quotes, I wish I'd had the courage
to live a life true to myself, not the life
(06:50):
others expected of me. It's about living a life with
no regrets. So when you get to the end of
your life, as we all will, hopefully for any of us,
we won't have that sense of regret. Shout out to Ben,
my ten year old son, who knew we were going
to be talking about an active legacy and what makes
(07:11):
a successful life and I was sort of joining on
and on about it, and he says to me, well,
it's just really one sentence, mom if you want to
think about what an active legacy is or what a
successful life is. And I was like, okay, well tell
me and he said, well, an act of legacy, living
a successful life really is living a life you would repeat. Wow,
(07:36):
it happens in the small moments. It happens when you're
sitting at desk at night and start scribbling that poem
for your child that ends up going under their pillow.
The beauty of these hard questions is that it's really
just about making these small moments matter that add up
to a life you would repeat. We're so excited to
talk about all of this with our guests, Nora mcannerney,
(08:00):
author of It's Okay to Laugh and No Happy Endings
and also the creator of Terrible. Thanks for asking the podcast.
We'll be speaking to her after the break. For so
(08:27):
thrilled to have Norah McInnerny here with us. Norah is
the author of the amazing memoirs It's Okay to Laugh
and No Happy Endings and hosts of Terrible. Thanks for
asking the podcast. We were hoping you would start by
just telling listeners how you got into the work, um
of what you do now, who you are, and about
(08:49):
your background. Hi Eve, Hello d D. I am an
author of several funny books about sad things, and I
am a remarried widow raising a blended family here in Phoenix, Arizona.
And before all of that, I was just a regular
(09:10):
Midwestern gal whose life had unfolded more or less the
way that it was supposed to. I had had a
semi traumatic experience in fourth grade where I got a
bowl cut. Other than that, my life was blessedly boring.
I did all the right things at the right time.
I went to college, and then I got a job
(09:32):
and I fell in love when I was twenty seven,
which in the Midwest was pushing it. I fell in
love with this guy and he was thirty one older, man,
felt very sophisticated, and it was so perfect. It was
so annoying, like every love story is, which is you know,
didn't expect it, And there he was. And a year
into our relationship, he had a seizure at work and
(09:56):
I met him at the hospital. We really didn't think
it was serious. Even when the doctors told us he
had a brain tumor. We just thought, well, it can't
be cancer. Those are the things that happened to other people.
We will be the people who have a nice, little,
benign brain tumor. And this is a story that we
(10:16):
we tell and we laugh about someday, and we do.
We did laugh about that story, but only because it
was a very bad brain tumor. He had stage four
glioblastoma and we were married a month after it was
removed from his head, and his funeral was on our
third wedding anniversary. So Aaron and I were together for
(10:40):
four years. We were married for almost three. We had
a son together, Ralph, who is now nine years old,
and who is a part of this version of my life.
And I have this whole different life, this whole different
career that I never could have imagined, because I had
no imagination, and I could not have perceived of a
(11:03):
life other than the one that I hoped for and
had anticipated having, which is that you do the right
things and then the right things happened to you, and
instead I have a very different, very beautiful life that
I love, and I have a very different career that
(11:23):
I love that I never ever would have chosen. Imagination
is an interesting word to me, Nora, because it ties
to this idea of a legacy, an active legacy, right,
this idea that instead of just looking behind saying the
best days are behind us, I would say that I
(11:43):
would challenge us all to have imagination, to say what
does it actually mean to live an active legacy? And
so the question I wanted to ask you, Nora, is
why does it sometimes take and extraordinarily terrible experience for
people to wake up, whether it's the pandemic, whether it's
(12:07):
the death of a spouse, a d D. You've said
that it's been a cancer diagnosis for many of your patients,
why do we have to wait for something terrible to
happen to us, for us to wake up to say,
we are living on a treadmill that has been decided
by somebody else, not us, and I want to live
my life by what is important to me. I am
(12:31):
so interested a d d. In your take on this,
because we talk a lot about mindfulness as a practice,
like I'm gonna turn on this app and be mindful
for ten minutes, you know, I'm gonna And I did it.
I did my mindfulness, and I've certainly treated it like that.
But I think one of the reasons why the time
(12:52):
that I had with Aaron, and most of the time
that I had with him, he was very sick and
life was very hard, but that those hardest days of
my life were to date still some of my happiest days,
because we were so present, and because looking too far
into the future meant imagining a future where he might
(13:16):
not be there would most likely not be there, and
looking too hard at the past was useless because what
was even there? Like what was there? We we knew
that there was nothing we could do to have, you know,
change the outcome. I couldn't have gone back in time
and rearrange the cells and his brain. So we're so
so present with each other. And I do think that
(13:39):
when the bottom falls out, what remains is so so valuable,
even if what remains is not that great, if you
could choose it, you know, the fact is like we don't.
We don't get to choose it. And I wish so
badly that I could live all of my life, even
(13:59):
those previous decades before Aaron was sick, with that same awareness.
And I wish I knew how honestly, I wish I
wish I knew how. While your story is so powerful,
what's so interesting in hearing you and Eve talked about
this is this idea that anxiety is a future focused emotion. Right,
(14:21):
that was the first thing I thought about. How you
talked about being mindful and that like truth of the
universe is just to be president in the moment. What
is mindfulness? And that's what it is. But when we're
thinking about the past, there's a lot of regret, maybe
feelings of depression and going back, and then we often
say that anxiety is a future focused emotion, what if,
what if? What if? What if? Rather than being in
(14:43):
the now. For many of my patients. When something traumatic happens,
it is a great reckoning. And to Eve's question, that
original question of why does it take something like that
to happen, I often think it's because we are so
set in our complacency and it's the only thing that
shakes us out of our complacency. And then suddenly there's
(15:07):
that reckoning. And I loved when you talked about that
like essence. Right, you didn't use that word essence, but
that kernel of when everything falls apart, what's left, and
that feeling of what's left and pairing things down is
what we've really experience during the pandemic. You kind of
recognize that your time here isn't necessarily guaranteed. That is
(15:28):
what keeps us too when we when I talked about
imagination before, you can feel bad for anybody, right, And
I had a lot of pity. Right. I could drive
around the Minneapolis where I lived at the time and
be like, Oh, I feel bad for that. That makes
me feel bad. But that's different. That's not compassion, and
that's not imagination, right, It's just it's projection. And the
(15:50):
reality of compassion and of having a good imagination, a
good sense of awareness is that awareness that what you
think sets you part is actually what makes you a
part of the world, of this universe, of your community.
