The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Magic of Yes: Embrace the Wise Woman Within by Lori Pappas

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

The Magic of Yes: Embrace the Wise Woman Within by Lori Pappas Loripappas.com Amazon.com Curious and ambitious women of all ages want to know what is possible; they want to be inspired, to feel safe, valued, and respected. Does this sound like you? The Magic of Yes is a captivating common-sense guide that will help you leverage what you already possess, build on your strengths, and shed old habits and "supposed-tos" that block your way. Lessons extracted from the journey of humanitarian and entrepreneur Lori Pappas and those of other extraordinary ordinary women, supported by expert advice and research, offer pathways to overcoming adversity, discovering inner balance, and ultimately finding peace.Embracing the wise woman within is a lifelong journey that involves continuous learning and incorporating feedback, taking risks, aligning actions with personal values, and cultivating an attitude of gratitude. It takes time, energy, and an intentional mindset-but it's worth it. Lori's journey is a testament to the power of saying yes to curiosity, empathy, creativity, love, and, most importantly, to oneself.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the iron lady sings and that makes it official. For over 16 years, going on 17 years, 2,300 episodes, we've been bringing the Chris Voss Show.

We bring you, what is it, three to five new episodes a week? Or no, hold on, two to three new episodes a weekday. So that's 10 to 15 a week. So make sure you listen to every single darn one. I know a lot of you do. So we appreciate that. Refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss.

LinkedIn.com, 4chris foss linkedin.com for chest chris foss chris foss one of the tiktokity and all those crazy places on the internet opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the chris foss show some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind today we're talking with a very young lady about her newest, hottest book that's coming out tomorrow and some of the things that she experienced in life that went into it. Lori Pappas survived a traumatic childhood and learned to leverage the power of self-reflection to redefine her core beliefs and chart her own course.

Lady Luck smiled on her in the 40s and she became a national award-winning successful entrepreneur who mentored hundreds of employees and thousands of customers after failing retirement in her 50s i had a friend who did that he went to mexico he was going to retire on one dollar beers he came back so that kind of that story he was like you can live on one dollar beer in Mexico Chris, and I'm like, but what else anyway? She escaped her second unsatisfying marriage by moving to Africa and founding a charity It helped over 100,000 highly marginalized people through initiatives in water hygiene and sanitation functional adult literacy reproductive health women's empowerment environment and

orphans and vulnerable children she met and married the love of her life online in her 60s and now in her 70s she has time and mind space to identify patterns and extract lessons from her wild and unusual life welcome to the show lori And can you give us the title of your new book so we can have you introduce that? Yes, absolutely. It's The Magic of Yes. The Magic of Yes. The Magic of Yes. Oh, and Brie, I cut you off there, so my apologies. Oh, the subtitle is Embrace the Wise Woman Within.

But the important thing is The Magic of Yes. The Magic of Yes. Embrace the Wise Woman Within. Out February 6, 2025. So, Lori, give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? Really what it is, is that it encourages curious and ambitious women to explore 16 different pathways that might lead them to more inner peace, feeling of harmony, and be able to have more balance in their life. Oh, inner peace.

That seems overrated. Where's the fun in that? I mean, drama, drama, drama. That sounds more fun to me. I'm just teasing. Tell us about what prompted you to write the book. It seems kind of obvious to me from the bio, but I'd love to hear it in your words. Really what it is is that it was my big supposed to.

I had no real desire, right? But a lot's been invested in me, and I wanted to share what I've learned. And I wanted to see if I could make life a little more enjoyable and happier and easier for other people. And besides what, you know what, Chris? For the first 50 years, I helped men make a lot of money. And I decided I was going to devote the next 50 years to help women find more peace and harmony. So, you know, this is the woman's half a century for me. So would you say the book is angled towards women? Can men enjoy the book too? Yeah. In in fact i've gotten some of my best reviews from the men

there you go the magic of yes you know it's it's interesting to me how people go through life and there's stresses and there's everything else i love that you're i run a giant singles groups and i love that you at 60 you found the love of your life it just kind of there's a lot of women that i see in our singles groups that are in their 50s and 60s struggling to find love. So I think that's a really cool story that you finally found it

after all those years. Yeah, and I really didn't want to find it, quite frankly. I mean, I had it. I finally was happy. I was living my own life. I was unfettered and free. Why would I want a man to come in and screw things up? So my idea of the perfect relationship was that I would meet somebody.

