Podcast Episode - Are You A Rabbit?

Today is April 21st, 2019. If you're listening to this for the first time, just so in case in the future, it's when you're listening to this podcast, you know that this was recorded for Easter in the year 2019. And Easter is an interesting time. And it's really an interesting time here on the island where I live, because people really love to celebrate Easter. And I really think that this year I have lost my mind, because if you know me at all, you know, I don't like all this stuff around me. I don't like wasting money on little costumes and little cute things like that. I just think it's a total waste of money, which is why on the Suze Orman show when I had it, you never saw that. You couldn’t buy cups and you couldn’t buy t-shirts and you couldn’t buy all this stuff that you really didn't need. You all wanted it, you would write in all the time to the show and say Suze, why don't you offer this? Why don't you offer that everybody else does? And it's because Suze Orman did not want you to waste money. But now I digress, let me go back to Easter. So for this Easter, my sister in law and my both my sister in laws and their husbands are coming, and my nieces and my one niece, Katie happens to have a little baby who is now one year and one month old, now, almost two months old. Can you believe that when you're little like that you're counting by the months? Remember you were 5 and a half, 6. Anyway, and on the island they have an Easter day parade. Where everybody decorates their little golf carts, because there are no cars on the island. And I always, in years past would look at that and go, I wonder how much that cost them, like, really, okay. But I tried to enjoy myself. But when you're Suze Orman, sometimes it's just hard to enjoy yourself when you see people wasting money, no matter how wealthy they are, they are not. And now it's this year and Suze Orman finds herself purchasing a bunny rabbit outfit that the daddy’s going to wear little bunny hats for all the men to wear that are gonna be on this cart that we're going to decorate. Great, a little bunny outfit for Tommy J. That is, you know the little baby's name. And we're participating and I can't believe it. Oh my God, and want to hear what's also crazy about it? Is that I'm excited. I'm excited about it. Something's happening to me, everybody, I don't know what it is, but that's not the point of this week's podcast. I just wanted to tell you that story. All right, let's get to the point. And the point is, are you a rabbit? Are you a rabbit? And what do I mean by that? I will tell you. It was years and years and years ago. And one of the things that I did on the side besides being the financial person that you know me to be, is I was a producer of shows. And I would put on big shows for 5,000 people for 10,000 people. I would bring in Betty Buckley and Mandy Patinkin, and all these people and have an orchestra in the middle of the lake and all these people would come and it would be my production. And this one year I was putting on a show for a woman who in India is considered a living saint. And 5,000 people approximately were going to be there. And I'm thinking what can I do different this year than I've done all the other years that I did this show? And I come up with this idea of I know I'm going to get a Siberian tiger, a Siberian tiger, and this one that I did get by the way weighed about £600. And I'm going to get a Siberian tiger that is trained, and while all these people are sitting in this massive hall, this tiger with its trainer will walk down the middle aisle and it will walk up to the chair where this woman is sitting, and it will perform these majestic tricks and then it will leave and everybody will just be oh my God, that was fabulous! So I did that. I found a tiger and a trainer, I brought them to New York where the show was, and now the people are sitting there, and I'm sitting in the front because I'm watching this happen, and the tiger and the trainer walk down the aisle. And just like I had imagined everybody's going oh wow, look how beautiful that tiger is. And the tiger is brought, and now is sitting right in front of this woman. And before the tiger starts to do its tricks, it's sitting there, and everybody is watching. The woman looks at somebody, and motions for them to bring her this little stuffed animal, this little rabbit. And she was going to offer it to the tiger as a gift. And so she has brought this little rabbit and gives it to the tiger, and now the tiger has this stuffed rabbit in its mouth. And now it is drooling, and now it is having an instinct, it's killer instinct is starting to come out, and you can see the trainer who's holding this tiger with these chains, you can see the trainer, his arms, his like blood vessels are like busting, you know when those blue veins come up or whatever they are, his arms, you can see he's holding this tiger with all of his might. And he looks over at me and he says to me, he says get that rabbit out of the tiger's mouth. And I'm like me? You're talking to me? How do you expect me to get that tiger's mouth open and get the rabbit and I'm like what are you kidding me? But before I know it, I walk up I grab the rabbit and it's out of the tiger's mouth. Okay. And everybody's watching this, and I'm like going is it going wrong? And the tiger immediately starts to calm down. I'm thinking okay we're gonna start this over again. The tiger sits down, everybody's calm. The woman is laughing, as if she knew that