I want to just focus on what you just said
about what sets you apart, makes you apart, because I wonder, um,
(16:16):
if we could talk a little bit about that, this
idea that I've never seen in this in my research
for my second book around creativity and constraints, I've never
seen somebody say when I had, you know, a hard
thing happened to me. I have never heard somebody say
that it made them not feel less a part of
(16:39):
the bigger world, which I thought was so interesting to me.
You would think that it would it would lead to
retreat and anger and wanting to never face the world again.
But that really wasn't. At least my data is so.
And I wonder again if you see this in your communities,
where this idea of what sets is apart all of
a sudden makes us apart of something, whether it's your
(17:00):
text chain of widows, whether it's the community for women
with postpartum anxiety, whether it's so many of my friends
who have had cancer diagnosis these part of new different communities,
whether it's full of creativity, sharing imagination, like you said, empathy,
even some surprise. So it makes me hopeful that maybe
(17:24):
if we look at this pandemic and all the individual
things that happened to us, could be come out living
an active legacy that is connected to that apart a part,
not a part, a part of something bigger. And I
wonder if you see that in your community. Do you
hear stories like that, Nora, from the people that share
with you after you were sharing with them. Yeah, and
(17:46):
I lived it too, which is not to say that
I didn't also go through just like intense depression and isolation,
and also when I would look back at those moments
where I felt like I am totally alone, there's nobody
else here and everything is the worst. I also had
(18:07):
so much community in so many ways. Aaron and I
wrote his obituary together. We put it in the local paper.
I didn't think they would publish it, but this is
a fact for everybody who's listening. They will publish anything.
You pay for it. It's an ad for your death.
You can so live it up. And we revealed his
identity as Spider Man and it went viral, which was
(18:30):
a different, simpler time. Okay, it was a simpler time,
and I got so many messages. This is how I
started terrible. Thanks for asking. Most of our episodes are
stories that came to me where people are reaching out
and sharing something with me. These were complete strangers from
around the world who did not know me, who did
not know erin, who were like, I'm here with you.
I know loss, and i know how disorienting it is,
(18:52):
and they were offering me something, and they would share
their own loss with me with detail that they may
never have given their friends or family members. In part
because there is that recognition you might be a safe
place for me to put this. You just might be.
And I've tried so hard to make sure that I
(19:14):
am that safe place for other people. And David Kessler.
He worked with Elizabeth Coogler Ross on the five Stages
of grief. He wrote a recent book called Finding Meaning,
which is the sixth stage of grief. I have seen
this in almost every story that I've encountered as I
meet people too, which is that once you go through something,
(19:35):
you want to somehow like use it for some good
right that you are not the only one. I see
that all the time. I think it is the most
human reaction that we can have to say I want
to ease somebody else's suffering in a way that mine
was or was not. That it's like that idea their
(19:57):
cracks and everything. That's how the light gets in, right.
And there's this concept of a therapeutic presence, meaning it's
when you're with someone and their presence feels healing. That
idea of a therapeutic presence is very important. It also
has been shown recently in new emerging studies that it
(20:18):
has an actual role to play in healing. And even
I in the past have talked a lot about the
difference between healing and cure and how someone may never
be cured because it might be an incurable disease, but
they can be healed. The thing about this group effect,
which is so fascinating, Nora, it's what you're saying, this
idea that when we have a lived experience, a tragedy,
(20:43):
something that really defines and shapes us and shapes our
story forever. It's like there's that clear delineation before and after,
right like that one incident. As human beings, we are
meaning seeking, purpose driven creatures. We need to make meaning
and send out of difficult experiences. It's just an evolutionary
trait that we have, and so that when we go
(21:06):
through something difficult, and like you said, Nor at the start,
you felt alone and isolated, and then you put out
that obituary and all of these people started reaching out
to you. It helped to normalize and validate the experience,
which somehow helped you feel less alone, more connected, and
a greater sense of therapeutic presence all around you. You
(21:28):
were also able to give that therapeutic presence to others,
and that's that group effect. It is a true scientific
and measurable effect. And you've all done something different as
a result of this event. That's also important to say.
You found meeting and purpose and created a whole career
as someone who offers their therapeutic presence to others. Thank you.
(21:51):
And all I wanted to do was to make sure
that people knew that they were not the only one
and to validate the fact that life is hard for
everybody in different ways. And that is all we want
as people is you feel seen and heard, and if
(22:12):
you don't, try to make somebody else feel that way,
and it will, and it will, it will hopefully at
some point, like reflect back to you, will come back
to you. When you talk about leaving and a living
an active legacy, Eve, It's like what you do is
you reflect back to people the things that you didn't
have right in the moment, and you are also showing
(22:35):
people what is possible. I was reading something yesterday about,
you know, the privilege of vulnerability, right, this idea that
a lot of times it's hard to be vulnerable if
you aren't in a place of privilege where you may
not feel like you have that supportive community or even
a supportive job. So there is a privilege in vulnerability.
(22:56):
But you know, when you use those redemptive experiences of vulnerability,
I wonder by doing something with it if we're if
that's part of an act of legacy. Other people don't
may not have that ability to use their voice for
that type of vulnerability. And how can I create that
community or a world where everybody is entitled to that
(23:17):
type of imagination, surprise, compassion. You know, we we this
This first season has been about understanding that time is
not infinite, that time is diamonds, that we get one life.
