How to Transform Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Wisdom

Hey, one more thing before you go.What if the stories of your life, the small moments, the quiet lessons, the things you almost forgot, were actually the roadmap to becoming who you are and who you were meant to be? What if reinvention didn't require a crisis, but simply the courage to pay attention?Today we're talking to someone who has spent more than 30 years turning ordinary moments into extraordinary wisdom and stitching those lessons into books, speeches and columns, and even quilts. Today we're going to answer these questions and many, many more and teach you how to improve your life. I'm your host, Michael Hirsch.Welcome to one more thing before you go. Today's guest is a storyteller in every sense of the word.Lori Kleiner as Eckert is a motivational speaker, an award winning columnist, a nationally syndicated writer, a quilt artist whose work weaves words and symbols into fabric, and the author of five books, including her newest release, which we're going to talk about today. High on life.For more than three decades, Lori has spoken to over 250 audiences across 11 states, sharing her slices of her life with one mission to help people see that yes, life is difficult, but you can handle it. We have that in common.Her new book, high on Life offers 36 stories, each paired with one line, takeaways of full color illustration as a part memoir, part motivation, and part spiritual wink. Because hi chai in Hebrew means life is pronounced hi. So, yes, this is a book that literally is high on life. Welcome to the show, Lori.

Well, thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate the fact that you do this show. It's terrific.

Well, I am grateful that you're here because you have a lot of wisdom to share. You got a lot of journey to share, experience to share. And I think we're all going to learn something today.

Well, I like to. I always would tell my audiences that I don't think that I'm wise. I think that everybody knows the same things I know.And I think it was Richard Bach who said that we tend to teach best that which we most need to learn. So I'm trying to learn all these things, too. And, and I learned so much from my audiences and from my readers and so forth and from you. So here I am.Let's be wise together.

Wise together. This. What a mantra. That's a nice mantra. I think we could use that mantra, can't we? I, I can't, like, start with two big questions.They kind of stood at the heart of your work. Like how? Let me try this one. The first one, how can we.The small stories of our lives, the ones we often overlook, become powerful tools for reinvention, healing, and self acceptance? I'm jumping right into this.

Oh, sure. So how does that happen? I mean, we are what, a compilation of everything that we've done.So I, what, often lack self esteem and, you know, think something's wrong with me.But then a friend will usually suggest to me that I read one of my books where I'm telling everybody else that they're wonderful just the way they are so that I will feel that way about myself. And when they stop me and make me remember, I have to stop and think. You know, really, I have five books in print.I have spoken to, you know, audiences in 11 states. Dates. I have done a lot, and I have to give myself credit for my accomplishments. So those are my accomplishments.But, you know, like, the lady friend I had breakfast with this morning has all these kids and she's got all these grandkids and she writes thank you notes and she writes, sends everyone Thanksgiving cards and Christmas cards. These are wonderful accomplishments of staying in touch with people. So we all have our accomplishments and we have to give ourselves credit for it.And. Yeah, so all of the small stuff is really not small stuff. It's what's important.

I agree with you.I think that sometimes we have to stop and, well, the old cliche stop and smell the roses, kind of think about, you know, what's going on around us, who's in our lives, who we can be grateful for, what we can be grateful for, and. And, you know, think of ourselves too, because we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of somebody else.

Definitely. One of the stories in High on life is called 30 Reasons to Be Grateful.At my granddaughter's soccer game, and one of the reasons was that some other grandma had her shirt on inside out, but it wasn't me.

You know, I was a good name, right?

Yeah. And the one line takeaway from the story is that there's always something to be grateful for.So this doesn't wipe out the fact that there are often things to be sad about and discouraged about and depressed. Depressed about. But. But there's always something to be grateful for.

That's a fact. I've learned that in my personal life as well as my professional life, you could always be grateful for the little things. And. And people stop.People forget. It's a lot of little things that make up a big thing.

Oh. Oh, definitely. So. Well, I'm really jumping right in. So another of the Stories in High on Life is how to reinvent yourself.And this is just a really major topic for me. But my method, if you want to talk about it later, has two parts to it.One is having a healthy routine and the other is taking a step a day towards your new life. But those steps, Michael, can be teeny tiny steps. And sometimes they're missteps and sometimes there's sidesteps, but you just keep stepping.And so what is it? The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step or whatever. You know, all of that just adds up.And so I heard another one of your podcasts where you were wondering if you should say how old you are. Well, I'm going to be 74 years old, so I'm just days away from it. And.But all of those things, all of those teeny tiny steps, I mean, I did raise three kids and they're all successful, fully launched, and I do have a house that is not tumbling down around me. All of these teeny tiny steps all go together to make who I. Make me who I am.

