bLU Talks Boston Interview - Judy Wong

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to BluTalks and I hope you enjoy this video.

[00:00:28] Awesome. Hello everybody, it's Corey Poirier. We're back with another daytime late night talk show style interview. I have Judy Wong with me here today and I'm going to jump right in because I want to maximize our time. So let me jump right in and ask you, and I know this is a big question to start with, but can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Just kind of a Reader's Digest version. Oh Lord, Lord. I know a bit of your story so I know.

[00:00:53] It can pull the novel out. Yes. Oh, well, I like to say an artist at life. And what I teach people now is to make a life list. You know? Okay. I mean, you are alive. So isn't that kind of bizarre that we're actually alive? Come on, you're alive, right? Make believe you're alive. Why are you making a bucket list?

[00:01:20] Anyway, but I like to say I'm an artist at life. I've done, as my husband jokingly says, more careers in my lifetime than most people in their families. So I'm not giving you the list, that one. But yeah, I've done a lot of things, but I really like to think it's always being an artist at life. Well, first of all, I like that lifeless thing. I've never heard that before. It makes me think

[00:01:46] when people say you should write your obituary. But like, you know, obviously that's like after you're gone type thing. But it always makes me think, why don't we live? Like, why don't we practice living versus what if I die? I don't know. It's just a different, it's reverse engineering. Well, see what I realized, and I've studied this a lot, but it all began because my life began when

[00:02:13] I was 60. Yes. And I'm almost 70 now. The Dorian Gray paintings in the closet, Corey, please don't look. But when I was 60, and I thought it was amazing that I was 60. I was starting a whole new life. It was great. And all anybody wanted to talk to me about was my death. Like, what is your death plans? Really?

[00:02:38] Am I dying? And you know, how are you going to survive your limited income? I say, holy cow, I'm just starting out. Am I not allowed to make money anymore? I'm like, oh, that's, that's weird. And then they were telling me about my failing health. Now listen, I've spent over 50 years, the first 50 something years of my life being so deathly ill. And I mean, you look at my medical

[00:03:05] records, I should be dead in traction or the bionicle woman right now. Now do I look like the bionicle woman? I mean, really? And all I can tell me is about my failing health. I'm like, really? I'm getting started. I am not failing at my health yet. And I am not failing at my wealth yet. And what the hell are you talking about? My death wishes? And am I do I got my my burial plans ready

[00:03:31] and my will ready? I mean, do I look like I'm dying? I mean, I didn't think I looked like I was dying. So yeah, I mean, and I thought about that. And I realized a lot of the people, my peers, you know, my colleagues, because I was an international teacher at the time, and they were slowly being put out to pasture. And I happened upon a statistic that

[00:03:58] that if you think you are going to die, you will. I mean, even people I've worked with now who are terminally ill, right? They buy the doctor's death date, guaranteed, you're gone on the doctor's death date. But the ones who don't buy their doctor's death date, they live on and on and on. And in

[00:04:27] every case, every bloody case, when they finally cross over, it was because they made a choice. It wasn't inevitable. It was a choice. So why are we making our death plans? Why are we making eulogies? Why are we making, oh, this is my legacy? Let's be honest, when you cross over, you're not going to give

[00:04:52] two dams about what the hell is anybody's thinking about you here. So why are you worried about that? Why don't you worry about being alive right now? And being the best you could be? Absolutely. And I will add to what you just said about legacy, whether we like to admit it or not, and I know most of us don't want to, and I'm not trying to tell you to aim lower. But I will say the truth is for most of us, our legacy will be at most our family when we're gone. Meaning people in

[00:05:21] 25 or 50 or 100 years, for the average person won't say, you know about so-and-so, right? Like they talked about Shakespeare, 400 years or whatever later, but that's not the norm. So to your point, if most people won't even remember your legacy, why are you spending almost all of your life living in that? Right. And you know what people so often, they're like, but I want to be remembered. I want

[00:05:44] to do something special. But you know, the truth is, if you're bothering to busily figuring out how you're going to do this for your death, you're going to die, first of all. And second of all, you're going to be too busy trying to figure out how to do this before your death. But think about all

[00:06:06] the people, the amazing people in the world, the special leaders, the innovators, the amazing people that have made inroads. Think about like people like Napoleon Hill that everybody bloody talks about. You know, he was just a writer. He was a journalist, a little guy from Virginia who just

[00:06:33] liked to write. And he liked writing about what he saw. And that's why Andrew Carnegie was so enthralled by him because he was honest about his writing. But he didn't write it because he was going to make a legacy before he died. He wrote because he loved what he was doing. And he wanted to just give it out

[00:06:58] there and talk about it because it was exciting to him. And it was special. And he thought it was a really cool thing, the stuff he was learning. So here's a question then when we talk about a life list, what does that actually look like to you? Like do you actually make a physical list of here's how I want to live? Or what is an actual life list to you? So it came about when I was, you know, I always talk

[00:07:24] about the detours, right? You know, the divine detours and the sacred sidesteps because, you know, I used to be a dancer. I was a dancer for the first 30 years of my life. That was one of my careers. And so I always think of things in like terms of dance, right? And it dawned on me like all of these detours that we have, right? We're kind of like sidesteps in a dance. And when a dancer, you're on a

[00:07:49] stage and you actually forgot what you were supposed to be doing. You can like go, oh crap, you'll fall on your ass. But if you go, oh, let me just lean into this one, kind of move it into the dance, you end up with the more exciting dance, right? So I had a major detour. I'll admit it. When I was 18,

[00:08:13] I was in the process of, believe it or not, moving to Boston. And I was transferring from one school to another. And my not so loving mother, let's face it, there are people who are meant to be mothers and some are not. This was not. And she decided because I was still young enough, she could screw with me.

