Change is an animosity with growth. Some hoping that people can find some positive way to make a decision that life is not from outside in. I have discovered my inner resources in Auschwitz that I was able to decide that they were the prisoners not me. And they could never, never let my spirit.
Auschwitz was an opportunity for an opportunity to discover my power within me that no not to go take away. But, touch. So it's not what happens, it's what you do with it. Hi, my name is wrongachasti.
Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Over the next few weeks, as well as the brand new podcast episode that I release everyone's day and the short-to-bitesides once every Friday. I've also decided to re-release some of my most popular podcast episodes to date at the weekends. The reason I've decided to do this is because there are a lot of new listeners coming to my show in moments because of the incredible amount of publicity surrounding my brand new book, Happy Minds Happy Life, and the wonderful feedback to it.
So, for new listeners, I really want to be able to showcase what this podcast is about and the variety of different topics that I try to cover every single week. If you want a long-time listener, I really hope that you will enjoy being reminded about some of these classic episodes from the archive. And even if you did enjoy listening to the episodes at first-time rounds, I hope that you may feel inspired to re-listen, as I think there is a huge amount of value we had from listening in again. Now, this is the second conversation I've chosen to re-release as part of this new week and series, and it's a conversation that fundamentally changed me and my perspective on life.
Whatever you are doing right now, driving, commuting, out on a long run or out for a walk, it really doesn't matter. I think this conversation is very likely to stop human electronics. It is powerful, it's confronting, it's challenging. I've got to say I have to really grateful to my guests for her honesty empathy and her willingness to share the wisdom from her 93 years on this planet.
Dr. Edith Eager is a holocaust survivor and a psychologist, but above all, she is an incredible human being with an extraordinary story to share. Edith Eager appears in Europe in the age of 16 when she was living under Nazi occupation. Without any warning, one day, she was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp along with her parents and her sister.
In our conversation, she explains how she managed to cope with what's going on in Sunday camp. She also describes how she came to be the gods as the real prisoners, and quite incredibly, she describes her horrific experience as an opportunity. She's liberated herself from the prison of a past through forgiveness. Now, we don't want to say too much about this conversation because I really think that it speaks for itself, but one of the main take-homes you are going to get on in short is that we can all change our thoughts and behaviors that are keeping us in prison in the past.
Now, the sound quality was not as good as I would've wanted ideally. It was also very slight delay in the Zoom connection, but you can still make out every single word that she says. This is a life changing conversation, and I truly believe that it's going to change your perspective on your life in the same way that it changed mine. And now, Mike, in the questionable conversation, with Dr.
Edith Eager. Edith, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, thank you. I'm looking forward to have a very meaningful conversation.
I certainly hope so. You are a guest who I have been really looking for speaking to for about three months now. Ever since I started reading the gift, which I have to be honest is just one of the most phenomenal books I've read, and it's gone straight onto my favorite pile. I have a pile in my living room in the morning where I'm just having my morning routine.
I'll have a few books from which I just pick and read a couple of chats us from each morning. And your book has gone straight onto that pile. So thank you for writing it. Thank you for eating it.
It is a sound firm book. People ask me for it after the choice. So you're in the chapter then, there are the how-to's. And none of the talking does any good, unless it's followed with an action.
So you make a decision what you're going to start doing or start doing more of the same. Yeah, you have a choice. And that's something obviously that's a name of your first book. But even that's idea.
It really rings through this book as well that we've always got a choice. They always got a choice. And my name is not a shrink, but a stretch. So I'm hoping to stretch people's comfort zone because when you change, you have to be basically something else.
So this is a good time out with me and you let people can really take stock of their lives and see what they need to leave behind, what they need to leave think, and also for make a decision and putting it into action. Yeah, for sure. Now, I wonder if we could go back right at the start of this conversation. You say about leaving our comfort zones.
And in quite an extreme way, when you were 16 years old, you had to leave the comfort of everything you knew. And if you could take us through that step by step, so we can really understand what happened to you at the age 16. Well, that two things happened. I was putting the place I was not prepared for.
And I was told one thing and then I found another idea that allowed especially with the military people who come back and they wanted to take their lives because they don't know how to readjust and read think and redesign. And I think we're going through that same period right now. And it's a very difficult place to be when you don't know how long everything will last. It's not permanent, hopefully it's temporary.