Absolutely. Absolutely. A thousand percent. First, happy early birthday.

Thank you. I share my with Abraham Lincoln. So it'll be on Thursday the 12th. Yeah.

So every year you get a National Day.

I do. And some years I get really lucky and my seventh grade boyfriend will send me an email I said saying, I think your birthday is with Abraham Lincoln.You know, so I hear from Randy, oh, every three, four years.

Again, the little things. Right? Little things, little things. No, I'm proud of my age, actually.If you look at the line I've been doing genealogical research in, not to go off subject, but it's interesting when you go back and look at your generations. And I go back like four generations in my line and thus far I'm the oldest male individual to date.Everybody else was gone at like, my father died at 39, his father 27. The one before that 43, 46. So yeah, I'm grateful every day. Every day I get out of bed, I'm grateful.

That's great.

That really works. Yeah, you know, it's.We all have journeys in life and I think, you know, let's help everybody understand, like, what does it really mean to believe that life is difficult but you can handle it. They've heard my story and now let's talk a little bit about your stories.

Well, really with the.I'm happy to tell you my whole journey really started with divorce and the need to reinvent myself from being a full time mom and so forth, but about life Being difficult. I always think of going, it was my youngest daughter Lisa's first day as a senior at the high school. She's now 42 or 3 years old.I always have to stop and do the math. But I was a parent helper serving donuts and juice to the kids. And I just looked around, around that room. I didn't know many of the kids.I mean, I knew my daughter's friends, but it was a big school so I didn't know everyone. But I'm looking around and I'm thinking, I bet that guy is a little bit sad because his face broke out.And I bet this guy's a little bit sad or gal because her hair isn't perfect today. Or look at, you know, or you know, this one over here might feel like an outcast. I really wasn't picking on them.I was just identifying that they may have problems such as feeling like an outcast, such as problems at home, such as their parents just got no noticed, you know, said they were going to get divorced or maybe something happened that was good but shocking, like the family was going to have a new baby. And here's a high school kid doesn't want to have a new baby in their family.So I'm looking at all these kids eating donuts and orange juice and thinking that a vast majority of them are probably in pain over something. Not anything critical, not anything they're not going to live through.But I just wanted to hug them all and I wanted to say, which I do, life is difficult, but you can handle it. And so. And then you have to give yourself credit credit for handling it. You know, you have a bowl of ice cream tonight in honor of having handled it.But you, you can do it. I'm sure you can do it. And for my own journey.So I'm getting to the point now where, where my girlfriends are starting to lose husbands, you know, so we're in 70s and it's odd to me because I've been on my own for so long and that they really don't realize that their journey has. They knew they had a partner, but how much that partner participated or I don't even know what to say. My one friend.So I'm in the Midwest and when it gets cold, the tire light goes on on my dashboard to say the tires low when it's too cold outside. And so I said to my friend, I took the car to the dealership to have air added.And she said to the dealership, we just go to the gas station and fill the tires. And I said, well, I don't know how to do that. And she said, well, she doesn't either, but her husband does. So, you know, so my journey on my own.So I have to give myself credit. I figured out you can go to the dealership and they will fill your tires for you, you know. So anyway, the journey. I have.I have been journeying for a long time. You have to tell you one. Well, so we. We've just kind of touched on things without really going there.But I make quilts with words and symbols pieced into the design. And I haven't made this quilt yet, but I want to. And the expression the joy is in the journey. That's literal.The word journey is Jo at the beginning and why at the end is that astounding? I think that that is just. That's telling us so much. That's a nod from the universe that to find the joy in what we're doing right now.

I believe you're. I agree with that. I agree with that. And those little, those little accomplishments, those little things that you end up doing on your own.I applaud you for recognizing that it is a positive step of the forward in a forward way. And my mother, I grew up with pretty much a single mother. She raised three kids and in the 70s and 80s.And I know how difficult it is for a woman, especially during that time. As you know, you couldn't even have a checking account until 1974. And an interview with a young woman whose grandmother was.Was the congressman, one of the first women in Congress, who then pushed that through Congress to change that law so that women can have a checking account and buy property and didn't have to have a husband or a father or a brother co sign for them for stuff. So I applaud your journey in regard to reinvention because sometimes people don't do that. They think I've lost everything.I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go.

