The Gentle Power of Sisu w/ Dr. Elisabet Lahti

Even though now this story that I'm sharing, it sounds quite unusual and it was a big feat as healing from any trauma is a big feat. It's a trauma. Healing is always an ultra run for all of us. But inside that journey, I would say that it's a misconception to think that Sisu is only the big things we do. I personally think that it's those micro moments in our ordinary life where we either choose to, let's say, turn away from our family member or partner or from a challenge, and or we keep our heart closed. Instead of facing what is there or feeling the tough emotion, for example, it's those tiny little things that actually really end up defining our future. Today, it's a great pleasure to have Dr. Elizabeth Lotti on the show. Elizabeth is an awarded educator, applied researcher of psychology, and founder of Sisu Lab, which builds communities and organizational cultures. Sisu is a Finnish word which means extreme courage, and it's all about persevering even when you think you've had enough. Dr. Lati is the world's foremost researcher of this concept, and in this episode we discuss her own personal struggles and hardships as a great example of Sisu, as well as her vision for a peaceful world that integrates the yin and yang of strength and gentleness. I've known Dr. Lottie for many years, and it has been a pleasure watching her grow and flourish. This episode was a long time in the making. So without further ado, I bring you Dr. Elizabeth Lottie. Dr. Elizabeth Lottie, it is such an honor and privilege to have you on the psychology podcast this is super fun i've always enjoyed our encounters so this is really a treat thanks a lot yes this is a long time coming this is a long time coming um you've been studying this concept called susu susu uh for a very long time and also embodying it and living it for a very long time um since the last time we connected i believe you actually changed your first name is that right Am I right about that? Yeah, I drew the line from Emilia to Elizabeth. So it is my official name. And I went through a little process when I turned 40. And maybe it had something to do with that. But I realized the meaning of those two names. So Emilia comes from Greek word. That means to rival, to combat, to kind of push really hard. And then Elizabeth comes from Hebrew female name Elisheva, which means God is my oath. So there is this kind of going from pushing and doing things really the hard way into more of kind of opening the hands and embracing a bit more softer approach to life. So I figured that it's something that actually describes the way I approach life nowadays. So yeah, I go with Elizabeth nowadays. cool thanks for thanks for telling us about that yeah some sometimes i think it's like people feel like they're not they can't don't really feel an identity with the name they were given and some like a lot of people call me by like a different name and it starts to make me think wow people perceive me as that other guy maybe i should change my name to that um it's just something interesting but you haven't changed your gender now right gender hasn't changed no okay okay making sure that nothing else has changed just the name okay cool um well it's real delight to have you here and i was wondering if you could tell our audience a little bit about um this concept of sisu because you're it's a very finnish a very finnish thing and uh i don't know how many of our listeners are from finland yeah yeah sisu is um it's a really old word from finnish language it's about 500 years old and um a bit of part of the finnish cultural history what they often say is that you can't understand Finland or a Finn if you don't know this word, sisu. And the word comes from word sisu, it's epimology, and it literally means the inside or the interior. And what it denotes is this kind of very deep fortitude, I would call it the fire in the belly in the face of adversity. So when we come to that place where we come to our preconceived limit of our capacities, mental or physical ones. And we yet don't give up. We might and often feel this what I would think William James meant when he described the second wind. So in time of crisis, we find this deeper reserve of energy within us. And oftentimes when I describe Sisu to foreign audiences through stories, I see this light go off in people's eyes because everyone who's been to that place into that dark forest you know we we know how it feels like forest wow that's the dark forest of the soul yeah you're right your writing also has a little bit of a poetic feel to it yeah i i draw a lot of inspiration yes and the kind of mythical and uh i think our we are such a such a multi-layered being this this whole human experience that uh i kind of tend to take all the help i can get to parse together this puzzle and try to understand it from different angles and i think i've also gone to so many dark forests that i've had to had to kind of start also taking the soul into consideration where my cognition and my mind kind of failed me so wow you said you've been you've been in many dark forests wow um do you feel comfortable sharing a personal moment where you felt your sisu was tested oh my goodness i think i need to pull a library and pull something out of it i mean we we all have those places and um no one is immune to adversity um the beginning point of sisu uh that is something