202 | Why “Motherf*ing Amor Fati” Is the Mindset Shift Every Survivor Needs for Resilience with Becky Schmooke

What if the key to your healing journey was hidden in a mindset you’ve been avoiding—one that actually welcomes emotions instead of suppressing them?

In a world that often praises toughness and emotional restraint, many trauma and injury survivors feel isolated trying to “stay strong.” This episode challenges that narrative by introducing a fresh, emotionally intelligent take on Stoicism—one that might be exactly what your recovery needs right now.

Featuring guest Becky Schmooke, author of ‘Choose the Handle That Holds,’ the discussion delves into the stoic philosophy, how it embraces all emotions, and the concept of ‘amor fati’ — loving one’s fate. Becky introduces her practical framework, STOA, for achieving success and resilience, which she uses even with NFL teams. The episode highlights the importance of practical tools in personal growth and recovery, offering insights into integrating stoic principles in everyday life.

00:00 Introduction to Whole Again

00:53 Meet Becky Smoke

04:42 The Stoic Philosophy

08:12 Becky’s Journey to Stoicism

14:53 Practical Applications of Stoicism

19:32 Embracing Latin and Stoicism

20:30 Understanding Amor Fati

22:01 Personal Recovery and Acceptance

24:16 The Power of Amor Fati in Daily Life

26:14 Introducing the STOA Framework

29:40 Practical Applications of STOA

31:24 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Discover more about Becky and her book: Choose The Handle That Holds.

Take a deep breath and begin to reclaim your strength starts with embracing every part of your story—and learning the mindset shift that could transform your recovery.

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Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or lacquer, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. It embodies the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection and teaches that breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, making it more valuable rather than less. Metaphorically, Kintsugi reminds us that our challenges, scars, and setbacks are not something to be ashamed of but can be embraced as a source of strength and transformation.

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If you feel you need more mental health support, please contact NAMI. This is a good place to start. If you have a question or comment, please reach out to [email protected]. 

With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Healing, Growth & Resilience after Physical Trauma through Kintsugi Mindfulness listeners explore resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on stress management, mindfulness practices, and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools like breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress relief. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embraces healing as a process of transformation, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and being overwhelmed to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and holistic approaches to self-care, this podcast empowers listeners to cultivate emotional resilience and live with greater balance and intention.

Transcript:

 In this episode, I’ll share a mindset shift that you didn’t know you needed.

Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to Whole Again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki. In this episode, you’ll learn about amor AKA. That mindset shift you didn’t know you needed, as well as how the stoics viewed emotions and a framework to help you get things done that was created by our guest.

That’s right. We have a guest on Whole again this week. Her name is Becky Smoke, and she wrote the book that I gave to many of my clients. Which is titled Choose the Handle That Holds a Guide to Living, leading, and owning the Moments that matter, which is music to my ears. You’re gonna love Becky’s energy and her take on stoicism.

From my perspective, stoicism can get a little broey lacking emotion, too much of that stiff upper lip. Becky brings in energy and laughter to stoicism like you and me. Becky has the grit of a survivor, and as the survivors we are. Before we go any further, I wanna say thank you for being here, because I know some days it’s not easy to show up, so the fact that you’re here says a lot.

I. It means that you’re still in the game, you’re enduring and you wanna get better. So thank you for being here, and thank you for being a survivor. And we know in life there’s pain, there’s discomfort, there’s suffering, but life also has joy and happiness and laughter. It’s all of it. Becky’s approach to stoicism welcomes all of it, and you’ll hear her vibe, her energy in our conversation.

And I will say our conversation is a bit salty. Meaning there’s some language and some language that if I said it in front of my mom, I would’ve gotten my mouth washed out with soap and water. So this show. Is labeled explicit for a reason because some moments that we experience as survivors just need a good old motherfucker to put an emphasis on what we’re feeling.

And with that, let’s take a healthy breath in and a slow releasing breath out and get to know Becky Smoke.

Hey, Becky.