Yeah. Well, I have to say though, on. So thank you. I appreciate that. Pat on the back and I need it. We all do.But on the topic of recreating yourself in the journey, I think one thing that makes it easier possibly to do is to realize that we have all reinvented ourselves dozens of times that. But that there are happy reinventions when we get the college degree, when we get married, when. And we have a child. These are positive reinventions.But you don't be fooled. You have reinvented yourself.And so the Same skills that you use in learning how to be a college graduate, you know, or a parent you can put to use in.In the sadder reinventions that, you know, when you get fired, when you flunk a class, when you get divorced, when you have an empty nest, you know, when you lose your spouse or you get a bad health diagnosis. You've been through some of these, you know, and you are reinventing yourself, but you have lots of skills because you have done it so many times.They like to tell the story of a Broadway musical called Avenue Q. And the opening line is, a guy comes out on stage waving a piece of paper. I just got my bachelor's degree in English.And the second line is, what do you do with a bachelor's degree in English? No. So that was a happy reinvention. But what. What comes next?

Exactly. Exactly. We have to take. And that goes back to the step thing, as you mentioned earlier. You have to take that first step and move yourself forward.You spend more than 30 years doing that and turning your life into lessons for others through books and speeches and columns and the quotes that you just talked about. Where did that calling come from?In regard to that we mentioned before we started, and people know that from my show, my desire was to motivate, educate, and inspire people from my journey itself. And that life doesn't stop just like you do.I know that's part of your message and that life doesn't stop when life changes and that you can move it forward. Kind of what inspired you to take your experiences and to help share those.

Yeah, I'll say two things out loud so you can help me if I lose my train of thought. One is that I have always been a sounding board for people, and the other is that I got divorced, so help me if I lose my train of thought.So I got divorced. So I wasn't doing anything for anybody else.I was trying to get a paid profession, and I thought that I would turn my hobby of quilt making into a paid profession.So if you're a quilter, you would know that there are quilt shows and quilt contests and quilt everything all over the country, indeed, all over the world, all the time. And I thought that I would market myself to that group as a quilt lecturer. But I didn't have confidence in myself artistically.I knew I was a great quilt technician, so I was giving myself credit for what I knew. So this means that if I had fabric with Christmas trees in it, the Christmas trees all stood up. Right.None of them would be lying on their Side or if I made stars, I didn't lop off the points. I had pointy edges on those stars. So I was a good quilt technician, but I wasn't sure I was a good quilt artist.And there are lots of amazing quilt artists out there, so I needed to be able to compete. And so I thought, well, I'll make quilts with words pieced into the design. So no one else was doing that. And then I gave myself a really stiff goal.I was going to make one quilt every two weeks so that at the end of six months, I have 12 quilts and I could take my show on the road. And, and I was. I'm a tall woman, 5 foot 7, but I'm kind of scrawny. So I didn't think I could make bed sized quilts.I was making wall hangings because how could I schlep 12 bed sized quilts around the country with me? So I was making these wall hangings with words pieced into the design and I just had whatever I needed to say on the quilt.So, you know, and so one said bloom and one said soar. And one said, come as you are, you're lovely. Another one says, I pledge allegiance to me.So anyway, all of those quilts work together to tell one story of the journey towards self acceptance. And I realized that I didn't have to just take that message to quilt people, that I could take it to a general audience.And indeed, quilters would pay. This is in the mid-90s. You know, they pay like $75 for a program. But if I called myself a motivational speaker, I could go to other groups.And so that's who I marketed myself to. I marketed myself to everything from PTAs, ladies church groups, to Proctor and Gamble.And I went and told the story about, you know, the journey, the journey, here we go again, towards self acceptance and love. So that was my impetus, was to make an income.But from there, the reason that it worked out so well for me is that I've always been everyone's cheerleader. I have had so many people when I was a kid, when I was in high school, so many people called me and cried on my shoulder.And sometimes I would get off the phone crying myself. And my dad said to me, if you can't talk on the phone and get off without crying, then you're not allowed to talk on the phone anymore.So that's just who I am. I'm the. I listen, I give advice. Again, not rocket science, you know, but I give advice and I Give encouragement. You can do it.And, oh, well, look what just happened. You just called me, you reached out for help. Well, look at you. Aren't you doing great?You know, and I found all the things to be grateful for in, you know, what they were telling me. And so that then did become the journey to make a difference.I always felt that was so necessary that, you know, that all of my talents were God's gift to me, but what was I going to do with those talents? And yeah, so that got me going. And may I continue on that story of being a motivational speaker and a quilter for a minute?