that it's already now far away was 15 years ago but the reason why I ever even started researching Sisu was when I was living in New York. It was maybe about five years before you and I met, or maybe a little bit less, three and a half years. And I had moved there with a life partner at the time, but the relationship turned very abusive. It was emotional abuse first, but then it turned very physically violent as well. and by the time it ended and when I started this really long journey to healing which I didn't even really realize at that time how long it would be but it also I would have to say took me on an adventure into myself and as I was rebuilding that kind of lost innocence and trust but I discovered a lot of things from that place and that is really the the root of what I do is to try to understand how we rebuild those parts and how can that be extended to the situation that we are now also as a humanity we're facing but the question that kept me up at nights at that time after the relationship was this this thought that how do humans overcome extreme adversity how do we do that who who overcomes who doesn't how might i find strength what would be those tools And then the second part was also that because adversity is unavoidable, we all have some kind of things that happen to us, that can we sometimes use adversity as a fuel? That was the second part of the question. But these two led me on quite an adventure that has been filled with serendipity, incredible encounters, and also really re-establishing and reinventing my own Sisu and my life force. Yeah, you might still reinvent. Yes. Yeah, your PhD takes a phenomenological approach. Can you explain to our listeners what in the world that means? Yes, to use that lens is to really place yourself inside or in the middle of the research. So it is experiential research where you become part of what is being examined. So it's a little bit different from the positivist way where you only observe things or you measure them, but you actually allow your own narrative to be part of it, which is that you, of course, you record everything, but you allow that voice of the researcher be a very obvious part of it, which to me sounds quite honest because always, almost with everything we do, the researcher is part of it anyways. in which our interests direct are what we want to focus on, for example, and all of that. So with Sisu, it seemed pretty obvious after I did this survey first, in which I asked people that what do they even think what Sisu is? Because it was completely unresearched at the time. It was very little understood when I asked people that what is Sisu in an ordinary conversation. I would get these very obscure answers and no one could really explain this to me. And that's what kind of piqued my interest that, okay, we have this concept from 500 years ago and there's something in it. And so I got a lot of data. There's a research paper on it called Embodied Fortitude. And it's really good. My mom recommends it. And so I realized pretty soon that I had still many more questions that I had answers. And there was something in this concept of Sisu because it is a phenomenon that relates so much to our experience and feeling when we are in that dark forest that I realized pretty soon that I need to somehow get closer to it. I need to take it on the road. And I literally did actually through this physical thing that I did. so that was a way for me to gain data on as it happens when I go to that place where I'm stripped so bare from my by tactics and my mental strategies and I feel that I am already done but because we always find the strength I wanted to understand that in that lived moment yeah you trained to run 1500 miles across the length of new zealand i remember watch following your i remember watching your videos and um and you trained kung fu in a martial arts academy in rural china wow yeah it was it was it was fun and crazy i would never do either of those two again but you did it but i did it yeah i did it and i'm so happy that i had this enthusiasm which i also believe is a form of life force that it can really drive us when we have a vision of something we want to do and um with new zealand it was there was also this social activism that was have to you know i weaved into the campaign so i did a full trifecta you know i went to a country that i felt like was my spiritual home, which was New Zealand. So there was something that pulled me. I had a dream about running the length of New Zealand. So that how the whole thing got started You know so it was this totally crazy idea Totally randomly picked the number 50 days Then I looked at the map and I like okay that about 30 miles a day And got to collect data for my PhD. And also I combined it with this cease or not silence campaign to open a conversation around how do we build compassionate cultures and societies and reduce violence? How do we build more social support, you know, so these things don't happen? So all those combined created this perfect, beautiful story for me that somehow carried me through. And I wasn't a runner when I got this idea. I trained for two years. And this always stands as a testament and a testimonial of these powers and strengths that lie in all of us that are oftentimes unexplored. And I think it was part of the big trauma I had that actually really pushed me because I wanted to reinvent the narrative that we have of overcomers or survivors of domestic violence. Because when I was one, I realized how many, you know, there's often this question of people are seen that are weak somehow. Why didn't you leave? It's a very complex, very nuanced question. And I wanted to reframe anyone who's gone through any kind of abuse of any sort that, you know, we're strong. We have incredible capacity and strength and we have beautiful futures. And so that was driving me to go through all that. Hi, all. I want to take a moment to make a few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you all know, I'm committed to helping people self-actualize. In the service of that, I just had a new book come out called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself, and realize your full potential. 