Women & Money with Suzanne Leydecker

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.What would you do if you suddenly inherited more money than you ever imagined? Would all your problems be solved? Or like today's guest, would you discover that money doesn't fix everything, Especially when it comes to love, relationships and self worth? Today, I'm excited to introduce Suzanne Lydecker, a mother, philanthropist, speaker, and author of the compelling book A Woman on My Journey of Self Discovery Through Love and Money.

Jennifer Norman:
What would you do if you suddenly inherited more money than you ever imagined? Would all your problems be solved? Or, like today’s guest, would you discover that money doesn’t fix everything—especially when it comes to love, relationships, and self-worth? Today, I’m excited to introduce Suzanne Leydecker, a mother, philanthropist, speaker, and author of the compelling book A Woman On Top: My Journey of Self-Discovery through Love and Money. Suzanne's journey took an unexpected turn at 47 when she became a newly single mother of three and inherited a significant amount of money following the passing of her parents. What seemed like a financial blessing soon revealed deep challenges, especially in her relationships and personal growth. With a master's degree in Marriage and Family Counseling from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a certificate in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, Suzanne is uniquely equipped to help others. She has since turned her personal story into a mission to support women in discovering their purpose, practicing self care, and setting boundaries in love and life. Today, Suzanne will share how wealth impacted her journey. From feelings of guilt and the pressure to be overly generous to the hard earned lessons about establishing healthy boundaries in relationships. But most importantly, we'll explore how she's now using her experience to empower other women to live authentically and courageously. By the end of this episode, you'll gain valuable insights on self discovery, financial independence, and the importance of balancing generosity with self care.

Jennifer Norman:
So sit back, relax, and prepare to be inspired by Suzanne Leydecker's remarkable story of transformation and her powerful book, A Woman on Top. Welcome to the show, Suzanne.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Thank you, Jennifer. Wow, I'm so happy to be here. And thank you for that beautiful introduction. It actually sounds like I know what I'm doing.

Jennifer Norman:
You do know what you're doing because you have gone through it. Now everybody's going to be very interested to hear about what happened in your life. Please tell us what happened leading up to the time when you were 47 years old.

Suzanne Leydecker:
All right, So I grew up in a family that was perfectly designed to write a book about love and money. And by the way, when I went to publish my book on Amazon, there is no category for 'love and money' on Amazon that you have to pick out two categories that you want to be in. I'm in dating and midlife management or something. But I was like, wow, there's a lot of people talking about love. There's a lot of people talking about money...

Jennifer Norman:
And maybe the love for money...

Suzanne Leydecker:
Love for money. I mean, everything, right? And nobody's talking about the big elephant in the room. Now we know because they told us that. And I know from personal experience that sometimes when women get married, our sex drive tends to fall off. And we're like, not tonight. There's a headache. I have a headache. Then they get divorced and they're all over town.

Suzanne Leydecker:
But people tend to talk about money less than they talk about sex. And so that is a real critical thing in a relationship when you're getting involved with somebody to kind of find out what's going on. So the first chapter of my book is called The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree. And it seems to me, Jennifer, the one that everybody is the most attracted to, because even if they didn't grow up like I did, it got some weird messages around love and money growing up. Who made the money, who spent money, who had an allowance. If you were loved, did you get money? Did you get money as a kid if you did your chores really well, or was it taken away if didn't do something that your parents told you to do? I didn't really realize at the time. And my father was quite successful. And then he got some very serious Alzheimer's and passed away.

Suzanne Leydecker:
But he had set up this second to die life insurance policy, which was built by a bunch of crooks, really honestly. And I never knew whether I knew about the policy, but I didn't really know anything. And so once my mother died, I called the insurance company and I was like, I think I'm going to need to speak to a manager. And they're like, oh, no, we can help you. And they took one look at it and they're like, we can't help you. You're going to have to talk to a manager. And I was like, I know. So eventually, I was just telling Jennifer before we came on the cast, there were two checks because they were generational skipping.

