Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Agapi Stassinopolous. Agapi is a worldwide motivational speaker, conducting seminars to empower individuals in recognizing their individual gifts. At the age of 18, Agapi left her home in Athens, Greece, and entered the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Agapi later moved to the United States to pursue a career in film and television, as well as to complete her masters in psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Agapi is the younger sister of Arianna Huffington, and is a frequent blogger for the Huffington Post—as well as a speaker at various international events and global conferences on health and well-being.
In her latest book and book-on-tape from Sounds True, Unbinding the Heart, Agapi provides readers and listeners pointers on how to live with generosity and wisdom, using her culturally rich Greek background and her life experiences as a guiding factor.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Agapi and I spoke about disappointment as a teacher, and how the focus on contributing to the lives of others can be a way to free our heart. We also talked about how important it is to redefine success, and Agapi’s advice to young women who might be just starting out on their career. We also talked about lessons Agapi learned from her Greek mother, including several quite memorable slogans. Finally, what Agapi feels is her work still after her mother’s death in terms of realizing the fullness of her mother’s legacy. Here’s my conversation on Unbinding the Heart with Agapi Stassinopolous:
Agapi, your latest book is called Unbinding the Heart. That’s such an interesting word—”unbinding.” Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that—”unbinding the heart.”
Agapi Stassinopolous: Well, Tami, first of all, it’s so wonderful to be together and conversing and touching our hearts. I have to say that Sounds True has been very dear to my heart for many, many years. It certainly a unbinds a lot of hearts and souls and spirits. So, to have the audio of my book, Unbinding the Heart, as part of your library is a dream come true. I just wanted to start by saying that and really thanking you [for] your amazing devotion and commitment to the human spirit and what you do there.
TS: Thank you. Thanks for saying that. I love the idea of Sounds True unbinding hearts. So, if we can do that to any measure, that’s beautiful.
So, tell me about this word. It’s so interesting.
AS: I love that word because when I look at people around us and when I look at little kids, and when I think of ourselves (and myself) as a little child—or you go back and think of yourself as a little girl or a little boy—there’s a certain boundlessness [and] there’s a certain exuberance. There’s a sense of not being bound.
Then, as we grow older and as the conditionings of the world, our society, our parents—what one should be, what one should do, what one should say—the judgment, the conditionings—what starts to happen is our hearts and our expressions start to close down. We censor ourselves.
That’s what I call the binding. It’s what we put between ourselves and our heart. Everyone—our hearts are pure, are conditional, and they love. They know love and they express love. You cannot help but look at a baby’s eyes and feel the love.
But as we grow [up], something happens to the human condition that is the binding of the heart. I truly believe that the ultimate work that we have to do as a human being—a spirit and a soul—on this planet Earth is to unravel and to unbind what we put between ourselves and our heart.
So, that’s what I mean by “unbinding.”
TS: Yes. I think that what you’re describing is this conditioning process and censoring ourselves. That makes a lot of sense to me. But, I also wonder: what about that person who says, “You know, if I really unbound what was protecting my heart, I would feel so much. I would be so sensitive, and the world is such a painful place to be. I don’t know if I actually want to feel that much.” What would you say to that person?
AS: [Laughs.] It’s like, “I’d much rather be numb,” right?
Then here’s the thing: First of all, I want to make a distinction, Tami, between being in the presence of your heart and wearing the heart on your sleeve because a lot of people say to me, “Well, Agapi, if I open my heart and I start to share my true thoughts and to really love everyone—or to love people unconditionally—I’m going to get hurt. And I do get hurt,” people say to me. I’ve been hurt by intimate relationships and all that.
There’s a big difference, Tami, because the emotional heart that we all experience—it’s very tied down to the personality and the ego and the humanness of us. That suffers and does experience the hurt and the high sensitivity, let’s say, of what happens in our emotions.
But being in the presence of your heart is a whole other level of evolution. That takes consciousness. It takes work. It takes letting go. And it takes a sense of vulnerability that is ultimate protection.
When you are—and I know that you’ve experienced that, maybe from your beautiful dog that you were just sharing with me had passed, and there was a presence that animals often have. With dogs, especially. I’m more of a dog lover. You feel a presence of love and heart.