[00:08:37] And literally the night before I was supposed to move to Boston, she sabotaged and pulled the plug. Man, was that a detour. My whole life, everything that I had planned out was pulled out. She wasn't even paying for my education for crying out loud. I was paying for it. But she felt, you know, she needed to do that. But it actually did something. And it's part of the reason I live the way I do now. And I teach people to live this way.

[00:09:07] I couldn't figure out what to do next. I was like, oh my god, well, I'm here. I've got a resume, like a ton long as a performer. And all of my peers had no resume and a lot of schools. So I figured, let me go find a school. And I went to find a school. Now this guy who was my scene partner, now to an 18 year old, let's face it, a 55 year old is older than Hill. And so he was my scene

[00:09:33] partner. He's 55 years old. And I remember sitting there talking to him while we were working on his scene. I go, Bill, what the hell are you doing here? I mean, come on, really? And he looked at me and he went, honey, I'm a retired fireman, a retired cop. I'm a retired English teacher. I always thought it might be really kind of cool or fun to be an actor or maybe be a director. So I'm going to do it because I plan on

[00:09:59] doing everything during my lifetime that I can come up with. So I'm going to do so many things and I'm going to have the most amazing life. And at 18 years old, I thought about that and went, wow, that's a great way to live. By the way, Bill did go on to be an actor and a director and a quite well known one, actually. And we were lifelong friends. And that's one of the things that stuck with me.

[00:10:29] Why are we making bucket lists? Let's face it, you all know what a bucket list is for. It's for when you die and you got to kick the bucket. So what the hell are you making a bucket list for? I mean, you're alive. What a crazy concept. Make a life list. Didn't we do that when we were younger? You remember, like, when we were kids, we had this, I'm like going to be a fireman or I'm going to be an, I wanted to be an astronaut. We hadn't even figured out how to get to the moon yet, but I was going to be an astronaut,

[00:10:58] you know, and no one was going to tell me no. So, I mean, we have all these things, these lists of dreams and things and they're dreams. We call them dreams. We go, well, it's too late. It's all over. I'm too old. Dreams are expired. Horse crap. Horse crap. If my friend at 75 years

[00:11:24] old could be a goddamn astronaut finally, because she managed to wangle away onto those, one of those space shuttle thingies. And listen, she's no social media maven. She hates social media. But she figured out what to tell them so she can get that bloody ticket at 75 years old to go up in the ship. So really, is your dreams expired? That's what your life list is. And it's always a work in progress

[00:11:52] because you're always coming up with new cool things, just like when you were younger. It ain't any difference when you're older. You still come up with new school things, you know? Like I look at it this way. If we're living to 100 or more, right? I'm what? In my late 60s, I'm going to be almost 70. I got a lot more years to go. I plan on putting at least more six more careers together between that one then. Not for nothing. I mean, I'm already working on another one. So...

[00:12:24] That's so funny. I have to add, like when you were saying the bucket list versus the life list, for whatever reason, somewhere in between there makes me think of Jack Canfield. I know, and I think it was the success principles, but he talked about his goals list and how he put a hundred things on his goal list. And these are like major, major things like sell a billion books and they're on their way still. Like they're almost there. But he put all these things on the list. And anyway, I think he's achieved 97 or 98 when he wrote the book, probably a hundred now,

[00:12:54] but either way, he's almost a hundred of those on the list. But he set it as a goals list, which I think is more of a life list than a bucket list. But, but I think it's fascinating. He said he's pretty sure if he wouldn't have made that list of a hundred, you would have achieved less than 20. Right. I mean, look, if you don't dream, you don't have a life. If you're not a work in

[00:13:18] progress, then you're standing still. It's better to be moving than standing still, you know? And, and really, truly think about this. People are living to a hundred or more. When I was a kid, if you turned a hundred in the United States, do you know the damn president called you up? I did not know that. I swear to God, he did. He called you up. I guarantee you. Now, now my friends, my, you know,

[00:13:44] oh, mom just turned 103, 100. And we're all like, yeah, cool. When's the party? You know, you don't know. Why are you living for your death? If you have no idea. I'm a science teacher. So let's, let's, I mean, this is my other career, but I mean, let's face it. The corporal body is going to end someday. But the truth is you don't know when you don't. So why are you apologizing for

[00:14:09] the life that you lived? Why are you not just living a life? Wow. There's a common theme here about living a life. I love it. Like actually living and really living in the moment. So I know we got to keep the time. So I'm looking at Heidi, letting me know we got to keep the time. So as we wind down, my last official question is both how can we learn more and what parting advice would you give us

[00:14:35] about living a full life? Well, you have that little thingy of me and there's a QR code I think that's going to come up. Um, you can go to my website living out loud ain't over yet. What a concept.com. And yes, even though I was an English teacher, there's no punctuation. Um, and on the site, you could actually make an appointment with me. And I do give a free gift of 30 minutes with me.

[00:15:00] I am a healer, believe it or not. I am an energy healer. I'm also a hypnotherapist and I'm also a psychic. But, um, my goal is I want to light the light of every human being on this planet. So by all means, call me up. I'll be happy to talk to you. And my last words are stop making your damn bucket lists and stop apologizing for the life you lived. It's amazing. It's not,

[00:15:29] the detour is actually your destination. So keep living. Amazing. Thank you so much, Judy. Thank you everybody. To be continued. Awesome. Thank you. Great job. How do you like that?

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