Women Sharing Part Two
[00:00:00] We all deserve to have fulfilling careers and lives. We deserve to experience joy and peace, and freedom, and all of those things that make us feel truly alive.
[00:00:20] It takes a lot of courage for us to take the reins in our lives and take action that honors the deepest parts of ourselves in this current season of life. It takes a lot of courage to lean into growing and to lean into learning, and to know when it's time to make a change. I’m Arivee. I'm a first generation Latina, mom of three, and life and high performance coach to women just like you.
[00:00:50] And this podcast is for all of us looking to grow and learn and explore what a joyful and fulfilling life and [00:01:00] career can look like. And how to start living into that life right now. We're going to go deep, and we're going to honor our truth in this podcast, and the best thing is we're gonna do it together.
[00:01:13] So welcome to the Humble Rising Podcast.
Welcome back to the podcast. As you know, this is a special two-part episode, so if you haven't caught part one, go back one episode and check that out before you listen to this part two of the episode.
As you know from part one, I'm talking to two of my closest friends, Carla and Diana, and we're talking about life. We're talking about lessons we've learned. We're talking about how hard we can be on ourselves, why there are benefits to going through the hard stuff, how you can navigate that. And we're talking [00:02:00] about how do you go after what you want? How do you do that? This is a conversation that we would have if we were getting together in person, so I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us for part two.
I wanted to talk a little bit about 2022 and what you both found to be the biggest struggles for you and the biggest lessons learned this past year, because we talked about the pandemic. I think 22 was the year of post-pandemic sort of thing. Yeah, I don't wanna say normalization ‘cause this is not normal, but wondering what you struggled with.
I think I can answer this question. So you've heard a little bit about my struggles during the pandemic, which were both a curse and a blessing, and I say a curse and a blessing because what I was going through, it was really difficult. Like really hard. Some people, there's books that talk about the dark night and I feel like that was my dark two years.
So 2022 felt a little more hopeful for me and a little more, I guess, targeted to make, as I was saying earlier, to [00:03:00] make my spirit thrive and just what makes me come alive. Right? So I was able to take my acting classes. I was able to go to auditions. I was able to act and all that is great and the outcome of all that has been amazing, but every day is still a struggle, right? In the sense that like, I still have to, that all of that you guys were talking about, those breaking those limiting beliefs, that's not just like a one time thing, like you say it and that's it. It's every day that you have to show up as you are.
And of course, I'm speaking from my limited view in doing what I'm doing, like let's say, just embarking in this acting world is auditioning and just acting in general. You’re putting yourself out there. You couldn't be more naked. Right? And I love it because it's me connecting to the human experience, right? So if I interpret a character that's me showing how much I love another human being, like whether that person's angry, mad, revengeful, whatever, I'm interpreting that and showing how human I am and showing [00:04:00] empathy in interpreting that character. Right?
So I feel naked anytime that I'm on stage because a piece of me goes with that character, right? And in auditioning it's the same thing. If you really sit down and think about it, it's so subjective. It's like whether or not you match the picture that a person, that a director, or a casting director, has in their mind about this character. However, you, yourself, you're putting yourself out there.
So that was the biggest challenge, and again, blessing where I was able to challenge my limiting belief over and over again, showing up as I am in this moment and telling myself, you are enough. You got this. Whether or not I thought I was prepared, is a different story, but just do it. Just see what happens. Right?
I've also been learning to set boundaries. When I was a teacher, I was working with students and I would set up norms in the beginning of the year and that, I was used to that. Kids like structure. So it was easy to be firm.
Now, switching over to the school [00:05:00] psychology side, I'm mostly meeting with parents, with administrators, with teachers, and that was a shift, and that's a bigger shift than what that sounds like working with adults. So learning how to create those boundaries, because no longer am I working with little kids and saying, “These are the norms of our classroom.” Now I'm working with adults and I have to set those norms as well. Like, let's speak one at a time. Let's get our work done by the due date. You know, let's be respectful, and speak positively, right? Let's start with the positive.
All of these were challenges that I encountered this year. But biggest of all, and in that same breadth of setting boundaries, was setting boundaries with my family. Because I think for a long time, talk about doing, doing, doing. I thought I had the responsibility of doing everything for my family, especially since I'm the connection to the language, the culture, the everything. Growing up, I did everything for my parents.
So learning how [00:06:00] to say, “No, I have siblings that can take care of that”, or “No, I need my space for this.” That has been really tough because that was my first community, and sometimes setting boundaries feels like I'm alienating myself. And I just had to remind myself like, “No, this is self-preservation.” And they would want this for me and if they were in my shoes, right?