It’s a strengthening that it takes for us to get to that place. It’s really letting go of the illusion of all the other elements of the emotions—and really knowing that our hearts are mighty. The spiritual heart that we are all part of is extraordinary. It takes a certain letting go [of] the aspects of ourselves that are more of the emotional part of ourselves.
I think that is part of the soul’s evolution. I think part of what we’re here to do is to grow ourselves up to know that. Does that make sense, what I’m saying to you?
TS: Well, I think I could use a little bit more explanation [of] what you mean by “letting go of the emotional part of ourselves.” What are you meaning by that?
AS: Well, the emotional part would be [that] we want things and we want people to love us the way we want to be loved that day. We get reactive. We get emotional. We get judgmental. That’s all part of the personality of the humanness.
But, there is a part which is really—the heart loves. The heart just knows love. It just doesn’t have that, “Be the way I want you to be.” The true lover of who we are—in the sense of our inner self—is so beyond all that. There’s a certain freedom and a certain sense of liberation when we come to that place, because it’s not on the whim of how people are going to be with us.
A lot of our emotions come [from] the way we think people should be with us—the way people should love us, the way people should treat us. So often, especially in intimate relationships, nobody is really going to be doing things according to the way we want them to treat us. Does that make sense?
TS: It does. Yes.
AS: There’s a certain sense of when you look [with] the eyes of love and compassion—to yourself, first of all. When I get tested is, “When do I withhold love from myself? When do I shut off my heart from myself?” When I don’t meet up to my expectations. When I don’t feel the way I want to feel. When I’m not doing things the way I want to be doing them. When I demand against my own nature to be other than who I am. Then I shut off my heart.
When I come into a sanctity and a reverence of the being of who I am, then it really doesn’t matter what XYZ is doing—how things are going—because I’m in the presence of a sweet love of my heart being unbound toward me. [This] is the nature and the essence of who we are.
TS: One of the things that’s really interesting to me, Agapi, is how people deal with—we could say—bouts of self-judgment. Whatever might cause the self-judgment—whatever it might be. Something didn’t go the way we wanted it to. I’m disappointed in this or that. I’m disappointed in myself. All of it. Yes.
So, what have you learned in terms of your own relationship with yourself about dealing with periods or experiences of self-judgment?
AS: Well, that’s such an important subject to me, Tami, because basically one of the reasons I wrote the book was because I had a big dream. I went to London and I started the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and I studied acting. I was recognized as a very talented and brilliant actress, being at the tender age of 18.
I went to Hollywood to do a movie, and the move fell through because of finances. After that, I struggled to get my bearings and find my footing in the world. I struggled to get jobs, because I didn’t have a green card and I had a Greek accent. Everybody would say, “Oh my God, you’re so talented! You’re so classically trained.” But they basically couldn’t fit me in. I could not get the part.
That went on for years. This is the binding—it made for a certain judgment of myself. Insecurity. Feelings of doubt—tremendous self-doubt. I didn’t know what I was meant to do in the world.
I started to search and I started to find a spiritual approach to life. I started to do yoga. I started to meditate. I found my spiritual teacher. I was feeling somewhat relieved, but still I had no sense of expression because I wasn’t getting work.
So, at that point—about six years later—I was in New York and I had an audition for a Greek part in a six-hour adaptation of Greek plays. I didn’t get the part. I didn’t get any part. I didn’t an extra, I didn’t get a lead role, I didn’t get a supporting role. I was absolutely devastated. I felt like the world was crumbling.
I went on a New York City bus and I saw how everybody was so depressed on the bus. People were unhappy. There was a sense of a lack of joy. You know how the buses are.
I thought to myself, “What if I could just do something to cheer everybody up?” I started to talk to one woman next to me who happened to be an actress who had given it up to become a nurse. As I was talking to her, I told her that I had an audition for the part of Joan of Arc. She loved the role, and she said to me that that was one of her favorite parts. I started performing for her, and did a whole monologue for her on the bus.
What happened after that changed my life, because the whole bus woke up and looked at me and applauded me. This woman turned to me and said, “My dear girl, why are you waiting for anybody to hire you? Why don’t you go do your own thing?”