So I'm hoping that people use that time to take stock of their lives, whether they're able to hold onto things that are not working anymore or are they able to read this side and risk that's very good English word. I love and risk to do something new that is very scary because you have the fear of the unknown. That's why people don't change. But change is synonymous with growth.
Some hoping that people can find some positive way to make a decision that life is not from outside in. But I have discovered my inner resources in Auschwitz that I was able to decide that they were the reason that they were not me and they could never know that my spirit. So it's not what happens, it's what you do with it. Auschwitz was an opportunity and today we have an opportunity to read the side that we are holding on to hatred or recognizing that hatred is eating us up and how to be a survivor and not to become anything or anyone or any circumstance.
You say Auschwitz was an opportunity. Yes. You're saying that now is a 93-world lady? Is that right?
Yes. Which is incredible. Yes. I don't think 93 years ago, I love that.
I'm not quite a logical edge. That's an candidate. But I think Auschwitz was an opportunity for an opportunity to discover my power within me. That's no natural take away.
What's that? Could you take us through that day when you were, I mean, what was that day like? Was it just a normal day for you in your life? One of the things I always say in schools is what my mother told me in the color card.
We don't know where we go in. We don't know what's going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind. I tell you that in school, to work the karate kid because the best power is a very important power, OK?
Not to smoke part because if they're here, we don't have to go through the lanes. So this is exactly what happened. When I arrived, I was assigned on bike my fry. Work makes you feel, make me work makes you free.
And it was karate. I didn't know where I was. I never heard of Auschwitz. But then we were separated.
My father said, actually, we're just going to work. And then we're going to go home. But it's not going to happen. Because in our leader, he wasn't a gas chamber.
So was my mother. So then I stood in line with my sister, Magna. And then when the guy who was referred to as the angel of death, he was pointing to the left, go to the right, and pointing my mother to the left. And then I followed my mother.
He grabbed me. And I never forget those eyes. And I feel a lot of attention to eye contact. You have a very good eye contact with me.
Because I can kill you with my eyes. And I can love you with my eyes. So check your temperature, actually. That's good.
Well, just with the eyes. And so he drew me on the other side. And said, you're going to see her mother very soon. She's just going to take a shower.
And as she drew me on the other side, I ended up a few months away from the canal. And one of the inmates put my earings out. And he heard that me. That while I was going to the theater, she said, I was up in key.
And so she took her anger out to me today because it was just a question. But I didn't know that. I just said to her, I would have given you my evenings and decides when do I see my mother? And she pointed at the chimney and fired by something out of the chimney and said, my mother is learning there.
You better talk about her in past tense. And my sister hugged me and she said, makes me cry. And she said, this bit, it never dies. This bit, it never dies.
So I considered my duty to celebrate one of the most beautiful and the gift of God is the gift of memory. And I'm going to do everything like power to see to it that your children and grandchildren and grandchildren. And for your grandchildren, I have seven doors. We never experienced what I did.
I'm four prevention. I'm four, a lot of things rather than being against. I'm four life and four, you're 19 and four hopefully. Having a human family that you can be you and I can be I, but together we're going to be much stronger.
So I invite you and your culture and wherever you are. And I need to go to work. I make it. And in many Jewish and children become Buddhist.
And I think there is a great idea to be said about being awake. Being awake every moment to me is beautiful because I see what I lived. Look at the IQ and the EQ. The emotional IQ, the school of the experience that you had in life.
And I'm hoping that people are recognizing that the IQ is fine. But unless you have a good sense about your life, let you know and where you want to be and pick a goal and then be attention to what they're focusing on. So it has to be in alignment to have the goal and the goal is to get freedom. How do you define freedom?
By letting go of the concentration camp that you created in your own mind. That's what forgiveness is. You give yourself a gift that you do not carry. The people that you hate, that you release them, you let them go.
That's how that's why forgiveness is about me for giving you for virtue to me. It's for me to give it myself not to be a prisoner or the hostage of the past. I don't even know how it's right. I go through the value of the shadow of that.
I don't come there or set a house on that. But I don't forget it or overcome it. I came to terms with it. I call it my cherry horn.
Yeah. I mean, your book, I've got marks and underlines on almost every page of this thing. There is wisdom that's gold. I've been on my own personal in with journey since my father died seven and a half years ago.
And lots of the truths that I'm learning are beautifully and very articulately put together in the gifts. And it really has been a gift in my life. So I thank you for that once again. But I've got the first thing I've learned on page three.