Hello, sir?

Hello, sir. I’m, I’m being called sir. This is great. This is a great way to start. So I call

people Sir. Sir, I’ve been doing that ever since, ma’am. I was in Paris,

so, and and Par. You’re blaming the French on the sir feature on my

politeness.

On your politeness. The French are very polite.

I, well, so how do you feel about, ma’am then? Is it ma’am, miss, miss, do you have. What say you on that?

I have very few. I, okay. If I do a ma’am, it’s hard for me to do it without a southern accent, which gets ma’am, ma’am, which gets awkward because I don’t have one. But, um, for me, I don’t, I’ll call, I’ll do like a miss.

I don’t usually do, ma’am. I feel like it’s hard to say ma’am, without sounding a bit,

how do you feel when someone calls you, ma’am?

I laugh usually.

Laugh. I love that. Oh, that sweet. Bless, bless your heart.

I get, bless

your heart. Younger

I get called Miss Becky

a lot

like

Miss Becky

and, um, by like my camp kids all the way through like, like NFL players that I’ve worked with.

And it like, it, that always makes me laugh too because it’s just, it’s, it just cracks me up. I feel like a kindergarten teacher. Um, I don’t mind it. So.

Well Miss Becky, so for all the listeners out there, we are going to like blow the lid off of how people view stoicism.

Yes.

So that’s, that’s the goal in the next few minutes is to blow people’s minds through our conversation because stoicism, well, I think it’s earned this label.

It’s. Basically some things that like bros do, you know, all stoic and all tough and suppressing their emotions, and a little philosophy coming from the Greeks and it’s very broy, which I don’t know, maybe current, given the bro culture. Revitalization is happening across the world, but um, but we’re gonna try to do something a little bit different.

So are you game Miss Becky to do that?

I am game. Um. I think the, right off the bat, I think we have to be clear on the difference of like, you know, the big s stoicism, the, the philosophy of stoicism and then also the word stoic because they’re two very different things. And how so, so you can be like, to be stoic with like a little s like not stoic, you know, not being the, of the philosophy stoic does mean, you know, kind of that closed off.

You know, stiff upper lip, British, but the Brit, we’re gonna blame the Brits. Yeah, very. But we, we,

we’ve, we blamed the Brits for like their stoic approach to life. And we’ve just applauded the French for politeness.

Yeah. That’s where, where, where we’re going today on this one we’re going, we’re gonna make a

international

controversy.

That’s what’s controversial these days when people are not listening to this during the current, um, timeframe. So, yeah. So we think of, uh, queen of England, which like, yes. It’s hard now because she’s no longer with us, but I think we can still think of her, um, no emotion.

So we can, we can still think of Liz as stoic.

Yeah. Yes, big as stoic. The philosophy is not anti emotion at all, and the way I always explain it and say a lot is I have emotions, but my emotions don’t have me. And that’s the difference. And you know, I’m, listen my, to do the full international, like my, um, ancestors, my lineage would be Italian and Irish and Scottish.

So like I have a lot of fucking emotions. Yes. Yeah, I do. Yes. It’s just like I can’t help it, it’s in my blood. Um, and so, but the. To be able to be stoic, as in the philosophy would be to check those emotions and, uh, you know, and decide which ones you wanna give your energy to.

I love it. I, what comes up for me when you just said that about, you have emotions, but emotions don’t run me is that great?

Uh, Miley Cyrus, you know, she is a stoic philosopher. Um, in her song we run things, things don’t run. We. Which is, oh yeah, great line by Miley. For all the Miley fans out there, I’ll send you the link to the song. It’s actually, it’s an okay. It’s not one of the best Miley songs, but that line is pretty good, right?

So maybe she is stoic in disguise, miss Miley.

She might be and, and hopefully, I think she’ll definitely hear this podcast and then she’ll write in and let you know.

She is a huge fan of whole, again, there’s no doubt about it, but she’s listening. She’s a binge type of listener. Miley is. So, alright. So how did you get into Stoicism?

