The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

Audrey Rindlisbacher
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  • Self-Improvement
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For moms and women who want to increase their confidence, and discover and develop their unique gifts, while strengthening themselves and their families. *Over 50 5-Star Reviews*

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 168: Donna Zajonc on Victim, Creator, and Who You Want to Be

    I'm a recovering rescuer. For me this shows up as me doing things for others that they should really be doing for themselves (often my kids).   I also sometimes jump in and try to fix a problem that isn't mine, or do something I was never asked to do—like call the doctor or plan the party or give dating advice. Of course, I'd tell myself I just "wanted to help."  But honestly, that probably wasn't my true motivation. I probably thought something was broken that I needed to fix. Resources from the Episode: Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Center for the Empowerment Dynamic - Donna's Friday newsletter and essays, published weekly for over twelve years Coaching with the Empowerment Dynamic - Donna's coaching program, the one Audrey went through Who Do You Want to Be on the Way to What You Want? by Donna Zajonc The Power of TED* by David Emerald, a core text in MDM Academy Level One Episode 164 with David Emerald AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 168: Donna Zajonc on Victim, Creator, and Who You Want to Be Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Today I have a special guest, Donna Zajonc. Her credentials are master certified coach, author, and co-founder of the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic. If you saw our David Emerald interview, that is her association here. She helped co-found that organization with David. They worked intimately together for many years until he passed away. And I had the privilege of being one of Donna’s students years ago when I took her coaching program. It gave me lots of tools, some of which we’ll talk about today. Thank you again, Donna, for being here. I’m really looking forward to this. AUDREY: I want to give you a little bit of her credentials, because she’s done some really amazing things in her life and I want all of you to know how incredible she is. She is currently the director of coaching for the Power of TED, the Empowerment Dynamic organization. She is a very gifted teacher and coach, and her coaching program is so worth signing up for. She received the Washington State Excellence in Coaching Award in 2017. She served three terms in the Oregon legislature, and she also owned a multi-store food retail company in Oregon. Then in 2001 she really embraced her passion for coaching. Donna, you’ve been coaching pretty much full time since then? DONNA: Yeah, 25 years now. AUDREY: That’s amazing. And The Power of TED, one of the core books in our Mission Driven Mom Academy, level one, has sold over a quarter of a million copies. DONNA: I’m so glad to hear that. It’s so needed. AUDREY: And then her own book, which I own here and have all marked up, is Who Do You Want to Be on the Way to What You Want? Coaching with the Empowerment Dynamic. It was published a few years ago. I love it. Donna’s Path: Nursing, Public Service, and Coaching AUDREY: There are so many places we could start. I think we know a little bit about you professionally. I’d love to start out with a little bit more about you personally, so our audience can feel like they know you as a woman. Tell us a little bit about yourself. DONNA: Well, there are quite a few different segments to my life, as you alluded to. My early years of being drawn to public service through politics and being in the legislature. And being a mom. DONNA: I was in southern Missouri and went to the University of Missouri, joined VISTA, and married right out of college. We went to Oregon to work with the Klamath Indians, where I was the health coordinator. That was in the early to mid seventies. It was through that experience that I got really interested in public policy and health care policy, and I spent some time in the legislature. I stayed in Oregon, stayed in the Northwest, even though my home base, my brother and sister and family, were sixth generation in small towns in Missouri. But I’ve been a Northwesterner: Portland, Seattle. I live on Bainbridge Island, which is a gorgeous island right off of downtown Seattle. DONNA: That’s the résumé of person, place, and time. We can certainly get into when I met David in 2003, when we started immediately talking about the empowerment dynamic. We named that and had no idea it would become our life’s work and our business. AUDREY: You said professional coaching since 2001, so you were already doing that when you met David. DONNA: That’s correct. I was moving into coaching leaders, especially public leaders, because that had been a big part of many of the years earlier in my life, a real dedication to the nobility of public service. That is not how much of our public leadership is seen today, and I get really sad about that. But that’s exactly what I was doing in 2001 and 2002. We met in 2003 and were immediately drawn to our way of thinking and our desire to create a world that works for all: our desire to serve, to help people be their best, and to create systems where families, companies, and nations can really thrive. AUDREY: Absolutely. So what led you to coaching in the first place? Why were you already in that realm when you met David? DONNA: That’s a great question. My undergraduate degree is in nursing, and I went into public health nursing right out of college, working with the Klamath Indians and then in two different community mental health clinics in Oregon for many years. So I already had a very keen interest in human development and psychology. That’s when I heard about and discovered this idea of coaching, which in 2000 and 2001 was brand new. DONNA: There was a friend here on Bainbridge Island who really guided me into asking, is this a good fit for you? And it felt so good. My psychiatric mental health nursing was more about healing, about addressing wounds and issues. Coaching is all about forward looking, forward thinking. That forward thinking, being at our best, being emotionally sound and secure in our values, being able to take responsibility, all of that really attracted me. So I looked into the coaching school here in Seattle. It was a perfect fit, and I never looked back. AUDREY: They actually had a school established by then? DONNA: They did. There were a handful of really incredible coaching programs in the year 2000, and one of the founders of the International Coach Federation created a school here. I felt that was a bit of guidance, because it was so easy for me to be able to attend school right in Seattle. How the Empowerment Dynamic Was Born AUDREY: That’s wonderful. So tell us a little bit more about how this connection with David organically started to grow into shared work for the two of you. DONNA: What a beautiful question. We met in a business setting, but we very quickly realized that there was a strong love and affinity between us. Over those couple of years after meeting, he shared with me epiphanies he was having about a time in his life where he felt very much like a victim. He found out he couldn’t have children of his own, that he was biologically infertile. His dad, who he was very close to, died suddenly. And his first marriage disintegrated, for lots of reasons, but I think in part because he couldn’t have children and she very much wanted children. DONNA: So he started telling me about his epiphanies around this victim consciousness, and about some guidance he had had to ask, well, what’s the opposite of victim? Out of that meditative reflection, he had a sense. He says, I didn’t hear words, I didn’t hear a voice, but the opposite of being a victim and having life happen to us is to be a creator. So learn to create and take responsibility for our lives. AUDREY: And on first blush that seems like a really simple idea. It is so profound. DONNA: It comes with an extremely profound idea about how we meet the world, how we meet challenges, how we meet ourselves and our family, moving out of “life happens to me and I’m powerless,” which is a quick summary of victim consciousness. And we are all victims at times, to accidents, to health issues. People really do abuse us. What we’re talking about is not victimization. AUDREY: That’s right. Definitely. DONNA: We’re talking about victimhood as an identity, that we see ourselves as not having a choice, that life happens to us. That description alone can really stop people. AUDREY: Yes. There’s a big difference. DONNA: So that became our conversations. We both knew about the drama triangle, me from my days in mental health, and David knew about it through being in therapy regarding the loss of his marriage and not being able to have children. AUDREY: And that’s the main shift, isn’t it? Victim is the heart of that drama triangle. DONNA: Dr. Karpman said that when we’re feeling like a victim, there’s always a persecutor. There’s always a problem that’s caused us to feel like we’re a victim. And the third role Dr. Karpman said is that when those two roles enter, there’s always a third one, the hero, the rescuer. So that’s a very dynamic description of the three primary ways we human beings respond to things we don’t like and don’t want. DONNA: David’s epiphany, as you know, was, oh my gosh, there’s got to be a positive alternative to that. We firmly believe in the goodness of who we are as human beings. So what is the new triangle that rests upon that goodness, that ability to choose, that ability to create, that ability to be loved? That’s what he started sharing with me on walks. And I said, David, this is really original work. We need to write this down. DONNA: That’s what we did for about a year and a half. And we named the new triangle. I was writing a book about my time in coaching, and my editor heard about David’s new triangle and that we had just named it the empowerment dynamic. So now we’ve got the drama triangle on one hand and the empo