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Okay, now back to the show. Have you gotten a lot of messages and people writing you thank yous and things like that? Yeah, it was truly amazing. It was a very communal effort. we organized 15 events along the run in different cities and in each we had women's circles men's circles somewhere i gave talks after running 30 miles on that day for example and um 30 miles wow yeah wow you know i remember watching your journey just being able to yeah yeah yeah it started with me being able to run a few miles and then you know extending slowly and then slowly in this process of just going through the motions which is really this part of sisu that is not so mystical actually this inner strength that nothing has ever changed without action or effort. And these very little tiny things and steps stacked on top of each other bring us to the finish goal or the end line at some point. Did you listen to podcasts while you were running or listen to music? Scott, I listened to every single podcast of the psychology podcast back then when I was training. So you were with me. uh i i listened to like seasons of different podcasts and a lot of music but sometimes i would first run in silence for the first few hours so then i would kind of reward myself um you know with music or something like that amazing wow um well what's what's one of the biggest misconceptions you think exists out there about sisu well i'd have to say that even though now this story that I'm sharing, it sounds quite unusual and it was a big feat as, you know, healing from any trauma is a big feat. You know, it's a trauma. Healing is always an ultra run for all of us. But inside that journey, I would say that it's a misconception to think that Sisu is only the big things we do. I personally think that it's those micro moments in our ordinary life where we either choose to, let's say, turn away from our family member or partner or from a challenge and or we keep our heart closed. Instead of facing what is there or feeling the tough emotion, for example. It's those tiny little things that actually really end up defining our future, the present first and then the future. So if we in those moments, when we really feel the pull to just abandon everything or be in a bad mood to someone, what if we actually use that inner strength to do the thing that might even feel impossible, to face someone with kindness or with curiosity or open a conversation or dialogue. You know, that's often very tough. Yeah, for sure. It's not exactly the same thing as grit, right? No, all these concepts are, you know, they're in the same family, sisters, brothers, however you want to say it. And it's impossible to kind of draw a line, even though we researchers and humans would like to put them in a box that this is where Sisu begins. and something else ends. But I would say a couple of things, for example, of grit, research by Angela Duckworth, which is passion and perseverance. So this very long-term work toward a goal. So it means there's passion and then there's this day in, day out. But Sisu is more like it happens in the moment. So it's not about the long distance goal, but it's actually in a moment when we feel that we are at the limits of our perceived capacities. It's almost like you come to the edge of Grand Canyon and there's no way to continue the journey. So you need to pull out some a bit more momentous reserves in order to, let's say in a marathon, there's a thing that marathoners call the wall, which they often call that it's impenetrable. But yet most of the people who start the marathon, they finish. So we draw from something within us and we get to continue. So Sisu happens more in the moment. So we borrow a bit of this embodied fortitude. But the second thing, which is actually very curious, is that whereas grit, perseverance, hardiness, they are qualities of the mind. So Sisu is what I would call embodied fortitude instead of mental fortitude. that it has a more of this flavor of something that we don't quite even understand, but we do have more research from embodied cognition of understanding how our body works with our mind and our emotions. Thinking of, for example, our gut microbiome from gastroenterology, where this microbiome through this unconscious process influences our responses to stress, to pain, to our emotions. So there's this very deep dialogue happening at all times. And it's much more broader than we for a long time in psychology have thought that we're so obsessed with the mind. And so was I. I had a long time before I realized that Cesar was not about the same quality. that