Absolutely. Because I think that. I think it.What I like about you is that, you know, you had said in some of the interviews that I have seen you in is that every story you share is an invitation for someone to see themselves more clearly. And. And I think that's.You kind of embraced that, I think, throughout your speaking career and, and what you bring to people, especially in the quilts, I think it's a brilliant way of doing that. So, yes, please continue.

Well, so here I am the motivational speaker, speaking to all kinds of groups. And, oh, they liked me and they wanted me to come back, but I only had one program and I had, of course, sold.I had written it up as an adult picture book, you know, short on words, full of pictures. So my first book was an adult picture book and I sold it to Pelican Publishing Company.And so then that gave me credentials as well as a published author. But people wanted another lecture from me, so I created a second series of quilts and Pelican Publishing Co.Published another book of mine, and now I had another lecture. But the odd thing with the second book is that I wrote a thousand word essay to go with each quilt.So the idea of a picture and a thousand words, that was what I was going for. And so it was after I got my second book published that I realized I like to write. How crazy is that?So I think that that's also something that people should. Could. Might learn from me is that I really didn't have a game plan. I just took every opportunity that offered itself to me, and it's taken me far.So then I like writing, so I started to write a Slice of Life column. I was in my 40s at that time, divorced, and I wrote about being single in midlife. And I syndicated that to little newspapers across the country.And then I compiled a year's worth of those columns. And that became my third book, which has a name that people Buy the book for the name. There is, I think, except on the secondary market.I think I have four more copies of this book. Otherwise it's sold out after only 20 years. But it's. I Need a Man's Pants to Wash. Isn't that a funny story?

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I thought, what an interesting title.

And people love the name. Yeah, well, so there's a story behind that. There's a story behind everything. Everybody has a hundred stories, a thousand stories, a million stories.And I encourage you to write them down. High on Life has a companion piece of a blank journal, so you can write your own stories, by the way.But anyway, my grandma, with whom I was very close, my bubby, when my grandpa died, I said to her, you know, Bob, don't you want to get remarried again? And she said, I need a man's pants to wash. So she was very certain she wasn't going there.But I'm 42 years old and divorced and I'm not really sure, so I call. So I called the book, which was Slice of Life Stories about Being Single in Midlife. I Need a Man's Pants to Wash. But there's no punctuation.There's not this. None dark exclamation point or period. It was. Let's explore this issue. So that's. That's what I did.

That's what you did. That's. That's brilliant, actually. That's really brilliant. Yeah, I think.I think it reminds me some stories that I told you about Richie, who used to work for me. Very good friend.And, and kind of reminds me of some of the stories that he and his wife had shared with me in regard to something similar to that with his mother. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I think. You know, it. It. What I'm.What I'm seeing kind of a pattern of, is that you're kind of a cheerleader for someone who reminds people that life is hard, but you know, you're capable in that you can do it, you can achieve it. And I think that you learn that philosophy from your own journey, right?

Definitely. I mean, really, when I'm down sincerely, people suggest to me that I read my own books.

Take your own advice, your own advice.

And I am really forced to remember the scads of things that I have that I have accomplished and in the early days of. Again, it's just so funny to me that all of this kind of just happened willy nilly for me just by taking the next step.But after writing that third book, which was a compilation of 52 columns about being single in midlife. I actually wrote a book. I had been involved with a man who we called Big Irv. That. That tells you a lot about him right there.And when Big Irv died, you know, that was. I had to reinvent myself. And so I did by having a healthy routine, which is what I tell people to do, and.And by taking one step a day in the new direction for me that was writing.And so then here I've got this fourth book, which at that point, Pelican Publishing company wasn't publishing the kind of stuff I write, so they didn't want to publish it, though they had published the first three, and I couldn't find a publisher. Another one of your guests had talked about what a journey that is, and that's a wild ride. But anyway, so I self published it. And then.And then I thought I was again, like, you know, you get married, you think you're done, but now, now you have a marriage or you have a baby and you think you're done, but no, now you have to raise it. So I thought I was done with that when I wrote that fourth book.And instead, my publishing guru told me that I needed a website, so I created a website. And then the website guru told me that I needed to bring people to my website regularly so that they would see the book.And so he said, you have to start writing a blog. It's like what I wrote. Well, I thought it was done writing, so I started writing two blogs a month. I am currently writing blog number 173.So that's a lot of years of writing blogs.

Well done.

Yeah. And lo and behold, High on Life is a compilation. It was like maybe a dozen news stories, but two dozen that had already been published on my website.So, you see, I have to give myself credit for all of this, don't I? I mean, I could say it was all willy nilly. There was no grand plan. It just happened. It did just happen, but I made it happen.And in those early days of having the website, I believe that I couldn't just ask people to buy my book. I had to give them something.So daily I posted, if you go on my Instagram and scroll way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way back, you're gonna see daily motivational messages. Just take one step forward, you know?