It may be interrupted abruptly, or as you said, if
(23:38):
we're lucky, we get more time on this earth. But
it's just one life, and this episode we wanted to
end the season on it because we believe this idea
of an act of legacy is living on this earth
with intention, which is the exact opposite of what you
said when we started, which was this idea of living
(24:02):
life without really thinking about the decisions were necessarily making,
living on a treadmill, auto pilot, not paying attention. So
for us to understand time, we thought you could help
us wrap up the season by this recognition that maybe
(24:22):
all of us won't have a wake up moment, a
light bulb moment. So what can you say to those
people out there who didn't have, you know, an experience
like you had obviously, but do you want to learn
from what you did? What can they do and put
into practice? To live a life where time has really
looked at the way it should be is our most
(24:44):
valuable currency. I do think sometimes that that realization or
that acknowledgement to live constantly with the sense of a
ticking clock is also not healthy. Right If every a
you wake up and think this could be it like
that is that is no way to live. There is
(25:04):
no way to live. But there's this Mason Jennings song
that I listened to you over and over when Aaron
was first diagnosed, called be here Now, And those are
basically the lyrics, right like be here now, no other
place will do. And I got the word now tattooed
(25:25):
on the inside of my wrist to remind me of
the value of the present moments. And that does not
mean that we have to love every moment. It does
not mean that you have to go yolo. Our time
does not need to be spent in big, splashy ways constantly.
(25:45):
The biggest moments are typically going to be the smallest moments.
When I am eighty five years old, I want to
remember the feeling of my youngest child sitting in the
mom chair, which is what he calls, my body on
the couch, and he holds my arm and he puts
my hand across his heart and it covers almost his
(26:06):
whole chest. Like that is that is everything, And that
is such a small, small thing. We have so little
control over our legacy, active or not. We do not
know how our interactions ow our investments in time or
money will pay off. We don't know those those those
seeds will be sown long after we are gone. In
(26:28):
so many ways. And what I remember about Aaron is
I don't want to remember just that he died, or
the fact that he died. Like what I remember is
that he spent an entire year memorizing all of his
friends middle names and birthdays, because he said, to be
a good friend, you had to know somebody's middle name
and their birthday. That is living in active legacy is
(26:50):
being so present, as present as possible with the people
you love, with the things that are important to you.
And I know that we don't always have control over that,
but if you do, even for a minute, that's worthwhile too.
In mindfulness circles, we talk a lot about that idea
of the timelessness of the present moment, and a mindfulness
(27:14):
teacher once said to me, and look around all of
these intense stories that people are sharing. Recognize that every
single person that you meet on the street lives with
that same intensity in their lives that you do. Very
simple statement. It rocked me, shocked me had never thought
(27:35):
about that. We all go through life thinking we're leading
this intense experience, which we are, but so is everyone else.
And your story of this traumatic event which ultimately lead
to a beautiful unfolding of you as you're really recognizing
your true self seems to me. But you had to
(27:58):
go through that really intense experience, and because you went
through that intensity, you are able to connect with others
who have been through that same intensity, and so you
exude empathy to me. And I can't thank you enough
for your vulnerability and your sharing and your perspective. Thank you, guys, Hi,
(28:33):
it's me Eve. I wrote find your Unicorn Space as
a permission slip for you to reconnect and discover that
thing that makes you come alive without the guilt, without
the excuses. Especially in our all too busy world, making
time for ourselves is essential work. It improves our health,
our relationships, and it just might be the antidote to burnout.
(28:54):
Join me on a journey to find your Unicorn Space.
Visit unicorn space dot com. Did I can't believe that
(29:15):
we're at our last episode of the season. Unbelievable. I know,
I'm pretty reflective just given how much knowledge I feel
like we got to glean from our really amazing variety
of guests. It's definitely been a journey. So part of
that journey, I think, is really this idea of how
(29:40):
do we want to commit to continuing this journey, this
active legacy. What sets you apart makes you apart. So
as we think about what sets you apart and what
makes you apart, it's great to have a map and
and we like to call that the creativity commitment. It's
(30:04):
a way forward. It's definitely focuses on what sets you apart,
but it also ends on what makes you apart. And
so A d D I thought, if you would please
model this creativity commitment, we can check in on you
in season two, but also our listeners can follow along
(30:24):
with us at page two O nine and find your
unicorn space. So here it is. My name is at
Dating a root car. My motivating values include joy, helpfulness,
and inspiration. I love it today and moving forward. I
give myself permission to live by my values. I allow
(30:47):
my values to inform my day to day curiosities, some
of which are public health, mental health, stress, resilience, bettering
the world through my knowledge, wanting to connect with other people.
I am committed to explore deeper and pursue activities and
(31:10):
interests that are in alignment with my values. What you
just said, I planned to take my open pursuit as
far as this one is, think a big, hairy, audacious,
authentic goal. You know, at the start of the pandemic,
I was a doctor seeing patients talking about stress management.
(31:30):
It was a stressful time because modern life is stressful.
The pandemic happened and it turned everything on its head.
Prior to seeing patients and being a doctor, I worked
in global public health in Geneva with the w h
O Collaborating Center on refugee health, HIV and AIDS. I
never thought that infectious disease and that whole world would
(31:51):
ever align or combine with my work and stress management.
And here we are the pandemic. So in thinking about
how I want to serve the world and be bigger
and have a bigger impact, but also more aligned with
my values, it would be when you ask me that question,
I would say, I want to go all the way,
(32:12):
whatever that may be in terms of helping with health, communication,
for public health, COVID, mental health, refugee health, stress, resilience,
all of it, because we are living in a unprecedented time.
And like you have always said, I love when you
(32:33):
say that you met the moment with fair play, and
I am ready to meet the moment with my expertise. Now, wow,
I love that so much because when anybody thinks about stress, resilience,
burnout and it's implication on the physical body or the brain,
I want them to thank dr Adity neuro car. So
(32:57):
that's our big, hairy, audacious, authentic goal for you. My
first actionable, small step forward toward leveling up and reaching
my goal is committing to fostering my communication practice every
single day, whether that means writing a few pages in
(33:18):
my upcoming book or doing a TV interview, something every
day that moves the needle for me. I love that
so much. A communication practice. I mean, you're a woman
after my own heart. As you know my date for
completing Well, you just said the date is every day,
So I'm gonna let you get off on that one.