it is something a little bit different. And it complements this inquiry that we have about human strength and fortitude. You've thought a lot about this, I can tell. Oh, I spend a lot of time on this, yes. Do you ever feel like some of the academic aspects were unnecessary? Like, you know, they're necessary to get a PhD, but, you know, a lot of the SISU is in the doing of the SISU. It's not in the thinking about the sisu, right? Yes. Yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah. And a lot of the work that I do is very, I work with trauma survivors and, you know, there's really very little point to bring tables and research papers there. It's so much about kind of being able to be present when there's even no words for that. And so, but of course you need the, I'm so grateful for the foundation that I have. And of course, having such a big framework of doctoral research, it in itself equipped me to reach so high that without it, I would have never done some of the things I did. So it all worked for the best. I'd say so. And now I get to be called Dr. Elizabeth Lafty by Dr. Scott Berg-Haufman. so well it's doctor doctor doctor yeah of course um now you have the book it's called gentle power yeah is this true true story am i telling a true story that's a true story yes and in this book you highlight another side of sisu that goes beyond sheer toughness um can you talk about that yes and it is a perfect bridge from the previous question actually and when you said that wow i've You've spent a lot of time with this. And I don't think I would have been able to be so excited and passionate about Sisu for 15 years if there wasn't this other side. You know, this whole toughness thing wouldn't propel me to keep going with it. But what I realized about Sisu through my own process first, when I was in New Zealand, I had this really huge realization. It was day 12 and I call it the miracle of day 12 because, you know, at that time I had ran these 30 mile days. I had an injury that was developing on my right foot. So everything was a little bit uncertain. Can I continue? It was really painful. And that pain, you know, it took away my, I couldn't even observe the beauty around me. I had a hard time connecting when I was running with people because, you know, pain makes us turn inwards because we need to manage it. And I was at the point of like, what do I do? You know, I have set up this whole campaign. We have events coming up and, you know, it's this age old question with R42 that when should we still push forward or should we now stop? There never an easy solution and we kind of have to learn you know and figure it out But I had this ongoing conversation with the road because I was there alone And this road kept asking me questions, you know, and or my subconscious, you know. And at some point it said that, you know, Amelia was back then, you know, that's like, Amelia, do you see that next bend over there? and I said like yeah you know and the then I heard the response that well you know when you run there guess what you're gonna see more road and another bend and then more road and the pain will stop when you make it stop yeah and you know at that point I started this process of really going into these deep layers of myself where I realized that it actually was or had been easier for me to be hard on myself than to be gentle and kind and have mercy oh yeah that's deep that's deep it was you know and looking afterwards it feels like this whole run for my own personal journey almost existed for this day 12 to kind of if we think of alchemy which is i wrote a book for finnish speaking uh people and it's called the alchemy of sisu and you know of course taking a bit of a risk with such a name but for me because alchemy is such a perfect word for this transformation that happens from lead to gold which car you you know spoke a lot about this transformation of our psyche and the lead for it to turn into gold it has to melt and what do we need for that melting is heat and that's where this this potential and the gift of adversity also comes even though no one wants it and we resist it but there is a process that can we can actually take away gifts from it and so at that point what I did was I simulated myself at the end of the 50 days that, okay, let's imagine that I get through all these days and I've done it. And I use this question from Mark Allen, who's, I think he's a six-time Ironman world champion. So a total guru of sisu and physical capacity. And I asked him that, what's the one advice that you gave me for this run? And Mark looked at me and he said that, honor yourself. And I took this and I looked into those past the 50 days that if I arrive, can I say that I honored myself or did I do it at all cost and kind of reverse engineering from there to that moment, it was actually very easy for me to make the right decision and kind of cut that consecutive days, which was the plan. And then we went to see, went to the ER to look what was happening with the foot, you know, and the The doctor on call happened to be an ultra runner himself. So, you know, he didn't bash me for being a crazy person, but he understood, you know. And luckily, all that I needed was a day off. And then I switched my strategy a little bit. There was no plan B. The plan was to run. That was it. But at that point, I realized that, OK, we need to do something. So I kept the adventure human