At that moment, I experienced a sense that I had the gift and I had to share it, and not wait for other people to give me permission to share my gift and to hire me. I then proceeded to put a one-woman show together that became very successful—of the goddesses. I wrote books. I performed this show everywhere.
So, that’s the story that I wanted to tell in my book because I experienced going from restriction to the openness of my own talent—and sharing it. What I learned is that I had to really be the one—that’s what I called the “unbinding.” I had been the one who stepped into the joy of my gift and really gave up this, “Someone hire me.”
Now, it wasn’t a conscious choice as much. It was more out of my own frustration and feeling suffocated—saying, “I’m going to do something. I’m going to do something right here and now.”
Life is so generous when we give up—that’s what I mean by the letting go of our own agendas [about how] things should be going which way. It can be anything from the traffic going bad, from missing a plane, from a project failing, from a financial result, from the kids misbehaving and throwing havoc, from a relationship going bad and leaving us. It could be anything.
When we step into being bigger than our own agenda of how things should be going, life is so generous. It gives us right back and rewards us with a gift of our own life.
TS: It seems from your story that there’s almost a connection, we could say, between disappointment and finding your true calling—at least, in your case.
AS: Yes. Absolutely. And Tami, if you ask—and as you know, I speak a lot at events and conferences. You ask everybody, “How many people here have experienced disappointment and loss in your life?” Everybody raises their hand.
That’s part of the human condition. It’s like, daily we can get disappointed by things because the world doesn’t go according to Agapi’s Gospel or to Tami’s Gospel. The world goes according to the world. People do what they do. They world is doing what it’s doing.
Where do we find this okay-ness with things? We realize that we can control so much, but then after a while we can’t control the fundamental things of life. We can’t control so many things. Definitely we can’t control other people’s behavior.
That kind of leads me to the question of success and failure. So many talented people say, “I didn’t succeed in this. I didn’t succeed on my project. My work is not as successful.” They have so much judgment and pressure [with] whatever people call failure.
In the book, I describe so much about how my mother taught me and my sister Arianna that failure was so much part of life. You have relationships that don’t go the way you want them to go. If you don’t fail, you’re not really living.
I think we have such a stigma that when people write books and then say, “Oh, my book didn’t succeed,” what does that mean? You wrote a book. You wrote a book that you shared with people. You shared your knowledge.
But, we have this notion—especially in America—success is X amount of dollars, X amount of sales, X amount of followings in the Facebook, X amount of social media. We’re always pressuring ourselves for the next level of success.
What do you think about this, Tami? It’s a big issue in this country.
TS: I agree with you, Agapi. I think it’s really important that people define success for themselves on their own terms, so that we’re not measuring ourselves against terms that aren’t even our own. So, I think you’re pointing to a really important thing, yes.
I’d be curious: What are your personal metrics for success? What does success mean to you?
AS: You know, for me, it’s like—let me see. How can I just give it as this . . .
The days that I feel this profound gratitude for the gift of my life that is the miracle of my life because I call it like, “How did I ever get to be this person? How did my body move and grow?” When I’m in touch with the miracle of life and I share deep connections—when I share loving with people that I know, people that I don’t know. Whether it is at events or whether it is just in my daily life. When I feel that I am at peace with Agapi—that I’ve reached a place that I’m at peace inside myself.
I’m going to redefine that if you want me to, but I know that I am loved by the essence of life that created me; that God loves me; that the spirit loves me—and I’m in touch with that spirit, and I can share it with others. When I go to bed and I smile at the joy of just another day. Then I’m successful. Then I feel a true sense of peace because I’m at peace with myself.
Now, on the material level, when I know that also I’m able to function without having to worry financially, when I’m healthy, when I know that I can get up and go to the gym and work out. How wonderful that is. When I get requests to go and speak to people because they’ve heard me speak and they love what I have to say. That’s also wonderful.
When you said to me, “Let’s do your book-on-audio,” after my book had been out and I wanted to put my voice in it? That was a great success.
When I’m going to Mexico to talk to 10,000 women in May—that’s also a success. It’s like you keep adding into it.
But, the fundamental thing is: Am I sharing my gift? Am I sharing my heart? Am I sharing who I am? Am I helping other people lift? Am I able to make one soul happier because I have encountered them and I contributed [to] their growth? That’s huge.
