In Memory Of Dr. Gladys McGarey: Discovering Love, Life, and Laughter at 103 and Guide to Thriving Through Adventure and Compassion Across a Century

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1:38so really sad news i don't know if you remember great podcast guest she's been on twice gladys mccrary 103 years old a doctor you know i think about the things she said in this podcast almost every single day, to be honest. How do you live to have such a high quality of life and be happy all the way up to and through the age of 103 and still be, she was a doctor, is still practicing. And I was actually even gonna visit her next month. I was going to Arizona and I was gonna see if I could see her and interview her in person, but just heard she passed away the other day and really sad about it. such a life-changing guest.

2:27We're re-releasing that podcast here. And even if you've listened to it, listen again, I don't know what else to say. It's just a really wise person. And it's worth in our society listening to and really taking close to heart the advice of the elders who have been there, done it, and have the wisdom to tell the tale. And here she is, Gladys McCrary.

2:55This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

3:12How are you feeling? I'm feeling fine. I had that accident with a tricycle, broke three ribs, but that's five weeks ago, and I'm all well. Wait a second. You had an accident with a tricycle. You broke three ribs. And of course, any statement like that has to be followed with. And now you're 103 or 104 years old. How old are you? I'm 103 still. Okay, I don't want to make you older than you are. I won't say. I have to live each moment to get to be 104. So I still am 103. You know, and so, okay, you've had this tricycle accident. What happened? Well, I was riding my tricycle, and she got stuck in one of the dips in the road and tossed me.

4:05She threw me off, and I acted on my back and broke three ribs. And now I've got, I'm punishing her because she's in the back of my porch, and I told her she shouldn't have done that. But anyway, we're writing our story about how she tossed me. And can I ask, were you scared when you realized you had been hurt? Well, it hurt. I don't know whether I was scared or not. I guess I was. But, you know, those things are frightening. And I didn't know what had happened, but I knew I hurt. and so we got an x-ray and there it was and the first x-ray said that I had one of the ribs that was not attached. I mean it was you know it had not gotten it had gotten detached but the next x-ray we got it had found its place and we were back in shape.

5:06And now you're feeling fully recovered or mostly recovered? It's healed. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, and this is why, look, in your book, The Well-Lived Life, you share these six secrets, which really are more difficult than they sound, a lot of these secrets. And, you know, I read the book a year ago when we first spoke, and I read the book more recently to prepare for this. and I really find myself kind of in tears when I'm reading it, particularly towards the end, and you're describing painful experiences that you've been through. And I don't know, this is going to sound weird, but I don't know if I want to live to be your age.

5:52Does that sound weird? No, because I don't know that I want to live, but how long I want to live. You know, it depends on how much I can do to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. I mean, there's life that needs to be lived, people that are reaching for their true humanity. I think all around the world, that's what's happening, because that's what I'm hearing from people. The stories that I'm getting from people are about how they were in a spot where they feel really, really stuck. And some of the words that they read or heard or lived helped them to get out of that stuck place and go on with their lives.

6:46And so it's that kind of life-giving juice that love carries through from one person to the next. Let me ask you, like when you were going through your divorce, for instance, with Bill, which happened after 46 years of marriage, did you feel, for instance, loved during those moments? I was so shattered. I was so broken. I was totally useless. I was in my car. I was screaming at the universe. I was yelling at God. I was saying all kinds of, do you want to know, don't want to know, and stuff. But I was so broken that I just, I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't go on any further. and I pulled the car over to the side of the road and I said to myself, am I going to spend the rest of my life this way, feeling this way?

7:55And the words came down to me, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. It had my name in it. Be glad. Oh, oh, okay. okay okay I back up and I went to my home which at that point was empty except for the dog and I changed my license plate and my license plate read be glad for the rest of the time I was in Phoenix doing my medical work and so that every day that I went to my car I had to see that and people behind me in the traffic had to see that. So I was carrying the message of Be Glad around for the rest of the time I was in practice here. It was that kind of a moment in time when my total brokenness brought me to my knees enough that I was able to answer that.