  2. Aug 11

    EP 167 You loved your child before they were born

    Years ago I read a book by Robert Fritz that taught me something that has changed my life: that often we think we know what we want, but when we actually ask more questions and get down to our true motivations and intentions, we are really just reacting, not creating!  Resources from the Episode:  Robert Fritz Inc. - Robert's website, books, articles, and program schedule Creating Your Life: the three-month course Robert built, offered through Creator Tools Robert Fritz Creating Channel - Robert's films, songs, and writing on the creative process The Robert Fritz Structural Consulting Channel - full consultations, filmed Books by Robert Fritz: The Path of Least Resistance, Creating, Your Life as Art, The Managerial Moment of Truth, and Identity, co-written with Dr. Wayne Andersen Mothers of Creation ** - Provo, Utah - September 26th** Episode 163: What It Means to Be a Creator AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 167: Robert Fritz on What Creation Actually Is Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. I am so excited for us to spend a few minutes today with Robert Fritz, who I greatly admire and am very honored to have with us. Thanks for being here, Robert. ROBERT: My pleasure, thank you. AUDREY: Let me tell the listeners a little about him. His bio is technically three pages long and thick with worldwide influence. Here is a summary of some of the highlights of his life’s work. He is an acclaimed composer, filmmaker, author, and management consultant, best known for developing the theory of structural dynamics, which explains how underlying structures shape human and organizational behavior. Educated at the Boston Conservatory of Music and in Germany, Robert has spent decades helping corporations, government agencies, educators, and nonprofit organizations create lasting change through his principles of structural thinking and the creative process. His work has influenced leaders such as Peter Senge and has been applied by organizations including IBM, Blue Shield of California, the US Department of Defense, and educational systems worldwide. He is also an award-winning composer and filmmaker whose films have earned more than 250 international awards, and the author of several influential books, including The Path of Least Resistance and The Managerial Moment of Truth. AUDREY: Today we are going to focus most of our attention around my favorite book. This one right here, and this is probably an old copy. Creating. The subtitle is A Practical Guide to the Creative Process and How to Use It to Create Anything, a Work of Art, a Relationship, a Career, or a Better Life. Robert, thank you for being here with us today. ROBERT: Thank you. I am delighted to talk to you. How the Book Came to Be AUDREY: This book has shaped some of my thinking. It has corresponded with other things I have studied and experienced in life and proven itself over and over again. Many of the principles and concepts you teach in it have borne out in the real world and proven to me to be very, very important. So I am just curious personally how this book came to be. ROBERT: I had a two-book contract with Ballantine Books. The first was The Path of Least Resistance, and then there was time for a second book as part of the contract. I thought the major focus should be on creating. Because creating, or the creative process, is the most successful process for accomplishment in history. It created all of the arts, science, commerce. And yet mostly we do not learn how to create. ROBERT: We learn in school how to react or respond to circumstances. The major difference between the creative process and what we learn is that what we learn is to think about the circumstances first, and then what do we do about that. If you are rebellious as a kid, you react. If you are cooperative, you respond. But it is still the circumstances that are the driving force. The creative process is really different. It is your choices. And one of the major choices the creative process always begins with is, what do you create? ROBERT: My background, as you said, is the arts, and particularly composition. I have a bachelor’s and master’s in composition from the Boston Conservatory. What we learn in music in particular is that it is the underlying structure of music that determines how music goes. We have things in music called form and analysis. If you are in a conservatory, you go to these classes and you analyze Beethoven or Chopin, a number of different types of pieces. And it is not a matter of how does it feel and what do you think of when you hear the piece. It is, how did the composer get you to feel that? What are the elements in play that give rise to predictable patterns of behavior? ROBERT: When I was teaching composition at New England Conservatory, I began to wonder if that same principle could apply to everyone, not just composers, but everyone in creating their own lives. And that led me to developing the principles that are in the book you really like. Self-Esteem, Ego, and the Focus of the Creative Process ROBERT: What do you like about it, by the way? AUDREY: If you are out looking for answers, as I was, there are a few different camps. There is the camp that focuses entirely on the self, on self-esteem. What do you want to create in relationship to this ego? What will service you? It is all about you. ROBERT: I wrote a book with Dr. Wayne Andersen called Identity, and the subtitle of the book is that it does not matter what you think about yourself, which is ironic. It seems like the self-esteem people have never read a biography of successful people. They would see none of them had high self-esteem. But the difference was they were not focused on themselves. They were focused on what they were up to, what they were doing, what mattered to them, what they were creating. ROBERT: It is always on how am I doing, and how does it make me look, and do I like myself. Totally irrelevant in the creative process. AUDREY: It is interesting, because we are building an event this fall called Mothers of Creation, and it is all about the creative process and how mothers can engage in it. We start the day by having everyone write out a problem story. What in your life are you feeling upset about or stuck in? In preparation for that, our team was writing out problem stories and picking them apart, trying to figure out why this is a problem for me. There were a few different reasons, but we were trying to find what was in common. Ironically, one of the core components for all of us was that our intentions were wrong and our ego was right in the center of it. That is why we were bumping up against life in that way, unhappy about something happening to us because of what it was going to cost, what pain it was going to cause us, how it was going to make us look, or what other people were going to think. That was so enlightening and clarifying. AUDREY: It is such a great insight to understand the shift of focus from how am I doing and how do I look, to what is this outcome I am trying to create, how close am I to it, and what do I need to do to create it. And is it worth my precious life energy? Because there are a million paths we could choose, and it needs to be worthy of the few minutes we have here. ROBERT: That is a principle called hierarchy. What is more important, what is less important. A lot of people spend their lives on things that are less important to them, because they have not really sorted out that value system of hierarchy. AUDREY: I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy a little while ago, and that is the theme of that novella. He spent his life on what was not important, taking direction from everyone around him, being a subject of his environment, thinking that was what he wanted, thinking he was arriving. Ego was so deeply entrenched in everything that was going on, because it was all reflective of that. Is this now servicing the identity I want to have of myself? Obligation and Choice AUDREY: So to answer your question, I would say there is one camp saying get what you want, but the underlying message is to service the ego. And there are other camps I lean more toward that say, no, actually take responsibility, have discipline, show up, fulfill your duty. The conscientious aspects of life. I think there are some powerful, good, solid principles in that camp. ROBERT: I am sure, because what you are describing is obligation. But really, we are not obligated to do any of that. Often what happens is people turn what they want into an obligation. For example, let us say you are caring for an adult, your parents. And you say, well, I really have to do it. Well, no, you actually do not have to do it. You are making a choice that is really quite altruistic, and you do not even have the benefits of knowing the altruism of it, because you are manipulating yourself into obligation rather than seeing, I could do this or not do this. ROBERT: Obligation means you have no choice. You have to do it. Choice means you can do it or not. AUDREY: That is what I was getting at. What you are talking about is the best parts of both of those camps. It is the middle ground that says it should not be all about me, even if for no other reason than that as soon as it is all about you, it will not even service you best anyway. And you choose it fully. But then you commit yourself to it. There is this component of responsibility, but it is responsibility you have chosen. It is a commitment you have made. Why Commitment Works Against You AUDREY: That dovetails into something you say at the start of the book. I cannot remember the exact phrase, but basically that creating is an act of love. I wanted you to speak to that love component of creation, how you would define creation and creating or being creative, and what the connection with love