Suzanne Leydecker:
One of them, they sent them by regular mail with a post stamp on it in 2007. I was like, what? Doesn't make any sense to me today. Like, it's just crazy. And of course they got lost in the mail. Strangely enough, insurance companies, as far as I know, are not big on paying out on policies. They're big on people paying.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, yes.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Not to say that you shouldn't have one, because it's a good thing, especially if you have children or partner where you own a house together or something such as that. So when I was 47, all of a sudden the checks came and you might have. Remember that 2008 was a major disaster in the stock market. Somehow all my money was in cash.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Because I haven't figured out what to do with it.

Jennifer Norman:
So what a great time to buy.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Smelling like a rose. Right. And I did quite well with it. But I noticed, for example, over time, like, I remember going into one of the local bars. I live in Aspen, Colorado. Back then it was slightly affordable. Now it's just ridiculous.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I was with a friend and we just had the early bird special. We were there for literally an hour and a half. And the price on the menu was like $10 for an entree.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, it was cheap.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And the bill came and it was like $237. And I was like, what? So the bartender, who I knew, who, when I first moved here, I got all the freebies, I was kind of an attractive 40 year old, was pouring me $43 glasses of wine without asking. And he told me I drank four of them. And I'm like, well, I love wine, but I don't think I could drink four in an hour and a half. So I felt kind of... That was the day I realized that I was being treated differently. And I've never really cared about people that have money. So all my friends here were kind of poor, broke ski bums.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And so all of a sudden I was different. I met a man like two months after I inherited the money. I didn't know that till I wrote my memoir. You want to solve the problems of your life? Go write your own personal memoir. You will really see what's going on. So anyway, so I went through three broken relationships where they were young, all of them, they were athletes in some way because that was what was important to me and I wouldn't trade it... I traveled all over the world with the US Ski team. And I mean, I had amazing time, but they were super hot. Really just hot. And broker than crap!

Jennifer Norman:
Yes.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And each time I thought I could save these men and that they would love me. And everybody told me, oh, they're only around for the money. And Jennifer, that was so hurtful. Everyone's like, I was like, do I not have anything else to offer? And by the way, money could be translated into beauty, talent, your business, and nobody really prepares you mentally. Like, financially, I did quite well with the money, but emotionally, I didn't have a clue.

Jennifer Norman:
And a lot of times I think it can be quite either intimidating for men, like, the more successful men like to see that a woman has more than you, or if you're attracting younger people, then they're looking for a sugar mama. And there's an awkward dynamic, potentially.

Suzanne Leydecker:
It was an awkward dynamic and everybody reminded me of it constantly. And I spent years in guilt and shame. And the turning point for me, like, I've been working on myself and I was just thinking about this the other day that I have been wondering since I was a small child what the heck we're doing here. And I think that if I was to look at it from a brain point of view, it's to be loving. Like, it's not to make all the money in the world. I don't care how much your net worth rises, you will always default back to the level of your self worth. So how are you going to work? I know your podcast is a lot about self care and actually I will share right now the new pillars of my coaching business, my speaking business, is that three things going on.

Suzanne Leydecker:
One of my women that worked with me just this morning was like, I'm having a problem in a relationship. She was taking something personally. And I was like, what are the three pillars of the things that we're trying to spread to women all over the planet? And she's like, I don't know. It's like, we've been doing this for two years. Personal responsibility. And that means for women, not taking too much. Like, it's not all our faults. Put up a big sign after you boyfriend breaks up with you that says, it is not all my fault.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Because as women, we tend to take more. My number one biggest thing is learn to say no without apologizing at your boundaries up front. What I did not do with all the men was I was like, oh, sure. And then I set this precedent of me being a sugar mama, and I didn't like that.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And the third one, the most important one, where this woman who works with me, who does all my branding and my social media did not know the three pillars of our business because they were touching her personally. And so I was like, you're taking this personally, that gets us ladies in a lot of trouble.

Jennifer Norman:
So is number three, 'don't take it personally?'

Suzanne Leydecker:
Don't take it personally as best as you can. Because it just creates problems. I used to cry, get upset. And after writing a book and my whole life, as I said, have been designed to do this, when I went to the University of Santa Monica, which is a more spiritual practice of seeing things from a 10,000 foot perspective, things began to shift. So my whole book, if you choose to read it, which happens to be a really good read I hear from people every day, is don't do this. Don't do what? I did do this. So because my outer journey of trying to figure out how to be successful financially to be a woman on top, and that doesn't mean we're on top of men. Although if you Google that, you will get a lot of naked women on top.