When somebody writes to me and says, “I read your book and I felt you told my story. I felt your heart through the book and it opened up my heart,” that feels like an Oscar. That’s as big as an Oscar to me. Do you know what I mean? That, to me, is like, “Wow! I was able to express my truth and it happened to waken someone else in their truth!”
These are things that I think we should be teaching our schools and our kids—to say, “These are things that are really [an] amazing measure to your life.” Because ultimately, I saw my mother die. She had 250 dollars in her bank account. She had not written any bestsellers. She was not a CEO of a company. She had raised two daughters with her whole heart and she had touched countless human beings from the grocery shop to the taxi driver to a stranger in the street to the Prime Minister of England to the carpenter and to the plumber. She had touched hundreds of people, and anybody now that I can run into after all these years will say, “My encounter with your mother was one of the most profound experiences in my life.”
But, nobody’s going to write a book about her except me. [Laughs.] Because I wrote about my mother.
But you know, she raised us because she was so genuine and so authentic. To me, she was the most successful woman I know.
TS: Now, one thing I want to clarify, Agapi, is that you talked about this type of turning point in your life that occurred when you were on the bus and you were experiencing your disappointment from not being chosen in your acting career in the way that you wanted.
AS: That’s right. And not being validated. Exactly. By the world.
TS: So, here you are. You’re disappointed. You’re on the bus. Suddenly, a change happens. You’re performing the monologue, and the people on the bus are enjoying it. How did this really become such a turning point in your life? Help me understand that. What was the turning for you?
AS: I think it’s almost like when you are kind of down and completely wrapped up in your own unhappiness. Somebody comes in and you do something for them, and they light up. Somebody comes in—it could be somebody calls you and they’re having a fire in their house. Or, their baby’s sick and you get out of your misery. You say, “My God, this woman’s child is sick. I’ve got to help her get to the hospital.”
But, you do something that is kind of beyond yourself. Now, I happened to be doing my monologue, which was my joy. But, it was more about an offering to give to this misery of the bus that I felt. It was like, “Well, I’ll get up and do this because that will change the energy. That will be my contribution to this moment of these people who seem so unhappy.”
It takes you out of you, because when you’re auditioning for parts—for example—you have an agenda. You want to be hired. When you’re performing for a bus—so, nobody can give you a job—what you’re really saying is, “I’m just doing this for the joy of it. I’m just doing this to help people lift a little bit or get a little happier.”
You know—you’ve done so many things in your life that are beyond you. You know how good it feels to just contribute to other people’s lives in the moment. It takes you out of yourself.
I think, Tami, so much of our key to happiness is really service, because when we give it unconditionally—when we help other people become a little happier—that’s where you will always find that you feel so good about yourself and about life.
TS: I’m with you. I’m with you.
AS: I know you are. [Laughs.] I mean, that’s why you do what you do.
TS: Yes. Yes.
AS: In a way, you’re contributing to putting out [the] works of people who are so profound and so beautiful and uplifting. [You] lift so many people. So, I mean, I know that’s your work. But, the motivation behind it is to really lift people.
TS: I’m curious about something, Agapi—because I know that you talk a lot and are interested in working a lot with young women. Women who are coming into their own sense of voice and empowerment, and their own sense of calling—[as well as] how they can contribute to others. So, I’m curious: if you were talking now to a group of young women who were interested in really coming into how they might contribute best to the lives of other people, what kind of sage advice might [you] give them?
AS: That’s a beautiful question. First of all, as a young woman, so often you feel the pressure to contribute [and] to succeed. I watch it with my nieces, who are 23 and 25. You feel there is a lot of pressure on young women to become more successful maybe than one would expect them to. They have these, “What am I going to be? What am I going to contribute?”
First of all, there is a certain trusting the currents—that life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to, but that life does work out. Part of the key is asking for help—asking for people who know more than you, who you admire, that you respect. Asking for help. So many times, young men and women can also start things on their own and they get burned out because they don’t know boundaries or they don’t know how to take care of themselves.
Or, the other thing is that they start to question themselves—to doubt themselves. In that, you start to lose ground.