We would hook up every once a quarter in some wonderful place somewhere around the world, have a great long weekend. And then he'd go back and do his thing, and I could continue doing my thing. And that was my big plan. How did it work out? Well, I met Bill Butcher, my husband, and he had a more interesting proposition, and that was, why don't we just try to be unfettered and free together? I said, okay, I'll give it a try, but don't you dare expect me to ever marry you. And here I am, married, happy.

But I'll tell you what, he made me a promise that I think every man should make promise a woman, and that is he would do everything in his power to make me happy. And he has. Well, it sounds like he's quite the leader in the relationship i guess he's worked hard at he used to be a campaign manager so

yeah i became his campaign he's used to winning so what can i say i didn't have a chance you won you won the vote so tell us a little bit about yourself. How were you raised? There's a lot of stories that you have, I'm sure, especially going to Africa and founding a charity down there. Tell us about your upbringing. What were some of the things that shaped you from childhood, etc., etc.? My mother was a religious fanatic. And so, everything that came out of her mouth, nothing really was her responsibility. It was God's responsibility. And she decided that I was possessed by the devil and kept trying to exorcise the devil from me. And the good news about that was that I developed a very, very thick skin. And that allowed me to compete in male-dominated industries

for the first half of my life. My mother was convinced that I was possessed by the devil because I would talk back to her and not do what she said. And my father wanted peace in the house. And so they ended up taking me to... We had a visit at a psychiatrist about why wouldn't I be more obedient and after the conversation the psychiatrist made the comment that really my mother should be committed to an asylum because obviously there was something

that was wrong there and my father refused to do that because then he would be admitting that she was damaged goods. So I was committed to a mental hospital. Within a few days of having been given all these drugs, I realized that my photographic memory was going. A gal came in my room one day crying that she had shock treatment and now they were talking about a lobotomy and i thought jesus i'm not going to go down that route so i figured out what i needed to do to get out and i started pretending to take the drugs but i stopped and a month later i found myself on a train going cross-country out to Seattle, Washington to live with my sister. I figured out if I was going to have something worthwhile happen in my life, I had to figure it out myself. So I took responsibility and did it.

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. Yeah. And sometimes those things that shape us in childhood i mean i think most people can look at their childhood and go it wasn't the best experience in the world i mean we all probably would have wanted better i mean i wanted to live in opulence where i had servants would serve me and and you know food all day long or something i don't know what i just wanted sounds like a good idea but you know it's it's interesting how the stories of our life are the fabric of our life and how they shape us and it's hard for me to look at and i think

and i would imagine most people i don't i don't live in most people's heads maybe i do i'm in the left part of your brain if you're listening but i i guess i do live in people's heads actually with the podcast but you know the fabric of your life you I can look at my childhood and see the trauma and different issues that I had and I can go you know I probably wouldn't be the person that I would be and I kind of shudder to think what kind of person I would be if I hadn't gone through some of the experiences. So it's kind of interesting how these stories shape us. You know, I really don't see it as a disadvantage. I see it as something that allowed me to become more empathetic. It certainly allowed me to become a very fierce competitor in my for-profit business.

And it also forced me to challenge really what were my beliefs and so then I was able to chart my own course and figure out what really did matter to me and what did I want to look like because I sure as hell didn't want to look like what my mother thought I was you know I had a blank slate and so you're able to build your life you go through some marriages I guess what do we make this journey where you kind of? Go go to Africa and and kind of I mean that's that's kind of a Scary thing to do to go to Africa and just start something out of whole cloth. You think that's scary I think it would be I would I'd be I'd be afraid to eat and be a lot you being my lion Huh? I have a thing

It is funny how people think that's really scary. The eating by a lion part or seeing one? You know, lions are not my favorite animals. I think lions are really pretty egotistical. Yeah. They have some attitude problems. They seriously need some adjustments. Yeah.