  3. Aug 4

    EP 166 The thing you dread

    You do hard things every day. You run a home, you carry other people's needs, you handle complicated things most people never see. You have so much more power than you realize. So why can one small, ordinary thing still fill you with dread? Having people over for dinner. A phone call. A visit you keep putting off. Something that should be simple, and somehow just is not. What's fascinating is that the dread is almost never about the thing itself. It is about the story you are telling yourself. Which means you do not have to keep dreading it. Once you can see the story clearly, you can change it, and show up as the you you want to be. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 166: Creator Orientation, A Panel Discussion Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I am Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Today I am joined in another wonderful discussion with Tracie Hyde, Lindsey Wright, and Cadie Hatch. We are preparing for our upcoming Mothers of Creation celebration, and it has been such a joy to meet, to discuss, and to read more resources together as we look at the kinds of things we will cover that day. We are also preparing the women who will attend in our online community, which is really wonderful. If you are interested in joining us, the link is in the description below. We have been returning to a few themes leading up to this event, and today the theme is creator and creation. We have talked about victim types and victimhood and why understanding them is helpful. But what is the reverse of that? The opposite of being a victim is to be a creator. So let us start simply. Will one of you give us a high level overview of Karpman’s Drama Triangle, who the players are, and what a problem orientation looks and feels like? The Drama Triangle and Its Opposite LINDSEY: I can do that. The victim orientation has three components. First the victim, who needs a persecutor, someone to blame the problem on, someone they believe is causing the problem. And then they need a rescuer, the knight in shining armor who comes to save the princess. Those three components collude together and feed on each other. Often we switch places within it. We start out as the victim and then become the persecutor. It is a fluid circumstance, this drama. On the other side, we have the opposite. The opposite of victim is creator. The opposite of persecutor is challenger. The creator sees the problem not as something to blame, not as the source of the bad feelings they are having, but as a challenge, something that can be overcome and that has something to teach them. And the opposite of the rescuer is the coach. The rescuer just takes away the consequences and smooths out the problem, but the victim does not get to learn anything. The coach does not solve the problem for you. They help the creator solve it themselves. They ask questions, they provide support and resources, but what they want is for the creator to have the experience of solving the problem and reaching the outcome they want. AUDREY: Thank you, Lindsey. That is so helpful. So we have two orientations, two ways of being. We will get into a lot of detail at the event and help you understand the nuances and why they matter. But fundamentally, to talk about being a creator, we have to juxtapose it with who a victim is and who a creator is, and the players in their life. We Choose Our Orientation AUDREY: Most of the time, in most of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we have a choice. But most of the time we organically show up as one or the other. Let me give you a good example. My husband has incredible health. Optimal health. And it is not just good genes and a good constitution, though I am sure he has that too. He has a way of being in the world about his physical body that is creator all the time. If he gets sick, his first thought is, I will probably be better tomorrow, or this is not a very big deal. He is not looking for who got him sick, or why this always happens to him. Even when he gets something small like a blemish, he sees it as a challenger. He tells himself, that is probably going to go away, I am going to figure out how to get rid of that. And then he always does. He is always looking to coaches to understand how to eat better, build stronger muscle, and live longer. He is currently reading three different books on how to be as healthy as he can be. When it comes to his health, he is in a creator orientation almost all the time. I think all of us have at least one area of life where being a creator comes so naturally it is like the air we breathe. Some people are like this with money. It may be hard for a lot of us to believe, but they have always had a positive reference point toward it. They expect it to come, they are comfortable with it, they spend it wisely and grow it, and there is always more than enough. But most of us also have a weak point, an area where we show up as a victim a lot, maybe in several areas. We talked about that in our last group discussion, about victims and victim types, and how we can show up as different types in different areas of our lives. When something happens to us, we determine the orientation we choose. Two different people have cancer. Two different people declare bankruptcy. Two different people get divorced. Two different people lose a child. And we will see radically different responses to the exact same circumstance. Often, when we are uncomfortable with something, we think that surely anybody in our situation would respond the same way. And the answer is almost always no. There is probably at least one person who would choose a creator response, who would look at themselves and their situation differently. So I would love to hear from each of you. Where in your life are you tempted to show up as a victim, and where do you show up as a creator? What are the thoughts and emotions around those two experiences? To go back to my husband, the other end of his spectrum was his pornography addiction. For years he was the victim of it. He could never figure it out and believed he would never overcome it. And then, with the right principles, tools, and orientation, he found sobriety. So we know that with the right tools we can conquer even the hardest circumstances of our lives. Give our listeners some reference points from your own lives. Tracie: The Dinner She Used to Dread TRACIE: This is one I can share. It is not a deep problem in my life, but it is something I have observed, where I can be in drama or choose to be a creator. It is having people over for dinner. It seems like that would be easy to do, but for many years it has been something I dreaded. We have a lot of people over, especially on Sundays. Family, extended family, friends. We can have up to seventeen or twenty people for dinner. My drama side looks at everything as a problem. The meat is not going to be done exactly right. The people coming may not really want to be there. What if someone feels left out, or no one talks to them. All these things that are out of my control, I worry about and see as problems. I dread Sunday as it comes around. And while people are there, I feel anxiety, so I am not able to minister to them or think deeply about what they need. That is the drama side. It has been so helpful to recognize that I have been in drama in this situation. Because if I can flip it into creator mode, then I can ask, why am I having all these people over? It is to create an experience we can have together. My drama type here is the perfectionist, where nothing can reach the goal, because it is just a nebulous idea I have never thought through clearly. It is never enough, and that is why I dread it. But in creator mode, I can have a vision of what I am actually creating. Maybe the food is not perfect. Maybe someone is dreading coming. How people interact is out of my control. But I can feel satisfied that I invited them and provided an experience where they can feel connection, where we can have time together as family and friends. When I focus on what I am creating, it becomes less about me and how I am being perceived. That anxiety leaves, and it becomes fulfilling instead of something I dread. I still lapse into the old pattern every so often, and I have to work through it and exercise that muscle to be a creator. But I can tell I am coming out of this dreaded rut I have been in, and I am finding a lot more joy in it. AUDREY: That is wonderful, Tracie. Those details help us see it. At the event we are going to give women a lot of specific tools to parse this out, and vision is a key component, which we will talk about on another podcast soon. One of the things you said several times was the focus off of yourself and onto others, and instead of reacting, taking ownership of your thinking. In our discussion about victims, one of the key words was responsibility. One of the biggest responsibilities we can take on is responsibility for the way we are thinking, and choosing to think differently can change everything. You are being intentional to recognize a pattern and to use the tools and principles you have been given, and it is turning what could be a bad experience into a really beautiful one. Can anyone else give an example of how this creator orientation is blessing your life and pulling you out of difficult circumstances? Cadie: Strong in One Place, Stuck in Another CADIE: I loved how you said your husband just has areas where creator orientation comes naturally. I do not know that I had ever thought about it that way before. I certainly know where my victim orientation comes naturally, but where does my creator come naturally? For me, one area is education. I do not tend to feel overwhelmed by it. I have educated my children at home all their lives and have helped with a charter scho

  4. Jul 28

    EP 165 A voice gave him a date.