9:16Yeah, because you mentioned how people are trying to find their true humanity, and how you say in the book is you were always identifying yourself as Bill's wife, and then Bill's divorced wife, and you guys introduced yourself as Drs. Bill and Gladys, and you had to find your true humanity then. I had to. I then became Dr. Gladys. Up until then, I was Bill and Gladys. Yeah. And you talk about how it's possible to learn lessons in these moments when it seems like it's impossible to learn from them. Like you look back over prior times where you had been hurt and you almost have to make this lawyer-like argument with yourself that, okay, I've had bad moments in the past.

10:07I learned from them in the past, which means I can learn from them now, which I think is an interesting and useful technique. But I'm sure when you're actually in the moment when you have to do that, it's very difficult. Well, it's difficult because you don't know the next step and you have to live it. You know, because the next step was, okay, if this is what you're going to spend the rest of your life doing, face up to it. You know, and it was horrible. I mean, the things I was saying, the things I was doing, my whole life at that point was in tatters. So I had to do something with it. The important thing was just stop long enough to be glad about what it is and then see where you'd go.

11:03And that's what's happened. And it's, I mean, look, you've lived such an interesting life starting from your parents. Like your parents worked as, you know, doctors in India. You grew up all over the place. You've met so many interesting people and you've been all over the world. I mean, but it's hard to think. Like you're, I mean, you mentioned how you used to drive a Model A Ford and now people are like casually going into space. Yeah. It's almost like hard to grasp. But I wanted to ask you specific things. You mentioned in the acknowledgments about Edgar Cayce, for instance. So Edgar Cayce is known for,

11:47he wrote books about having psychic powers and he was able to predict things. You also met so many times with Milton Erickson, who was like the founder of various branches of psychology. I mean, you've had this fascinating adventure, 103 year adventure. And what was Milton Erickson like? Like he created hypnotherapy and he convinced himself, he hypnotized himself into not believing he could be crippled from polio. I just wanted to ask you specifically, like what was that like meeting him and seeing him go through this experience. He was a funny guy. I mean, he was colorblind. His wife had all of his clothes in one color because he was colorblind and he would get the weird colors off.

12:44Anyway, he was a very opinionated and actually, amazingly, his opinion used to, they'd stop us in the middle of what we were saying and think, you know, what was that he said? You know, it was that kind of a guy. He didn't just say empty things. He said things that stopped us where we were thinking. and made us think again. So when we had, when my husband Bill met him at a meeting, a medical meeting, and they came home and we started these evenings on Tuesday nights of having, there were about five, I was the only woman, but there were about five of us who would come together on a Tuesday night just to talk about stuff that Milton was talking about.

13:50But at that point, I was pregnant. And by the time I was eight months pregnant, they were staying until 2 o 'clock in the morning on this. And I finally kicked him out because I had to get my arrest. But it was a good thing because when they left, they had to create something else. And they created the American Hypnosis Association. anyway it's that kind of amazing aspect to life itself if you have to go through certain things and you're actually able to step and take a step forward it may seem like the wrong thing to do but if it's for the right reason just do it like what's an example yeah that kicking them out to start the American Hypnosis Society was the right thing to do.

14:53I didn't know it was the right thing to do. I just knew I had to take care of this baby and myself, and so they better take care of themselves, and they did. And do you think, how do you think he did, like how does the mind work? Like how did he basically get himself going again? And, you know, having polio seems to have permanent physical effects. And yet, through the mind, he was able to recover some abilities that he had lost through polio. Well, he found his juice, okay? He found the words that he could say that would allow other people to pay attention to the things he was thinking. And that's what happened with us as a small group.

15:42we began to listen to the things that Milton Erickson was saying and thinking, you know, he's right. And how do we put that into context with our lives? And so from that step on, it took the next step the way life does.

16:15Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates at the end of the day. The most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

16:46And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash Altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

17:39Read James Patterson's Disrupt Everything and Win.

17:47You know, sometimes I would like to believe these things and kind of use the enormous power of the mind to help my life and to move it forward. But there's so much baggage in there, at least telling me that it's just not going to work. that I don't have that kind of power over reality. People always say you view the world from your perspective only, and it's only your perspective that you see the outside world. But I also sort of feel like there's this reality too. We all kind of share this reality and world, and sometimes things are bad, and sometimes things are good, but I can't have any control over that.