So much of it is that, as you start to experience life and your contribution, never be afraid of your failures, never to think you should have worked it all out, never to think that you should know it all—but, to be very, very loving to yourself. Very loving, very caring. Keep the excitement of every adventure of your life as a young girl.
How many times will you say, “Oh my God, if I only had known that when I was in my twenties”? But you don’t know that when you’re in your twenties. In your twenties, you’re not supposed to figure it out.
My niece went through a very difficult time with drug addiction because she was in such search of herself and such loss. Even in the midst of a lot of the Ivy League colleges—of Yale. She just found herself stuck. It was through tremendous love of the family and her own commitment to herself that she started to find back the way. We always think of her as—after being sober for three years—it’s such a huge victory. Now, she’s helping other young girls who struggle with issues like that.
I wrote a blog, which I loved—it became very successful—called “Five Questions to Finding the Calling of Your Life.” The calling of your life is a daily thing. It’s not like, “Oh, I found a great calling and here’s what I am to do.” But every day, if you ask yourself, “What am I learning? What am I teaching? What am I sharing? What am I overcoming? What am I completing? Am I enjoying my life in my youth? Am I being true to myself?” These are very important questions in one’s growth.
Basically, I always say, “Really, be kind [and] be loving to yourself—and not always try to feel you have to fit in.” So many times, you feel, “Oh, I don’t belong to this group,” or, “I do things differently.” You should be different—feel different, be different. Different is good. You don’t have to be or like what other people like. Be unique.
My mother had a great expression, Tami. She said, “We’re all born an original. But most of us die a copy.” Don’t die a copy. Stay an original. It’s something that we must teach our young men and women—to be an original.
TS: Now, your mother sounds like quite the woman.
AS: [Laughs.] Quite a woman. My mother was quite the woman. Quite the woman, Tami. She would have loved you. You would have loved her. She would have sat with you, would have fed you Greek food and cheese and cookies and spanakopita. She had a way and a joy of life that was amazing.
She suffered a lot, you know. She had a lot of pain. What she went through with my father—he was unfaithful to her, and had affairs throughout their marriage. She left him, and she had a heartache about that. That was really hard for her. She had financial difficulties. She had big dreams for her daughters—that she wanted to see us live abroad and be educated.
But, she had a love, and she was really unbound in her expression—in her way of living. That’s why I wrote the book—because I wanted to also tell the stories. I have a chapter in the book called “Take Care of Your Capital.” That was one of my mother’s big things—”Take care of your capital.” Eat well. Sleep well. Hang out of with people that uplift you. Don’t be with people who are depressed and toxic. She really was amazing—the way she took such good care of us.
TS: Now, that’s an interesting expression. “Take care of your capital.” So, what you mean by “capital” in that sense is sort of, “Take care of yourself—your own infrastructure.” Your body, your state of being?
AS: Exactly. Your state of being. Yes.
TS: You said this very interesting thing—that your mother was quite “unbound.” That was the way you described her. What did you mean by that?
AS: Yes. I can tell you specifically how she was. She had no shame about asking for help. So, she was very unbound in terms of—like, if she needed help for her daughters about something. If she needed money, she would go ask her brothers. She didn’t have this restriction of, “I shouldn’t be doing that.”
She was also unbound in terms of her giving-ness. She would just give unconditionally to people. If we had people that she didn’t know, she wouldn’t say, “Well, I don’t know them. I’m not going to be—” Or she would always offer food at her house and hospitality. Whatever she had of herself, she would just give of her knowledge, her wisdom, her advice.
So, she wasn’t bound in terms of saying, “Well, this person—” let’s say when we lived in London. We would meet with a lot of different classes. In England, classes are much more prominent than in America. There would be like the Prime Minister, let’s say, or the members of Parliament—because at the time, I dated a member of Parliament. Or there would be people who were successful in the arts or Lady So-And-So.
My mother couldn’t care less about titles, money, prestige. She was just staying with people. That was kind of very disarming. One time—I have this story in the book—between the Prime Minister and my mother. We had a dinner, and the Prime Minister came in the house in London.
