An Army of Normal Folks - Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

For our latest "Shop Talk", Coach Bill pays tribute to Sunde Smith, a single woman who left Manhattan and did something really crazy. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney, this is Shop Talk number 23 and Alex still has not bought me a bell. Today we're going to talk about... You're giving me no time, I'm recording all these at once. Oh you just time stamped them. I know, I just left people behind the curtains. Nooooo. They gave me one minute to go get a bell.

Maybe between 23 and 24 he'll do something besides sit there. Okay, Sheptaught number 23, we're gonna talk about getting out of your comfort zone from an interesting perspective of a young girl that I coached in basketball, who I absolutely love. Her name is Rachel Smith and her mom Sunday. Their story is pretty phenomenal and it speaks to the power of those of us who have the temerity to get out of our comfort zone because it can change our and the lives

of those around us. So getting out of our comfort zone because it can change our and the lives of those around us. So, getting out of our comfort zone, coming up next right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of

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Everybody, Bill Courtney, Shop Talk Number 23. A lady named Sunday Smith from New York City, pretty remarkable woman. Sunday knew New York well, knew its restaurants, its shops, was a successful journalist first on the print side and then as a TV producer mostly for financial shows. She was aggressive, she loved to pursue the latest huge story. However, there was one story that wasn't coming together for her. And it was her own. Missing were the children she'd always wanted. When she came home from a long day at the office,

the only messages on her answer machine were work related. She thought back to how happy she'd been on her grandparents farm in Iowa and her parents farm in Tennessee where tons of relatives and friends were around all the time. Life in the big city despite all of her successes felt kind of empty compared to her life back then. The men she dated, they didn't want kids and Sunday became more and more frustrated and suddenly she found herself in her forties and in her words, and if you knew her, boy, would you get this? She said, it was getting late in the game in the late eighties.

When she worked on a documentary for PBS about how the most creative ideas emerged when one summons the courage to deviate from old routines, i.e. get out of their comfort zone. Soon she realized that the information she was collecting was as much for her own personal development as it was for material for her show. The following year, Sunday left New York for Moscow, Tennessee, A small town where her parents on the farm, Manhattan to rural Tennessee, that's a pretty big change and that's way out of the comfort zone. But she was just getting started. She was working for a public television station in Jackson, Mississippi when she was put in touch with a woman in Memphis who arranged for couples in the United States to adopt babies from orphanages in Moscow, Russia.

She approached the process blindly, which was a good thing, because if she'd known how much red tape would be involved, there was one torturous delay after another she might not have proceeded in the first place. But in July of 93, Sunday, by herself, alone, flew to Russia to bring home Elena, a three-year-old baby girl, every bit as beautiful as she appeared on the video Sunday had been sent many months before. At last, Sunday was a mother. Once she took on the new role she wanted more, despite the difficulties raising the children, challenging enough without a language

barrier. Over the next decade she adopted three more girls, each from Romania, each with its own trials and rewards. One girl was named Rachel. Sunday didn't make the trip this time as she couldn't leave her own mother who was suffering from Alzheimer's. Sunday and Elena greeted Rachel who was only two in a stroller at the Memphis airport. Rachel was hysterical at being passed around the world from one stranger to the next but they calmed her down and took her home. That was about 28 years ago. Rachel, I knew as a kid in high school, was an amazing lacrosse player and a really good basketball player. She ended up earning a scholarship to the University of Vermont to play lacrosse. I was her eighth grade girl's basketball coach at St. George. George's independent school private school outside of Memphis Rachel was as tough and competitive of a kid as i've ever coached in any sport

And had she been a guy she would have been a mental linebacker in football There's no doubt that she will be a champion whatever she decides to do with her life No one can know for certain where Rachel would have ended up. Certainly not playing lacrosse in Vermont. If Sunday had not gotten out of her comfort zone. Perhaps someone else would have adopted her, perhaps not. The orphanage where Rachel lived was in a remote area of Romania. There's a real chance she would have ended up like many other young girls that Sunday had run into at

the train station in Bucharest, selling flowers to survive or selling something else much worse to survive. When you get out of your comfort zone guys, the world can change. If Sunday can leave Manhattan to come home to a completely rural area and then as a single woman adopt four children, one from Russia and three from Romania and change lives and in her richer own by simply having the temerity and the courage to get out of their comfort zone and in doing so, build her family and change a life. What can you do? What can you do if you're just willing to get out of your comfort zone, go against the norms, go against the grain? That's Shop Talk number 23. I hope you'll think about getting out of your comfort zone this week. If you have any ideas of stuff you'd like to hear about, tenants, fundamentals, values, current events,

please email me at bill at normalfolks.us and if I think I have something to add to it, we'll talk about it and we'll cite that it came from you. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs, I'm Bill Courtney, I'll see you next week. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti

marked the beginning of the end. It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Listen to Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casaveto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. We're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America.

I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm your host Santos Escobar, Emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartReyo app, Apple podcasts or whatever you stream podcasts. Ever get the feeling someone's watching you?

Well, in 1971, a group of anti-war activists had that feeling. I was in the heart of the dragon and it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI and expose J. Edgar Hoover's dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Binge the full second season of Snafu now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.