Mitzi Perdue is the co-author, along with Mark Victor Hansen and Preston Weekes of How to Be Up in Down Times. Having been a prominent science writer and health writer, Mitzi holds a BA with honors from Harvard University and an MPA from the George Washington University. Mitzi combines the experiences of three long-time family businesses. Her father Ernest Henderson co-founded the Sheraton Hotel Chain and her late husband Frank Perdue was the second generation in the poultry company that today operates in more than 50 countries. Mitzi founded CERES Farms in 1974 and in 2019 she founded WIN THIS FIGHT, STOP HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.MitziPerdue.com
• Book: How to Be Up in Down Times, by Mitzi Perdue Mark Victor Hansen and Preston Weekes
• Mitzi's Initiative To Stop Human Trafficking: www.WinThisFight.org

Most Influential Person

• Mother Teresa

Effect on Emotions

• I've loved the idea of controlling emotions. Some you can't. If you have a child who's ill, I don't know what to do about that. But of ordinary garden variety things, I think it's a question of will. I think, do I let that get to me? Then I think, that's their problem.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathing I consider so important that I've been taking lessons with a voice coach about deep breathing.
• When things are really tough, if you can take a deep breath, (My breath is purple in my imagination), and you breathe it out, it takes away tension and other stuff.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Ask by Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen
• Book: How to Be Up in Down Times, by Mitzi Perdue Mark Victor Hansen and Preston Weekes
• App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

• I have been in many jobs during my lifetime that have been dominated by men. You can imagine that a lot of bullying came my way, so how did I handle it? Here's where it gets a little bit off-beat.
• If you criticized me in some way and it's going to make me better, I embrace it, I love it, I'll act on it.
• If you're just bullying me or if you're being critical because you think you can get away with it, you don't exist for me. You just don't exist. I'm not going to let you get under my skin.

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• 418 Mind-Body Healing Using The Vibrational UPgrade System; Alison J. Kay
• 166 Create a Nurturing, Mindful Space With Million Dollar Decorating Host James Swan

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Bruce Langford:

Mitzi. Are you in mindfulness mode today?

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Uh, yes. I, I feel calm. I feel happy. I feel upbeat and I'm ready to give my all to our audience.

Bruce Langford:

Well, that is fantastic. So Mitzi, what does mindfulness mean to you?

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

I think that if you aren't practicing mindfulness, at least in my case that I have all these rat races running around in my head and I don't focus and life isn't as full and rich and glorious as it could be. So I'm extremely in favor of anything that brings calm and focus and big vision. And so I'm, I'm a fan. Yeah.

Bruce Langford:

I am a fan too. As you know, since I have the podcast, I am really excited about your book because it was such an enjoyable book to read and so much great content; How To Be Up In Down Times. And you wrote it along with Mark Victor Hansen, and there's one other writer as well. Who is that other writer, Mitzi?

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Oh, Preston Weekes. Oh, he such a fantastic person. But in addition to being fantastic, he's also the stepson of Mark Victor Hansen. And I think everybody knows that Mark Victor Hansen, and maybe they don't, if not, I'm going to share it with you and spill the beans. All right. My co-author Mark Victor Hansen. I mean, one of the two coauthors, Mark Victor Hansen is in the Guinness Book of World's Records for selling the most non-fiction books in the world, half a billion of them. And he's the Chicken Soup For The Soul guy.

Bruce Langford:

Yes, he is. And I interviewed him not too long ago and absolutely loved spending the time with them. And since that time he has connected with me and said, Hey, you need to interview this person and that person and Mitzi you're one of them. So I'm so excited to be here and be connected because of Mark. So that's really great. And I'm going to just share a couple more things about you Mitzi, with Mindful Tribe. You combine the experiences of three longtime family businesses, which is quite interesting that your father co-founded the Sheraton hotel chain and your late husband was the second generation in the poultry company that operates in more than 50 companies. It's Perdue poultry. I would assume that's what it's called. Yeah. And you've founded now, your company. Is it Ceres farms? Okay. Ceres farms. And you founded that in 1974, and you've also founded in 2019, Win This Fight, Stop Human Trafficking. And what an important, important endeavor that is. So lots to talk about today. What took you to the point where you made the decision to get involved in writing this book, Mitzi?

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Well, I am a writer by trade, but I got to know Mark Hansen because he's active in human trafficking too. And I met him through that and we just sort of clicked. And we corresponded lots and we talked lots and along about early February, it was pretty clear to me from … I have friends in China and I've, you know, for about 12 years, I visited China every year to visit families that I'm fond of. And they would invite me. But because of that, I had what felt to me like a distant early warning system that something really terrible was coming our way, namely COVID-19. And I asked Mark about what if we wrote a book that would help people get through this? Cause you know, we, it hadn't really, we're talking, we're talking very early February and it wasn't a time yet where everybody was thinking about it. And I said, I suggested to him, you know, you're one of the most inspirational people in the world. Your stepson is a physical fitness expert and I'm a health writer. What if together we gave 40 tips and they would be short, like none would be longer than two pages, but it would help people get through an extraordinarily difficult time. Mark said, yes. And the rest is history. We had 18 hour days writing and writing and writing. And about three weeks later published on Amazon.

Bruce Langford:

That is exciting, isn't it? Yeah. And it's so easy to digest it. And yet there's so many great suggestions and ideas and you just keep reading and reading and reading to find more of them. And you tell some very interesting stories in the book. Would you be willing to share one of the stories that you have shared in that book?