18:32Well, let me tell you a story, okay? because my life goes on a story about another James. I had a friend named James McCready, and he was a family friend. We all loved James. And then he moved into dementia, so we had to put him into a facility where he'd be taken care of. And so he had his room, and it was a nice room and all of that. I went to visit him one day and took him a little plant, a little green plant in a little pot. And when I took it to him, I said, now, James, this is your plant. But it needs to be loved and it needs to be taken care of. Now, he's looking all around the world. He didn't respond so that I thought he was even understanding what I was saying.

19:29but I was saying it anyway. And I said, it's going to need water and it's going to need sunshine, but it's your plant to love and take care of. And I talked to him a little bit about this and I put the plant on his windowsill and I left. And a week later, I came back and he met me at the door because he knew that I was coming up. And he met me at the door and he said, magic, magic, magic. and I said what what and he so he said come magic and we went into his room and he says box and he took me over to the air conditioning box on the wall and he says look push this button everything is cool and nice and plant loves it but he says push this button oh everything hot awful plan doesn't like it that's what he told me and I realized that he in his state of whatever you want to call it being alive had taken the message and had put it into action and created a relationship, a loving relationship with the plant in a way that was giving him juice.

21:13It's that amazing kind of ability that we each have to reach to some other living thing. Now, that little plant wasn't anything to speak of. I mean, I just took a little grim plant to him. And he took that and was able to create a story for himself that allowed him to get some juice back in his life because he connected with another living thing. So who are we to say what is the process of reaching to other people and reaching to other aspects of our lives around the world because all of the living stuff in this world is here and it's life and it's love that keep it going. And towards the end of the book, when you talk about the sixth secret, which is spending your energy, I'm recalling the name of the...

22:28Juice. Spend your energy wildly. Juice. Yeah, so what does that actually mean, the word wildly there? Well, like with me taking a plan to that, I mean, what sense does that make? when I took my plan to that little plan to James it made no sense at all how is this man who knows nothing from anything going to it was a juicy stupid thing to do but look what it did yeah and why did you get the inclination to do it because I had the juice to do it and I did it You know, in other words, I thought about it, and I thought, yeah, James might like that. It was just a passing thought, and so I did it. It was that kind of thing that I mean wildly.

23:25What kind of a wild thought is that? You take a little green plant to James. You know, so, but it doesn't just end up so, because the plant was a living thing. James was a living thing. The refrigeration was energy that was a living process. In other words, he connected his living process with the living process of the plant enough to love the plant, enough to create this story. That's what stories are all about. Telling each other and allowing each other to understand what life is about. What strikes me too is that, okay, you could visit your friend, Jim, because on the one hand, maybe there's a sense of obligation.

24:26Oh, he's in this facility and you want to stop by, check in on him. But you infused more into this visit. you kind of, like you said, you kind of almost created a story out of it. Like you did this ridiculous thing, but that's what stands out and creates a story that we could tell today, many years later. Right, right. If you can put some life into actions that you're taking and doing, then you're spending your juice wildly. Who cares, you know, when you throw it off? the whole idea into the air. Well, who cares that you took a little plant to James? Nobody cared. Nobody else cared. James and I are the only two that did.

25:19And so what? You know? Well, I cared and he cared, so we connected and the plant was there. A living process is that ability to accept life at its own terms. Now, having dementia is not a pretty thing. So this wonderful man had shifted into dementia, but he was still the same man who I knew and who as a family we cared about. He used to spend a lot of time with our family, with our kids and so on. But then he wasn't able to. He had shifted into this phase of his life and he was still alive. And as long as there was life there, I cared about him. And how old was he when he suffered from dementia or when he started suffering from it?

26:28Oh, probably in the 60s. When you were younger, what did you think was old? 20. I remember saying to my cousin who had a brother who was 20 years old and I was 10, and I said to her, how does it feel to have a brother that's 20 years old? I remember that because 20, oh my goodness, I'm 10. How can he be 20? Yeah, and I was thinking this when I was reading your story, how you went to Afghanistan when I think you were 86 years old. Right. And so that's almost 20 years ago now. Yeah. But 86 is also old. Oh, yeah. And yet you had confidence to kind of take these adventures. It seems like you were always open to adventure.