Exactly.

You know, take time to spell the roses along the way. If it rains, dance in the puddles, you know, on and on and on and on. But that is. That is me. That's the kind of cheerleader that I am.

That's a brilliant way to approach life because I've seen too many people that when something has forced them to change, then whatever circumstances they're in, that force that change, they sit back and go, I don't know what the heck to do. And I'm just going to sit here and think about it for a while.And then they get depressed and they get angry and they get resentful and things go down a dark road.So yeah, I think it's amazing that you were able to take each time that you were presented with something that was a life changing opportunity, you recognized it, you grasped it.

Well, as I often say, what's plan B? You know, so plan B, I just is to sit on the sofa. But in the formalized version, in high on life, when I talk about personal reinvention.So I've hinted at it, but let's say it in so many words is that I give you a two step process for personal reinvention. Why is it so easy? Because often when you're reinventing yourself, you're in bad emotional straits and you just don't want to get off the sofa.So I'm gonna make it really easy. But of course this works for those happy reinventions as well. So step number one is that you have to have a healthy daily routine.So that's real personal. It's what do you do when you're flying high and things are going well for you? What are the things that you naturally do?I bet you brush your teeth every morning, I bet you take a shower every night. I bet you get dressed, I bet you go places. So you have to have a healthy routine.For me, that is exercise and eating right and worrying about my sleep hygiene and all that kind of stuff. But it's whatever is your, whatever is your natural routine for when life is going well. That's what you have to do every day.So that's step number one. And step number two is to take a step, even if it's teeny tiny. Teeny tiny is fine.But I encourage you to have an accountability log so that you write down today's date and the action that you took.And if you are in a happy reinvention, the guy from Avenue Q with the new degree in English, maybe you can set a timer for 10 minutes and do 10 minutes worth of stuff again.I still want you to write it down in your accountability log that you did it, but maybe you can make three phone calls or send four emails or Whatever. In the direction of your new life.And it's just so surprising to me, even when you're in a bad reinvention that just really five, six, seven days into it, you're starting to feel better. And the one example that I use is empty nest syndrome.So when my last child went off to college, I really, I could feel the weight of the silence in the house. It had me pinned to the sofa. And so I used my method, and I bought myself a spiral notebook to write an accountability log.And the first day I contacted, I don't remember if I, I must have done it via email. I went to volunteer match.com so it's all the volunteer activities in your area. And I signed up to be a volunteer for the March of Dimes.And I, you know, each day I did something, and lo and behold, after five or six days, I least had a place, a meaningful place to go on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever. And it was. That's a lifesaver. That's absolutely a lifesaver.

Yep, yep, yep. I, I, for six months after I retired, I was calling in stuff, and I'd say, call up and say, this is retired sergeant.Blah, blah, blah, this is going on. This is going on. And then the cops would show up and pull them over, do whatever they need to do. And pretty soon they kept going, sarge, we got this.Just go home and relax. Put your feet up. Because I was making so many calls, because I, I just didn't know what to do with myself, you know, I, I was a cop.That's what I was. That's what I did. And all of a sudden it stopped. So I'd see something, and I kind of go, okay, I gotta call that in. Oh, okay, I gotta call that in.I mean, obviously I had a lot of support from a colleague, my family as well, my colleagues. But I can relate to that statement.You, you get stuck in a, in something, you have to kind of break that routine before you can throw yourself into something new.But you have to recognize it or somebody needs to kind of nudge you a little bit in that direction and say, like I say, go home, put your feet up, relax. We got this kind of thing. I find the interesting, it's an interesting title in this book.When I first looked at it, I think of chai, like chai tea, right? I drink Tai chi all the time. I do it when I, When I meditate. I love having a cup of tai chi when I'm a meditator, after I meditate.So in the Hebrew Form. It's high. Right. High on life, 36 slices of wisdom. It's a blend from.From what I can read so far, you know, it's a blend of humor and spirituality and the Jewish culture and everyday insightful listeners who haven't seen it yet, kind of. What inspired that in particular and to take it from that approach.

What inspired the title or.

Yeah, that title and that approach to go into it that way?