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Oh, I'd like nothing better. To be up in down times, and this is also a mindfulness story and oh, I hope I don't monologue too long for you, but thank you. I mean, that's one of my something I'm trying to correct. And I fail every time because …

Bruce Langford:

I'll tell you what, I'll cut in. If it gets too long and I'm sure it won't, I'll just enjoy the story you're going to tell.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Well, I'll do my best to be a polite guest, but here it goes, we're going to go back 2300 years to Plato, the great philosopher. And he was teaching his students back in Athens and the students wanted to know what I think we all want to know; what's it take to be happy. And Plato answ ered that there are three things that men think will make them happy. And how about they never do, or at least long-term they never do. And so of course his students wanted to know what str those three things. Plato answered money, power, and fame. And the students said, you know, that sounds like it would make people happy, and Plato said, No, they don't because you always need a bigger and bigger dose. You know, the more money you have. Yeah. What seemed like a fortune to you five years ago now it's not enough.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

And the same thing with power and fame. So his students said, well, if money, power and fame don't do the trick, What does? And Plato answered, truth, beauty and goodness, because each of those, they make you happy all by themselves and you don't have to kill people or rob people to get more of them. So truth, beauty and goodness make people happy. And now it's the part where I'm scared about monologuing too much, because that leads to the real story about how this plays out in real life. Permission to continue this, please do. Yes. Mitzi. Okay. How does this play out in real life? And there was a period of about a week where, by complete coincidence. I read a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte and a biography of mother Teresa. Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France. And he, you know, he had probably more wealth, power fame than anybody in history up until then he had territory.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

He had women, he had all the worlds goodies that, that could come to one man. What about mother Teresa? She had a vow of poverty, the physical possessions that she owned consisted of nothing more than three cotton sarees. The, I don't want to say costume, the clothing that poor Bengali woman would wear. And she also owned the sandals on her feet and she spent her life taking care of the course of the poor, you know, like lepers and people with AIDS. I mean her life was not glamorous. It was a complete life of service. Now who was happier? Napoleon with all the power, money and things that the world has to offer or Mother Teresa with her vow of poverty and serving the poor. In other words, in life, to my mind of total goodness and beauty and truth.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

Well, who was happier? And we don't have to guess unless you want to guess, but no, but I'll, I'll plunge on and give you the answer. Napoleon, at the end of his days, he was an exile in some Island in the South Atlantic. And he writes that in my whole life. When I look back on my whole life, I cannot count six happy days. Wow. This is the man with all the world's goodies that people think they want. He wasn't a happy man. What about Mother Teresa with her vow of poverty? Almost no possessions. Here's what mother Teresa wrote, looking back on her life. “My life has been a feast of unending joy.” So which way to go? Yeah. One was a taker. Everything that he got, he took from other people. The good things that came Mother Teresa's way really came from being a giving person.

Bruce Langford:

Yeah. What a great story. And you tell it so well. And that is what I got out of your book is that, you know, it's so important to be a giver. And you tell different stories and you have so many interesting little anecdotes and so on, but really that's what we need to realize is that we need to be givers and to help others. And one of the things you talk about are masks and you talk about in there, how a woman from Czechoslovakia said, when I wear a face mask, I protect you. When you wear a face mask, you protect me. So there's another example of giving: I'm wearing a face mask because I want to give you a sense of security. I want to help you. It's not about me. It's about the other person. Now I know that you have made quite a few face masks. Tell us how you came to the point of creating face masks and making them with a little team in your own apartment building.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

I would love to share with that. And first I'm going to put on my hat as a science writer and why face masks are a good idea. This is me as a science writer speaking, which is that, no, this is not going to be true in every case, but as a general principle of medicine, it's the dose that makes the poison. So if you're with somebody who has COVID-19 or you have it, the mask, it's not going to be a perfect protection. There will be little viruses that are going to escape through it, but you're going to cut down on them. And to the extent that you can cut down on them, then you're either giving it to somebody or getting it yourself. You're going to get what we call an inoculum, a dose of it. If you get there, just hypothetically supposing you're standing, sitting near somebody ….

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

… which actually happened to me in January. Somebody who had it, if you're sitting near somebody and they're not wearing a mask and you're with them for a period of time, you know, these are, the viruses are just going back and forth, but supposing instead, you're wearing a mask and you're socially distant. You it's still quite possible to get COVID-19. But if you get a lower inoculum or a lower dose of it, because the person's wearing a mask and hopefully you're wearing a mask too. I mean, supposedly you get 50% or 20% or 10% of the amount that you'd get. If you weren't wearing a mask, the odds are you're going to be less sick because your own ability to fight it off isn't as instantly and strongly challenged as it was or would be if you weren't wearing a mask. So I'm passionately in favor of masks.

Mitzi Perdue, How To Be Up In Down Times:

And I know there are arguments all over the place on whether you should or shouldn't. I come down pretty firmly on, if you're near people, wear a mask. This is such a complicated subject, but one other factor to consider. If you're outdoors in the sunlight and there's a little breeze, your chances of getting it from somebody who's a little bit distant from you are really small. I mean, like I've read, I've read scientific papers that says you have 3% chance of getting it. If you're outdoors and there's sunlight and there's a breeze and there's a little bit of distance. So I'm fine if you're out jogging and you're not going to be near anybody, and there's a breeze it's going to dilute the virus and your chances of getting it are just so much smaller than if you're in a confined area. And at that point, yeah, wear a mask if you're near other people.

Bruce Langford:

Well, I think that's great advice, Mitzi, and I believe that we should wear masks. I think it's very important to do what we can to protect other people and protect ourselves. And we just need to do that. I think in this COVID environment that we live in. (Listen to the episode to hear more)