    In Auschwitz, a man told Viktor Frankl about a dream. A voice had said he could ask one question, so he asked the only one that mattered: when would the war be over for him. Not for everyone. For him. The voice gave him a date. He believed it completely. I have not been able to stop thinking about what happened to him on that date. It changed how I understand what we are really doing when we call ourselves creators. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna - logotherapy and the life of Viktor Frankl The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) - David Emerald The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn   AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 165: Viktor Frankl Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to you about Viktor Frankl, a personal hero of mine. Just imagine that you're a Jew in Vienna during World War II. You've fallen in love with the woman of your dreams and you want to be married, but the law has just changed, and you are the very last Jewish couple in Vienna awarded the privilege of marrying. Not long after, your beautiful wife becomes pregnant, but no Jews are allowed to have children. And so she is forced to abort it. AUDREY: These were some of the things Viktor Frankl went through. I'm not going to go through every detail of his life, but he's worth looking up and learning all about. Today I want to do something really special with him and his experiences. AUDREY: We can see components of the Mission Driven Life in these stories and events and excerpts from his life. He had that love of God. He lived according to principle. He loved truth and talked about it often. He took good care of himself, loved others, loved humanity, made a huge impact in the world, heard the call, adopted meaning in his life, and shared logotherapy with the world. So definitely a mission driven life worth celebrating, and an incredible man who I greatly admire. Narrowing the Focus AUDREY: But for today, I want to focus our conversation a little more narrowly. I'm going to tell you a bit about his life leading up to World War II, and then I'm going to take you into his most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning. If you have not read this book, you really, really need to. The first half is recollections and excerpts from his experiences in the concentration camp. Nothing vulgar or offensive, but very thought provoking. He's trying to look at it from a psychological point of view, through the experiences of the prisoner. The second half is about his logotherapy, which is a fascinating read. AUDREY: The reason we're going into that book is to do something very unique. This fall, as I've mentioned on the podcast before, we're going to gather in the beautiful mountains of Utah and spend a day at our MDM celebration working through our theme for this year, Mothers of Creation. We're going to talk about how we show up as victims in the world, in our own drama, how we sometimes create it for ourselves or react to circumstances outside our control. We build these problem stories. We're going to break those apart. We're going to learn how to disengage. We're going to talk about what creation means and what it means to be a creator. And then we're going to teach you how to reframe it, how to turn it into new purpose and vision for your life, and how to create a creator statement. AUDREY: There's a community in the MDM Academy specifically for this event that women are welcome into as soon as they sign up, and that's been going well. Our brilliant Lindsey Wright has been running trainings in there. We did the first one together, and they're recorded. It's been a beautiful experience to watch women start to learn these ideas and prepare for this day-long event. So with all of that in mind, I want to show you three core concepts we're talking about on the podcast right now, and how they come to life in Viktor Frankl's book. Drama and victimhood and victim roles. Creation and creators. And vision, and why vision matters so much and how it's incorporated into these other aspects of our lives. A Little About Viktor Frankl AUDREY: He was born in 1905 in Vienna, the middle child in a Jewish family. When he was little, World War I hit, and it hit his family hard, like it did so many others. They were in abject poverty. They struggled to survive. And what's fascinating about Viktor is that by the age of three, he knew he wanted to be a doctor. Isn't that something? He went along that vein, thinking and learning in terms of what it means to make people whole, what it means to heal them. By the time he got into high school, he was actively studying psychology and philosophy, some in school and some out of it. So it might not surprise you that at age sixteen, he gave a speech in school entitled On the Meaning of Life. These ideas were already part of his message, his mission to the world. He felt it at a very early age, and that idea of meaning and purpose never left him. It was a central theme in his life. AUDREY: As a teenager, he also wrote to Freud. I don't know that they exchanged many letters, but Freud remembered him and remembered the correspondence when they met a few years later. He later disagreed with Freud and left off following him, but always deeply respected him. He then went on to medical school. During that time, he started to notice a disturbing trend. As exams approached, there was always a percentage of high school students every year who would end up taking their own lives, either leading up to the exams or after they received their scores, because these were so vital. They would literally determine the trajectory of that student's life. And they were young, and didn't always have the foresight to understand that things can change, that life could be different and better. So they became very fatalistic. He noticed this. He was disturbed by it. He decided to do something about it. He started treating these students with therapies and other modalities, and the first year he did this, there were no suicides. It was the first time in a long time that had been the case, and that was very rewarding for him. AUDREY: So he continued on. He finished school, and by the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, in 1933, he was already the head of the Vienna Psychiatric Hospital for female suicide prevention. He had seen the need, he had reached out, and as he did that, he really started to make a difference in this area. He learned a lot in the process. He went on and took other top positions. And by the time World War II was approaching, it hit Vienna earlier than it did the United States. Even as it approached, he could see that as a Jew he was in a lot of trouble. There were already more laws and discriminations put in place. So he applied for a visa to the United States. It was done by lottery, so he just had to wait it out. His number came up, and he was actually awarded a visa to go to the United States. The Stone on the Floor AUDREY: But he knew his family didn't qualify. He would be the only one going, leaving his family behind. He didn't know what he should do. So he decided to leave the decision up to a power higher than himself. He prayed and waited for some kind of sign. One day he was at home and found a little stone on the floor. When he lifted it up, he realized it was a piece of a Ten Commandments tablet that had been shattered when a synagogue was bombed, and his father had brought it home. It was a section of the honor your father and mother commandment. He saw that as divine intervention, and that he needed to stay with his family. So he decided to do that, which is why he was still there when the war reached him. AUDREY: He met his wife, Tilly. They fell in love. She was an incredible woman of compassion and intelligence, and they connected very deeply. As I said earlier, they were the last couple awarded the opportunity to marry, in 1941. In 1942 she became pregnant, and it was a forced abortion, because if a Jewish couple was known to be pregnant, they would be sent immediately to the concentration camps. AUDREY: So she had that forced abortion. Not long after, in 1942 or maybe 1943, the family was transferred to a milder concentration camp. At the beginning they were together. Frankl's father was old and very sick. Frankl was able to smuggle some morphine into the camp and give it to his father just before he passed away, and he was very grateful he could do that. Through a series of complications, he wound up in Auschwitz. His wife was going to follow him there. She ended up at Bergen-Belsen, where she was, I believe, almost immediately killed. He didn't know that at the time. And so he served out his time in Auschwitz until the war ended. Into the Book AUDREY: That brings us to this book. After the war, he dictated it in just nine days. He first published it anonymously, because he didn't feel he should take credit for it. He didn't know it would do any good or make any difference. He just felt it needed to be said. And it had a huge impact. It became his most famous work and has sold more than twelve million copies in print worldwide. So a very, very important work. AUDREY: I'm going to take you on a journey, from victim to creator to having vision, through some different excerpts. He says here: "The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one's master, and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course. The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him. This escape from commitment was most apparent when a prisoner had to make the decision for or against an