Like what was the, what was the pull into this philosophy?

So the, you know, and I, I do say this, um, in my book. What a nice little plug right there. Um, that was really good.

That was pretty, that was pretty slick. Yeah,

that was slick. Well, I mean, I have, it’s, it’s called, you know, like I hated Stoicism. It’s the name of, I’m pretty sure the chapter things I should know.

Yes. Um, but it initially, when my husband introduced me to it, I was very against it. Like I was the most immature butthead about it, and I tried to tear the philosophy apart because it was challenging and it does force you to look in the mirror and it forces you to do the hard things. It’s not a hack, it’s not a way like an easy out.

All. Yes. Um, and at the time I was not wanting that. I did not wanna look in the mirror and do the hard thing. You, the, you want

the shortcut,

who doesn’t? Well, and mostly what I didn’t want was to have to address the things that were in my control. And that’s one thing that stoicism is really big, is understanding, you know, again, to the point of the emotions, like, which ones do you wanna give energy to?

Also everything in life, like what are you giving your energy to? And we spend most of our time at energy on the things that are not in our control. Instead of the things that are, and at the time, you know, I was still in the midst of, you know, my battle with my eating disorder, with bulimia and what was in my control would’ve been recovery to, you know, you know, finally be done with that.

That wasn’t my control isn’t no one else’s control, and I did not want to have to. Do that and admit that and spend my time on that. I’d rather spend on all the things not in my control.

Yeah. Well I think that’s probably most people, like we wanna get all worried about all the things outside of our control and we can doom scroll our life away.

And that’s a way of like escapism and you know, just denying what’s like real, what’s right in front of the mirror. So was this a. Saying your husband was like around the dinner table. Like you guys are just talking about, he’s just throwing out quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and be like, Hey Becky, like I got a great quote for you today.

And you’re like, you know, talk to the hand type of thing.

Mm-hmm. Uh, no. He’s started by show me like Ryan Holiday videos. He’s like, oh yeah. He was like, he was like, yo, let me show you these like YouTube videos. This guy Ryan Holiday. And I was not a fan of those. Um, and it’s funny that they, I mean, I was just, I mean, I was just nasty.

I was just in that really, like, I was just being so, um, I. Just try to poke holes in it. I was determined to disprove the philosophy and I spent a lot of time and energy on that and so, but, which I think is ultimately a good thing because yes, then I’ve like really done, tried to find all the dirt on it.

Well, that was, I would say that’s probably the first indicator that you really wanted to buy into it. ’cause if you’re gonna go to all the work to disprove it, there’s a little bit of you that’s like, well I don’t know. I’m married to this guy. He seems to be, you know, we’re gonna keep him around. He’s sharing this stuff with me.

He might be speaking some truth to me, so I’m gonna first try to disprove it. But secretively, you’re probably like, ah, there’s probably something here.

You are giving me much, too much, too much credit. Like there was really, I was, I did not. Want

you didn’t want, you were, I won’t touch it

with a 10 foot pole.

Like it was like I was, I was truly against it. And what shifted though was I started, you know, kind of getting about it in, in a weird roundabout way. And I was doing some of my own writing and sharing stuff and I had other people start to mention like, oh, this sounds like. You know, stoicism and I was like, oh God, no, that word again, it’s coming, it’s coming back.

But then realizing like, and so once I started getting these little like tidbits from other people, um, and that’s how it often is if we are, if you’re with, if you are married or in a committed relationship. You know how it rolls. Um, your spouse can tell you something and you can think it’s the dumbest thing in the world.

Yes. And then someone else brings it up and you’re like, oh, really? That’s fascinating.

Um, and then you bring it home and be like, I just heard about this fascinating concept, hun. They’re like, yeah.

Have you ever heard of stoicism?

Have you ever heard of stoicism? This is fantastic. This is my new way of living.

And you know, your partner’s looking at you like, hello? Like, yeah. Yeah.