It's just so powerful. In almost that is what you just said. As an Auschwitz survivor, I'm here to tell you that the worst prison is not the one that not sees put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself.
When did you start building that prison? And when were you able to get out of it? Before I answered your question, I like to ask you how old were you when your father died? So I'm 43.
That was awesome. So I was 35 years old when my dad died. So when you consider looking at it from a different perspective that you didn't lose your father, that's really for center you for 35 years when you celebrate every moment. And then that spirit had to go home.
I would yeah. Just how you look at things. Yeah. You're fine.
It would be very great for knowing that his son has a full life, but his interviewing survivors that he is an ambassador for peace. He's in that wonderful feeling. Just looking at the same thing from a different perspective. Yeah.
Thank you. Let me be with optimologist and recognizing that the prison is in our own minds and the key is in our pocket. We create the Nazi within us. I graduated with honors and I never showed up for my graduation because I did not forgive myself that I survived.
See, I didn't even not see. I have in my mind unfortunately that part that in allow me to celebrate the freedom fully. Today I won't do that. But I think the prison that we put ourselves in our own mind needs to really examine because every behavior satisfies a need.
And when you have the victim's mentality, you always going to find a victimizer. There is no victim without the victimizer. And it also gives you a secondary gain. It gives you the idea that you don't have to do anything.
Zero. And that's why I also yesterday's victims easily become to these victimizers because they look in the world to raise the victim's weak. The victimizer is strong. So part of the psyche will identify with the aggressor.
And that's what we call the Stockholm Syndrome. Yes. You identify the aggressor. And many times children who are beaten unfortunately they grow up and they carry it from generation to generation.
They try to do everything in my power to teach especially fathers. They may they treat their children. It's important because children don't do what we say. They do what they see.
And the way he loves his children is the way it reads the mother of their children. How he loves and adores and takes care of the mother. His wife is life-made. So there is not what you feel is what you do.
Just so powerful. Really. That's a wisdom. And what you say, you know, but there's also love.
I can really feel there is love. There's no charge. There's no anger. There's no sense of you're trying to talk down to me.
Or talk down to anyone. It's a really lovely energy that even though we're 3,000 miles away and I'm looking at you through a screen, I can still feel it. I can feel you too. Yes, I was really connecting.
Well, people don't come to me. They're sent to me. And I couldn't be more really blessed to have you in my life. And your father is thinking now.
And he says like Mr. Higgins, why God, he's got it. Yeah, no for sure. Why do you think it's so important for fathers as opposed to mothers to behave a certain way in front of their children?
I think the fathers are the role models to be a knowledgeable leader, but not a dictator. A father is a man. The lots of males running around, lots of boys running around. But a father who is a man is the knowledgeable leader and teacher and protector and provider to see if it's the family that is really totally subjective by a man who was called upon to have a family that looks up at him because he's pregnant.
He's recognition that you look at your father and the wing that he is not going to say one thing and do another. That's a definition of a hypocrite. So when the phone rings and you pick up the phone and you tell your father very quietly, daddy, it's for you. And your father tells you very quietly, tell him I'm not here.
And the following week, he's giving you a lecture about honesty. You're going to catch your father very quickly and say, hey, what are we talking about today? Children see everything. They say, and I think that's very important.
We're the children to be consistent. I dream parents, to be good parents, to themselves so they can be good parents, to the children. Yeah, thank you for that. You know, I've been a father now for 10 years.
And I've very much changed my parenting style over those 10 years. But a lot of that has come from me clearing out my own closet, looking in the mirror, being honest with myself, not trying to kid myself, and saying, hey, listen, listen, mate, you can't say this and do something different. And I totally agree with you. And suddenly, this is my experience that kids don't do what you tell them to do.
They do what they see you doing. And that really has been a huge motivator and driver for me to change. Because I'm thinking, well, if I value my role as a father as one of the most important roles in my life, which I do, then what could be more important to me than addressing my past, getting rid of guilt, shame, anger, all kinds of toxic emotions I have felt really until very, very recently. And by freeing myself on them, I parent in a different way.
The interaction is different. It's more joyful, more happy. But it started with looking in the mirror and being honest with myself. You need to do that.
And you're also called upon to be a guide to others. A guide from darkness to light, from prison to freedom. It is practice that someone looks at you and says, I want to be like him. So it's not what we feel.