Suzanne Leydecker:
It means being on top of your game, whatever that is.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
However that looks, showing up in ways where you can be your best self and from there you can attract people in your life. Jennifer, I'm curious.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
How old are you?

Jennifer Norman:
I'm 54.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Oh, God, you look like you're 12.

Jennifer Norman:
My Asian genes.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Your Asian genes. Well, anyway, so for all you younger people out there that might be listening as well, because you've got two wonderful women that have a lot of experience in life. So again, don't do this. Do this is what I hear a lot from clients, from people, from women. I live in a very successful town with a lot of people have done quite well. Women beautiful in their 50s, 60s, whatever it is, but also in their 20s and 30s. Like the word on the street is, oh, we don't need men anymore. We're becoming financially independent and we don't want to clutter up our lives with men.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And they all are acting like little babies and none of them are going to college. And you guys were building up this story. That's not helping any. I had actually an opportunity to sit down with the guys from Mattel around the Ken and Barbie movie. And no matter what you think of the movie, I think Ken needs to be shown a little bit of a better light because he's just feeding into. Do you experience this with people? You know, where people. Women are like, I just don't feel like dealing with it anymore.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, absolutely. It is one of the reasons why I called my business, 'The Human Beauty Movement and not like the female beauty movement or the women's beauty movement. Because I really believe that in various circumstances, everybody can be oppressed, everybody can feel trauma, everybody has a story to tell. And so while I appreciate the feminist movement, I do not consider myself a feminist from that regard. I consider myself a humanist, not from like the religious perspective. It's human. And I love that we're aligned in the fact that you say you don't have to devalue men so that women can rise. We can elevate both.

Jennifer Norman:
And it's not about the male bashing, it's not about gender bashing or race bashing or anything bashing, age, whatever. It's that the understanding and appreciation that there's compassion for self and then there's compassion for others along the journey of life.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I think it's really important because we cannot leave 50, approximately 50% of our people on this planet behind while we rise up.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, yeah. And certainly. And because there's always in physics, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The patriarchy and being a male dominance society as we have in the west and in many other cultures, is that like eons, for centuries and millennia it has been this way. And now we are coming into a divine feminine evolution where there is this meshing of gender, there is a meshing of roles and responsibilities in society and there's confusion and chaos and that's what the divine feminine means. And soon we're going to have a place where feminines are probably seen as the more dominant of the genders. However, there is compassion and there's understanding for everyone in this realm and how people react to trauma or feeling oppressed. Some people will be like, well I don't need.

Jennifer Norman:
And that's a reaction, that's a knee jerk reaction. And then I think with maturity and with understanding and appreciation, then you come to a place where you can kind of equivalize and say I realize it for what it was. And now I'm in a place of acceptance and understanding certainly.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Well, I'm going to give a push for this book called Word Slut which is all about our how our language has been based on patriarchal language. Of course it's going to get lost in how words, for example, it's so bad became to mean. It's so good. And everybody knows what that means now.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
So. And they change over morph of time. But one of the things that I'm just going to touch on something that you said, you said I'm not a feminist. Right. So, so funny because Amanda, who wrote the Word Slut, the only word that she did not define, which she threw around a lot was the word feminist. So in my opinion, what I grew up thinking was, is that feminists were bra burning, left wing, male bashing lesbians who did not like men.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
So I remember being at a dinner. This was a number of years ago, but I was still. It took me forever to write this book. 10 years. So I was at a dinner at a table out summertime Lake Tahoe, and one of my sons goes like, well, you're a feminist. And the hairs got way up on the back of my neck and I'm like, I am not a feminist. Do you know what feminist in the dictionary really means? Equality. It's all that it means.

Suzanne Leydecker:
It's just. I don't know why they picked the word feminist, but a lot of us still associate...

Jennifer Norman:
And because of that, yeah, I am absolutely pro women becoming equal. And yet I think that there is such baggage with the word from those associations that you had described earlier. And that's why I don't like to attach myself to a word that can be so misconstrued. But I am very much for equality. I belong to women's CEO groups. And I understand that there still is such a lack of equality in terms of the women in certain roles that they wish to get to in pay and all of these things, from a patriarchal perspective, frankly, because the way that hierarchy is set up, is patriarchal.