And my husband gave his credit, has never once. Ever thrown in my face or said like I told you so or anything like that. Um, I don’t know why he hasn’t, I would’ve done that immediately, um, and multiple times. Um, but he’s been really good about that.

And so it was when Covid hit and I really was faced with this moment of realizing so much is outta my control right now. And it was a scary time. I’m a type one diabetic. My daughter had undiagnosed like lung issues. We didn’t know. My husband’s a first res, he’s a firefighter on two departments, so he’s on shift a hundred hours a week.

And you know, we had just so much uncertainty and I knew that if I were to continue like down this path of bulimia and stuff and it wouldn’t end well. And then the only thing I had control over. As far as my health goes was to, was recovery on that point, you know, to move on and pass that and get myself, you know, get my shit together.

Honestly, because like I was like, I have to stay healthy. I cannot do this. And um, and so that’s when I, I really was willing right, to look in the mirror to do what stoicism asks of you. And that’s what brought me back around. And so once I, you know, I had all these little kind of touch points. Of, okay.

Maybe it’s not as horrible as I thought it was of a philosophy, not as like brutal. And then Covid hit and I was like, well, I better dive in.

And I did. So the pandemic was really like the big wake up call. It was. It was. It was, you know what I, I do think it was a bit of a wake up call. For the world, maybe for this country.

I think the problem is some people have hit snooze and gone back to sleep. You know, it’s just like, I don’t wanna wake up, you know, I wanna, I wanna sleep in. And I think that’s also quite natural because it’s still chaotic. If we looked out the window, it’s still like nuts. Mm-hmm. So in your book, choose the handle that holds?

I do. I would say. You serve up your husband very well, so you give him a lot of credit. So, um, very, very cool job. I love the book.

Like I started off in my book, like I, I do idiotic things, but I’m not an idiot. Yes. Like, yeah, I’m, yeah. You know, I’m, I’m a smart enough wife. I’m going to, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give him credit.

You’re, you’re giving him credit for you. You’re giving credit for the introduction to stoicism from the book. What do you hope people gain from it? Practical shit. Practical. Yeah.

Here’s why. Up until this point, Michael, I had like digested and read just about every book out there on self-help growth, like Bene Brown, like every single, I mean, and I love her work.

It’s fantastic. She’s great. I would read her stuff though, and I just afterwards be like, but how? But how are

you gonna actually do this shit? How

do I do this? Yes. Like, and like read it. And I would almost get, I started to get angry because I was like, I have, I felt like I had all these tools. In this toolbox, but I didn’t have the key, like I couldn’t access it.

And I was just getting very frustrated. And I remember one day in therapy, like asking my therapist, like, I’m like, isn’t there just like a, like I just want a pill. Like I just want like something that will just, like a, like give me access. Like what, what’s, what’s the easy out? And he was like, there is no easy out, easy out part of the process.

You’re on a journey. Yeah. You know, like, that’s

why I’m like, I’m just your cash cow. I this point like, you know, yes, I’m a lifer. Um, but I. You know, that was my kind of frustration with, with books great content. You’re like, yes, yes, yes. And then you end it. And it’s just, I didn’t know what to do with the stuff.

And so with my book, that’s why I literally have a chapter called, but how at the end of each of the four pillars of my leadership framework be, you know, full of these practical ways, like how do you implement it? Here’s how.

I wanna get like into that, that I, I do appreciate that part of the book or just that emphasis in the book, because you do, you know, you share, you, you share great elements of stoicism.

You got your great quotes. Of course. I’m completely biased. I should, I. Be in full disclosure to those listening. There’s a period, there’s a part of the book that’s about me, so like I’m totally a biased host here and reader. I was like, this book is fantastic. Right? Especially that chapter about O’Brien.

That was pretty good. So

it is pretty good. You know what though? I gotta have a bone pick with you because you had me put in the name of your podcast.

Oh, yes.

And then you changed the name of your podcast.

Yeah. I I tend to do that, like, to screw things up. Yeah. So, yeah,

I do feel that was intentional. Yeah.