(33:39):
My type of share that most resonates with me is
and what I mean by that is why when you
think about why you share yourself with the world, what
are some of the motivations for why you want to
share yourself with the world. I've never been motivated by
money or fame. What I have always been motivated by
(34:01):
is connection. I went into medicine for the power of
the human story. I love that moment in clinic when
you explain something complex to a patient and they have
that lightbulb aha moment. I love that same thing when
people respond, whether through email or d M s, saying
you explain something or you had some insight on mental
(34:24):
health or public health. It's those ah ha moments that
I live for. I love them because it tells me
that people are thinking differently, and that is so meaningful. Connection.
You're sharing to connect and to pass on what you
know in very complicated ways and the community I intend
(34:46):
to connect with. Speaking of connection along my journey is
and what I mean by that is who who are
your spiritual friends? Who keeps you going towards this big
vision of a doctor a DD neural car Media World
Domination LLC becomes I think women like you Eve and
(35:10):
other women like so many of the guests that we've
had this season, people who are standing in their power,
living their truth and owning their authentic selves. What's been
fascinating about this conversation with Nora Eve is that she
has committed to this creative pursuit, a life of impact.
(35:34):
She didn't go to some mountaintop or some fancy spa
and a retreat and then have these aha moments. Life
handed her a deck of cards and she played them
the best that she could. And I think for all
of us, whether we've had a traumatic experience like Nora
or otherwise, we have the hand that life dealt us
(35:56):
and we have to play it to the best of
our ability. To me, is a true commitment that we
all should actively pursue as our active legacy. I love
that so much, Adity, because at the end of the day,
this commitment to live creatively does not mean that you're
going to be living in a studio with no rain
(36:18):
on you and perfect birds chirping outside and the most
beautiful canvas in front of you. That's just not the
way life works. But creativity is taking those values, it's
taking your experiences, and what you say to yourself is
that I'm going to live that active legacy by living
(36:40):
those values, by moving forward in those values and really
big ways possibly, but also by taking really really small steps.
And everybody out there, you know this is not an
easy exercise. We build to it over two hundred pages
and find your unicorn space, but it's an important on
(37:01):
because this is a vision board, this is a commitment.
This is a way forward in a journey. This is
how we can think about what sets us apart but
also what makes us apart, and being intentional in this
part of our lives is an investment that we can't
afford not to make at this stage, after the biggest
(37:23):
disruption of our global lives. We have to commit to
making these changes and being apart to become apart. So
in our last time out of the season, what we
want you to do is make a creativity commitment. You
(37:44):
can find it on page two O nine to find
your Unicorn space or at fair play life dot com.
We'll be back next season to dive into more topics
like this and especially unicorn space, finding it, showcasing it,
celebrating it, dancing in the rain together. Thank you all
for listening to this first season. Please share the show
(38:05):
with your friends, tell us what you liked, what you learned,
what you want to hear next, who you'd like for
us to feature as a guest, and we'll be back soon.
Thank you for listening to Time Out, a production of
I Heeart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm Eve Rodsky, author
of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and find
(38:27):
your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social media at ev
rodsky and learn more about our work at fair Play Life.
And I'm dr Addi Nearucar, a Harvard physician with a
specialty and stress resilience, burnout, and mental health. Follow me
on social media at dr add ne Rucar and find
out more about my work at dr dd dot com.
(38:48):
That's d r A d I t I dot com.
Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda Farrend, Aaron Stover, and
Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team is Allie Perry,
Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Crnschi. We hope you all love
taking a much needed time out with us today. Listen
and subscribe to Time Out on the I Heart Radio app,
(39:11):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the
New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space,
activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator.
And I'm Doctor add In the Rucar, a physician and
medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience,
mental health, and burnout. We're here to peel back to
(00:24):
layers around why it's so easy for society to guard
men's time as if it's diamonds and to treat women's
time as if it's infinite like sands. And whether you
are partnered with or without children, or in a career
where you want more boundaries, this is the place for
you for all family structures. We're here to take a
time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim
(00:49):
our time. High d D Hi, Eve, I'm feeling a
little nostalgic today because this is the end of our
first season and this has been such a fun and
a really interesting ride with who we've been able to
(01:11):
talk with. So as I was thinking about the end
of the season, I really wanted us to address this
idea of legacy, what we're remembered for because at the
end of the day, you know, it's not always the
things that we spend our time on. That's why we're
here in the Time Out podcast right to scrutinize and
(01:32):
encourage people to make active decisions about how they spend
their time. So the story I wanted to tell you
today has to do with my day job, which I
don't talk about that often on this podcast, but for
over ten years, as you know, I've been a philanthropic advisor.
I work with families on their legal matters and their
governance related to family businesses, family foundations, families that look
(01:54):
like the HBO show Succession. As we've laughed and said,
and as we said to our listeners, you should feel
bad for me. But one story that really stood out
to me was right before the pandemic, one of my
clients in the Pacific Northwest called me and said, I
was thinking about you today. I was at a funeral
(02:16):
and so I said to my client, well, thanks, it's
really nice of you to think of me when you're
at a funeral. What made you think of me? And
he said, well, I'm at a funeral of a colleague
and my client is a tighten of business in the
Pacific Northwest. This was another tighten of business in the
Pacific Northwest. He had passed away. There was a packed church,
and my client was there to pay his respects. In
(02:39):
the church, something happens where all three of his daughters,
the man who passed away, all start to approach the
podium where they were going to speak, and they say
things that are silly, childlike poems. So the first daughter
goes up, she recites a poem that's like a Shelf
Silverstein poem, rhyming and beautiful and funny, and the audience,
(03:04):
the mourners start laughing. And then the next daughter comes
up and she does the same thing. It's a different poem.