Well, the approach of 36 Little Stories is because that's what my blog is. So I didn't really write this book.You know, I wrote 12 news stories, but they were stories that I would like what I was writing, you know, previously. And so it was just. Okay, let's look at. I don't remember how many stories existed at that time. 120, let's say.Let's look at the pick, the ones that are evergreen because, you know, I talked about the pandemic and that's come and gone, you know, surprisingly. But I took the most evergreen.So, you know, three places to find friends or, you know, kinds of things that are important to talk about every now and again. So that's how the format came around to be 36 stories. Yeah.High on Life came about because the book, when I submitted it to Bancroft Press, who's my publisher, it was only 18 stories because 18 is a mystical number in Hebrew. 18, and it's called hai or, you know, the difference between Hanukkah and Hanukkah? It's the same thing. Are you going to say it ch.Or you're going to say it H. So hi. Or hi. So when I submitted it to the publisher, I submitted 18 stories. So it was 18 stories on life. I liked the fact that people.Because I think, though it does have a Jewish flavor. Some of the stories talk about Judaism, but most of them not.But I like that it hints at this chai tea because like you said, when you meditate or when you're having a quiet moment or for me to hold a cup of something hot when it's cold here in Cincinnati, Ohio. So I like that, that people can think that we're talking about chai tea because we. Because this is a book of comfort.I'm hoping you're comforted reading this. You know, I really do. I hope.

Yeah. That's brilliant.

Well. And how we got to 36 stories is that the publisher, Bruce Borch, said he was loathe to publish such a short book as 18 stories.He said, you think you could make 36? I said, I can have it. To you tomorrow, you know, so.

Oh, that's funny how it happened. And he used the word loathe. That means I gotta. I gotta add some more. That's okay.You talk about, like, self acceptance for forgiveness, gratitude, personal reinvention, and the magic of one plus one adding up over time. Can we. We talk about self acceptance in regard to what you. What you bring to that?

Oh, to self acceptance. Well, I have to take you to a couple of the quilts. One of them says. Let's see, it says.

It says something.

What does that quilt say? It says, proud to be a strange bird. And another one says, dare to be different. So these are me.So in the proud to be a strange bird, there are, I think, seven red birds facing west, and I'm the green bird facing east. Or maybe it's reverse. But anyway, I'm the green bird and everyone else is red. In the dare to be different, there are three gorgeous butterflies.In that case, they definitely are flying west, while I'm blue flying in the other direction. So this has just always been me. So here I am at midlife, and my friends are all going by twosies onto the ark, and I'm divorced.So I've always been different. So my message, again, I'm teaching what I most need to learn is that you're beautiful just the way you are.So, okay, so I'm the green bird, and everyone else. Almost everyone else is red. And okay, I'm the blue butterfly. When most are orange, it's okay. I'm fine just the way I am. So that's where that is.And if anybody looks through my older books. So the first two books with this ring and get quiet and listen are illustrated with quilts. And so they're adult picture books.But if you look at them, many of the quilts are oddly shaped. They're not squares or rectangles like most quilts would be. Excuse me. Let me take a sip of water. So that was reflecting me. I'm oddly shaped.I've always been oddly shaped. But of course, all the quilts are beautiful. Even if I made them, they are. Technically, they're perfect.And there got to be a time where I made a quilt that was so oddly shaped that there were about a dozen different corners you had to turn in order to put the binding on it. And to turn a corner when you put binding on is a challenge. And I thought to myself, can you be done being so oddly shaped?And so isn't that wonderful that life suggested that to me?You know, so put it all Together in the same way that I have to give myself credit for my accomplishments, I have to give myself credit for being okay as I am. And, you know, plenty strange ash my kids. I break out in song every now and again and all kinds of embarrassing things.

You know, that's life. That's like Bill Frank Sinatra song. That's life.

That's life. Yes, exactly.

Which brings me to Billy Joel.

Oh, Billy Joel.

Billy Joel. You use his song Big Shot, don't you?

I do. So I went to a Billy Joel concert, and everybody knew every word of that song and shouted it along with him.And I forget what magazine called it his most. They used a different word, ticked off song of his career. And so I happen to have been there.This concert occurred right at the Jewish holiday that we are dealing with forgiveness. And it occurred to me that Billy Joel is earning royalties from his anger. I'm not.

If we could do that, I'd be really, really, really rich.

There's really, really no reason to carry this anger. So with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, we are supposed to forgive everybody. But an interesting thing is. Oh. Because God forgives everybody.So if you can't forgive your neighbor, then you're holding your neighbor to higher standards than God is holding them. So that's the nature of that. Yeah. But by the same token, God forgives you also for your failings, for what you did wrong.And again, then you can't be mad at yourself or whatever you're mad at yourself for, because you're holding yourself as you're. You're. You know, you're using a higher than God would use. So I love that. I just love that. So, yes. So that's how Billy Joel came into the book.I say that the book has 36 stories from everything from belly fat to Billy Joel, Belly fat to Billy Joel.