It's what we do that we commit ourselves. And that's what happened in Auschwitz. We had to commit to each other. It was cooperation, not competition or domination, because all we had was each other then.
And all we have is each other now. How can we empower each other with our differences? Would you mind if I asked you a few more questions about your experience in Auschwitz? Yes.
Auschwitz was hell. I usually like to call Tonsalieh, who has a theory on stress. He says, anytime something stressful come to us, we have to automatically respond to this. We have to fight or free.
They did not work in Auschwitz. Because if you touch the guards, you will shut right there and then I would not let them. When people would go and touch the guard and they were shot, there is no way I could free. Because if I touched the board while I was elected, and I saw that blue body.
So I knew what not to do. And I was able to turn the heat red into pity and decide it that they were the prisoners. So I became a very talented schizophrenic. I did what I was told every day, but deep inside, I had my spirit.
They could put me in a gas chamber any minute. I had no power over it. Over the morning when we stood it for scoldial power, they were counting heads and they told us, if you don't feel well, just stay in the barracks, we're going to take you to the hospital. We had to discover it was a place where discovery that there was no hospital.
There was the gas chamber. So don't ever stay behind because you'll never see you again. We had to learn very quickly the rules, not to fight or free, but to stay in a situation and just kind of when they say one day at a time, I would say to myself, if I survive today, then tomorrow, I'm going to see my boyfriend because he told me I have really prized and beautiful hands. So it's the way you think you create what you think.
That's important. Every morning when you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror and you say, I love me because self-love, self-care, it's not narcissistic. It's okay to love you and look forward to the day that you create your thinking, you create your feeling and you create the behavior. So before you say anything, ask yourself, is it kind?
Is it really very important then, necessarily? And if it's not, don't say it. I teach couples how to share silence. Don't ask how are you.
That's a stupidest question because if I'm, and I can't stand down, I guess to that because I was professor of psychology and my student told me that the America people are hearing but not listening. And I said, let's test it tomorrow morning, ready to pick up your books. Someone is gonna say hi to you and you see very quietly, my mother died this morning. Shouldn't have.
Don't need someone came, said hi to him. He said, hi, how are you? And my student said, my mother died this morning. I guess what happened.
Oh, that's great. I'll see you this afternoon. People are hearing but not listening. I like to be a compassionate listener, even to the wife's supremacy member who came to see me and told me how he's going to kill all the Jewish people, all the black people, all the Mexicans, all the Chinese and not to react.
If I could have reacted, I would have taken that boy and raking to the corner. And I would stop on him and tell him, who do you think you're talking to? I saw my mother going to the gas chamber. But I think that the most obnoxious person is my best teacher.
So I think it's very good to look at the bigger than you. It's there. There's a hit there. There is a mother to raise her there.
There is kindness, there is goodness. And I think it's very, very important to really change our thinking that can change our lives. Yeah. I'm getting shivers as you're talking because this, these words of wisdom that you speak.
I can feel the truth in them. I can feel this. I guess this is where I'm, I've been coming for a few years. I've really been trying to understand myself, understand human behavior.
And I'm fascinated by people and fascinated by why someone's ended up in front of me, why they've got a particular way, why they talk about it in a particular way, why some engage with what you want them to do and others don't engage. And I've never really judged my patients. I've always tried to learn from them and understand. And I guess where I'm currently on in my journey, I love about what you just said is, I literally do this every day.
I look for the friction. I look for where was I not at ease with something? Where did something bother me? Or where did I feel an emotion?
And then my current approaches, instead of trying to blame somebody else for that, I can't hold on. This is me. What is this bringing up in me? Because that's what I can control.
I can control my reaction. So if I'm getting triggered, what is it triggering? So I spend my life now going inwards. And I gotta say, it's so rewarding because what could be better than understanding yourself?
I wanted it so beautiful because you said the magic word trigger. It does nothing to do with going on this minute with that person. That person is triggering something in me that is totally my unfinished, emotional, family-award agent business. See, so then you're grateful.
And you say, time is old because love is time, TIME. And it's very hard to leave time. Right, how much time do they give you? You look like I was just 15, 20 minutes.
It's time. It's time to spend 10 minutes. Every moment is changing their lives. Don't try to understand things.
That's it belongs to a classroom. It's only in your head. Just go to the heart and just say, sounds like and then put the feeling good next to it. Sounds like you're angry about that.