And then the third daughter comes up and also reads
a really funny, silly, beautiful, rhyming poem that again sounds
like it was published by someone. And then everyone in
the audience is very confused. My client tells me, and
(03:25):
then all three daughters lean into the microphone and say,
those were poems our father wrote for us as the
tooth fairy. Wow, he was our tooth fairy. And what
my client was reflecting on after leaving the church was
that nobody talked about his business career. What people were
(03:48):
remembering from that day were his poems, the fact that
it was probably strange back then for any man to
be the tooth fairy. Even now in my data, that
usually is done by women and heterosist gender partnerships. But
(04:11):
on top of it, what my client said to me was,
I had no idea, working with this man for years
and years that he was a poet, such a beautiful,
skilled poet. And it got me thinking about how we're remembered,
what do we spend our time on and why, And
(04:31):
so I would love to hear your thoughts, because we're
going to get to hear from our amazing guests, Nor McNerney,
who really speaks so deeply about issues of legacy, grief, existence,
existential meaning. But I'd love to hear from you about
(04:52):
this idea of an act of legacy. I read about
it and find your unicorn space, this idea that we
can't control how we're remembered, whether it's this titan of
business who will be remembered in that room for his
poems and other things. But I do know that we
can start to think about our values and how we
(05:15):
live our daily lives that will shape how people remember us,
and I wanted to know what are things that you
think about in terms of what we can focus on now,
what our priorities can be now as we think about
how we will be remembered in the future. So first,
before we talk about this idea of an active legacy,
(05:38):
they think back to this Harvard study it's called the
Harvard Happiness Study. And more than money or titles or
positions of power or all of the things, you know,
many of these men were titans of business, as you say,
and yet when it came down to the end of
their life and they reflected back on their life, the
greatest marker for happy enus was the quality of relationships
(06:02):
that these people had over seventy five years. So when
we think about leaving an active legacy, it's less about
the doing and more about the being. There is another
really beautiful book that speaks to this, written by a
woman named Brawny, where the Top five Regrets of the
Dying And she was a palliative care nurse and spent
(06:27):
years sitting at the bedside of people as they took
their last breath in hospice care. And she asked these
people as they were dying, what do you wish for,
what do you regret? And everyone said their most common
regret was in quotes, I wish I'd had the courage
to live a life true to myself, not the life
(06:50):
others expected of me. It's about living a life with
no regrets. So when you get to the end of
your life, as we all will, hopefully for any of us,
we won't have that sense of regret. Shout out to Ben,
my ten year old son, who knew we were going
to be talking about an active legacy and what makes
(07:11):
a successful life and I was sort of joining on
and on about it, and he says to me, well,
it's just really one sentence, mom if you want to
think about what an active legacy is or what a
successful life is. And I was like, okay, well tell
me and he said, well, an act of legacy, living
a successful life really is living a life you would repeat. Wow,
(07:36):
it happens in the small moments. It happens when you're
sitting at desk at night and start scribbling that poem
for your child that ends up going under their pillow.
The beauty of these hard questions is that it's really
just about making these small moments matter that add up
to a life you would repeat. We're so excited to
talk about all of this with our guests, Nora mcannerney,
(08:00):
author of It's Okay to Laugh and No Happy Endings
and also the creator of Terrible. Thanks for asking the podcast.
We'll be speaking to her after the break. For so
(08:27):
thrilled to have Norah McInnerny here with us. Norah is
the author of the amazing memoirs It's Okay to Laugh
and No Happy Endings and hosts of Terrible. Thanks for
asking the podcast. We were hoping you would start by
just telling listeners how you got into the work, um
of what you do now, who you are, and about
(08:49):
your background. Hi Eve, Hello d D. I am an
author of several funny books about sad things, and I
am a remarried widow raising a blended family here in Phoenix, Arizona.
And before all of that, I was just a regular
(09:10):
Midwestern gal whose life had unfolded more or less the
way that it was supposed to. I had had a
semi traumatic experience in fourth grade where I got a
bowl cut. Other than that, my life was blessedly boring.
I did all the right things at the right time.
I went to college, and then I got a job
(09:32):
and I fell in love when I was twenty seven,
which in the Midwest was pushing it. I fell in
love with this guy and he was thirty one older, man,
felt very sophisticated, and it was so perfect. It was
so annoying, like every love story is, which is you know,
didn't expect it, And there he was. And a year
into our relationship, he had a seizure at work and
(09:56):
I met him at the hospital. We really didn't think
it was serious. Even when the doctors told us he
had a brain tumor. We just thought, well, it can't
be cancer. Those are the things that happened to other people.
We will be the people who have a nice, little,
benign brain tumor. And this is a story that we
(10:16):
we tell and we laugh about someday, and we do.
We did laugh about that story, but only because it
was a very bad brain tumor. He had stage four
glioblastoma and we were married a month after it was
removed from his head, and his funeral was on our
third wedding anniversary. So Aaron and I were together for
(10:40):
four years. We were married for almost three. We had
a son together, Ralph, who is now nine years old,
and who is a part of this version of my life.
And I have this whole different life, this whole different
career that I never could have imagined, because I had
no imagination, and I could not have perceived of a
(11:03):
life other than the one that I hoped for and
had anticipated having, which is that you do the right
things and then the right things happened to you, and
instead I have a very different, very beautiful life that
I love, and I have a very different career that
(11:23):
I love that I never ever would have chosen. Imagination
is an interesting word to me, Nora, because it ties
to this idea of a legacy, an active legacy, right,
this idea that instead of just looking behind saying the
best days are behind us, I would say that I
(11:43):
would challenge us all to have imagination, to say what
does it actually mean to live an active legacy? And
so the question I wanted to ask you, Nora, is
why does it sometimes take and extraordinarily terrible experience for
people to wake up, whether it's the pandemic, whether it's
(12:07):
the death of a spouse, a d D. You've said
that it's been a cancer diagnosis for many of your patients,
why do we have to wait for something terrible to
happen to us, for us to wake up to say,
we are living on a treadmill that has been decided
by somebody else, not us, and I want to live
my life by what is important to me. I am
(12:31):
so interested a d d. In your take on this,
because we talk a lot about mindfulness as a practice,
like I'm gonna turn on this app and be mindful
for ten minutes, you know, I'm gonna And I did it.