Jennifer Norman:
So there is that conversation as well. Is that feminism doesn't mean having to have women CEOs, it means for women to feel confident and enlightened and fulfilled in anything that they choose to do.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I have another interesting question. So let's say we. I know you live down in LA. We poll everybody in the greater LA area. Everybody. And we ask them a question. Do you believe that women should be paid equally for an equal job done?

Jennifer Norman:
And I would imagine that a lot of people would say yes, but a lot of people would also say no.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Well, I. This is my theory.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I haven't tested it yet. Want to test it, but I would say say that 99.5% would say absolutely. There would be a 5% holdout. Those men who are like, I like my woman naked in the bedroom and in the kitchen. So we might. And maybe my statistics are slightly skewed, but my question is, if everyone believes it, why isn't it happening? And I can only come up with one good answer. We don't all believe it.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Not men, not women. There's something that we've lived for so long, and I think it's important that we do not ignore that. Generation after generation after generation. We've been doing it a certain way that was, was working and now it's no longer working. So I don't even think that we as women think that we're beginning to. Because of the statement you made earlier. I don't think we think we're as good as men.

Jennifer Norman:
And that's deep work to do.

Suzanne Leydecker:
That's deep work. And just by acknowledging that and saying that we all have some racial prejudice against different races, different religions, homosexuality, that, I mean homosexuality I think is the leader of all this. They're actually really growing into way more acceptance than female...rise of female. Because there's sometimes it's, I think that men don't want to see change, women don't even want to see change. It's just, you have to keep going. I mean, eventually we'll all be taken over by robots. So let's pick a place here, people.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, we can't deny the progress that has been made over the past century. I mean, it's been an extraordinary exponential change as far as women's rights, civil rights, racial rights, all of these things. And so there is certainly movement whether or not we have been able to achieve pay parity. No, not yet. But hopefully the gap continues to close. And hopefully we understand that there are different ways to be successful because the way that society has been built and what we know has been so patriarchal that changing that and seeing what is possible could take a while, even as all of these shifts are happening. And so there are a lot of question marks and to your earlier point about do we think that we are equals? And I think a lot of it still stems from the fact that people will still question women in biology and having to take time off for the kids and primarily being the one that takes care of the kids. And when menopause happens, 50% of women quit their high paying jobs because of mental and all these issues that happen when their estrogen depletes and it impacts their psyches, it impacts their emotions, it impacts a whole lot.

Jennifer Norman:
And then they start doubting themselves and feeling insecure and not remembering things as much unless they're able to get some kind of help for that. And so I think that there are certain biological, physiological, social things that are still in our psyches that cause us to feel this impairment, that glass ceiling still existing. It's pretty extraordinary to see the progress that has been made.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Yes, that is for sure. And I think that progress can happen instantly in some cases. And I think that going back to your thoughts thing of self care. Like, we have this whole like to do list of self cares. Right. And then sometimes we don't get to them and then we beat ourselves up because we didn't self care. I think it's important to remember that self care happens with those three pillars. It happens by taking personal responsibility and not too much don't get ladies.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Or learning to say no as a complete sentence, which this is a very new practice for me.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And I've learned how many places that I actually. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. That is a tried and true litmus test for should I be doing it now. It could not be a hell yeah for a lot of different reasons.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah. We're so used to being like, well, I need to do it because I don't want to hurt their feelings or it might rock the boat. And that's the way that we have been conditioned, is to just be polite, living in polite society. And they're like, oh, what kind of person are you i you're like, "No, you can't do this. No." It's like you're...that's almost rude or just obnoxious in some cases. It's perceived.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Well, we're gonna break that cycle.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I want to talk about the fact... Because you had come through this inheritance and some people were saying, like, oh, well, you didn't earn that. And so it gets to either imposter syndrome or feeling like your self worth is connected to your bank account, but yet it's also attributed to how much you worked for it. Like, that must have been like a real big thing in terms of you're grappling with the situation that you came into. Tell us about that.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I actually wrote about that in my book. I was at this thing for suicide prevention, the Hope Center here in Aspen at an event, and there was a woman, I think I named them Caroline and somebody, in my book, because, it was so impactful. And I knew the woman. I did not really know the husband. But we were sitting around. Again, I've been doing this for 11 years. So I'm involved in talking with people all over the world for a long time.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And this man was like, I told him I inherited the money. I used to be really afraid, Jennifer. I didn't want anybody to know.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
To be seen as different or less than or all those things that I was perceived at. But I told him I inherited the money. And he's like, well, we were having some kind of conversation it went off into, "Well, women that make the money, they have a right to have a say. If you didn't make it and you just inherited it or you got divorced from it, then you really don't have a vote."