I did that with the general. Okay? And he said, I bought a dirty, a dirty, nudge doo there. I was smoking pot and telling the father of all kinds of unfortunate labels, dictator and so on.
And you cannot change what other people are gonna say to you. But you can see the mood they talk, the mood relax, I become. Let you think the negative stimuli and turn it into positive. You see?
And then you see, I'm practicing my low frustration tolerance level. So you are not a shrink, I'm a stretch. You are a stretch. And there's a really hard testing.
You pushing your button still, not to react because when you react, you don't think what how to respond. Just take a deep breath. You cannot change the external circumstance. I could not change that when I actually looked at the guards that they were doctors and not me, that I was innocent.
And then a woman tells me somebody touched me inappropriately. And I don't know how to tell you because you were in Auschwitz. And I tell that woman, you were more than present than I was because I knew the enemy. I was told I'm never gonna get out of your life.
I was told I'm cancer to society. And the only way I will get out of here is the corpse. And they took my blood many, many times. And one time I asked why I had taken my blood.
And he said to either German soldiers, so we can be in the war and take over the world. I go and yang my arm, I'm very right. But I said to my as your stupid idiot. I was a ballerina.
My blood is never gonna be in the war. And so I had my human, you know, sarcasm, cynicism, whatever kind of human that really kept us alive. But it is very important for you to know that many people can do what you can do, but not the way you can do that. You're unique, you're one of the kind.
I love the way you are with me. You see, I see the honesty and the humanness accepting the fact that you're human and you make mistakes. And you will make mistakes because we don't have any God live hours with humans. And it's okay not to be perfect.
And by the way, when you are a perfect, the perfection is you're going to profess in it, keep that in mind. And then you want to do everything just right. And then my window there was in a class and the IQ was 148. She was a perfectionist and I went to visit a class and she would erase one thing a million times and the teacher called her my little red caboose.
That's the dream, the last card on a train. It's called the red caboose. So she thought she does unqualified to stay in that class and she was ready to check out. And she was about 10 years old and the first time I talked to her about Auschwitz.
On a 10 year old level, so you have to know age wise who you're talking to. I cannot talk to a 10 year old at what cognitive dissonance I can talk to you about it. But I think we need to learn how to meet people when they are and then treat them the way you want them to be. So I told you I'm not allowed a teacher to call names.
I don't like labels. Anyway, I succeeded she went back to school and when it was time to write letters, to get to colleges, you have to write to an autobiography. And the title was when the caboose became an engine. And she got into Princeton.
She graduated with honors. She got to UCLA, got to PhD. And she's a professor of psychology today. So you see, you've got the question of loyalty rather than blindly at the authority.
I also like to tell you that our religion done said many years ago. And I was interviewed by the same person, Larry King. He said that the Holocaust did not exist. And I'm quite sure that our religion did not read Plato who said, you have to think of a lie.
It has to be a big one. And then you repeat it, repeat it, until people believe it. So our biggest enemy is ignorance. And it's very, very important to look at the small towns and people are here in the preacher and talking against this one or against that one.
And be sure that children Christian authority rather than blindly at the end. So that's how they guarantee what's in your scoop. And what's not. And the best thing, of course, is that all this goodness comes in one convenient, tasty, daily setting.
For a limited time only, guess a free AG1 Flater sampler and AGZ sampler to trial the flavors, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts. For first time subscribers, see all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more. What was it about you in Auschwitz that gave you the spirit to keep going?
Because you mentioned the story that if you touch the guard, you'd be shot. And you saw some of your fellow inmates doing that. And the question that rose up for me is, do you think that some of them did that on purpose? Because they couldn't take it anymore.
And they knew they touched a guard. They would be over. I had a friend who was so proud that her father went into the world wire that he took charge of his life. That is dead.
I was 16 in love. I wanted to live so badly. I wanted to do everything in my power, not to ever allow them to take over. That spirit.
That is with me now. That spirit that you're eating. Because people ask me for a help to book. They wanted to know what can be done in a challenging situation.
So there is no problem. There are only challenges. There is no crisis. There is only transition.
So if you approach me life, not talk about crisis, talk about transition. Because you're going to give up your need to preserve their people. You're going to give up the need for other people's approval. You regain your power.
You give birth to their you. That is free at last. Some people may listen to this and listen to your story. I go, wow, she's incredible lady, which I completely agree with.