27:29You said yes to adventure a lot. Well, my parents did. They went to India in the middle of World War I to take their message of love to Indian people in the jungles. Okay, you started. and I was, my mother went into labor with me at the Taj Mahal. You start your journey with parents like that. It's not an empty journey. Nobody's life is an empty journey. But what if you don't start with parents like that? Like, that sounds amazing. Well, type what you've got. What do you have? You know, you have, maybe it's an empty plan. You know, something that's like that empty plant, who cares? It's something that's alive.

28:23Maybe it's a dog that you have in your life that's alive. Maybe it's a tree. Maybe you have a tree that's a friend. Maybe you have a friend that you don't like very much, but he's your friend, and you play with him, or you, you know, whatever is going on in your life. It's that fact that life creates life and love creates life. And love and life go together like a pregnancy. A pregnancy is a manifestation of a life force within the mother and the baby that are one for nine months or however, and then they become two. You know, the love of the mother creates the life of the baby. The life of the baby takes its first breath.

29:28When the life of the baby takes its first breath, that baby becomes a different soul, a different person. But until at that time, it's one with the mother. It's that kind of an amazing universe that we live in. Do you think it's true the saying that you're only as happy as your saddest child? As what? You can only be as happy as your saddest child.

30:07well whatever however you want to say that you know i think we each have to find our own way of saying that kind of thing that that allows us to accept what the status that we're in you know whatever it is then let's accept it the way it is and and see where we're going with that see what's building what's around us what is there out there I can love okay or in here that I can love or what happened yesterday that kind of a thing do you think as like at what point you know through the past century or did you ever think oh I need to slow down now It's too much. I need to just slow down. I never had a chance.

31:07I mean, I never thought about slowing down. It was something because there is always something interesting popping up. Yeah, like going to Afghanistan in your 80s, for instance. I had this brother, Carl Taylor, who started Future Generations, which is still, his son is carrying on the work of Future Generations around the world, which has created communities around the world who are doing the kind of thing that we did in Afghanistan with the women. but you see my parents started that they lived their life wildly and took a chance during World War II there were U-boats in the water when they went to India but they went because they had a vision they had a thought they had something that was offered to them as the possibility for their life, and it excited them.

32:20It gave them juice, and they went to India. All right. My mother went into labor with me at the Taj Mahal. She almost died. I almost died. I had a hepatitis, a malarial hepatitis when I was two. I almost died I didn't die I didn't live through that and so on and so on and so on and it's that amazing process that love and life create and keep love going and life going it's how you and I connected I'm talking to you your name is James I'm connecting you with my friend James who the story of James and the little plant is now a story that can be, you know I mean this is the way love and life goes Yeah, and you know you mentioned earlier people trying to find their true humanity do you think it's different now than it was let's say 30, 40, 60 years ago that people get lost in the roles they play in society so that it's harder for them to find their true humanity.

33:41Do you think it's different now than it used to be? I think it's different because life is different and life changes, but that doesn't make it any harder or any easier. It is what it is. And it's as hard as it's going to get. And as long as we take the next steps as hard as they are to move to the next step, which makes it as hard as they are, which takes the next step a little easier. Then you, you know, I mean, it's being willing to step forward and the faith that life and love in your life, in our life, in my life, life and love are the two activating factors that keep me moving. and keep us moving, keep the world moving, keep little plants moving.

34:40And so let's say someone is asking you, like, well, you know, I'm so busy all day. I'm doing things, you know, this, that, the other thing, and I want to find my true humanity. Like, what's the advice you give? start looking for it if you're not looking for it you're not going to see it if you're looking for it you'll find it and no one else can tell you I mean you're in charge of your life see I have this idea this isn't a theology this is an idea I have the idea that when God whatever God is to each one of us when God created the earth and the universe. And he looked at it, he, she, and said, oh, this is gorgeous.