  5. Jul 21

    EP 164 Where "I am a creator" actually came from

    Thirty years ago, a man sat down for his morning quiet time in the middle of the hardest season of his life. His father had died far too young. He and his wife had been trying to start a family, and he had just learned he was infertile. His marriage was ending. And in that prayerful space, he said, "Okay, God, I'm ready to surrender my victim stance in the world. But I need to know: what's the opposite of victim?" The word came immediately. Creator. That man was David Emerald, author of The Power of TED. If you've been through the academy, you know this book. It's one of the core texts we study together, and I've heard story after story from women whose lives changed because of it. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) - David Emerald The Karpman Drama Triangle - Dr. Stephen Karpman AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 164: David Emerald & The Power of TED Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher. If this podcast is helpful for you, please share it, like it, pass it along, and leave a review, so we can share the message of mission and principles with everyone who needs it. I feel privileged and honored to have David Emerald with us today. This is a long awaited conversation. I’ve talked to people for years about how someday I was going to have a conversation with David Emerald about The Power of TED. This is that day, so I am ecstatic. For those of you who have engaged with the work or been in any of the academies, you know that The Power of TED is a core book that we spend a lot of time in to learn better self-management and self-leadership skills. I’ve heard story after story about its impact. If you listened to Carolyn’s interview that came out recently, one of the most important things that happened to her in the program was learning this book and practicing its principles. Today, David is going to tell us more of the backstory, so I’m excited for that. AUDREY: A little bit about him. His full name, which I didn’t know until recently, is David Emerald Womeldorff. He’s the creator in chief of the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic and founder of the Bainbridge Leadership Center in Washington. His passion and work is in supporting individuals, teams, and organizations in leading and working from an outcome-focused and passion-powered orientation. His principles and frameworks are based on his decades of study, observation, and application in collaboration with a wide range of individuals and organizations. His pen name is David Emerald, and with a last name like Rindlisbacher, I can understand why he did that. He’s the author of the best-selling The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic), a teaching story about self-leadership, and 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama, which is also phenomenal, by the way. I’ve studied that one quite a bit. It’s an organizationally focused teaching story that draws on his more than 30 years of experience in leadership development, change leadership, and employee management. David’s books are sold worldwide. David, where should I send people to find your work? DAVID: If you go to powerofted.com, where you’ll end up is at theempowermentdynamic.com. AUDREY: Perfect. That’s where you’ll find all of his work. And I’ll talk more later about some of the other ways I’ve engaged with David and his wife, Donna. They have some other incredible programs. But to get the conversation started, David, can you give us some of your backstory? What were you doing professionally before all this authorship came up, and what did you learn there? The Backstory DAVID: The backstory is that prior to the epiphany that eventually led to The Power of TED, and I’ll certainly share that whole story, I was living in Dayton, Ohio, working in corporate America, focused on management and organization development. I had a communication background. I was introduced to Robert Fritz’s work and was engaged in a course being run at a hospital based on his creating technologies, and I became friends with a gentleman named Bob Anderson, who’s the founder of The Leadership Circle. A number of things just came together in my life. At the time, my wife and I were trying to start a family, and that wasn’t working. And I’m pausing on that, because a big part of the backstory is that the things the character David faces in the story are autobiographical. DAVID: In about an 18 month period, three things happened in my life that were quite formative. One was that my dad, who I had a very healthy relationship with, passed away at much too young an age. He was in his early 60s. My wife at the time and I were trying to start a family, and I was declared medically infertile. She was quite introverted, and for whatever reasons, she chose not to have us explore any other options. So that marriage failed. As the marriage was coming apart, we were engaged in some couples therapy and doing quite a bit of work, and as things continued she decided to withdraw from that. It was during that period of time that I learned about the Karpman drama triangle and its roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer. The Epiphany: What Is the Opposite of Victim? DAVID: I had been working on my own with this therapist for about three months. One morning I was sitting at my desk engaged in what I call my morning quiet time, which has always been some combination of prayer, meditation, and journaling. I was in that contemplative, prayerful space. I remember having my eyes closed, and I just remember saying to the God of my understanding, “Okay, God, I’m ready to surrender my victim stance in the world, but I need to know: what’s the opposite of victim?” And I’ve got to tell you, Audrey, immediately the word creator came. It was so stark that my eyes flew open, and I thought, I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect that. I can’t say that I heard a voice, but the experience was such that I could understand someone saying they had an experience like that and heard a voice. I wish I could say, like Paul on the road to Damascus, that my life was forever changed. That was not the case. It was a personal epiphany. And I’m now talking about a good 30 years ago, around 1990 or 1991. AUDREY: Just as an aside, when was the book first published? DAVID: In 2005, actually 2006. AUDREY: So about a 15 year period. Wow. DAVID: There was about a 10 year period where I would think about it from time to time, and then it would fade into the background and life would go on. I continued in the corporate world in executive and leadership development and was involved in The Leadership Circle that I mentioned earlier, a very powerful feedback process, doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle at the University of Notre Dame in their executive programs. AUDREY: What kind of work did The Leadership Circle do? DAVID: It’s what’s called a 360 degree feedback tool. If you think about an organization chart, it’s 360 degree in the sense of getting feedback from one’s boss, one’s peers, one’s direct reports, perhaps clients, around the perceptions they have of one’s leadership. AUDREY: And you’re facilitating that feedback loop. DAVID: Exactly. It’s a coaching conversation. The Leadership Circle at the time also had a couple of leadership workshops that I facilitated and co-facilitated. And the ways of thinking that are captured in The Power of TED and in 3 Vital Questions, I owe a lot to Bob Anderson and the framing of what I call the victim and creator orientations, or the problem and outcome orientations. So you asked earlier what prepared me for this work. All of those elements were in there, and they came together in the personal epiphany I just shared. AUDREY: Would you say that insight, or revelation, or epiphany changed your behavior at all? Made you see the world differently? Was it having any kind of personal impact before you built a model for others? DAVID: Yes and no. The yes is that because of the other work I was doing, in The Leadership Circle we would talk about a reactive orientation versus a creative orientation. That creative orientation, which evolved in my work into a creator orientation, certainly impacted me. And I have long been mission driven in my own work. From that work I crafted my own mission statement, which has not changed much since the early nineties. I can call it up on my screen. AUDREY: I would love to hear it. And why did you call it a mission statement? DAVID: Because it’s what I’m called to do. It’s certainly purposeful, but it felt more like a mission statement than a purpose statement. Here it is: I am called to support and facilitate individuals, teams, and organizations in consciously shifting to a co-creative, vision focused, and passion motivated orientation for their lives and livelihoods. This is my lifelong ministry of service to humankind. I am a partner in creation with God. As spirit works in and through me, I serve as a channel of God’s abundance, love, wisdom, and power to touch, heal, and transform my own and others’ lives and ways of being in the world. AUDREY: Wow. That is beautiful. DAVID: That’s been on my wall through multiple moves. It really has been my North Star in terms of all the work. And that existed before I had a name for TED, before I had alternatives to the persecutor and the rescuer. Meeting Donna and the Conversation at Notre Dame DAVID: Fast forward about 10 years. I was doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle and some international work with another consulting company. I was on my own, so I could live anywhere. In 2003, I was attending a workshop as a participant at a place called the Whidbey Institute and met Donna Zajonc. We really connected around a shared interest in leadership. She was coming out of public leadership; she had been an el

  6. Jul 14

    EP 163 You Are Already a Creator. Here Is the Proof.