But they may go one step further. And they may say, well, she's special. She's got a superpower. I'm not like her.
She was able to overcome what she went through and come out the other side. She's stronger than me. What would you say to someone who's feeling like that? Yet, little do the word overcome.
I don't forget. I do not overcome. I come to terms with it. Part of women's left in Auschwitz.
I want to be a realist, not an idealist. Life is difficult. The more I suffer, the stronger I become. I did not ask to go to Auschwitz.
You did not ask to be touched in appropriately. You did not ask to be that is little woman, like many watching on the movie. It's a wonderful movie to talk about and take each every one of those wonderful characters that it doesn't take his wife to London. It takes a little girl to London.
And that's why I ask many people when they do childhood end. See? Because many children have to take care of their parents. If others are in alcoholic, if mother doesn't get up on the report, I'll talk in the afternoon, because she has migraine headaches.
I think it's very important to ask you, so when did you have night childhood end? If you're a child of an immigrant, my little girl was two years old when we came to America. She taught me how to speak English. She taught me how to write peanut butter.
I never spoke peanut butter in my whole life. Or tuna fish. And also, so the children become parentized. So you got to kind of see whether you went through the ages and stages of life.
The person to really study is B.I.J. and B.I.J. as a Swiss psychologist studying, the ages and stages of my development. And many people are grieving over childhood or the teenage years they never had.
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I've heard you say before is I don't want you to hear my story and say, my own suffering is insignificant. I want you to hear it and say, if she can do it, so can I. I was such a wonderful thing to read.
And so it's very nice to hear with another thing you say in the book, which is there is no hierarchy in trauma. I think it's such an important point. And actually this morning, I mean, I'm talking to you in the British evening. It's morning, I think for you in California.
And I had a conversation with someone today about, just about racism and actually how we can talk about race to our children. And as we were talking about afterwards, this whole idea came up with that sometimes in life, if we hear that someone has suffered more than us, there's often a guilt that happens. We think, oh, well, I can't really tell them how I'm feeling, because my suffering is nothing compared to that. And I thought the way you put it in the book, there's no hierarchy in trauma, which is so beautiful.
No, because in my book, the joy is when women came and the daughter was dying of imma failure and be cried and cried and the following hour, someone cried the same way because that Kari-laan caused a liver. And it was not the same shade that she expected. So do I tell that woman used to be the idiot? You should have been here an hour ago that don't minimize or trivialize anything.
Suffering is a feeling, it's one of life. It's good to invite it in when you get to be good, feel the feeling, but then you decide how long you're gonna hold onto that feeling. Any behavior satisfies the need. And if you're a victim, you're going to gain a lot because you don't have to do anything.
You're always gonna find a victimizer. And couples do that too. The victim becomes a victimizer who's back and forth and back and forth. I don't know what that means in a sense to you, but what I can tell you, that man created patriarchy.
And the Bible even says that the woman comes to the world to please man and take care of man. If I would be a man, I would do the same thing. That you marry someone who's a virgin, you marry someone who's younger. So God forbid that you find out that another man is a very long man.
You know, it's very, very defined that the man is the king. And it's okay if she's the queen and the children are the princess and the princess. There is nothing wrong with that, but the man has to use his power to be the Roman. To the children who are looking at that father and say, I want to be just like him.
Oh, I want to be everything he's not. Can you relate it to that? Yeah. That boy, especially looks at that.
And so I want to be just like him over. There is no way I'm ever going to be like my father and guess what he goes out. And he decides to be a caregiver, even though the father wants him to join his business or become a doctor just like him. There's no problem because the son shows to give him the need for his father's approval.
See, there is, he got to give up something. And that's no problem. But man, he said, I'm going to be like my father and he's a rebel. And if you are wanting proof something, you still have a prisoner.
If you want to prove something, you're still not free. So if you want to prove something to somebody else, there's still charges that still emotion behind that. You're still a child. And you don't know how to just let go.
My father is my father. I carry half of it in my blood. Half of it is my mother. Half of it is my father.
And I'm going to make peace with my father. I don't have to be like him. He can be himself and I can be I and hopefully be can empower each other with our differences. You don't come from an agenda and marriage too.
When a woman said, my love is going to cure him and he's going to stop drinking. No, he's already married to the alcohol. He's an addict. She doesn't realize that love is something that you accept someone just the way they are.