powered and I cycled some parts of it in the middle. So I caught on those 30 miles I lost and it continued. So I was kind of zigzagging, running and cycling until my foot was okay again. But that changed everything. And the joy came back. I had my autonomy back on this beautiful run that I had designed. And I learned a lot about taking care of myself and combining this toughness with also gentleness. and um so gentle power is the it's the higher octave of sisu it's the the the constructive expression of sisu because we are often in danger of pushing too hard so we must balance it with something that brings us again into that place of where we honor ourselves and others also because we can easily be hurtful to other people as well through our sisu it can be hurtful to ourselves We can end up with burnout, you know, all kinds of things. We can end up getting disconnected from our peers, our coworkers, you know, if we are too harsh on them. And then it can impair our thought process. So Sisu must also be informed by reason. Yeah, I love that. I actually just 30 minutes ago got off a call with Susan Cain who wrote the book Quiet. and i was thinking before i read your book gentle power i thought you were making the point that you know a lot of introverts can have grit it doesn't have the grit doesn't have to be such a growy thing to do for lack of a better way of putting it well said that's maybe one of the also the the misunderstandings around sisu but yeah you know and this yeah yeah we need balance with the toughness with the gentleness in order to be wholesome integrated humans yeah so you can have self-compassion with yourself you can have compassion with others even while you're dominating the competition i mean people you know get so get so obsessed with dom and everyone's got to win an argument these days um politics is uh really horrifying to me right now in america yeah this notion that that um this notion that words are violence i i disagree with and um you know i just wonder in your your work with uh with with curbing violence do you you know like what are your thoughts on like the charlie kirk killing and all that you know that happened in america like you know like i'm sure that violence is quite broadly you're against violence and violence of words as well right violence in in all words you know i see that we have a responsibility for protecting life so anything that uh diminishes uh cuts off emotional wings from another person you know we need to like one of the the core things of season of silence was this idea of zero tolerance to violence you know and there's this because i've been thinking of where do i take season of silence now because it's such a broad concept you know the courage over silence and it's not only this interpersonal violence but it's in school bullying you know it's at workplaces it's in small communications it's online commenting it's it's everywhere and you know there's so much talk about toxic leadership nowadays because it is so rampant all over the world but um what makes me really curious or where do i kind of come where do i go with this is um the really untapped potential and the real fulcrum of change is the bystanders, the masses of people who also we allow bad, poor leadership in our workplaces. When we form cultures where there is zero tolerance to violence and we have those conversations, those tough conversations directly and using gentle power, which means that we balance the harshness that can come with the direct conversation sometimes. I mean, sometimes we need to be super tough too obviously but bringing in that humanity into all of that you know that we can rise to our best as we are what we need to see from each other now is like the excellence but um i'm a huge fan of jackson cuts and he's coined this he's created a project called the upstander uh project and that is really about empowering and inspiring and training you know the bystanders how to stand up and of course taught uh tot cash dan you know the uh the art of insubordination all of that and uh so using our sisu a bit more for that so i think there's a place for every human in this global transformation that we are going through now you know can you elaborate a little bit that when we see something that is uh diminishing to humanity when we see violence that we don't simply stay silent but we have the courage to to speak up speak out against it yeah yeah i mean it's yeah it's free speech sounds like you're pro free speech so i have to say now that as a defined free speech i'm coming from finland so i might be a little bit out of the the the concept uh the u.s yeah well just having a diversity of viewpoints and that being allowed you know in a lot of ways free speech is the opposite of a of a like a of a totalitarian regime you know where everyone has to have the same viewpoint or else you're murdered you know like you know we want a real democracy where we allow and defend other people's right to speak their opinion even if we disagree with them yes yeah yeah um how can people develop their sisu muscles what are some tips help help me nice no sisu muscles yeah that's a good comparison by the way because you know we we we do the the exercises and that's how it starts um i i drew something on paper i actually wanted to coin something from sisu you know using the the words uh themselves so it can be a little memory uh tool so i was thinking that how