I did my mindfulness, and I've certainly treated it like that.
But I think one of the reasons why the time
(12:52):
that I had with Aaron, and most of the time
that I had with him, he was very sick and
life was very hard, but that those hardest days of
my life were to date still some of my happiest days,
because we were so present, and because looking too far
into the future meant imagining a future where he might
(13:16):
not be there would most likely not be there, and
looking too hard at the past was useless because what
was even there? Like what was there? We we knew
that there was nothing we could do to have, you know,
change the outcome. I couldn't have gone back in time
and rearrange the cells and his brain. So we're so
so present with each other. And I do think that
(13:39):
when the bottom falls out, what remains is so so valuable,
even if what remains is not that great, if you
could choose it, you know, the fact is like we don't.
We don't get to choose it. And I wish so
badly that I could live all of my life, even
(13:59):
those previous decades before Aaron was sick, with that same awareness.
And I wish I knew how honestly, I wish I
wish I knew how. While your story is so powerful,
what's so interesting in hearing you and Eve talked about
this is this idea that anxiety is a future focused emotion. Right,
(14:21):
that was the first thing I thought about. How you
talked about being mindful and that like truth of the
universe is just to be president in the moment. What
is mindfulness? And that's what it is. But when we're
thinking about the past, there's a lot of regret, maybe
feelings of depression and going back, and then we often
say that anxiety is a future focused emotion, what if,
what if? What if? What if? Rather than being in
(14:43):
the now. For many of my patients. When something traumatic happens,
it is a great reckoning. And to Eve's question, that
original question of why does it take something like that
to happen, I often think it's because we are so
set in our complacency and it's the only thing that
shakes us out of our complacency. And then suddenly there's
(15:07):
that reckoning. And I loved when you talked about that
like essence. Right, you didn't use that word essence, but
that kernel of when everything falls apart, what's left, and
that feeling of what's left and pairing things down is
what we've really experience during the pandemic. You kind of
recognize that your time here isn't necessarily guaranteed. That is
(15:28):
what keeps us too when we when I talked about
imagination before, you can feel bad for anybody, right, And
I had a lot of pity. Right. I could drive
around the Minneapolis where I lived at the time and
be like, Oh, I feel bad for that. That makes
me feel bad. But that's different. That's not compassion, and
that's not imagination, right, It's just it's projection. And the
(15:50):
reality of compassion and of having a good imagination, a
good sense of awareness is that awareness that what you
think sets you part is actually what makes you a
part of the world, of this universe, of your community.
I want to just focus on what you just said
about what sets you apart, makes you apart, because I wonder, um,
(16:16):
if we could talk a little bit about that, this
idea that I've never seen in this in my research
for my second book around creativity and constraints, I've never
seen somebody say when I had, you know, a hard
thing happened to me. I have never heard somebody say
that it made them not feel less a part of
(16:39):
the bigger world, which I thought was so interesting to me.
You would think that it would it would lead to
retreat and anger and wanting to never face the world again.
But that really wasn't. At least my data is so.
And I wonder again if you see this in your communities,
where this idea of what sets is apart all of
a sudden makes us apart of something, whether it's your
(17:00):
text chain of widows, whether it's the community for women
with postpartum anxiety, whether it's so many of my friends
who have had cancer diagnosis these part of new different communities,
whether it's full of creativity, sharing imagination, like you said, empathy,
even some surprise. So it makes me hopeful that maybe
(17:24):
if we look at this pandemic and all the individual
things that happened to us, could be come out living
an active legacy that is connected to that apart a part,
not a part, a part of something bigger. And I
wonder if you see that in your community. Do you
hear stories like that, Nora, from the people that share
with you after you were sharing with them. Yeah, and
(17:46):
I lived it too, which is not to say that
I didn't also go through just like intense depression and isolation,
and also when I would look back at those moments
where I felt like I am totally alone, there's nobody
else here and everything is the worst. I also had
(18:07):
so much community in so many ways. Aaron and I
wrote his obituary together. We put it in the local paper.
I didn't think they would publish it, but this is
a fact for everybody who's listening. They will publish anything.
You pay for it. It's an ad for your death.
You can so live it up. And we revealed his
identity as Spider Man and it went viral, which was
(18:30):
a different, simpler time. Okay, it was a simpler time,
and I got so many messages. This is how I
started terrible. Thanks for asking. Most of our episodes are
stories that came to me where people are reaching out
and sharing something with me. These were complete strangers from
around the world who did not know me, who did
not know erin, who were like, I'm here with you.
I know loss, and i know how disorienting it is,
(18:52):
and they were offering me something, and they would share
their own loss with me with detail that they may
never have given their friends or family members. In part
because there is that recognition you might be a safe
place for me to put this. You just might be.
And I've tried so hard to make sure that I
(19:14):
am that safe place for other people. And David Kessler.
He worked with Elizabeth Coogler Ross on the five Stages
of grief. He wrote a recent book called Finding Meaning,
which is the sixth stage of grief. I have seen
this in almost every story that I've encountered as I
meet people too, which is that once you go through something,
(19:35):
you want to somehow like use it for some good
right that you are not the only one. I see
that all the time. I think it is the most
human reaction that we can have to say I want
to ease somebody else's suffering in a way that mine
was or was not. That it's like that idea their
(19:57):
cracks and everything. That's how the light gets in, right.