And when I marry him and I'm going to love him, he's going to stop drinking. That's not reality. We'll have a colleague anything that you do access to the look at addiction. Yeah.
You mentioned that you would say if you, or when you wake up tomorrow, I think you said you'll see your boyfriends. What's it the thought of your boyfriend that kept you going? Was that the picture you painted inside your mind to keep you going? And also along with that, how important is it for all of us no matter who we are or where we are in life to have something outside ourselves to be holding onto.
And to serve others, I guess is what I'm trying to say, is how important was that to help get you through? What was how important is it for those of us who haven't been through what you went through, but still struggling? You are so brilliant, but I'm going to give you one word that guided me to survive and the world is curiosity. I always wanted to know what's going to happen next.
I was curious. There is no way I wanted to ever do anything other than one and nothing else was going to happen next. And who knows what's going to happen next? You may find your freedom.
And you may find out that you can discover within you that you never thought was possible. That no one can take away the way you think about anything the attitude of these responses. Your opportunity to play for the gods because they have the prisoners. So it's just what you think you create.
That is very true. So if you use words like, I always, I never, I'm going to find a man and I say to her, you know what? If I were a man, I would run from you. She's off everything, and I'm going to be negative, self-fulfilling prophecy.
And always there's, I'm never, they're getting those words. They are absolutely sick. Just say, I'll tell you how I do this. And now I can read them.
If then I have a choice. Then what choices you have, then that's your freedom I can make them. You bring up this very important concept of language. And the words we use to describe things now.
I'm going to share with you that I actually, generally speaking, no longer say to my knowledge, I lost my dad. But for some reason, in this conversation early on, it popped out. Clearly, I haven't fully eliminated that. Because normally I don't say it anymore.
But for some reason I did. And why I'm sharing that? Because I've been really feeling it the last few years. And this is something that my wife and I spend a lot of time with our kids doing.
It's been very mindful of words. Like the kids say, oh, I'm not good. You know, it's always happens. Oh, hold on.
It's not true. It's not really true. How about we rephrase that? Or if they say something like, oh, man, I need that.
Do you need that? And I'll tell you my daughter's at the seven, she gets this. Like she calls me. You mean you want it?
Okay. Thanks darling. Thanks, darling. Thanks, let me know.
I guess I want to ask you is how important are the words we use? And then you're writing this brilliant world life-changing books in your 90s. But how can we teach those lessons to children so they don't need to wait till midlife and later life to learn what you've learned and what you're trying to teach us now? Beautiful.
And we need to bring it without end. We cannot go on beyond four minutes. We need to sleep at the three days we have to listen it. We need to sleep.
We need to eat eventually. I know for about two weeks I didn't get any food. I know that Gandhi went possibly a month without food. When people say, you know, I need to go downtown.
I need to take care of this and that. And that's not a need. That's a one. And why is it important that we get this right?
Because some people will go, yeah, but this is just colloquial talk. It doesn't matter. But I suspect you think as I do, that actually does matter. It does matter.
And also people have the rules that are very rigid, rather than flexible. I need to write a letter to my mother. I need to call my mother every day. My sister Clara made her granddaughters called her every morning eight o'clock and sing a Hungarian song.
Otherwise she was going to be punished. You see, my sister was a very controlling person. And you know what? Let's keep them going to go to grandma after that.
She really didn't know what to be a grandma. OK? You get to learn two things. Negotiate and compromise.
You make a deal with your child. They gave me $50. But don't tell me what to do with your $50. That's a child.
They want to order freedom and all this responsibility. So you write the constitution for your family. That you work as a team. You have two children.
Then you have four wheels. And that four wheels is necessary because if one of them goes, the other three wheels with that. That you have rules. You write them.
America has a constitution. You write your constitution. But there is no punishment or any consequence. So if you don't do this and this and this, that means we can't just stay home.
See, you talk about rules and the children are part of the decision-making process. It's not me telling you what you should do. Get rid of that word. You could.
It's called assertive discipline. So if I'm a school teacher, I am satisfied. And if you make noises in my class, I'm coming to you and telling you, I get paid for teaching this class. And if you make noises, it really interferes with my class.
So you see I'm giving you a choice to leave or stay here quietly. Because there is no freedom without responsibility. It's an okay. So love is again.
Not what you feel is what you do. And you do for the better men of that family. And I think you can teach the seven-year-old how to put the dishes in a dishwasher. It has to be aged appropriately.