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. You're perceived as like a trust fund baby or somebody that just...Yeah. Kind of like lucked your way through life. Wow.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I didn't know what to say. Yeah. I just stood there. It was like a deer caught in the headlights. Finally, he realized what he had said, and he turned about this shade (of red). Oh, okay. And I was like, it's okay. It just proved to me that this still is a thing. And honestly, even for women that have been really successful in their business, and you go to sell it, it's like you've won the lottery.

Suzanne Leydecker:
We know what happens to most lottery winners. Their families break up. They don't know who their friends are. Generally, they lose the money in three to five years no matter what they got. And a lot of them commit suicide. I'm still here to talk to you. I'm still around.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And I actually did quite well with the money. My brother lost it all, every single penny of it. But as a child, I was called the little girl. Little girl, you don't know how to handle anything. And I was like. I just felt like, yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
So you're still keeping that around. Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
You still keep those stories. And one of the things that I talk about, the first chapter is The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree. Like, you got to figure out what apple orchard, what tree you're from, what rotten apples that may have served you back then to survive in whatever familial situations we grew up in. Even if they look pretty good on the outside. There's not a lot of those fairy tale, I don't now, Dick Van Dyke type relationships, I don't think. And so we to go through our stuff, but figure out, like, if do you even want to be an apple tree? Maybe you want to live in a peach grove. I don't know.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Going thinking outside of your box is critical to moving towards healing and love. And that's that self care piece for me is those three things personal responsibility, learning to say no without feeling badly, and not writing the text 15 times? Yeah. No, no, no. You write it once. I'm sorry. This won't work for me.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, no use.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Not even. Don't even say you're sorry. See, I'm trying to get out of it. Taking things personally are huge components of self care. We think massage, nails. Yes. That Is too. But really taking care of your building exactly. Your Persona and who you are and how you contribute to the world is really what self care is.

Jennifer Norman:
Right. In terms of self care and personal responsibility, I want to break down this idea a little bit more and get to the bottom of it, because I think that for women and for people in general, a lot of times we use this language and we... These mindsets that are disempowering. It's somebody else's fault, it's this person's fault, it's that. It's the situation that I'm in. But personal responsibility looks different. Can you describe exactly what you mean by that and perhaps give some examples?

Suzanne Leydecker:
Yeah. So personal responsibility. Yes. Means I'll tell you a story. Always tell stories. Stories should have a point, and every point should have a story. So if you're trying to tell somebody to impress them, do that. So my story was that it was all my fault.

Suzanne Leydecker:
On the breakup of my book it's specifically about these three boyfriends. But then how that also spilled over into my business, into saying just that one last time. Oh, I'll hire him, I'll pay him, I'll do whatever. Because I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings or not do business with them. It was like wearing. Honestly. But on the last breakdown, which I broke up with with him, but I knew I kind of had to.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And it was devastating. Jennifer. And I loved him, but I was enabling him. He's doing much better now without me being around, taking care of him. But I fell into a funk. And it was 2020, September of 2020, and I came back to Aspen. I was kind of living with him in Michigan, and my kids were all here. Just everybody wanted their kids to be around.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Oh, we're doing potluck dinners every night. Everybody's... I was absolutely miserable. I live in this old Victorian. So my bedroom is right off the kitchen. And the kids are here. My nephew is here. They're having a great time.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I'm crying in my soup every day when they tried. God bless them. I love my children so much to get me out of this funk. And I just. I couldn't do it. And my daughter. That's why I went back to the node. Like, she made me a sign and said, this is not all your fault.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Because I don't know about everybody that might be joining here today, but I took a lot of things, like it was all my fault throughout my life.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, that sounds like personal responsibility. So what would people say as far as taking on that guilt. Because that is another thing too, because we do. We take everything and we think it is. Oh, my gosh, this is me. What's wrong with me? Why is this happening?