But, you know, it was just, I was so lucky, Chris, because my for-profit business was successful. And I sold it at 49. So I had resource. And I also had the confidence that I could do stuff. Now, I thought just because I had developed a successful company in the United States that I could do it in Africa. Boy, that was, talk about being egotistical. It was awful. You learned all that.

Yeah, it was a whole different issue. But I just really felt for these people. And I saw this little girl that had flies on her eyes, and she was the same age as my granddaughter and i realized that that my granddaughter did nothing special to be born in my family and this little girl did nothing wrong to be born in that disease-ridden life and that just wasn't fair you know and so being challenge motivated i thought that's really a cool challenge. How do you get the flies off the face? How do you give people a chance to have a healthy life based on their circumstances?

And that was very motivating to me. And also it allowed me to get out of that marriage and live on my own. And I love that. And so you built this charity down there in Africa. How many years were you down there? Ten. Uh-huh. Ten years. I started when I was 57, I think, 56, 57, and I was forced to leave when I was 67.

Oh, wow. It had gotten too unsafe for me to be living there as a single woman working in the area that I worked. There had been a lot of violence that had broken out. I really became a possible hostage victim. And that's not fair. Not fair to my family, not fair to the embassy. There's a lot of political upheaval, too, in Africa that goes on.

A lot of government overturning. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Definitely. So you come back to the States about that point, or? You know, I had just met Bill online, and he lived in Mexico. I lived in Ethiopia. Okay.

And I didn't like what was happening in the United States, and he said we could live in Mexico. And I said, okay, why not? Was he the guy that I knew who liked $1 beers and that's why he retired in Mexico? He's more of a wine guy. Oh. Yeah. I figured I'd do a callback joke to that original story.

Yeah. So we lived down there. Yeah. And that was great. But it took me seven years to really recover. Because I really, you know, it did take an awful lot of energy out of me doing all those things. And developing an organization. And implementing those projects and so forth.

And it took really seven years of relaxing and thinking and so forth to get myself ready to write this book. You got to unwind. You got to figure out the new life and get settled and find peace. And so now you're sharing your story with other women and men and helping them out. Yeah. Yeah. It helps. What are some maybe, can you tease out maybe a lesson or two or a story or two from the

book that you'd like to share maybe? Sure. Sure. It really has to do with how you discover your essence and become more self-aware. And so not only do I tell my story, but I fold in stories from other extraordinary, ordinary women on what they have done in order to learn to set boundaries or forgive themselves or become the curious entrepreneur of their life. It has a section about navigating the chaos of being married or divorced or career, juggling careers and the gap between a personal life and a professional life and so forth. And so that's more about the start of the computer

industry being one of the first women in the country to sell compute how you challenge the status quo that type of thing then it's okay fine so you have lived the american dream and you're still not happy what's up you know what's wrong with that story? And what can you do about it? And some different avenues as far as activating empathy, taking risks, exploring new opportunities. And then at the end, it's really all about, so how do you find your peace? How do you really embrace life and love? And how do you get your whole life to be congruent? So the people that you hang out with, the things that you do, where you live, what you access all helps you find that inner peace.

But then it ends with a challenge. And I find this to still be a real challenge to me, to really access that wise woman within. You need to be open-minded, seek knowledge, and reflect. And, you know, which one do you think is the hardest of those three, Chris? Open-minded, seeking knowledge, or reflecting? Maybe reflecting, because then you have to be self-accountable, maybe? I find that one one of my favorites. I think my absolute favorite is seeking knowledge because I'm really curious.

And I've learned to reflect. You know, I'm 75 and you're not even out of your 50s. So what the hell? So you still got a lot to learn. What do I know? But I find the most difficult one is being open-minded. You know why? Because you like to listen to people that think like you do.

It pisses me off when I hear somebody that I think is a dunderhead. What was that term, a dunderhead? Yeah. I love that. I'm going to start using that all the time. A dunderhead? Yeah. I love that. I'm going to start using that all the time. A dunderhead. What? Is it just someone who's kind of stupid or something?