And there's this concept of a therapeutic presence, meaning it's
when you're with someone and their presence feels healing. That
idea of a therapeutic presence is very important. It also
has been shown recently in new emerging studies that it
(20:18):
has an actual role to play in healing. And even
I in the past have talked a lot about the
difference between healing and cure and how someone may never
be cured because it might be an incurable disease, but
they can be healed. The thing about this group effect,
which is so fascinating, Nora, it's what you're saying, this
idea that when we have a lived experience, a tragedy,
(20:43):
something that really defines and shapes us and shapes our
story forever. It's like there's that clear delineation before and after,
right like that one incident. As human beings, we are
meaning seeking, purpose driven creatures. We need to make meaning
and send out of difficult experiences. It's just an evolutionary
trait that we have, and so that when we go
(21:06):
through something difficult, and like you said, Nor at the start,
you felt alone and isolated, and then you put out
that obituary and all of these people started reaching out
to you. It helped to normalize and validate the experience,
which somehow helped you feel less alone, more connected, and
a greater sense of therapeutic presence all around you. You
(21:28):
were also able to give that therapeutic presence to others,
and that's that group effect. It is a true scientific
and measurable effect. And you've all done something different as
a result of this event. That's also important to say.
You found meeting and purpose and created a whole career
as someone who offers their therapeutic presence to others. Thank you.
(21:51):
And all I wanted to do was to make sure
that people knew that they were not the only one
and to validate the fact that life is hard for
everybody in different ways. And that is all we want
as people is you feel seen and heard, and if
(22:12):
you don't, try to make somebody else feel that way,
and it will, and it will, it will hopefully at
some point, like reflect back to you, will come back
to you. When you talk about leaving and a living
an active legacy, Eve, It's like what you do is
you reflect back to people the things that you didn't
have right in the moment, and you are also showing
(22:35):
people what is possible. I was reading something yesterday about,
you know, the privilege of vulnerability, right, this idea that
a lot of times it's hard to be vulnerable if
you aren't in a place of privilege where you may
not feel like you have that supportive community or even
a supportive job. So there is a privilege in vulnerability.
(22:56):
But you know, when you use those redemptive experiences of vulnerability,
I wonder by doing something with it if we're if
that's part of an act of legacy. Other people don't
may not have that ability to use their voice for
that type of vulnerability. And how can I create that
community or a world where everybody is entitled to that
(23:17):
type of imagination, surprise, compassion. You know, we we this
This first season has been about understanding that time is
not infinite, that time is diamonds, that we get one life.
It may be interrupted abruptly, or as you said, if
(23:38):
we're lucky, we get more time on this earth. But
it's just one life, and this episode we wanted to
end the season on it because we believe this idea
of an act of legacy is living on this earth
with intention, which is the exact opposite of what you
said when we started, which was this idea of living
(24:02):
life without really thinking about the decisions were necessarily making,
living on a treadmill, auto pilot, not paying attention. So
for us to understand time, we thought you could help
us wrap up the season by this recognition that maybe
(24:22):
all of us won't have a wake up moment, a
light bulb moment. So what can you say to those
people out there who didn't have, you know, an experience
like you had obviously, but do you want to learn
from what you did? What can they do and put
into practice? To live a life where time has really
looked at the way it should be is our most
(24:44):
valuable currency. I do think sometimes that that realization or
that acknowledgement to live constantly with the sense of a
ticking clock is also not healthy. Right If every a
you wake up and think this could be it like
that is that is no way to live. There is
(25:04):
no way to live. But there's this Mason Jennings song
that I listened to you over and over when Aaron
was first diagnosed, called be here Now, And those are
basically the lyrics, right like be here now, no other
place will do. And I got the word now tattooed
(25:25):
on the inside of my wrist to remind me of
the value of the present moments. And that does not
mean that we have to love every moment. It does
not mean that you have to go yolo. Our time
does not need to be spent in big, splashy ways constantly.
(25:45):
The biggest moments are typically going to be the smallest moments.
When I am eighty five years old, I want to
remember the feeling of my youngest child sitting in the
mom chair, which is what he calls, my body on
the couch, and he holds my arm and he puts
my hand across his heart and it covers almost his
(26:06):
whole chest. Like that is that is everything, And that
is such a small, small thing. We have so little
control over our legacy, active or not. We do not
know how our interactions ow our investments in time or
money will pay off. We don't know those those those
seeds will be sown long after we are gone. In
(26:28):
so many ways. And what I remember about Aaron is
I don't want to remember just that he died, or
the fact that he died. Like what I remember is
that he spent an entire year memorizing all of his
friends middle names and birthdays, because he said, to be
a good friend, you had to know somebody's middle name
and their birthday. That is living in active legacy is
(26:50):
being so present, as present as possible with the people
you love, with the things that are important to you.
And I know that we don't always have control over that,
but if you do, even for a minute, that's worthwhile too.
In mindfulness circles, we talk a lot about that idea
of the timelessness of the present moment, and a mindfulness
(27:14):
teacher once said to me, and look around all of
these intense stories that people are sharing. Recognize that every
single person that you meet on the street lives with
that same intensity in their lives that you do. Very
simple statement. It rocked me, shocked me had never thought
(27:35):
about that. We all go through life thinking we're leading
this intense experience, which we are, but so is everyone else.
And your story of this traumatic event which ultimately lead
to a beautiful unfolding of you as you're really recognizing
your true self seems to me. But you had to
(27:58):
go through that really intense experience, and because you went
through that intensity, you are able to connect with others
who have been through that same intensity, and so you
exude empathy to me. And I can't thank you enough
for your vulnerability and your sharing and your perspective. Thank you, guys, Hi,
(28:33):
it's me Eve. I wrote find your Unicorn Space as
a permission slip for you to reconnect and discover that
thing that makes you come alive without the guilt, without
the excuses. Especially in our all too busy world, making
time for ourselves is essential work. It improves our health,
our relationships, and it just might be the antidote to burnout.
(28:54):
Join me on a journey to find your Unicorn Space.