Suzanne Leydecker:
What's wrong with me?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And so what would you say is the difference between taking personal responsibility, the idea that you should take responsibility, versus the concept that everything is my fault.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Well, let me answer that in a kind of different way. What happened is, is that I knew that when I was in this complete funk, that how some people ask me, well, how did you get out of that? Because 2020 was my lowest of lows. My kids had to take me to the Hope Center, which is the suicide Center I was at, weirdly enough.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, my goodness.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I wasn't in a good way.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And I was partially sunk down because I repeated the same behavior over and over again. And the epilogue of my book talks about things like hiring slowly, firing quickly. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. Everybody's so busy peeking at everybody else's grass to see they're not taking care of their own grass. Simplifying my life, I used Marie Kondo's – another incredible book - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which I think I'll be tidying until I'm 60, and then I'll be rearranging the dirt or something, I swear to God. But, like, the steps that I took. So I didn't necessarily say, okay, well, I'm going to fix my issues with personal responsibility. What I did was I did all these other things that all of a sudden created personal responsibility.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I remember somebody asked me, like, life changing moment. I do a lot of water skiing. I want to go to the senior world Water Skiing Competition as a competitor. So I was on the end of a water ski dock, and I knew this story about this man. I hope it's okay to get a little bit creative here. He was, he told me the story about how he met this woman and they were dating. We were dating, and she all of a sudden wanted to go out more. And he tried to explain to her that the only reason that he liked to go out is to pick up strange women and possibly do some partying.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay...

Suzanne Leydecker:
And so I knew this story. And I had had an experience of being with this man where two times he'd gotten really mad, like, not talked to me for two years because I said some...broke some kind of a conversation confidence of his. I didn't think it was any big deal, but it was a whole thing. So something, I don't really know what it was, Jennifer, was like, maybe we should do something differently, I guess is my biggest message. So I was like, hey, do you mind if I tell the story about...And he's like, sure. Now I did it in front of the three other people that were standing there. The better way probably would have been to take him away and ask him, but I didn't.

Suzanne Leydecker:
He's like, sure, I told the story. Everybody thought it was hysterical. And we all went off and I left that water ski dock going. "You did something differently. You did something differently." Like, that's my biggest message to my coaching clients is, are you willing to do something differently? I don't really care what it is. I'm just going to tell you one more story.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I know this couple. She's absolutely beautiful. She was also in like, you are, involved way in the yoga world. And there was a man who lived in town who met her and fell in love with her. And this was the one, right? And so now they've been married for 15 years. And she has a really hard time because he is constantly texting. He's quite wealthy and he, she feels like he's not paying attention to her. She doesn't feel heard. And so during our short time together, one day she said to me, yeah, and he really likes to go to dinner early.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And like, I have to be ready like half an hour before we get there. We live five minutes from town down, so I just don't show up in time. And I was like, that's really interesting. So she wanted to help. She wanted help with this thing that she didn't like him not paying attention to her. And I said, oh my God, I have a great idea for you. Why don't you see what it's like to just show up a half an hour early for dinner in your kitchen, maybe 35 minutes before he gets there. Bring your phone.

Suzanne Leydecker:
If he works on his phone. I know we all got plenty to do on our phones. Just do that. And I know that if she changed her behavior here, it would impact what was happening here. I can pretty much almost 100% guarantee that her trying to fix his problem was not working. So I said, well, why don't you just try, try it for a week. It doesn't have to be forever. You can be late next week.