That's a great marketing tool, right?

Yes. Isn't that great? But it's true.And the one about belly fat was I went to a woman's wellness event, and we had to write a love letter to some part of our body. So I wrote it to my belly that I don't love because it's. It's kind of a pouchy belly, even though I'm tall, you know? And.And I thanked it because part of the reason it's kind of flabby is because it had those three amazing children who I so adore. So on behalf of Scott, on behalf of Shayna, on behalf of Lisa, I thank you. And then I listed the 10 grandchildren that have come from those three.And it's like, well, of course your belly is big. Look what it produced, you know, and so, so that's self acceptance, isn't it?

Yeah, that's a brilliant way of doing that. I think now every time I hear a big shot, every time I hear bojo, that's what I'm going to think about. What can I, what can I. Yeah, yeah.

You know, what happy load can you put down? Because it is a heavy load to carry or whatever. So I am posting for people who like to ride.So at the end of high life, there is, there are some blank pages because again, I haven't cornered the market on wisdom. I haven't cornered the market on life stories. You've got your own. So there are blank lined pages for you to write your own stories.And what was I going to tell you about that? I don't know. It went away. What were we saying?

We were talking about Billy Joel and the art of saying forgiveness and to forgive yourself, forgive your neighbor, forgive something so that you can let it go and kind of move forward.

Yes. And so I, I have been right. Thank you. That was a great prompt to this almost 74 year old brain. So I have been right, right.Putting writing prompts up on my website, which is my name, Lori Kleiner. Eckerd.com I've been putting writing prompts up on my website. One set of writing prompts a week.That'll happen for the 36 weeks that there are stories in high on life. And so I just am doing this one about Billy Joel is the one that's going to post tomorrow, I think at noon.And I suggest that you write yourself a letter of forgiving yourself using the methodology that I just told you. Yeah, yeah.And then keep that letter because you know that that suspicion that you're really rotten to the core is going to pop back up again sometime and go leave that in your underwear drawer so that you know it's there.

We'll find it every time, every day. See, and if you don't. Yeah, yeah, that's. I think that's a real look. I think we all, we all sometimes have to, we criticize ourselves as well.And we, we also don't believe that we are good enough sometimes.We don't believe that we're able or can accomplish something that we, we know on a different day or another day we would have the opposite effect of that. But I think we need to be reminded that we have that opportunity to forgive ourselves and to, you know, nobody's Perfect. Nobody's perfect. Everybody.Everybody. You could find flaws in everybody. I don't mean that in a judgmental way. Way. We can all find flaws in ourselves. We can all find flaws in everybody.Nobody is perfect. So I think that, you know, sometimes we have to make sure that we understand that and that no, you know, nobody's expecting us to be perfect.We're just expected to be human and to be compassionate and to be grateful and to be loving and to be kind and to be human. To be human. So, yeah, I like that. That brings us to one of my favorite ideas. In your book, you write about the power of small steps.We talked about that earlier. I agree with those small steps that got me walking again, one step at a time.You know, you have to take that first step, and in small steps kind of gives you a little action. And you take that action, you add another action to it, repeat it over time. It can take extraordinary places.Tell me about the philosophy of that to remind everybody.I know we talked about it earlier, but as we close this out, please help us remind us what those small steps, the one building off of the other can take us.

Oh, that. So that again, that's another story in High on Life whose takeaway is a little bit plus a little bit equals a whole lot.So I tell the story of a friend of mine who we graduated high school together. Mike Kahn is his name, and he was a trial lawyer in St. Louis. I think he's retired now, and the father of five children, and he also is a writer.He's got more than a dozen books out, and I think a dozen of the more than a dozen are mystery involving Rachel Gold, I think her name is. She's the investigator. And they're all set in St. Louis, so you get to go behind the scenes at the ballpark and all that kind of stuff.But anyway, in the middle of being the father of five and a trial attorney, he wrote all of these books. And he has said in interviews, how did he do it? Well, every night after the kids went to bed, he wrote one page. And he did that seven days a week.And at the end of the year, he had, oh, my 365 pages, which is pretty much what the average book is. And so that is how this man wrote that many books, being so completely busy and occupied in life. What a wonderful lesson for all of us.He wrote one page a day, so that's perfect.And then I tell my own story of all the cold calls I made to line up up what turned out to be over 200 speaking engagements in, you know, in 11 states in 10 years time. And it was like one cold call at a time. And I would always say, you know, because people always put you off when you call.You know, I never want to be a past. So when may I can call you back? And they say, well call Tuesday. Okay, when? Tuesday at 2. So guess what? That's when I called.I didn't call Monday at 3 or Wednesday at 4. Tuesday at 2 is what you told me. And they would tell me they could set a clock by me.And I called back and I called back and I called back and I got the gig. So that was the first one. Then I called the next guy and I said I had this great speaking engagement for so and so.And he wrote me a recommendation because of course you asked for that. And then I, you know, had to call him 25 times too. But then I lined up the second.It was one by one by one in the same way that I am writing my 173rd blog for my website. I wrote them one at a time. It was not hard. But you have to get started.