was what was going to happen. Of course she did most likely. And now the trainer is trying to get the tiger to do tricks. And the tiger cannot remember one trick. All the tiger is doing is looking over at me, because I have the rabbit still in my hands. And even though I now hide the rabbit, the tiger is just totally focused on that rabbit. Totally distracted, forgets all of its tricks and the woman says, leave to the trainer and the tiger. Alright. They leave. The program goes on, the other things went according to plan except for that. But the woman before she left, she asked for a microphone. And then she proceeded to give this talk. And this talk was about the tiger. And how is it possible that this mighty powerful tiger got distracted by a stuffed rabbit? How is that possible? And the tiger forgot everything that it had learned. And then she asked all of us to think about that. And then she gets up from her seat, and she starts to walk down the middle aisle. And I now am in the back of the hall waiting for her, thinking I would escort her out. And she comes right up to me right up to my face, and she says looking at me, rabbit. And then walks away. I'm like did you just call me a rabbit? What does that mean? Why did you call me a rabbit? And now my mind is going everywhere. And I realized after thinking about this, what she was saying to me is, Suze, in what way are you a rabbit? In what way do you distract others from doing that which you know they should do? And in what way do others distract you? In what way are others rabbits in your life? And I started to look around and I started to think about my own actions. I started to think about all these things and I realized, oh my God, it's true. I started to do something, and then I get distracted. Or I see somebody else doing something, and I distract them. So I am telling you this story because you are a powerful woman. You know what you should be doing. You know the tricks of your trade. Yet you let others be a rabbit in your life. You let your children at times be rabbits in your life. You let your spouse at times be rabbits in your life. You let your job, you let all kinds of things be a rabbit in your life and you get distracted from the goal. You get distracted from being the strong, smart and secure women that you want to be. I know you do, because I did. We decide things such as, all right, forget about money for a second. We're gonna lose 20 pounds. And we really start hard. We're exercising every day, we're watching what we're eating. We're probably on the Keto Diet. We're probably who knows what? And we're really focused. And then we go over to somebody's house for dinner, or we go out to a restaurant to eat. And then we get distracted because the rabbits of dessert, the rabbits of the bread on the table with the butter, the rabbits of the drinks that are offered. All these things that we have been staying away from, are now in front of us, and we get distracted from our goal. And before you know it, you're eating dessert, you're eating bread, you're eating potatoes, you're eating all these things, and now you've gained back all the weight that you just spent two weeks losing. The same is true with money. You stay focused, you're putting $100 a month away. You're gonna fund your Roth IRA, you're going to invest, you're gonna get out of credit card debt. You're gonna do your must have documents, you're gonna pay down your student loan, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, you're gonna do that, you're gonna do this, and you get distracted. And then you stop doing it all. So on this Sunday, it would be great if we could all take a vow to ourselves, that we are no longer going to be a rabbit in anybody else's life. And if a rabbit happens to come in front of us, we're gonna shoo it away, as we don't have time to be distracted. We don't have time not to march forward towards our goal. So while I'm at the Easter day parade, looking at all these stuffed rabbits, including the ones that I myself purchased for my own family so they can participate, I'm gonna have to seriously contemplate. Was that a smart thing to do or was it not? All right. Only time will tell. But here's what else time will tell. Want to be part of the Women & Money podcast? I want you to be. Because remember on Thursdays we do Ask Suze Anything and you know, I answer a lot of your emails, I'm sure you're out there and you're thinking, sure you do, Suze. Sure you do. Well, I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be able to do it. But I have answered almost 100% of every single email that has come in over the past two months. You know it and I know it, sometimes I don't. But I almost always do. Not that I'm promising you I'm going to continue to do so. But you just never know. So why not send in your question and again, can you make it short? I don't need to read your entire life's history. Send it to asksuzepodcast@gmail.com. And if you want, you can also call in and leave it at 1-877-545-7893 and of course 7893 spells Suze. And as I asked you to do for me every single week, can you just go to Apple podcast, scroll down when you're on my podcast here to the very bottom, and give the podcast a star rating? Can you do that for me? The more stars we get, or the more reviews we get. You have to be honest, if you don't like it, you should say. So the more people know about it and the more people that know about it, the more lives we can change, especially for the women out there, and the men smart enough to listen.