I was, it was malicious. I was like, I’m gonna get this Miss Becky. Yes. That’s

what the reviews have said. Yeah. They said that’s what reviews,

they were like, this book Miss Becky is fantastic except for the chapter about O’Brien and that switcheroo he did on his podcast name. So my apologies.

Yeah, no. So I do have, it is like, to your point though, the book is full story.

Yes. I love stories. I’m a like a story seeker, um, to the point where, yeah, my dear husband. Has seen this look in my eyes when something bad has happened where there’s like some kind and he’ll just see this little like glean in my eyes and he goes, this is a story for you, isn’t it? He’s like, you’ve already figured out the story.

And I was like, you betcha. This is a story. Like I see everything as a story.

Everything is a, but the thing is, I’m right there with you. Everything is a story. Like life is like absolutely fantastic and we can come up with like five to 15 different stories. Every day. Mm-hmm. And, and some of them, some, some, some of them just stink, right?

Yeah. But, but there, there is a few gems each day that we can weave of like a beautiful story on,

and that’s where you get this, the concept and now it’s not technically a stoic concept. Um, so if there’s any stoic purist listening, I’m aware that amor. It does not come from the stoics. However, it is a stoic mindset and is a stoic, uh, it’s perfectly in line with it, but it comes from, um, comes from Nietzsche.

Nietzsche. Oh my God. What’s the, um, what’s the German pronunciation? I just listened to a whole debate on how do you actually pronounce his name?

So I’m not gonna get into the debate, but like Nietzsche is sort of how. I’ve heard it, but I could be. Yeah. I just remember, listen to

one. Now it gets in my head every time I say, so

what is, um, Amate

amor, um, for, and now I know everyone listening is a Latin nerd, so they know this, but it, of course, we

are big in the Latin nerd community here on whole.

Again, it’s, it’s one of our niches.

I start every talk with, um, this concept, which is a real. Real uplifter thing. Everyone’s like, yay Latin. This is what I came to hear. Um, and I cover Latins, doism and death in just about every single talk I give. And so like, man, is it a,

I tell you there, there’s nothing more motivating as you get up in front of the NFL teams that you work with.

And they’re all ready to go out on the battlefield. And, Hey guys, for a minute we’re gonna talk about death.

In Latin.

They, they in Latin, I tell you, nothing fires up the troops like a good Latin lesson. Nothing

really does. Um, it does, it does. It

goes viral on YouTube

a hundred percent of the time. Um, a more fatty means like a love of your fate.

Love your fate. A more fatty. Fate being fate. A more being love, right? Or like the way I like to just like picture it is embracing your fate and it’s not just accepting it. So it’s not just taking the hits but getting stronger because of them. And it’s this idea of taking everything that’s throwing at you.

Turning it to your benefit. And it’s not toxic positivity, right? It’s not saying that everything’s all rainbows and sunshine and you know, you pay Skittles, right? Like no. Like it is recognizing like, yeah, this is not what I wanted. Like this might suck, but it’s what I got. And sometimes it’s realizing that like the way to turn to your benefit is to simply be appreciative of the fact that you’re alive.

You know, like I, you should tell people like it’s this or your. Like, which one do you want? Um, and, and that’s, you know, it’s, that’s to the extreme, but sometimes again, that’s where you have to go. And it’s, um, but we, we get really hung up Michael on that stuff. That’s not in our control when it comes to our fate and spend all of our time there.

And in doing so, we waste the opportunity to really live. And I think too many of us just passed time. We’re not actually living life, and this whole idea life is short. I kind of say bullshit. Life is long enough. We just aren’t really spending it living.

Yeah, I, I’m right there with you, Becky. I think this whole concept was a game changer for me in my recovery.

Mm-hmm. Because in the early phases of my recovery, I was, as I would say, arguing with reality. All the things outside of my control. Mm-hmm. My accident shouldn’t have happened. The driver shouldn’t have been driving this. This totally sucks. Uh, life is so unfair. I was playing by the rules, uh, yada, yada, yada.