    I want to tell you something Abraham Maslow figured out while studying the highest levels of human consciousness. He had assumed, like most of us, that creativity belonged to a certain kind of person. The artists. The composers. The poets. The rest of us just didn't have that natural creative genius. Then he started studying people who were truly thriving and one of them stopped him. She was a housewife. Uneducated, not wealthy, no artistic training. And yet everything she touched was original and inventive and alive. What he wrote about her is something I think every mother needs to hear. Come listen and I will share with you exactly what he said and why it changes everything about how you see yourself. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Introduction AUDREY: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is one of the most important and well-known sentences in the history of the world. It tells us who God is: He’s a creator. And it tells us who you and I are, as children of God — we are also creators. We cannot not create. So what are you creating? That’s what we’re going to talk about for the next few minutes. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, founder of The Mission Driven Mom, and today I want to spend some time on a topic we’ve been discussing a lot on this podcast and will be diving deep into this fall at our Mothers of Creation event: creation, and being creators. What does that really mean? Why does it really matter? Are There “Creative Types”? AUDREY: For those of you who went through a lot of public school in the West, you were probably just like me. In school there were art classes and music classes, and those students were “the creative types” — the ones who could draw and paint, the artists and the musicians. The rest of us weren’t creative. And then, on the other hand, today the world tells us like crazy: just create what you want. Create the life you want. Create a life you’ll love. You hear that kind of thing all the time. So which is it? Are there creative types, or can we all create literally anything we want? I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. AUDREY: I want to read you something today from Abraham Maslow — a very famous psychologist, in case you’ve never heard of him. He said that Freud figured out the unhealthy part of psychology, and he wanted to figure out the healthy side. He came up with his hierarchy of needs and the concept of self-actualization. This is from his writing on creativity, and he started with the same assumption I did. He says: “I soon discovered that I had, like most people, been thinking of creativeness in terms of products, and, secondly, I had unconsciously confined creativeness to certain conventional areas only of human endeavor — unconsciously assuming that any painter, any poet, any composer was leading a creative life. Theorists, artists, scientists, inventors, writers could be creative. Nobody else could. I didn’t even think of scientists, as scientists, as being creative. Unconsciously I had assumed that creativeness was the prerogative solely of certain professionals. But these expectations were broken up by various of my subjects.” AUDREY: So he was studying people intensively to better understand the highest levels of human consciousness and living — what it looks like when people are really at their peak, this self-actualization we strive for. He goes on: “For instance, one woman, uneducated, poor, a full-time housewife and mother, did none of these conventionally creative things and yet was a marvelous cook, mother, wife, and homemaker. With little money, her home was somehow always beautiful. She was a perfect host. Her meals were banquets. Her taste in linens, silver, glass, crockery, and furniture was impeccable. She was, in all these things, original, novel, ingenious, unexpected, inventive. I just had to call her creative. I learned from her and others like her that a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting, and that, generally, cooking or parenthood or making a home could be creative while poetry need not be — it could be uncreative.” AUDREY: That was a huge insight for him, and it’s important for us to keep in mind. Just because certain people are labeled “creatives” doesn’t mean anything. We are all creators; we can’t not create. What Creation Really Means AUDREY: You are creating, every day, the life that you live. Your choices, your thoughts, your beliefs, your patterns, your habits, your actions — they build up the circumstances all around you, and you experience the fruits of them. What happens to us is that we have areas of our life we don’t like, so they become problems. We build out these problem stories, telling ourselves everything that’s wrong with the situation and all the ways we can’t make it any different, and we struggle and fight, focusing on the problem instead of on what we want instead. To have a creator orientation is the gateway to a new life — and that’s what we’re working to flesh out for you on this podcast all through the summer and into the fall. AUDREY: I looked up the root of the word create. It comes from a very old root, “ker,” and here’s what’s fascinating: that root means to grow. Sometimes when we think of creation — of God as a creator, of ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” and all those biblical or Christian ideas — we picture it as coming up with something from nothing, molding and making material. But really it’s just to grow: to bring something worthwhile into existence, to love it enough to create it. This is how Robert Fritz talks about it — we’re going to have him on the podcast later, and I’m excited to talk with him about his ideas. He describes how we create because we love. We love the creation enough to bring it into existence. We love the unborn child enough to prepare for it; we love it before it exists in our material world. That’s the spiritual creation we bring about when we imagine things that could be and love them into existence. AUDREY: Now, this state of being is the opposite of being a victim. Creator is the opposite of victim. A victim is caught up in obsessive mental patterns that keep them stuck on a problem — focused on what they don’t like, what they don’t want, what’s not working out, unmet needs, unmet expectations, things they feel they can’t control, ways they feel stuck. And this can be a small thing, like hating running carpool, or a huge one, like going through a divorce or losing someone close to you. Creator Is the Opposite of Victim AUDREY: Any issue, small or major, that’s causing that pit in the stomach and those negative emotions — that’s where you’re probably showing up as a victim. I’d encourage you to go review the victim-type discussions I had with Lindsey Wright, and start asking: do I maybe have more power than I think I have? That’s the message our mothers and the women in our programs continually discover. They keep seeing new ways to identify truths, to see principles, to peel back the layers of how they’ve been thinking and believing about themselves and about life. And they feel so liberated as these misbeliefs and lies they’ve been telling themselves fall away. When we’re doing that, we’re acting like victims — and awareness is the key to change. We can’t know how to become a creator until we can admit we’ve been a victim; identifying the type of victim, and the antidotes that get us out, is enormously helpful. Once we recognize we’re being a victim, we can start to create something different, because now we know what’s been going on with us. What Meditation Teaches Us AUDREY: One thing I thought about while preparing this was from level three of our academy, where we go through worldviews. One of my favorite authors on worldviews is Huston Smith — he’s brilliant — and in this section he’s talking about Buddhism. Buddhism and the Eastern religions have gained a lot of traction in the West over the last fifty to eighty years; a lot of people love those worldviews now, or adhere to them. And even when they don’t, meditation has taken off in the West in a huge way. Here, Huston Smith is talking about why we meditate — basically what it can do for us — and I found it fascinating, because one of its primary functions is to move someone from a victim space to being a creator. Listen to how he describes it. Through the practice of meditation, one arrives at a number of insights. AUDREY: Number one: every emotion, thought, or image is accompanied by a body sensation, and vice versa. So as you become more aware that you’re acting like a victim, it’s an awakening — you become aware that you’re having these emotions and thoughts, and that they’re accompanied by feelings; that there’s a connection between your thoughts and your feelings, and that they’re inextricably linked. That’s why you can better control your thoughts by changing your words, your actions, and your thoughts. We talk about this in the academy — how they’re all interconnected. So those feelings of anxiety, dread, frustration, and confusion are a cue that you may be thinking like a victim in this area of your life, and you can key into that. AUDREY: Number two: one discerns obsessive patterns in what arises in the mind, and how these patterns constitute our misery. I mentioned this a minute ago — these obsessive patterns, where we feel so stuck. He says: for some it’s a nursing of old grievances; others find themselves preoccupied with longings and self-pity; and still others simply feel at sea. With continuing practice, the obsessive grip of these patterns loosens. So as you get better at understanding your thoughts and feelings and putting your finger on the obsessive patterns, you can begin to ide

  7. Jul 7

    EP 162 Are You Adding the Drama?

    Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th You know the feeling. Something happens. Maybe your husband sleeps in, maybe the house is a mess again, maybe a conversation goes sideways. And before you have said a word, there it is. A tightening in your stomach. A low hum of frustration you carry around for the rest of the morning. That feeling is drama. And it is not the situation causing it. It is the story you are telling yourself about the situation. This week I sat down with Cadie Hatch, Tracie Hyde, and Lindsey Wright for a panel conversation on victimhood: what it actually is, how it shows up in real life, and what it feels like from the inside. All four of us got honest about our own patterns. And I think you are going to hear yourself in this one.   AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 162: Drama & Victimhood — A Panel Discussion Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Today I have with me CADIE Hatch, Tracie Hyde, and Lindsey Wright, and we’re going to talk for a few minutes about drama and victimhood. We’ve been preparing content for our upcoming Mothers of Creation celebration, focusing on these themes — drama and victimhood, creation and vision — because those are the things we’re going to spend all day on at the event. We’ve been having discussions in the background, preparing our presentations, working on our own problem stories, and having our own experiences with the content. So today we just want to talk a little about drama and victimhood. And I want to start with a very simple question: how would you describe a victim? What do we mean when we say “victim” here? How does each of you understand that? What Do We Mean by “Victim”? CADIE: I would say victims are kind of all around us. All of us can have this tendency to fall into the victim mindset. But regardless of the circumstances they’re in, victims see things in the negative. They want to focus on the problem — on the thing that’s annoying them — and they’ll stay stuck in the emotions and negativity around that problem for as long as they choose to. AUDREY: Great description, CADIE. To reiterate what you’re saying: there are victims in the world who are genuinely victimized — we’re not questioning that. But what we’re talking about is the drama triangle, and specifically the victim role within it, recognizing that we all show up in our lives as victims at times. That means we have areas of our life we don’t like, that are uncomfortable, where we feel frustrated and stuck and negative. It doesn’t mean everything in our world is falling apart, or that we can’t get out of bed in the morning. But it does mean there may well be an area of your life where, when you think about it or talk about it, your thoughts and feelings and words are predominantly negative — and you just don’t like it, and you don’t like thinking or talking about it, because it’s such an uncomfortable area. Any other thoughts on how you’d describe a victim, or on victimhood and the victim mentality? Responsibility and Powerlessness Tracie: I think an important word is responsibility. Victims don’t take responsibility, because that would mean they’d have to act or create. Instead they feel acted upon, powerless, and they push responsibility off. For example, I do this a lot in my marriage. My husband is really great at taking responsibility, and I’ve had to learn through the years, through his example, that I need to take responsibility for what’s mine — instead of saying, “No, that’s something you did,” or casting blame on someone else for why this happened. I need to own it and say, “Yes, that was my responsibility, and now I need to act and make a difference.” AUDREY: I love that. And even just taking responsibility for our response, for our attitude about what’s happening — parsing out what we can and can’t control has been so vital for me. I like that word you used, Tracie: powerless. A victim orientation feels powerless, like things are out of our control, like we’re being acted upon. LINDSEY: They weren’t supposed to be like this, and we’re so mad about it. The world is the way it is, and I’m the way I am, and nothing’s going to change no matter what I do. Tracie: And how I feel in victim mode is a pit in my stomach. I feel anxious, unhappy, unsatisfied, stuck — it’s not a great place to live. CADIE: I feel the exact same way, which is so interesting to me. When I’m in drama, I feel it in my stomach — that tightening — and it’s something I’m adding to the situation. Here’s a general example: my husband loves to sleep in, and he’ll sleep in and feel no guilt about it — “This is great, I got to sleep in.” And I’ll be thinking, “Oh, I just missed two hours of things I should have done.” I’m the one adding the drama to the situation. AUDREY: Or the expectation. Are We Adding the Drama? AUDREY: It’s interesting, Tracie, because of what you said about not taking responsibility. What’s fascinating is that it’s so easy to tell yourself you’re not in drama, that you’re not acting like a victim, that you’re not focused on yourself — because you’re doing stuff. But why are you doing this stuff? How are you doing it? And is doing it actually alleviating the negative emotions you’re trying to be rid of? If those actions don’t really make you feel better, then that’s not actually taking responsibility for what you can take responsibility for. A good example: I’m still a recovering rescuer. I want to have all the answers for everybody and tell them how things ought to be, so I’m often doing something — but I’m still stuck right in the middle of the drama. And when people don’t respond to my rescuing the way I want them to, I have an excuse to go back and play the victim and lick my wounds: “They didn’t even take my good advice.” Because ultimately I’m not taking responsibility for what’s mine; I’m just reacting to a situation that’s uncomfortable. Not About Positive Thinking LINDSEY: I like that. Can I share something? I came across this the other day — it’s a book we use in the MDM Academy called 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. I think what we’re describing, this victim orientation, is really that we’re mentally and emotionally weak in some areas. Becoming a creator is a strength we have to develop. And I know we’re going to do another whole podcast on this, but it’s not about positive thinking. We keep saying victim is negative and creator is positive, so it’s easy to hear that as “I just have to think positively all the time” — and there’s a nuance to clarify there. The author, Amy Morin, says mental strength is about thinking realistically and rationally. A victim isn’t thinking realistically or rationally; they’re blowing things out of proportion, holding themselves and others to impossible, unrealistic standards. They’re not seeing themselves clearly or telling themselves the truth. So it’s not just “make every thought positive.” It’s becoming intentional: we notice a thought, we notice the guilt we’ve attached to something, and we get curious about it instead of judging it — not “I’m a bad person for feeling guilty about sleeping in,” but “That’s interesting. What is that teaching me, and how am I responding?” Then we become intentional about showing up differently — and the pit in the stomach starts to loosen, and we get out of the drama. AUDREY: Great stuff, Lindsey. If you’re interested in what exactly those victim types are, Lindsey and I did some podcasts on them recently, so you can go back and review those. Which Victim Do You Show Up As? AUDREY: With that in mind, I’d love to hear from each of you. How do you identify with this framework? What kind of victim do you show up as? And more importantly, how has having this language — being able to recognize it — been helpful for you? CADIE: I’ve really learned that I show up as different types of victims in different circumstances. My typical go-to — my “home victim” — is the perfectionist. Lindsey has done an incredible job identifying these different types, and among the four of us we feel we’ve identified another one to add to the list: the perfectionist. That’s my home victim. But I’ve noticed I show up as different types depending on what I’m doing. Recently I learned that when I go to clean my house, I very quickly become the martyr: “I’ve taught you all better than this. I’ve taught you to put your clothes away, to put your shoes away, and you don’t do it. Why don’t you appreciate me?” I get so frustrated with my family. But the reality is people are coming in and out of the house all day, we’re all busy, and things get left because it’s real life. When you’re living, you make a mess, and it has to be cleaned up eventually. It doesn’t mean they’re completely irresponsible human beings because they didn’t put their shoes in the rack like I asked. So I need to slow down and recognize that we’re still good people. AUDREY: That’s awesome, CADIE. So how has having that language helped you? Because it could just become one more way to feel bad about yourself, right? One more thing that’s wrong with you: “Now look at another victim type — here I am being a martyr.” Is it actually helpful, or is it just one more way to beat ourselves up? CADIE: It depends on how you want to look at it. If you want to stay in victim and use it as a battering ram to beat yourself up, you can. But if you want to recognize — as I’ve learned, because Lindsey has done so much amazing work with this — that there’s an antidote, then I can choose to use it and get out, or choos