to develop sisu so So the S, the first one, you know, it's like it's start now. The best day to start training our SISU muscle was yesterday. The second best day is today. And just this thing that our brain learns and we change through repetition. You know, neuroplasticity is on our side with this one. So finding what is that edge for you? is it athletic one you know or is it some kind of an emotional thing is it relational wherever that little thing is where it feels that it's it takes one to the discomfort zone and we might avoid it so gently I call it also you know that we take care of ourselves when we do that so go comfortably into discomfort the point isn't to be hard on yourself you know sometimes we need to do that but when we are training sisu it's enough to choose the the little bit of the discomfort thing because again it rewires our brain so when we are actually at the point that we need our sisu we have that runway that it's a little bit more easy to actually go and face that tough tough thing and then the second one that i i put there into it so developing those the somatic intelligence in us, that intuition, because it can be developed. You know, over time, we can start to hear the subtle messages. And that's the thing that our body knows what it needs to support us in tough times. Our brain is always in the past or in the future. You know it racing there but the body is in the present moment So finding that information there and giving that to ourselves to support ourselves And then the third one is self-care. So now we have SIS, self-care. Third, super duper important. To give ourselves the rest, the physical things that we need, the building blocks that we all know what they are, But, you know, it's when I finally learned to sleep, my life quality improved so much and so did my resilience. So this is a building block to really kind of put on a good place. And then the fourth one is you. That's for unity. And that's the thing, what I think of it is to be a person who takes care of their nervous system, who self-regulates so that I can be a safe person to you. and when we all do this to each other we can create that collective sisu because sisu doesn't only live in you or it doesn't only live in me but it actually in a weird way is in that space in between us where that those chemical messages you know and our brain is constantly asking am I safe and and so when I bring myself to any place that I signal that I'm a safe human that's how we can together come from that place of unity and that's where we really find that that true strength and the sisu so culture matters a lot having a culture of sisu yes yes it matters a lot i mean otherwise because we all have to use sisu but why on earth are we constantly creating a planet where you know we are we are forced to use our sisu to simply survive like how about we learn how to collaborate and be good to each other and kind so that we can use sisu for those feats you know like how do we build a better system somewhere or how do we build better education systems or or things like that you know but we have a long way to go but And, you know, we're taking, I believe, in the power of small steps repeated over time. So I come from a place of hope. I believe in this. Yeah, you are very interested in how Sisu can save the world. Well, let's talk about how Sisu can help people who have mental health struggles. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I think what I've seen quite often is simply to, when someone opens the narrative about Sisu or I speak of it, it helps people to start to remember those moments when they have been strong. even you know doing this little sisu stories exercise of thinking past back in the life where they overcame something that was tough and putting them even just with bullet points so that we can start to remember that there is more strength to us than what meets the eye at a given moment because that is the first thing that that survival mechanism in a way attacks and our mind gets us on that downward spiral. So we simply can't see ourselves as wholesome beings who also have strengths because the mind starts to focus only on those things that are wrong. So opening the conversation so that we can even start to talk about that we have this innate fortitude and every single person has it. I believe it's not a Finnish thing, by the way. it's a obviously a universal capacity just haven't we haven't have a name for it but it's uh you know yeah i mean i just i feel like um like athletes who are struggling with their mental health um the last thing they want to be told is to just persevere so my gut felt like this isn't sisu is incompatible um and you're saying it's the exact opposite at least the flavor of sisu that you're talking about yeah yeah that's a that's a good thing to kind of pinpoint so that those moments of remembering uh when we were strong they don't need to be accomplishments they can be strong and when i remember for example how i supported someone who was being bullied for example so there was this element of okay that's where i stood up or even remembering what happened what allowed me was that someone supported me so remembering and seeing kind of that interplay also of how this strength moves between us and how we can support each other yeah your uh your flavor of cease of your of sisu reminds me of like the buddhist concept of equanimity in a lot of