Or what does dunderhead mean? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to have to Google that. I think that. I think it's really difficult to get yourself to actively listen to somebody that you don't agree with. Isn't it? Yeah, it can be hard

especially right now we're yeah yeah yeah plus you know you know they're not right so that's the process that's true that's very true that's why they have what they call the Dunning-kruger thing the dunning-kruger test the where people who don't know a lot about anything seem to have the highest confidence the fact that they do yeah people who are masters and really study a certain subject know that the more they study it the more they realize the less they know it's kind of like this one's my first 10 marriages so you you go through this journey now you help other women do you do you do any coaching do you have a website where you do coaching or

advising or any sort of consulting to help other women or have you launched the book is there a plan for this in the future etc etc so all of this is new to me you know the whole idea even let me i'm going to answer your question but really really quickly, what it is, is that here, I was one of the first pioneers of selling computers, right? 50 years ago, I mean, it was really new, and especially small computers, and women didn't do it. Now, dial forward 50 years, I'm like a Luddite with this whole social media and this whole world that we live in today. I'm learning as I go. But right now, I'm really having fun being a guest on podcasts. And this is very fun for me. And I don't know that I'm set to be a one-on-one coach. I like to think of myself more as a one-to-many coach.

And I would like to encourage people to get to know other people. There are so many extraordinary, ordinary people that are around us. But we need to take time to get to know their stories and to listen and elders are important you know that's one thing i really learned in africa was that absolute value of elders and and that that seems to be kind of lost here in the u.s america does have that they don't respect elders. They don't value elders. It used to be the elders were the village wise people

that everyone would go to to learn from. Right. And I even see a lot of that, you know, even women had that. They had women elders that they could go and meet with. And I've heard that one of the problems that we have in our society is we don't kind of operate in these tribes anymore. We're very isolated, you know. It even used to be up until like Levittown, you know, people would live in the same town

with their parents and their grandparents and, you know, they would be in that same vicinity. But with like Levittown and the expansion of the U.S. as it happened through the 60s, you know, everyone moved out west or east and and you know your your mother lives in new york and you live in la and you know it's hard to tap into that experience and that insight and you know where a lot of people in the old kind of tribal caveman thing they would sit around and commiserate with each other and you know trade stories and swap stuff but that's why we have the chris fosh show is we can share the stories, and it's like being in a tribe.

You know, one other thing that I really like is that I think aging is fabulous. Lately, I've been hearing people talk about, oh, my God, I'm in my 50s, I'm getting so old. Baloney, you're just starting to enter into the real rich part of your life, and I love being 75, and I'm not at all embarrassed to say how old I am.

I think it's just so old. I think it's absolutely old that I'm 75 years old. I'm starting a new career. I just absolutely am having the time of my life. And I've got a lot to think about and a lot to share and i think i think it's such an honor to to be in this state and so i think it's something to embrace embrace it oh folks embrace your age there's so many people nowadays they're trying to look younger and stay younger and and it's just a it's a silly game you know we see these people

online they use these filters these as filter af filters to look 20 years younger and i love being my age because i can kind of use it as a bully pulpit i mean like i'm 57 and i'm older than you so get off my lawn and i spray him with a hose. Clint Eastwood style. But, you know, my mother will set me straight. She's in her 80s and she'll, you know, I'll complain about whatever. And she's like, I'm 82. Give me a break. And I'm like, probably she does have me trumped there.

You know, age is wisdom and we need to listen to the wisdom of the ages more because, as we always say on the show, one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history and we just go around in circles historically if you notice what we do we have some real bad patterns as human people human beings and if we learn from our elders some of the stories of what we did wrong maybe we wouldn't make the same mistakes so i'm gonna leave you with another thing. I don't think you have to be old to be wise. I think just, you know, being old for a lot of people means that you've got miles on them and you've got stamps on your passport or what have you. I have met some very, very wise people