So you have a seven-year-old who don't do that. That's how you're all done. OK. So the seven-year-old who don't tell you, I want to go to bed.
When my brother goes to bed, I don't want to go to bed earlier. Am I saying something? Yeah. OK.
And I get you, Daddy. I hate you, Mommy. And I say, and the child says, why do I have to go to bed? And why do you tell me?
And Mommy said, because I'm a good mommy. And that's what good mommy's do. But I said, so that's stupid. What do you mean I said so?
And so I grew up. And so I grew up. Because I said so, there was no conversation. So what do you want?
What kind of family do you want? Do you want dictatorship? Do you want to be an eligible leader? I'm sure you are.
I don't have to tell you any of that. You create an atmosphere. But children can feel any feelings without the fear of being judged. It is not like bad or good.
No. No. One thing we started doing this summer, Edith. And I think this was actually, I took about three weeks off social media.
I just went off. And it was an incredible time, because I was able to really tap into who I was, whatever's feeling, without having to listen to the noise of the world or not having to. I never had to. It was a choice.
I made a choice for three weeks to turn off the noise from outside. So I could go inwards. And in that time, I started to write down some of my own personal values. We used to think about what are the values by which I want to live my life.
And that had the idea. I was walking in the woods thinking about that. Oh, why don't we do this as a family? And so one dinner time, just before me or time, I think, we sat down the four of us.
And we all had to contribute. And we came up with five values or seven. We all had to agree. So I said, let me be in force.
I need these values at all. We all have to agree. So I won't have a chance to come up with their own value. And we went around the table.
Everyone had to say whether they agree or not. And what's been really great about that, this is just an experiment that I've been trying with my wife, is that if one of us has done something that is not aligned without value, then the conversation goes, well, let's say it's one of my children. The conversation is, OK, so what you did there, aligned with the values that we all agreed on. And I find it really effective because it's not anyone telling one another what they don't know what they haven't done.
It's really treating people with respect and saying, hey, look, we all agree to this. Yeah, actually, you know what? I don't know something that's not aligned with that. I'm going to recognize that and make a change.
Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Well, I like things to be written down. So you have a way to, but I thought you said, I think you said, and no, you write down. what if then, if this happened then, you know, and then, and then you hear your child saying, because sometimes we say, I understand, then we don't.
When I came to America, people spoke to me, and they wanted to know if I really get it. And I would say, yes, even though I had no idea what they were talking about. So I think you want to be sure that you hear exactly. Then you were already done and signed it on the dotted line and have it not arrived, but at those under rules.
Yeah. We are full cooperation, not competition or domination. But I was made before you. And that's why I am an adult.
And you bring in doesn't develop until you're 25. So a child does not play with their full card until they're 25. And that's why you have to really know how to talk to a child who is limited, not limitless. You got to study the ages, as stages of development.
You talk about cooperation. And one of the many striking things about your life story that I've read about is how even in Auschwitz, kindness and cooperation was absolutely key. It was key for you to survive. And actually, not only was it key for you to survive, it potentially saved your life at a point later on, I believe, when you were starving and very, very hungry.
So I went back to the manual. I gave me a piece of bread. I could have got ready to go up. And I chose to climb up and share it with the girls.
And later on, when I was in the death march going from my parents, I had to go and give him. And if I would have stopped, I would have been shot right away. I revisited that place. Every place I was.
And I looked at those places that I could have been shot. And the girls that I shared over that with so many stopping and they came and they carried me back from the chair with their arms and they carried me. So I would die. All we had was each other then.
And all we have is each other now. And can you go to some program? And then people were eating other people's flesh. I begged people to watch a movie called The Sound of Music because I asked a girl to help me because I cannot possibly touch human flesh.
And God said, just look down and I realized I discovered that I still have a dress to eat. And I remember then choosing one way to grasp over and against the other. So I can't is not in my vocabulary. When I go to a classroom, I run to the blackboard.
I could I can't equal. I am helpless. And then I take the eraser and take the ambassador and I take the I can't why. Because I think I can.
The whole cognitive psychology based on the philosopher called the Pictetus who said, it's not what happens. Makes you feel the way you feel. It's the way you view it. Yeah.
You know, this idea that we have the power. We have the power to choose. If we take some common scenarios, right? So, you know, I made a lot of video on judgment the other day.