So, of course I help my family as much as I can. But I've been learning how to rest, how to say no, and how to learn how to be okay with that.
How do you do that? What do you tell yourself?
Yeah. That a lot of self-talk, right? There's times that it's just the feelings, the feelings of guilt is always in there. Yeah Like last week, I was sick with the flu and my dad's like, “I want you to pick me up from the airport. You are the one that I want.” And I'm literally dying, like falling asleep, watching Wednesday on Netflix. Like I can't even focus for 30 minutes.
Wait, timeout, [00:07:00] Wednesday is Latina people and I'm pretty sure that that movie has been like, it's like the top five movie ever on Netflix.
I think so, yeah.
Hey, sorry I had to do the timeout. Continue.
I love that. I love that. Oh, the little dance was everything.
So saying no to him, it was like I could hear his heart break. And he wanted it to be his daughter, and he wanted that continuity or that, you know, I always pick him up. And so I ended up sending my husband, and I wasn't able to go, but so it was fine. It was completely fine. But the guilt that I had to deal with afterwards and being okay with that and sitting with that feeling and reminding myself that I did nothing wrong, it's still something I'm working towards. And that's a small example.
When does the guilt go away, Carla? Like in that moment, right? Like you feel like, “Okay, he wants to pick him up.” And you feel guilty? When does that dissipate?
Honestly, it takes, it takes a while, right? Because I'm learning how to sit in those feelings and like let it pass through me. [00:08:00] Sometimes whenever I feel guilty, whenever I set a boundary with my family, especially my parents, I'll go back and I'll try to compensate, like do anything extra like, “I will take you. Do you need me to work on any paperwork for you? Do you need me to call anyone?” And then I catch myself, right? And I bring it back. Like I didn't do anything wrong. But again, it's work, it's self-talk. It's an active thing. It's not just, “Hey, I was fine, da da, da.” Just have to feel that feeling.
I journal, I sit with it, and after a few days, usually I'm at that point that after a few days it goes away, but yeah.
Carla, why do you like to journal so much? Like what does it do for you?
Oh my God. It's like all my thoughts go in one place. Like instead of spiraling and all these thoughts and thinking of all like these solutions and all different ways something can go, it's just I'm word [00:09:00] vomit basically. And it's a nice place to just put everything, right? I'm not bothering my friends with it.
You could though, we're here.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no. But that's like step two, right? This is, word vomit is everything. It's just a place to put everything. And then after that I'm a lot clearer. It's like my mind is a little more silent, which is nice.
Yeah. You're not railing against yourself so much over and over. Like you mentioned, like me against me, right?
Yeah.
And the whole like fighting with yourself and then when you get to journal, it's like you get to ‘vomit sound’ on the page, and then you get a little bit clearer on like maybe then what you wanna tell Diana.
Yeah, exactly. You know what's funny too, is that sometimes, and I don't know where this voice comes from, like advice, like I'm word vomiting, just imagine like, and sorry for using that term.
No,it is, it's like a dump.
I'm in a brain dump, a stream of consciousness [00:10:00] is the proper way.
My stream of consciousness is going and out of nowhere, I'll get like a piece of advice and I'll write it down and it's actually what I needed. It just reminds me that everything that we need is inside of us and we know exactly what to do. It's just sometimes there's a lot of noise that you need to sift through, and journaling for me is sifting through that noise. Yeah.
It's like the visceral reactions that come out first, you know, and then you can actually get to the core, what's going on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like peeling an onion. Yeah. I think that's it.
What about you, D?
I do not journal. I wish I was like a journaler. I've tried, but I can't sustain it so well, so I'll think I'm cute for like three days and I'm like, “Ah, oh, oh.”
You journal like I journal. The Miracle Morning tells me to journal. The Miracle Morning tells you.
I know I shut the ears. I'm a bad person.
So then sometimes journaling is different. [00:11:00] Sometimes it's just writing down what you're grateful for, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. I made like a nice collection of some journals that I had, like four pages written, and then I was like, “I should just stop doing this ‘cause it's not my thing.” But, I think that works for some people. I think it, you know, for a lot of my students it works, like journaling works a lot. It works to my teachers, like, it is, it's like a trial and error method. For me, I get like, that's what I hear a lot of people talk about running, like when you go for a run, right? Like, it like clears all the noise out first.