Suzanne Leydecker:
She couldn't do it. A lot of people, they're not willing. That's part going back to the personal responsibility. Like, what can you do to make your life better rather than trying to worry about making somebody else's. You talked about that whole victim thing. Like we're like, well, it's all their fault. We can't get to it. I don't have time.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Time is a big victim thing too. A lot of those problems about sticky notes, like a mile which I, I had my purse in the driveway yesterday. I was working with a guy that was at whatever and it started to rain. Well, oh, my sticky notes. You can't read them. So I was like, huh, that one away.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, well, pattern interruption is very powerful for trying to get people out of their comfort zones and thinking differently because it's like if you can get your body to do something different, if you can think different, then your life can change. It's like a one degree trajectory change. And then soon after a period of time, then you'll find that you're on a different course and it perhaps can be directed more in your favor.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Yeah, I, I mean by me just doing that one silly thing on the end of a water ski dock next time I was like, oh, well, maybe because I tend to be one of these people that has a big mouth and I want to be liked. So I want to know, I want to tell everything that I know about everybody. And sometimes people have said to me, like, for example, my daughter got pregnant, told me pretty early. She said, don't tell anyone. I told a few friends, not many. Now I'm in trouble because some of my friends don't even know because I got so gun shy. She, it really upset her and so I really got that. I wanted my friends to know because I'm going to be a grandma, excited about that.

Suzanne Leydecker:
But anyway, I really recognize that telling other people's secrets or talking about somebody or doing something does not certainly gets me into a big ball of mess. And then I have to clean that up and apologize and do whatever if you can. Sometimes with taking things personally. Like water off a duck's back.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Looking back at your journey or experiences, what do you hope that our listeners would take away from your story? What's the legacy that you hope to leave behind?

Suzanne Leydecker:
Oh, gosh, I see so many women that are so loving and so kind and so beautiful and so sad because they can't find someone to love. And I can tell you they'll all tell me, oh, I don't need anybody. I don't. But I can tell you in 97 seconds if they, if they do or they don't. And I'm here to tell you that most of them do want somebody. And the only way that they're going to achieve that is by calling in the one.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I'll leave you with one last story. So the last story in my book is about a woman who lives in Denver. She was on a board with me, so I would see her every once in a while. We weren't best friends, but I like her. And over the years she got divorced. She did a lot of dating apps. When I would go down to go to these board meetings because we used to have them in person pre Covid. I would see her out in the Starbucks or whatever having a date. And I saw her multiple times, multiple men. Nothing was working out.

Suzanne Leydecker:
So at this event that we were at like three or four years ago in somebody's beautiful backyard in Cherry Creek, she sits me down and she's like, I gotta talk to you. And I was like, sure. And she's like, I quit my job. And I'm like, why did you quit your job? And she's like, I need more time to spend looking for men because he's just not coming. She's here. Okay. Dead serious. And I said, oh, well, I mean, she'd already started looking for the man, gotten the job.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Now she's like, I'm gonna go back to it. I was very empathetic.

Jennifer Norman:
And she was looking for a man to take care of her. Is that what it was?

Suzanne Leydecker:
No, she very. She was wealthy, she was beautiful, she's financially independent. She. Okay, no, she just wanted that companionship.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And so. So I had seen some of. I mean, I hate to say it, but a little bit of desperation on her part in the past. And so I just really encouraged her. This was in 2021. I encouraged her to call in the one, work on herself, weirdly enough. Now, I cannot take credit for this, but I also found it to be very unusual. I think on some level she heard what I had to say.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And it's not like I'm giving the God's message. I just happen to be the one to say, hey, let's find some ways to work on you changing one thing. Hoping that it's going to change over here. The magic man's going to come in. She met the magic man and she married him.

Jennifer Norman:
Yay, Magic man. That's amazing. I love that story.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I can't tell you for sure that, oh my woo woo powers. All I just did was make a suggestion for consideration.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Suzanne Leydecker:
And maybe she was one of those unique people that did take the advice, did start working on herself. And then he walked in. Well, I've never met him. I just.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, the truth is, yeah, once we fall in love with ourselves, then we call in, as you said, the people in our lives that really just vibe the best with us.

Suzanne Leydecker:
Oh, I forgot the most important part of the story. I'm like, I asked her, what if he never comes in? Then how do you want to show up? So it's worth thinking about. Oh, Jennifer, I've had such a good time being with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Suzanne Leydecker, everyone. Suzanne, thank you so much for being my guest on the podcast today. I'll put all of your information in the show notes so that people can find you and learn more about you as well as A Woman On Top. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human. All right.

Suzanne Leydecker:
I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Absolutely.Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.