Right? And IYY yada, you know. And, uh, I didn’t mention the lobster bisk for all the Seinfeld fans out there, that reference until I didn’t know about Stoicism at the time. But I did know about acceptance. Hey, Michael, this happened. You don’t have to like that. It happened. You don’t have, you know you, but it happened, and until you actually get to some level of acceptance.

You’re not gonna be able to move forward

mm-hmm.

In your healing process and stuff like that. So that this whole concept, now that I can link it back to stoicism, but it’s not really stoicism, as we just talked about, was huge for me and my recovery. So I I love that you talk about it in the book. Exactly.

Well, and I always, in like the chapter. Is called a, but it’s always followed. It’s followed by another word, which is because I think it is sometimes, at least for my, for me, I have to. More times than not add, um, not another Latin word, but it is French, the motherfucker. Well,

again, going back to the French, going back to the French motherfucker, it helps very polite, a very polite thing to say to people.

It, but, but like a more fati motherfucker because it’s

so, it’s, it works.

And I have had, it just

has a certain, uh, Gente, quois to

it. Very well done. Um, I’ve had people, early readers. Um, get upset about me using the word motherfucker, um, in it. And then more than one later messaged me saying, okay, now I get it.

Where they like had a moment and they were like, now I understand why, why it works. Um,

it works. There’s just a little bit of like oomph to it. There’s like, you know,

so to your point though, like, we hit trauma, right? We, we, something happens a. It helps get you to that place of acceptance and so you can start healing.

It helps just, it’s like permission to just get going to where you need to go and in, in all things. And, and I’m gonna sound very much like I’m downplaying trauma at this point, but I’ll never forget the time when we, my husband and I, we were gonna have a difficult conversation. We’re going down our home gym, sit down, and on the mats, we both do juujitsu, so we have juujitsu mats.

I’m sitting down and I feel a drop of water, like hit my forehead. Unless you’re in the shower in your house, you never wanna have water hit your forehead. Like you just don’t, not a good thing.

Yeah, yeah. General life. Yeah. Uh, rules to live by water hitting forehead when not in shower bad.

And so I look up and the ceiling is bubbling.

Oh. And,

and it’s like, oh no. And like a husband like reaches up and like touches it and just like comes down. And we both looked at each other and we both at the same time said like, amor. And like it was just like that. Like we didn’t spend any time on the like, oh fuck this, this sucks. Like just like what you normally do of like, ah, and it’s just like a more fat, and then we boom, we moved, right.

Got right into the fixing stage. Right into moving forward. And it just was so nice to just like, again,

get going. Get going. Yeah. Which I think there’s a whole bunch of life today that just needs to get going. Now I have a question. Mm-hmm. Did you ever go back to that conversation that you were going to have in the gym before?

No. Because that’s a great thing sometimes about trauma and stuff like that. Is it just like, it puts things in perspective and you’re like, you know what? And you’re

like, ah, wait, don’t need to talk. You don’t need to. We’re we’re good.

Save. Bye. We’re moving the, you know,

we’re, we’re, we’re moving on. We’re moving on past this topic.

So before we round out, I do wanna talk through your. Model, model method, system tool, like all these different things that people on LinkedIn say my, my proven tool for greater success in life. But you, you do have a model and a framework. Yes. That I, I think is, you know, joking aside, it, it is like really.

Valuable to help make this practical and doable.

Yeah.

So can you share a little bit about stoa?

Yes. So Stoa, um, is an acronym, um, because all frameworks have to be,

because we need more acronyms in life. We do.

I was like, what’s missing in this world? And those acronyms. So Chad, GPT told me, yeah,

yeah.

Corporate life needs more acronyms. That’s what I say all the time when I’m talking to strangers.

Well, so Stoa is actually, is where stoicism comes from, the name Stoa, and it means like painted porch. And the stoics originally all gathered on this porch, um, that apparently was painted. And uh, and that’s where they talked the philosophy through.