My mother would come in and the plumber was there, because he was fixing something in the kitchen. The plumber said, “Oh, Ma’am. I hear the Prime Minister is here.” And my mother’s like, “What do you think about the Prime Minister?” He said, “I think he doesn’t take care of the workers. In the workers’ union, we’re having a problem . . .” blah blah blah. My mother said, “Well, let me bring him in. You can tell him yourself.”
She brought in the Prime Minister to the kitchen to meet the plumber. That was very much her style, you know? She just made things happen. Connections happened. She had great chutzpah.
She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid to spend more money than she had. She always trusted that life would reward her. I think it’s like Rumi said, “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
TS: You had a really interesting chapter in the book about your mother—a conversation that you had with her. You called the chapter “Are We Wealthy?” I wonder if you could tell our listeners about that section of the book.
AS: Oh, I loved that. Yes. Actually, it’s called “Mommy, Are We Rich?” What it was—and this is one of my favorite things. I forgot about that, actually. Thanks for reminding me.
My father used to have this very rich friend who would pick him up in a blue Jaguar every Sunday because my father loved to go to the races. So, every Sunday I would see this blue Jaguar come pick up my dad. These friends of my dad had a very opulent home with servants, silverware, and gardens. We had a very modest home in Athens, where we lived.
I was confused because I didn’t know if we were rich or not, because we seemed to have everything. So, one day, I said to my mother, “Mommy, are we rich?” My mother sat me down and she said, “Now, listen to me. We have—” and how did she say it? “Now, listen to me,” she said. “We are very, very wealthy.” That’s how my mother used to talk. “We’re very, very wealthy because we have love and we have a beautiful home and we have education. You and Arianna go to beautiful, good schools. You’re learning other languages. You go to ballet classes. We go to the theater. We know artists who have great talent, and they share their talent. We love to share what we have, and we have people who come to our home. That’s wealth.
“And having talent, and being artists, and having friends that you share with.” She went on and on, Tami. And she said, “That’s wealth. Money you can make any time. But that’s being rich.” [Laughs.]
She made this huge distinction between wealthy and being rich. She said to me, “People who are rich are not necessarily wealthy. People who are rich sometimes are not happy. It doesn’t mean because you have money, you are happy. Being kind, being compassionate . . .”
And I was nine. I was going, “OK, Mom. Can I have a few drachmas?” It was like, when you’re nine, you can’t digest [all that much.] She was writing it down for me.
I never forgot it. Then, years later, especially when you come to this country—when you [have] so much of the god of this country is money, the dollar—”How much money do you have?” That is such a big thing—success being measured on money. It was amazing.
You know, Tami—I take you to any Greek village. They will steal your heart. People in the Greek land are so generous. They give you the shirt that they wear. There’s a generosity and a spirit of kindness and hospitality that makes you feel extremely wealthy.
So, you and I know people who have a lot of money who are not necessarily generous or giving. I’m not saying that one is good or the other. But, I know a lot of people who have way less money than other people, and they’re extremely generous with what they have—and feel wealthy. Having love in your life is one of the greatest gifts that you can have—having people who care for you and truly love you.
And the same thing: having love and having people that you love cannot be measured. Right?
TS: Once again, I’m with you, Agapi. I notice that whenever you share with me sayings from your mom—sayings that you learned from your mother—I write them down and I love them. Even in this conversation: “Take care of your capital.” That’s a good one. That’s a keeper. “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” That is a keeper. That’s fabulous.
I wonder if there any more sayings like that from your mom. Tell me what they are! I want to know.
AS: Oh, yes. Yes. We should make tee-shirts, Tami! [Laughs.] To go with my audiobook. Buy this audiobook and get a free tee-shirt from Agapi.
OK. Here they are: “Change the channel.” That’s only in the book. I want to inspire our listeners to listen to this book, because it’s filled with gems. When I was recording it, I felt so much sweetness remembering all these stories. Like, she used to say to us, “Change the channel.”
When I was disappointed one time, [when] a big production of a movie I was producing fell through. I was so upset and I was so disappointed. My mother finally said to me, “Darling, change the channel. You’ve been running with moping, ‘woe is me,’ ‘poor little me,’ ‘nothing goes right for my life,’ for too long. Change the channel. You have the remote. Turn it to something else. Turn it to gratitude. Turn it to joy. Turn it to sharing. Turn it to starting something new.”