A lot of us procrastinate to an extent that it creates our own failure or our own inability to move forward.You have a website and you have some books, books and you have some quilts and you have an Etsy store and you have so many things I couldn't talk about right here. So tell me, tell everybody how to get to you, how to find you and kind of what you have to offer.

Yeah, well, so if you see that name, Lori Kleiner Eckard, if you key that into a search engine, you're going to come up with so many hits.But you can also do it as lore kleinereckert.com to go to my website and it'll tell you about all the books I've written button it'll show you the six most current blogs. And I also, you know, again doors open to me and I walk through them.So when the, when the guru for the website said get people to come to your website. I'm a prolific reader of fiction. So I started writing reviews of books again to get people to my website.So I have like 250 book reviews up, which then made me an affiliate marketer for Amazon. So if you read my review and buy the book, I earn 40 cents and then also to get people to my website, all my quilting stuff.So that'll take you to my Etsy shop, which is also lore kleinereckert.etsy.com. so just Lori Kleiner Eckard will take you to Twitter. It'll take excuse me X. It'll take you to Facebook. It'll take you to Instagram.I'm everywhere and I would love to hear from anyone. By the same token, lorikleckert.com you can get to me and I hope people do. I would like to encourage them on their journey.

Well, I may make sure that everything is there is on the website and in the show notes that they can easily just Click Lori Kleiner eckert.com and find you in a heartbeat.And again, they can find the books there, they can find the quilts there, you can find your Etsy store there, they can find your blog there, they can find words of wisdom there. But I need some words of wisdom before we leave, if it's okay. Is this one more thing before you go unwelcome?So for someone listening right now who feels kind of overwhelmed or stuck in life, doesn't know where to go, unsure where to begin, what's the first small step that you recommend they take today?

Well, a recipe that I have for happiness is, you know, do more of what makes you happy. But then I learned that sometimes people are already doing too much.They have too many balls in the air, so their happiness needs to be taking one ball down. So I encourage everybody to make one step, but it might be adding a new activity or it might be subtracting one. And trust yourself.And even if it's a sidestep or a misstep, tomorrow's another day. Take another step. And I like to say life is difficult, but you can do it.

Brilliant words of wisdom.I think that we all should take those, heed those words and kind of make sure and recognize ourselves and the ability of us being able to take that first step. So brilliant words of wisdom. Thank you. Thank you, Lori. It's been a great, great, a great conversation.I really appreciate you, what you bring to the world.

Thank you. Well, I appreciate what you bring to the world too. So I encourage everyone to go to one more thing before you go. Is that also dot com?

It is before you go. Podcast.com. yes. But. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for that plug. I appreciate that. I think I love. We both have one thing in common for. Absolutely.Well, we have a couple things in common. Common. Three things in common.We understand that perseverance and fortitude and strength move us forward in life and that we can always redefine our purpose at any time in life, that we just have to take that first step and recognize it like you said, and the fact that we both love to inspire people and motivate people and educate people. So I have a new friend.

Me too.

Yang, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here. So Laurie reminded us today that life isn't shaped by the big moments alone, is shaped by the small ones.The stories we live, the lessons we gather, and the courage it takes to keep moving forward one step at a time. Her work is a reminder that reinvention is possible, self acceptance is powerful, and the stories we tell could become the stories that save us.And maybe, just maybe, your next chapter is already waiting inside a moment you have haven't fully appreciated yet. So that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you found inspiration, motivation and a few new perspectives to take with you.If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to like subscribe and follow us and stay connected. You can find us on Apple, Spotify or your favorite listening platform.And you can head over to YouTube and catch the full video episode version of this look at our pretty faces. We have a great day, have a great week and thank you for being part of our community. Until next time, this is Michael Hurst.And One More Thing before you Go.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One more Thing before you Go.Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com youm can find us as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.