So for me, in terms of the struggle, so I started getting into like actual, you know, you guys know I started getting into like boxing and stuff around February. So a lot of the journey over the course of since then has been, ‘cause I'm 38, right? And so as some of you people are, or used to be.
But, just kidding.
Yo, you're gonna be, you will be 39. [00:12:00]
You are months away from being 39. Thank you very much.
Very true. It's very true, and I embrace it. And that's part of what I'm bringing up is like that, this piece about age, right? I've never been super, like obsessed with my age or like, “I'm getting older.” Like I've never been that kind of person too much where I look at age negatively, maybe ‘cause I've always been younger in terms of my family or my friends and that sort of stuff. And I don't look at it as a bad thing, right? I think you're either aging or you're dead. So, you know, I'd rather be aging.
So in that sense, it's not really aging in terms of numbers for me. It's your perception of what you can and cannot do at certain ages. And that's what's been coming up for me recently because I'm with this squad of really cool girls that are all younger, about mid twenties probably. We spar. We get in the ring, we punch each other in the face. Six in the morning. It's weird, but it's cool.
And so, and we build this culture, right?
[00:13:00] Look, I love working out, but no one is punching me in my face.
Six in the morning.
You better bob and weave. You gotta bob your ass outta there. If that's the case. And that's part of what it is. It's like, that's part of getting outta my comfort zone, is like doing something, because I've always been athletic, right? I've always worked out. I started running track when I was six years old in Queens, over here.
Wait, I'm sorry, six?
Yeah, six the year after five. Can you believe this?
No, I know what's six.
Let's talk about Puerto Rican fathers real quick, and how they have athletic dreams that they be passing down.
I ran track at six.
Oh girl, I was on the track team. I'll call out my jersey. My jersey is tiny. It is tiny.
Was this a public school?
Oh no, it was like the Catholic Leagues. You know what I mean? [00:14:00] I mean, girl, lemme tell you, I was running five miles every day when I was eight or nine. I was like eight or nine. Yeah, so right around here, I mean, 200, 400, 100, 800, cross country. Yeah, I was in it.
You learned something new every day about you know, Bobcat.
Well, Poppy was a baseballer, so you know, you know, he had lots of athletic visions for all of us. But anyway, so I've been athletic and I started playing basketball and volleyball after I started growing.
But this was a new thing. You know, this was obviously, it's a different way you use your body, it’s a different way you use your mind. And you have to really talk to yourself ‘cause it's obviously something that like not most people do, but it's interesting and I think it's really empowering for women to do it and to feel stronger and to feel more in control of your body and your surroundings. Not that you're gonna like just pop anybody on the subway. I mean, maybe, you never know. But generally you're not trying to do that. Right? But it is really [00:15:00] empowering. I would want my son and my daughter to have those experiences where you have close physical contact and you can kinda maintain your distance and all these sorts of things.
But that being said, I still have to talk to myself because like a lot of these girls that I spar with, like I said, are younger. One of the girls was like, “Oh, you went to school in Boston too? I said, “Yeah, you know.” She said, “Oh, I went to Tufts. Oh, I went to BC.” I asked her, I said, “Oh, when did you graduate?” She was like, what did she say? She's a 2019. Oh girl. I was like, Oh girl.”
I was like, “That's right, girl.” I was like, “What you want me to say?” And I was like, “No, no, not at all.” Like I said, it's not something negative.
That you get hung up on.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
But it's something that you think in your head, “Wait, I'm too damn old to be doing some of these things. I shouldn't be doing this.” And I told my coach that I was like, “I don't know.” He's like, “You need to compete. You need to compete.” And I was like, “I don't know.” And I was like, I'm a little, you know.
Are you gonna compete? [00:16:00]
Well, he used wiser choice words than I'm gonna say, but he was like, “I don't care what age you are, you could still, you know, mess somebody up. You know, stop it.” And all the girls, when I told them I was a mother too, I forgot what I said. I said something off the cuff and they were all like slab, like what?
You just opened so many doors for them, D. It's like seeing themselves and like, “Ooh, whenever that becomes me, I can keep doing this.”
And I got ants ‘cause they were like, “Oh, I thought you were my age.” So I told Wally, I was like, “Yo, they think I'm very good.” He looked me in the face. He was like, “No, they don't.” I was like, “Yes they do.”
Can we talk about the fact that women in their thirties though, there's a whole like trend going around about how women in their thirties, I don't know how they're doing it, did they make a pact with the bad guy because they look so young? Or can we say we, because I mean.