ways um and i'm a big fan of the buddhist concept of equanimity because it's includes love and warmth and presence and uh yeah yeah maybe it's extreme we call it extreme equanimity i really appreciate that you bring up the term equanimity instead of for example stoicism stoicism because stoicism i i get it and there's that but that also easily goes again on the on the kind of shadow side of sisu where we rather kind of push away something and disconnect and we're just uh we push through that through the pain without feeling anything so i would rather hope my for myself and for us to develop that constructive side of sisu that more veers on the side of equanimity if something yeah yeah um no i really like that i really like that um so we talked about how it can really help with mental health um what about the collapse of democracy can it help with that absolutely yes it can um because well here's the thing so uh as a cultural concept so it's interesting in that sense too that it's not just uh this word that denotes some kind of a capacity in a human but also as a cultural concept in finland it has long roots of indicating something that is about doing things really well even if nobody is watching so it it has this invitation to uphold a good life so that we do things honestly with transparency so it invites the the person who cultivates CISO to actually look at their own choices so that's also the reason why i see that there is a lot of potential with this concept in this time now because it's not just you know mental toughness be tough and overcome have resilience but there's also an invitation to ask that how am i living a good life how is that built if someone wants to take it that far and you know i sure do oh well what's what's in the future for you doctor um yeah what's where are you at right now where's your head right now well i have to say my head is in a my head and body and and soul are in in quite a good place now i was just thinking in alignment with each other yeah they feel they're alignment and i think there's been some i feel it too in you oh i was gonna say i feel that you feel it too because you look like yeah you look really calm and just integrated and good so i feel that about you i love the mutual compliment club here i like it but there's a there was it was quite a rough ride after the 40s immediately but i feel that there was some kind of this a bit of this union uh integration that happened afterwards that i was able to bring some of my those parts together so now i'm able to have this this resilience and this toughness but also with so much love lovingness for myself and and my shoulders are relaxed and i give myself the things I really want to do so I nourish my enthusiasm with creative writing I've had the permission from my ophthalmologist that I was able to go back to Aikido back to the dojo which is I see Aikido as a realization of love that's what we really do there is we learn how to in an embodied way find like feel the the energy as it moves and where do I tense where do I soften and then How do I bring that embodied feeling out from the dojo and into the world? How do I do that in a conversation with, let's say, my partner or with my mother or anyone? And yeah, so I feel excited. It's a bit of a new page that's turning and I don't exactly know everything that's going to happen. But I want to be of service with what I've discovered from this road so far. so if for the first part i was building my cv then it's kind of time like what's the testament the legacy you know how how might how can i be how can i be of help and where you know will you still be conducting research or are you kind of kind of put that uh yeah i think i'm actually ready to go back i had to take a little break after the the eight year long phd was over yeah but uh now my life force is back so i'm ready wow great and uh and are other researchers picking taking on the mantle uh are they uh carrying on the baton so to speak yes there's a quite super interesting stuff happening here in helsinki um i got to advise the the making of the Sisu scale that's around and validating it. And then there's Marta Velasquez, who is bringing Sisu quite beautifully to Spain. And he has this other concept called Razmia, which she's kind of exploring the connection of those two concepts. And I keep hearing here and there where people are applying it into mental health or therapy and this and that. So it's really exciting to see. where where sisu's journey continues you know it's on its independent journey as it always was you know yeah um well wonderful it's uh it's been a delight uh watching you grow over the years you've come such a long way uh i remember my first ever meeting with you um and uh i remember i feel like you're a different person it's been a it's been a long road and i always remember how you were the first one to invite me to speak you know and do this hour and a half long presentation on sisu to your students at the it's true yeah you pen so i you rock that i remember all the people who opened the doors in the beginning you were awesome back then and you're still awesome you're you're more integrated you're way more integrated and grounded. Your energy is much more grounded. It's wonderful. Wonderful to see the journey. I'm glad we got you on the psychology podcast. Thank you so much. And yeah, I wish you all the best in your continued journey. Thanks, God.