that are in their 20s and 30s. But it really has to do with how much they've reflected how much they've really looked at their experiences and given themselves the opportunity to take it in and to put the pieces together yeah you make a good point that reflection is what helps us understand our history and maybe not make the same mistakes right the bummer part of you know when i Right. The bummer part of, you know, when I turned 50, the bummer part of it was I was able to look back and see this huge mess that I'd made of different parts of my life, and I was like, damn, wow, you can see the patterns. When you're 20 or 30, you can't really see too many patterns of your life yet,

but when you turn 40, 50, you start looking back and you're like going, there's some noticeable patterns here of mistakes I've made. Yeah. But you know what? You can, I have a favorite little saying, and that is make a lot of little mistakes really fast. Get to be a really great mistake maker. Get that cycle time really quick. Because then you don't make the big

mistakes and i'm not really see i don't even think the fact that i married the wrong guys or that i ended up with failed marriages as huge mistakes you know it's just something that happened and okay and what do you learn from it my first husband is the reason why I became a really good salesperson, because he didn't process very fast, you know, and he really had ego issues. So I learned how to make everything be his idea. And that's really valuable then when you are trying to sell. You want the customer to think that your solution is their idea. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole great thing about sales. Yeah. So really, there is so much to learn from all your different experiences. But you have to take time to think about them. Definitely. You have to reflect.

Because otherwise, you don't. You know, so many people are into distraction instead of reflection. experiences but you have to take time to think about them definitely you have to reflect because otherwise you don't you know so many people are into distraction instead of reflection like i found i found lately we had somebody on recently that talked about dopamine addiction adhd and ocd and i have adhd and so squirrel you know it's really easy for me to get distracted and a face uh anyway just doing some jokes. I just explain what I'm doing. You know, so I realized that, you know, I was doing a lot of dopamine seeking where I was looking for social media videos when I would go make coffee or when I'd drive to the gym. I'd always play like an audio book or something. I'm like, you know, we had this conversation on one of the earlier podcasts, I think yesterday,

about how you need to sit alone with your thoughts sometimes. You need to sit alone with yourself and you get really comfortable with that. And part of that is, you know, you do reflecting when you do that as well. And it's so funny. I've got this really sweet neighbor who's in her mid-50s. And I think it was almost six months ago, I gave her a challenge to find five minutes a day when she would sit and reflect. And she still hasn't done it. And when she sees me, she'll say, I just can't quite do it yet, Lori.

But you're in my head. I know that that's what I'm working towards. But five minutes a day. And you know what? I don't think that's so unusual. No. It's not a lot of time, actually. And that's really amazing, isn't it? Five minutes.

Yeah. Some people are so dopamine addicted. I kind of realized I was, too, when I had that conversation yesterday with a podcast So when I went to the gym last night, I didn't play any music I didn't play any of my audio books that I'll listen to or any podcasts and I'm just like, you know I'm gonna drive to the gym. It's like a 20-minute drive and I'm just gonna sit in quietness I'm just gonna sit in in my thoughts and just kind of do the thing. Meditation, I'm a big Sam Harris fan. He really is a promoter of meditation. Meditation is sometimes

the way people utilize that to self-reflect. And how did it work? It works really well for him and I'm trying to kind of learn it a little bit. But I think, I don't know about the whole sitting still part but I think more you know turning off the phone turning off the tvs you know and just kind of spending some quiet time alone with yourself you know even if you're doing stuff you know kind of sit with your thoughts and yeah listen to what you're thinking what what are you thinking you know I don't think most people question what they're thinking like why am i thinking why am i thinking that and is that really serving me one of the things that i find really helpful to me is i like to swim laps

and i find that when i swim laps the only thing that i consciously think about is what lap number it is so i know you know i know where i'm at a whole game of things but i find that while i'm swimming laps it really can allow me to kind of integrate the thoughts that are in my mind and so it's not trying to do anything, but just allowing my mind to do what it needs to do. And it really ends up giving me more clarity. Or even if you're walking the dog, I find being in nature is really, really critical. And if you're outside in some way walking, if you can just allow yourself to notice something around you, that in itself is going to get you out of your doing, your problem solving, your conscious thinking. If you could just notice something. You know, this doesn't have, it doesn't have to be difficult.