Like it's shifting and it's been shifting [00:17:00] for a while. But you know, and I was like, “Nah, they think I look their age, whatever.” But what’s more important is that I think their surprise was more that like a mother at my age would be doing something like this. You don't have that idea that, especially mothers, but women of certain ages do certain things. And it's like, but why? You know, like, and granted, lemme tell you, I got a foam roll. I got a foam roll. Okay. It's not like I can roll in there cold, and leave cold.
I actually have to cool down.
Those 20 year olds have to do it too. Like that's just good practice.
There are like changes and differences. You know, so it's not like, you know, I won't say that, but as long as you add restoration to your practice, like you we can do a lot more than what our brains tell us we should be doing or could be doing, right? And so that's been the biggest thing for me, is just getting over that hump of like, “Oh, you started late, you started this late.”[00:18:00] Not that I'm gonna be like freaking, you know, Floyd Mayweather, but I'm just saying that I should be doing this at, you know, we have these very prescribed boxes of what, and it's the same thing as like Carla was saying with the acting, right? Like you have this perception, “Oh, I have to start from college, I have to do this, I have to do this.”
But your journey can look different. And nobody's to say when you could start, when you should. If you have a mentality and you have that grit and you have that, like I'mma go after this right now. So all of us could do so much more than what we tell ourselves.
I have a fun story. If Diana is so dedicated to her boxing in 2022, since we're looking back, February of 2022, we took a trip to Puerto Rico, an amazing trip. We found a boxing ring. It was Black Dog. Yeah, Black Dog. Oh my God. I mean, she didn't have to convince me too much because..
You were down.
Yeah, I was so down.
But it was so much fun and it was like, nice to explore that. How did that feel that we got to do that?
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, that was a lot [00:19:00] of fun. I just told one of the girls I spar with, I told her to go, cause she's going in February. I said, you gotta go to this place. It was very like, there, you know?
Yeah.
Hot as hell in that studio. And that's the way I like it. I like it. I like it gritty. I like it sweaty. It's good. That's how it has to be, dirty.
We definitely needed some gogos after this.
The natural electrolyte coming down from that tree.
What made you get into boxing?
I used to go to a studio near me before Covid and then whatever Covid stops, right? So everything stops. Then I was on the bike and doing the Peloton stuff, which kept me afloat, which I'm eternally grateful for. And then afterwards I was like, I wanna also get out into a student. Let me try this class. And so I tried a class, I'm like, the first class I took the coach, like, “You got a star?” He's like, “You gotta come back. You gotta do it.” And he's like, “Oh, we go in six in the morning.” I was like, “All right, I'm with it.” And then I just kept going.
People aren't always morning people, quote unquote morning people. And so you kind of weed [00:20:00] out people who aren't kind of about that way. So I just started doing it and I was, obviously you're not good at certain things and your body and your mind freak out and then you get better and then you just slowly learn a piece.
And I think part of my role is to talk to the other girls. We're all kind of competitive and a lot of them have played sports competitively. So when you're not good at something new, you do a new sport. You think that if you're good at volleyball, you're gonna start boxing, you're gonna start baseball, you're gonna start whatever thing, and you're gonna be good at it ‘cause you're used to being good at things. And you're not good at it because you're not supposed to be good at it. Right? Because you just started.
But we assume that we're supposed to be at a certain level, so we get discouraged. We're like, “Wait, I suck at this, so I must not be good.” Just the kind of idea that I was saying about the obstacle, right? And then you see, “Okay, but I'm better than I was yesterday and I added this to my arsenal and then now this kind of sucks, but I'm gonna fix this.” And then, and it's a slow journey, right? And then sometimes you get in and you're like, “I'm feeling great,” and you are terrible. And you look slow and you look sloppy.
And then sometimes it's the opposite where you feel tired and you get in there and you're like… [00:21:00] It's a journey. And so that's part of mine is talking to other girls too, and they, they listen to me and I listen to them and I learn from them too. And we just kind of grow in that community so that that's some fun.
Wait a minute. I don't think you give yourself credit because the instructor pointed you out and said, “Hey, come in at six in the morning.” Meaning “You think you weren't good but obviously there was something in you.”
There was something, right? That is something that people see in you, right? That you're not here like very rough, obviously, but they see some sort of diamond, if you will. I think you're right. It was probably my eighties blonde hair that he was just like, “Oh, looks like a video game character.”
That’s girl fan.