  8. Jun 29

    EP 161 Mission Driven Story: Jacques Lusseyran

    Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th Episode 11: Mission Driven Story: Jacques Lusseyran I want to tell you about a man named Jacques Lusseyran. He was eight years old when a classmate bumped into him in the middle of a crowded classroom and sent him crashing into the corner of a teacher's desk. His glasses didn't break. The arm of the frames went into the tissue of his right eye. By the time he woke up the next day, he was completely blind. And yet by the end of his life, he would say that every single day he thanked heaven for making him blind. This week's episode is his story. Jacques went on to become a leader of the French Resistance during World War II, eventually leading a movement of more than 600 young men and women. He was arrested, interrogated, and sent to Buchenwald. He was one of 30 survivors from a transport of 2,000 prisoners. What makes his story so extraordinary is not just what he survived. It's what he discovered. AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 161: Jacques Lusseyran — Choosing to Be a Creator Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. Today I have the honor of telling you the story of Jacques Lusseyran. He was a French Resistance fighter during World War II, but his story is so much more than that, as I’m sure you’re going to find out. Years ago I did a longer, more thorough podcast on his life, showing how he lived the seven laws of life mission — you can go listen to that one too if you’d like. But today I want to share some of the key highlights of his life with a very specific lens in mind. I’m going to focus on a few principles that we’ll be diving deep into this fall at our Mission Driven Mom celebration for our Mothers of Creation. Through Jacques’s experiences, I want to help you see how powerful it is when we choose not to be a victim but to be a creator instead — regardless of what life throws at us. And I want you to see what vision really is, and how it empowers us to navigate the most difficult moments of our lives. AUDREY: I’m going to begin by telling you his story, and while I do, I want you to keep some principles in mind — the ones we’ll focus on at the celebration this year. Number one: when we respond to life as a victim of circumstances, we get frustrated, stuck, and lose our way. Two: a victim mindset robs our vision and makes us blind. Three: we can choose to be a creator regardless of circumstances. Four: responding to life as a creator causes us to feel liberated, clear, and even joyful. And five: our choice to live in a creator orientation blesses not just us, but those around us — and sometimes our whole community and beyond. When I finish Jacques’s story, I’ll remind us of those principles again and encourage you to take some time this week to ponder them in your own life. Losing His Sight AUDREY: So here we go. On a beautiful May morning in 1932, little Jacques was at school as usual. At ten o’clock the children jumped up, all of them excited to get outside, running all over the classroom. As Jacques moved toward the front of the room, a student darted past and hit him, causing him to fall into the corner of the teacher’s desk. His new glasses were made of shatterproof glass, so they didn’t break — instead, the arm of the spectacles drove into the tissue of his right eye, and he lost consciousness for the next twenty-four hours. During that time, doctors discovered that his right eye was completely destroyed and would have to be removed, and that his left retina had been so badly torn that by the time he woke up the next day, his whole life had changed. At the tender age of eight years old, he would be blind for life. AUDREY: Physically he recovered quickly. Within a month he was walking again; the next month he was learning Braille; and by the third month he was running and playing on the playground with the other children. But overcoming his blindness was a different challenge. He said this: “It was a great surprise to me to find myself blind, and being blind was not at all as I had imagined it. Nor was it as the people around me seemed to think. They told me that to be blind meant not to see, and for a time I still wanted to use my eyes. I looked in the direction where I was in the habit of seeing before the accident, and there was anguish, a lack, something like a void, which filled me with what grown-ups call despair. AUDREY: “Finally, one day I realized I was looking the wrong way. I could still see — in myself. I could still picture myself in the Champ de Mars. I knew the garden well: its ponds, its railings, its iron chairs. Naturally, I wanted to see them again, but I couldn’t. At this point some instinct — I was almost about to say a hand laid on me — made me change course. I began to look more closely, not at the things outside but at a world closer to myself, from an inner place, from further inside. Instead of clinging to the movement of sight toward the world outside, the substance of the universe drew together, redefined itself, and formed itself anew. I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about. I felt an indescribable relief, and a happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came like a prayer that had been answered. I found light and joy at the very same moment.” AUDREY: This experience relieved him of his initial despair. It enabled him to overcome the fear of blindness and gave him a way forward. Yet learning to navigate the other aspects of his blindness took time. One important tool he slowly discovered was that his thoughts and emotional choices had a profound impact on his ability to “see” and to function well as a blind person. Fear, Not Blindness AUDREY: As Jacques made his way through this new world, he eventually learned that it was actually fear — not the loss of sight — that made him truly blind. This is what he said about it: “Fear made me blind. Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion. The minute before, I knew just where everything in the room was; but if I got angry, things got angrier than I was. When I was playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing. I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because the moment I was, a bandage came down over my eyes. But when I was happy and serene, when I approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light.” AUDREY: In this way, Jacques gained a mastery over himself rarely achieved, especially in a child. He discovered that he had to rein in his natural tendencies toward anger, pettiness, unkindness, and jealousy. The temptation to give in to self-pity and victimhood was strong, but Jacques began to realize that when he chose to live according to true principles and governed his heart and mind instead, his ability to function well and happily in the world was restored. This insight was revolutionary for him. AUDREY: This process helped him grow into a man he could not otherwise have been. Through daily practice, he developed a high level of command over himself, along with an enhanced ability to love others more fully. This generated inner peace and self-confidence and endeared him to everyone who knew him. The character he built by living these principles spilled over into other areas of his life, and his education became a great success story. Through his persistence in learning Braille and studying hard, he was able to remain in the classroom alongside sighted students — can you imagine? — eventually winning first place in his class. The Coming of War AUDREY: Although Jacques had already faced and overcome extremely difficult challenges, another great crisis came into his life during his high school years: the outbreak of World War II. Fortunately, he had developed immense emotional, mental, and spiritual maturity in his younger years, and now it served him well. Already a very conscientious man, the war awakened in him a strong desire to know, to understand, to make sense of what was happening. For Jacques and his friends, the war was a call to action. They dug deeper into their studies and read the greatest thinkers, searching for answers. AUDREY: This is what he said about that time: “We wanted to learn how to live, and that was a much more serious matter. And we wanted to learn fast, because we felt that the next day it would surely be too late. There were signs of death on land and in the air, from the Spanish War to the frontiers of Russia — not just signs, but battles to the death. The feeling rumbled inside us, pressing to come out into the open: unless we were up to making a better world than our elders had made, the orgy of stupidity and killing would go on until the end of the world. I sat up late at night. I had thrown myself furiously into the study of philosophy. I wanted to understand it all, and I felt it was urgent. I don’t know exactly why, but it seemed to me that such a chance would not come again — that I was going to be snatched away to more worldly responsibilities. All the ideas of men who had dedicated themselves to thought found their way into my head for the first time, from Pythagoras to Bergson, from Plato to Freud. I examined them as closely as I could.” AUDREY: By the following spring, France had been occupied by the Germans. Of this time, Jacques wrote, “In me was a pack of fears and desires, intentions and irritations, which had had me clenched in a tight fist for weeks.” Then he learned that one of his closest friends had been arrested. Three days later, he contracted measles. He felt the illness was as much a moral lesson as a physical one. Of the change that took place in him as a result of the sickness, he said: “This was no microbe or virus making its way in me. It was

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About

For moms and women who want to increase their confidence, and discover and develop their unique gifts, while strengthening themselves and their families. *Over 50 5-Star Reviews*

Information

  • Creator
    Audrey Rindlisbacher
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    168
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Copyright 2025 The Mission Driven Mom Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

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