She just had this expression. We loved it. We went around going, “Change the channel.” So, that was one thing.
The other thing that I loved is that when we didn’t know what to do about something—saying, “Mom, I don’t know what to do about this,”—she would say, “Try and let it marinate. Let it marinate overnight.” It was like, “Don’t pressure yourself to decide something.”
Her favorite one is, “Don’t miss the moment.” If you were here with her and you would start talking with her, suddenly you would be distracted because the phone rang or because someone else came and demanded your attention. You were there but you were not there. She would say, “Darling, don’t miss the moment. You’re missing the moment.”
It was a lot about the multitasking in our culture that she abhorred. When she died, we put a sign on a beautiful bench by an olive tree that we planted—actually, it was a lemon tree we planted in our garden. It said, “Don’t miss the moment,” because most of us don’t live in the moment. I mean: we live in our heads. We live in the future. When there is no future, we live in the past. We live in what can be. We live in what should have been. We live in everything else but the moment.
Part of the reason why I love speaking and performing, Tami—I started as an actress—because when you are performing, you are in the moment. You can’t be anywhere else. It’s a high if we can summon up and be in the moment.
That was part of what I call “time opulence,” [which my mother had.] She never rushed. If you were rushing, she would say, “Darling, go without me. You’re in a rush.” She had this rhythm of eternity. She really lived in her own rhythm of—she was definitely an original.
But, “Don’t miss the moment.” It’s where the preciousness of love—and I think part of [why] we don’t like living in the moment is because sometimes the moment is uncomfortable. Sometimes, we have to deal with feelings that are uncomfortable. There’s this great quote that is from Arianna’s book Thrive. The quote says, “Most of man’s problems derive from the fact that man is unable to be in a room, quiet [and] alone with his own thoughts, still.”
I know you believe in meditation and mindfulness, and practice that. That’s so true. We have such a hard time being alone by ourselves with our thoughts [and] with our being-ness, right? Unless we are sitting by the Mediterranean Sea, and then it’s beautiful.
TS: Yes. What I’m reflecting on as you’re talking about your mom is this question I think of. Sometimes, after one of our parents dies, there’s this sense of [how] we are carrying on—if you will—potentially something unfinished in their life. Or, some sense [that] the baton has now been passed to us. I’m curious: for you, with your mother’s death, what [might be] that sense of what has been asked of you as her daughter?
AS: That’s an amazing question, Tami. I’m so grateful that you are sharing that with me—that you’re asking me this—because I feel, for me, it’s twofold. One is that as wonderful as my mother was in terms of her giving-ness and her sacrifice to give to us—and to give to the world—it’s a paradox. I don’t write about this in the book as much, because I told the other stories of my mother. She was also kind of deeply unhappy as a woman because she loved my father, who betrayed her.
So, there was a part of her that lived through giving. Her giving was her—she wasn’t somebody who, let’s say, would go spend money on herself or give pleasure to herself, because she had a harder time giving to herself than others. She was a complete and utter caretaker.
So, I have had to watch that pattern in myself because I am sometimes much more comfortable in giving to others. When it came time to give to myself—whether it was something that makes me happy or gives me pleasure for the sake of pleasure—I would have a harder time. Do you relate to that?
TS: Yes. I think you’re talking about the receiving aspect of unbinding the heart. I think it’s a very important part to talk about. Yes.
AS: Exactly. The receiving aspect of what it is to—and often, we don’t know what it is like to give to yourself, because how do you give to yourself? How do you really nurture yourself? There are so many aspects of ourselves. There is a child in us; and there is the woman in us; and there is the friend; and there is the vulnerable side; and there is the shy [and] insecure—what’s insecure in our lives and in ourselves. Not good enough, not enough. I mean, all of those aspects that we deal with.
To love yourself in your absolute vulnerability and to give to yourself is huge, is humongous. It’s like when you get there, you feel you will explode with joy.
So, I had to finish the self-care that my mother didn’t do for herself—to start to do for Agapi. It was almost like that was the other one that I could do, because I carried on her legacy by taking care of people and being nurturing to other people. But, when I started to allow myself to give to me and to receive from others—and to take in what life was giving me; what people were giving me; what the compliments, the goodness, the gifts of other people—meaning of their energy. When people said to me, “I love you,” I really had to go, “Yes, they really love you. They really love you. Don’t [question] whether you’re worthy or if they don’t, because when people say they love you, they love you.”