And so the original, the creator pH of the philosophies, you know, you know, they were kind of. Trying to name it after him. And he was like, no, it’s not about me. And you know, they, he pushed it towards that direction, which is something I like too. ’cause I think a lot of religions and philosophies do end up being, you know.

Titled After the Founder, and I think it’s nice. When is it not? Um, so, so sto a, um, uh, it made sense to try to turn that into an acronym and I did that. Uh, so it stands for Success Targets. Um, the O is a double O, but it’s just a single o and the framework, but obstacles and opportunities and then action steps.

And it’s a process not just for. School setting or strategic planning, but also for debriefing. And if there’s a soapbox, I will gladly jump onto every single day. It’s that we don’t do enough debriefing in life. And though debriefing we do do be it in professional personal life, we don’t do correctly. We are too superficial about it.

And so Stoa is this like never ending. Process where you’re just constantly refining, constantly just like getting more and more precise and surgical with your approach to success. Because success, um, and goals, they’re not, they’re not permanent. You don’t just like get to where you’re going. You’re like, and now I’m done.

The minute you say that, like you’re, you’ve lost,

you’re done. You’re done, done. The minute, the minute you say that you’re done, you’re actually done it. It is a, i, I do appreciate the whole. The circle of life. Right? Right. And so like just you, you get, you get to one goal or one milestone, and. The importance of just like, to your point, debriefing, I call it sort of the last mile type of stuff.

’cause I love like during sports metaphors. Yeah, yeah. And, and, but just like, okay, what happened, uh, what worked, what could have worked better? How do you have, uh, incremental improvements and, you know, building into the next part, the next chapter or the next milestone. And it’s this continuous process improvement.

If you will, or just improvement as in terms of h how we approach life. Right. Because we can always be learning.

Yeah. And it is something that I always tell people I like about it, is it can be done in just minutes. So this process, like my husband takes his crew through it on the way to a call. So they’ll be in the fire truck and in, you know, the two to three minutes that takes to get where they’re going.

You know, with everything else going on, he will take ’em through this process because it allows them to just focus in and, and they’re able to, then once they get to where they’re going, get right to work, and then on the way back, you know, they run through that debrief. They do formal debriefs for bigger calls, but then he does this informal one as well.

And it’s also, you know, I’ll, I’ll take groups through it and we’ll spend all day on it so it really can kinda expand and contract as needed. Yeah. I’ll do it before gonna Costco.

Oh really?

I do. I would, I take my kids through it. My kids do it au, my nine year-old will do it now automatically before a sleepover.

I do think there’s some intentionality. Mm-hmm. That’s required before going into Costco because you can come back, you can come outta Costco with a lot of binge impulse buying.

Yeah, no, the debrief is pretty brutal. It’s usually, um, always, it’s not a successful debrief of like a success. It is always a debrief of failure of Yeah.

Of like failure, like who bought the five pounds of, you know, red licorice?

Yeah.

Right. Which may not be a bad purchase depending on your perspective, but like. Costco, you can definitely come away with some things that you really scratch your head at when you get home. Mm-hmm. Oh,

a hundred

percent no, and no, and no shade on Costco.

They’re just doing a service. Like it’s, we are the ones doing the purchasing,

so it’s

on us.

It’s a fantastic company. I’m a huge, huge fan of Costco. Um, yes. The in, in what I think those important. Though to touch on and to end with on this idea of stoicism, and we can talk about it more maybe in a future episode, but, um,

we can do more and more of these, right?

Um, like we, this is not the first, this, this isn’t the first installment of Miss Becky. I. Whole again.

Um, so is the idea though success, like how you define it? And I think maybe we, we will just dive into that next time, but I think a lot of times we make a mistake of putting success as something outside of our control.

And just like you talk about like your identity, right? If we assign our identity to something outside of our control, like you are gonna get in trouble because, uh, you’re gonna really, um, I mean, because you’re setting yourself up for failure. And same with success. So like if you are, you know, for your injury, if you put success, was you running again running another marathon again?