Yeah, just spend time and probably you should schedule time every day. Probably that's a good way to do that, you think? Schedule a time that 8 a.m. I'm going to sit and have some peace? Just sit. Yeah, just to sit and have some peace. Just sit. Yeah, just sit with yourself and your thoughts. You know, I did a thing. I'm visiting Utah right now from Vegas, and unfortunately it's winter here. But when it's warm, one of the things I came up with a couple years ago now

is I go out and I make my morning coffee. I usually have two Huskies we have one right now and i will go out and sit out in the sun with my shirt off to collect the vitamin d to get from the sun and then it also resets my what's called the rhythms the right your bio rhythms yeah your bio rhythms your circadian rhythms. So I reset that for your sleep cycle. And then, you know, I play with my dogs. They throw the ball and they love that. And I'll usually read something like Meditations by Anthony Marcus Aurelius or some sort of stoicism that's very peaceful.

And so I'll usually read a few passages of that. Just randomly I'll pick up things and do some highlights. And then I'll just kind of sit and enjoy the nature. Soak up that vitamin D and it takes about 20 minutes or so that you're out there. And I found that's really refreshing way for me to start the day, you know, rather than, you know, opening up the email box and everything's on fire and all these people coming at you and you know, you need to fix this and we need this and here we we need some attention and you're like oh god okay but having that peaceful start to my morning really helps just sitting with my coffee and just kind of breathing and and so maybe try doing that

for five minutes in the middle of the day sometime yeah that's a good idea break it up yeah yeah i'm just gonna do that all day long. I'm just going to go out and just not do it. That sounds enticing. We overachievers really can't do that. Overachieving at that type of thing, we do have to take a little break here and there. Yeah. I like that. Take more

breaks. Take a break in the middle of the day. Because we get caught up in just the whole menagerie of life and you know people's demanding stuff from us and you know things happening of news and everything else and all that stuff and I Think we need to take like you say more breaks and say okay. It's break time I know that there's a thing on my watch that makes it so that i get up every hour from my chair maybe i could figure out how to set up some sort of reminder or alarm that would remind me to hey it's time to take a big break and stuff you know one of the good things about getting older

is that for me my mind will get a little fuzzy once it gets overloaded and so when that fuzziness happens, then that's the reminder of, I better go take a sauna or I better walk around the block or something like that. And then everything recalibrates. It resets. Go get a massage. I like to go sit in the massage chairs at the gym.

They have those zero gravity chairs all the way back and they can really dig into your muscles. And I love that because my back muscles get really tight and stressed and stuff. And so I go sit in those chairs for about 40 minutes, man. I come out, and I feel like I had a real massage, and I feel like 100 bucks. So those help, too. Yeah.

So as we go out, Lori, give people your final pitch to pick up your book and get to know you better. Any dot-coms, too, that you want people to find you on the interweb? I don't know if you've got a dot-com set up yet. Yes, absolutely. So all the links to everything that I'm doing is on my website. And my website is loripappas.com.

So L-O-R-I-P-P-A-S dot com. And there you'll find I write a newsletter that gives glimpses into the past other extraordinary or ordinary women have taken to find peace or overcome

whatever their issues had been. It gives links to a Facebook group I have, The Wise Woman's Sisterhood. It also has links into my book and it's the best way to contact me. So it's lauriepappas.com. You have a Facebook group, too, then?

I do. I do. The Wise Woman Sisterhood. And I've got a Facebook page, The Magic of Yes. I've kind of got Instagram going, but I'm still working on that with my granddaughter. And it's all available. It it's all out there and i'd love to connect thank you very much laurie for coming on sharing your wise wisdom we certainly

appreciate we'll look forward to having you on for your next book yeah absolutely who knows i'm sure you have a lot of amazing stories you could fill it with so laurie thank you for coming on the show we really appreciate it thank you so much chris thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. As always, go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, and all those crazy places on the internet. Or up her book, wherever fine books are sold, The Magic of Yes, Embrace the Wise Woman Within, out February 6, 2025. Pick it up while you can there. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.