I had to really also respect myself and say, “I don’t want to do that now. I don’t want to be with this person now. It’s just too much for me. I’m feeling depleted here. Get me out of there. Don’t eat this, eat that. Go work out now. Go exercise now. I don’t want to exercise—I want to go for some fresh air. Go for fresh air. I want a better pillow.” You know? Endless things. “I want better shoes.” Take care of my feet. Take care of my hair. Take care of the little things in life to the big things in life.
When I started out for what I want, and started to give to myself, respect my needs, I started to change. I started to feel calm. I think part of the anxiety we feel is we don’t really listen to ourselves. We don’t listen to what we really have to say. That’s part of the unbinding, because when you listen with your whole heart to yourself, you feel humbled—very, very humbled—by who you are. You feel, “God, how can I look after this being that has been bestowed? And how can I honor her?”
That’s a beautiful place to be, because then we don’t run to so many others to make us feel good about ourselves because you have you. Ultimately, just to get a little more metaphysical here, we’re all going to die. There will come a time that we are going to be dying. The day that we’re going to be dying, we’re going to have us and how we’ve been with ourselves and how much care and love we brought to ourselves. That would have created a space of no judgments, of no hesitations, of no holding back, of just saying to yourself, “Thank you! Thank you for the life. Thank you for what you are, fortunate being. Thank you for my journey.” And off I go.
Then you come at that moment and will be with the spirit. There will be space for the spirit to take you to the next level. That’s the way to look at this life. It’s like a preparation for something that’s going to happen, which is our end. It’s not a sad thing and it’s not a morbid thing, but it is a reality.
I think, in a way—and in the book [I do] describe my mother’s death [as] extraordinary, because she knew she was dying. She fell down and she sat there for two hours pretending she wasn’t dying, so we could all feel calm. And she left. I think her last words would have been—something to me and Arianna—“Take care of yourself. Take good care of yourself.”
She did the best she could—and I thank you for asking this question, because up until this moment I have never really seen what I’m completing that my mother didn’t do. Because my mother did not take such good care of herself. When she was diagnosed with a staph infection it was because we knew she had an infection but she wouldn’t treat it. She kept [using] homeopathic ointments and she wouldn’t have antibiotics. That infection went into her heart. So, she had a level of stubbornness and a level of, “I know it,” and not surrendering to taking care of herself.
I say this to our listeners because if I can impart with a message would be that each person—and each person who is listening to us now—is as valuable, is as important—your story and your being-ness matters as much as anyone else’s. Start to really, at this moment, take such good care of yourself with a gusto [and] with a passion—where you just love yourself so deeply.
To honor yourself, find out who you are, connect with [yourself], and do the little things. However you do your coffee in the morning. From the time you turn off your lights and go to bed at night—just make each day be [a] walk with yourself. Then, you find God and you find spirit and you find people and you find what matters in life because you’re being-ness is the blueprint.
And listen to my book, because it’s a sweet story and it opens up hearts, Tami. I’m very proud of my book, if I may say so myself.
TS: It’s a beautiful book, and it’s a beautiful reading of the book. Unbinding the Heart: A Dose of Greek Wisdom, Generosity, and Unconditional Love, by Agapi Stassinopolous—now available as a book-on-tape from Sounds True. Agapi, I’m so happy to have had this conversation with you. It’s laced with so much sage advice. Thank you so much!
AS: Did we tell them, Tami, that Agapi means “unconditional love” in Greek?
TS: We didn’t tell them that, but I think that’s a good point to make.
AS: It’s very important! Yes. Agapi is the Greek word for love. That’s how the book starts—why my mother named me that. It’s a beautiful name to carry on, so it is with my love that I share this message with my wonderful listeners of Sounds True and with blessings to you, dear Tami, for the goodness that you bring to this world on every level. So, it is with my love that I share and I pass on and I send you a wave of love and heart and light to follow you wherever you go.
TS: Thank you, Agapi.
AS: Thank you so much.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