Visit unicorn space dot com. Did I can't believe that
(29:15):
we're at our last episode of the season. Unbelievable. I know,
I'm pretty reflective just given how much knowledge I feel
like we got to glean from our really amazing variety
of guests. It's definitely been a journey. So part of
that journey, I think, is really this idea of how
(29:40):
do we want to commit to continuing this journey, this
active legacy. What sets you apart makes you apart. So
as we think about what sets you apart and what
makes you apart, it's great to have a map and
and we like to call that the creativity commitment. It's
(30:04):
a way forward. It's definitely focuses on what sets you apart,
but it also ends on what makes you apart. And
so A d D I thought, if you would please
model this creativity commitment, we can check in on you
in season two, but also our listeners can follow along
(30:24):
with us at page two O nine and find your
unicorn space. So here it is. My name is at
Dating a root car. My motivating values include joy, helpfulness,
and inspiration. I love it today and moving forward. I
give myself permission to live by my values. I allow
(30:47):
my values to inform my day to day curiosities, some
of which are public health, mental health, stress, resilience, bettering
the world through my knowledge, wanting to connect with other people.
I am committed to explore deeper and pursue activities and
(31:10):
interests that are in alignment with my values. What you
just said, I planned to take my open pursuit as
far as this one is, think a big, hairy, audacious,
authentic goal. You know, at the start of the pandemic,
I was a doctor seeing patients talking about stress management.
(31:30):
It was a stressful time because modern life is stressful.
The pandemic happened and it turned everything on its head.
Prior to seeing patients and being a doctor, I worked
in global public health in Geneva with the w h
O Collaborating Center on refugee health, HIV and AIDS. I
never thought that infectious disease and that whole world would
(31:51):
ever align or combine with my work and stress management.
And here we are the pandemic. So in thinking about
how I want to serve the world and be bigger
and have a bigger impact, but also more aligned with
my values, it would be when you ask me that question,
I would say, I want to go all the way,
(32:12):
whatever that may be in terms of helping with health, communication,
for public health, COVID, mental health, refugee health, stress, resilience,
all of it, because we are living in a unprecedented time.
And like you have always said, I love when you
(32:33):
say that you met the moment with fair play, and
I am ready to meet the moment with my expertise. Now, wow,
I love that so much because when anybody thinks about stress, resilience,
burnout and it's implication on the physical body or the brain,
I want them to thank dr Adity neuro car. So
(32:57):
that's our big, hairy, audacious, authentic goal for you. My
first actionable, small step forward toward leveling up and reaching
my goal is committing to fostering my communication practice every
single day, whether that means writing a few pages in
(33:18):
my upcoming book or doing a TV interview, something every
day that moves the needle for me. I love that
so much. A communication practice. I mean, you're a woman
after my own heart. As you know my date for
completing Well, you just said the date is every day,
So I'm gonna let you get off on that one.
(33:39):
My type of share that most resonates with me is
and what I mean by that is why when you
think about why you share yourself with the world, what
are some of the motivations for why you want to
share yourself with the world. I've never been motivated by
money or fame. What I have always been motivated by
(34:01):
is connection. I went into medicine for the power of
the human story. I love that moment in clinic when
you explain something complex to a patient and they have
that lightbulb aha moment. I love that same thing when
people respond, whether through email or d M s, saying
you explain something or you had some insight on mental
(34:24):
health or public health. It's those ah ha moments that
I live for. I love them because it tells me
that people are thinking differently, and that is so meaningful. Connection.
You're sharing to connect and to pass on what you
know in very complicated ways and the community I intend
(34:46):
to connect with. Speaking of connection along my journey is
and what I mean by that is who who are
your spiritual friends? Who keeps you going towards this big
vision of a doctor a DD neural car Media World
Domination LLC becomes I think women like you Eve and
(35:10):
other women like so many of the guests that we've
had this season, people who are standing in their power,
living their truth and owning their authentic selves. What's been
fascinating about this conversation with Nora Eve is that she
has committed to this creative pursuit, a life of impact.
(35:34):
She didn't go to some mountaintop or some fancy spa
and a retreat and then have these aha moments. Life
handed her a deck of cards and she played them
the best that she could. And I think for all
of us, whether we've had a traumatic experience like Nora
or otherwise, we have the hand that life dealt us
(35:56):
and we have to play it to the best of
our ability. To me, is a true commitment that we
all should actively pursue as our active legacy. I love
that so much, Adity, because at the end of the day,
this commitment to live creatively does not mean that you're
going to be living in a studio with no rain
(36:18):
on you and perfect birds chirping outside and the most
beautiful canvas in front of you. That's just not the
way life works. But creativity is taking those values, it's
taking your experiences, and what you say to yourself is
that I'm going to live that active legacy by living
(36:40):
those values, by moving forward in those values and really
big ways possibly, but also by taking really really small steps.
And everybody out there, you know this is not an
easy exercise. We build to it over two hundred pages
and find your unicorn space, but it's an important on
(37:01):
because this is a vision board, this is a commitment.
This is a way forward in a journey. This is
how we can think about what sets us apart but
also what makes us apart, and being intentional in this
part of our lives is an investment that we can't
afford not to make at this stage, after the biggest
(37:23):
disruption of our global lives. We have to commit to
making these changes and being apart to become apart. So
in our last time out of the season, what we
want you to do is make a creativity commitment. You
(37:44):
can find it on page two O nine to find
your Unicorn space or at fair play life dot com.
We'll be back next season to dive into more topics
like this and especially unicorn space, finding it, showcasing it,
celebrating it, dancing in the rain together. Thank you all
for listening to this first season. Please share the show
(38:05):
with your friends, tell us what you liked, what you learned,
what you want to hear next, who you'd like for
us to feature as a guest, and we'll be back soon.
Thank you for listening to Time Out, a production of
I Heeart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm Eve Rodsky, author
of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and find
(38:27):
your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social media at ev
rodsky and learn more about our work at fair Play Life.
And I'm dr Addi Nearucar, a Harvard physician with a
specialty and stress resilience, burnout, and mental health. Follow me
on social media at dr add ne Rucar and find
out more about my work at dr dd dot com.
(38:48):
That's d r A d I t I dot com.
Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda Farrend, Aaron Stover, and
Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team is Allie Perry,
Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Crnschi. We hope you all love
taking a much needed time out with us today. Listen
and subscribe to Time Out on the I Heart Radio app,
(39:11):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com