But that part of what you're saying is true too, it's like when you're around positive people and positive people are telling you things and you're like, “No, I'm this. No, I'm that.” No. It's hard sometimes, it's hard for us to take compliments and to take what other people are saying is true. And people are saying, “No, you're good at this,” or “No, you look this way,” right? And you're in [00:22:00] your head, “No, no, no.” It's like, shut up, shut up. Just listen to what people like.
When you're around positive people, right? When you're around people who are trying to bring you down, ‘cause they're not at certain levels of satisfaction themselves, that's a different story. But if you're around people who are positive and kind of doing their thing and, and trying to push you and, and support you, and they're telling you these things and you're the one bringing yourself down and just shut up, that's part of, of what it was too.
But there's levels to that. Cause I feel like with acting, if I focus too much on the product, then I'm not in the process. And what I mean by that is I often, when either I'm auditioning or when I was on stage, I had to tell myself, of course it matters what it looks like at the end of the day because people are watching you.
But for my process in particular, it was more about channeling something inside of me and giving the best performance that I could from coming inside of me without looking at myself from another person's point of view. If that makes sense. I remember telling myself like,”It doesn't matter if you're good or not, it doesn't matter if you're talented or not. Do you love this?”
If you love this, you'll find [00:23:00] a way to keep doing it, you know? And and that's hard. And I'm speaking from a place of privilege, obviously, because I’m not doing this to put food on the table or to pay my bills. I'm doing this from a place of, as a hobby and from a place of love. But you were saying how like sometimes it's hard for us to take compliments and that's very true. I find that with myself also, but sometimes I have to shut out even the good things, like the good, the bad, everything and just trust myself and my instincts and go with what I have to bring. Right?
Yeah. Because that's kind of within your realm of control, right? If you're depending on other people's accolades to get you to a certain point, you might be waiting for a while, you know? That's like part of that stoicism piece too, the only thing you really can control is your thoughts, sometimes, not even your body, but mostly your thoughts on what happens and how you think about things.
And so for you it's that journey. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah. Because even if you are dependent on accolades, achievements, any kind of external validation that society has deemed [00:24:00] to be the most acceptable thing, and those are taken away, or you don't get that, then your source of self, your source of validation, your sources is externally reliant. It's externally independent, and you can't generate that yourself.
I think that's part of what Carla’s talking about right? It’s like generating the sense of self worth just because, just because. Not about anything external and I think that's really hard for us to generate things from within. I think we are, society has trained us, and culturally, culturally, we've been trained that what people think matter like, what people think that matters?
That is more of what you feel about yourself is what it looks like from the outside?
Yes.
Oh girl.
What will people say? How will this reflect on not just me, but my family?
Our family?
You are trained to think like that.
Will you pull that in, Arivee? That gave me chills. Yeah. That was everything.
I just think the hardest thing too, for me at least, I know for a lot of us is [00:25:00] unlearning. We're really good at learning new things. We're like we can do that, it takes a while, but we can do the thing of like, “Okay, I'm new to this. Okay, I'm gonna learn. Okay, I'm gonna be a sponge. Okay, I'm open.”
But then when someone challenges what we think about ourselves, and how bad we talk to ourselves and how we've been trained to think about ourselves, that unlearning, the unraveling, that is uncomfortable, and it sucks. And it's hard to do unless like Carla’s saying, like, you give yourself the grace and time and support and you have a ton of support. You have a therapist and you work your way through those things.
And I think that is like the challenge for us, ‘cause I think we're great at learning. Like we're really good at that. I think a lot of people are, high-achieving people are, but how do you like unlearn the stuff that is really nasty that doesn't help you take a compliment, right? That focuses on other people's point of view instead of your own, Carla when you're acting. Like, how do we do that?
And being okay with failure, like being okay to mess up. [00:26:00] Like that's part of learning. That's the biggest part of learning, right?
Part of success. Like, it's part of being good at something too, is failing, you know.
It requires a lot of shutting out everything at everybody else and, you know, reaching out for support when you want, when you need it. But that noise, shut that out. Right? That's hard.
Yeah.
The biggest thing that helps me, like in terms of that failure piece over the course of years, ‘cause it's like, it's a journey, right? To understand that, but is the models looking at people as other people who've gone through it, you know what?
The model. Other people have gone through?
Models like Victoria's Secret models, I mean like, you know, like role models. Is that what you thought I meant? You know.