Well, right now, like you would be a failure.

Totally.

Right? And you would’ve been totally chasing that. And that’s the problem is you had to understand the outcome that matters. And this is what your part of the book was so brilliant and the way you phrase it, of understanding the process, we talk about process.

You mentioned this the other day in one of your tips of like. The digging into the process and trusting the process, and the way to trust the process is to trust that you have identified the outcome that matters. Yes. And if you do that, then you’ll follow the right process. But if you are chasing the outcome, that doesn’t matter, not the right version of success, something outside of your control, then the process you’re gonna lean into is not gonna be one you wanna trust.

Oh, I love that. And I also love the, like, the praise back. That felt really good. Well received. Thank you.

Yeah. Well thank you for this. And um, again, I do wanna thank you publicly for participating in the book. I reached out to you after hearing you on a podcast and started listening to your podcast. And because I talked about Kazuki in the book, I was like, this is

too good to be true.

Too good. Too good to be true.

Yes. Yep. Um, and, uh, yeah, and I appreciate all the lessons you give us. You know, every week. Well, thank you. Short little snippets. They’re great.

Yeah. Little snippets of wisdom that I’ve learned, that I’ve learned along the way. You know, from digital health to physical health to spiritual emotional health.

It sort of gets all wrapped up into one. But I like one of the things I appreciate talking to you, and of course your book. Again, choose the handle that holds

mm-hmm.

Where you can purchase it at all your finer book establishments, including Amazon.

Yes.

But, you know, you can also, um, buy it through your independent bookstores.

Yes. You just have to ask ’em to get it.

You just have to ask them. But it is the practical approach and your sense of humor as you, you know, talk about stoicism. So I, I think there’s a. There’s a good energy to your approach that really does blow a lot of myths away. That stoicism has to be all broey and all like stiff upper lip and without emotion and all that.

So love all that. But just the really practical thing. ’cause I don’t think we have. Too much of a information gap out there in the world. There are plenty of books, there are a lot of podcasts, certainly is taking all this knowledge that I think many of us have and some folks are still on the, on the learning process.

’cause we all reach it at different points in our lives. But then taking it all, taking what would work for us and putting it into our formula that we can consistently do. Like little steps consistently over time. And that’s how we create, um, the type of ripples that we wanna create in the world. And so I love that approach that you’re bringing to folks and I will highly encourage people to go out and buy Miss Becky’s book.

Thank you very much, sir. And I agree completely with you on that. And I think the ripples we start, man, it’s don’t, don’t miss the opportunity. That’s what I would leave it with is like. If you want more or something, call it out and seek it out. And so if wherever you’re at in your state of recovery from whatever trauma you’re dealing with, recognize the power of searching and looking for, for what you want to see in this world.

’cause you’ll see it. You’re not gonna, it doesn’t mean denying the, the other stuff. It just means making sure you are intentionally seeing the good because it’s out there. It really is. And it’s so fun to see it, to call it out and to then emulate it. So thank you, sir.

Well, thank you ma’am. That works. So I think it’s a great way to end our conversation, at least our first one here.

So, uh, enjoy the day.

Well, there we have it. Isn’t Becky great? I hope you loved her energy and her approach to stoicism. And again, thank you for being here and thank you for being a survivor. In this episode, we covered a lot of ground. We discovered how stoics view emotions. How they welcome all of them. And we dove into a more fate, that mindset shift that you didn’t know you needed, but now you have.

How cool is that? And we discussed Becky’s framework called Stoa, STOA, that she shares with NFL teams, and you can use it as well to create a better ripple that you can share with the rest of the world. My hope. Is that you’ll follow up with Becky and pick up a copy of her book. Choose the handle that holds and weave in elements of stoicism into your recovery to help you heal, grow, and become more resilient as you step into the person you’re becoming again.

Thanks for listening and being a survivor.

And if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O’Brien schiff.com. And sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect, and join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.