Of people who’ve been through it, you know? Like people, you know, who who've struggled, who's failed. Like reading. That's why I read a lot of biographies [00:27:00] and I read a lot of non-fiction stuff, it’s seeing how people fail continuously. Like I just read this book by David Goggins and he's always talking about his failures and, and how he came from that. And so you're like, okay, so when you see like the longevity of somebody's life and, and how, you know, or that podcast, there's like a podcast, how I built this and it's talking about these big brands, right? I think we've talked about that already, but these big brands, and you see these big brands, right? And you're like, oh, that's, you know, that just came outta nowhere, right? Overnight.
But you see how, how many failures you took for these people, and how many nos and how much perseverance these people had to have. And then you kind of, it helps me to put it in a little more in perspective about this, this is a long.
Yeah, it's a long game and the amount of belief you have to have in yourself or whatever, you're good.
Your vision.
It's unbelievable because self-doubt is gonna creep in there.
Always.
So I'm reading Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey and it's surprisingly really good.
Is it good?
[00:28:00]
Well, a friend recommended it. I know. Right next to me. Well, it was in my bag after yoga. I just emptied my bag and put it here. And I was like, “Oh, well Matthew McConaughey is gonna accompany me during this podcast.” But you know, I'm used to seeing him in romcoms. But this book is actually really wise. It's his journaling from his teenage years. He basically made a compilation of all his journaling, all his lessons in his life, and how he made red lights turn into green lights over his life and it's very wise, a lot of good lessons in there. So it's been very surprising and very eye-opening. It's a good read so far.
Yeah. And when I think about D, what you were saying of like, “Okay, what's in my control? Like, I think that's a powerful question to ask yourself, right? Like, “Is this situation in my control? Okay, well what is in my control? Right? And then like, what can I do to move forward?” And then I love this question of, you know, our self-judgment and if we are judging ourselves, like what judgment do I need to release about [00:29:00] myself right now to like take this step to do what I wanna do?
Right? Like what is it like putting language to it? Like I think when you put language to it and you put a container around it, it helps you like look at it objectively, right? And like separate from you. Like, it feels less like an internal, an internal battle inside your brain, a more like your brain is separating two things. Like this is me and that's that thing. Her name is Veronica and her name is Unworthiness. And she fucking comes up sometimes and she pisses me off and she tells me I'm not good enough. But you know what? I tell Veronica, I tell Veronica, “Look, I hear you. I get you. We've touched with this before. I need you to take the back seat because I gotta do this thing.
Engaging, noticing, but then like, yeah, but you're over there, and I'm over here. Thank you very much.
Yeah, I do that too, except my voice instead of being this like antagonist is actually a younger version of me who's very scared. I've tried saying, “No, I'm not listening to you.: That doesn't work. For me, I have to appease it. Like, “Hey, I hear you. I know you're [00:30:00] scared, but we can do this, and I got you. I got your back. After this, even if we fail, I'll be with you. I won't leave you alone.”
So I need to tell my voice that I'm on their team, you know? But having to be apart from me, something outside of me definitely works as well, Arivee.
Yeah. Okay. Ready? We're gonna do rapid fire real quick. Are you ready for this?
I'm nervous.
Don't be nervous. This is going to be fun.
Okay, Diana, you go first.
Okay. Favorite books of 2022 or favorite books, period.
I don't wanna be like one of those annoying guys. Like, let me list all of my...
Me, me, me, me.
5, 5, 5.
Oh, ew. I was thinking of one.
Okay. Go. Diana.
Okay. Or one.
Oh no, you go Carlita. ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ is one for me right now.
Yes. Way to go.
I'll reference the one I said ‘Can't Hurt Me’ by David Goggins.
‘Can't Hurt Me’ by David Goggins.
He's intense. He's intense. Like, you know…
That was a good one.
It was really good. Yeah.
Oh, ‘The Seat of the Soul’ was good too. I've gone back to that like three times.
What was it? ‘The Seat of the Soul’?
‘The Seat of the [00:31:00] Soul’.
My two were, I'm gonna have a bunch, but one was ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ by Cheryl Strayed, which is phenomenal. And when I heard of it, like, you don't hear about that, you heard about ‘Wild’, you heard about her more popular book. This book is better than that. Like, ‘Wild’ is great, but ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’, it like guts you, like, it literally guts you. It's really good.
And it's about letters that she writes back to people who've written her a letter asking for life advice. So it's, every section is different and that's what I like about the book. And then the other one is, ‘You Should Talk to Someone’ by Lori Gottlieb.
Oh yeah, we talked to you. You finished? You did that? Read it?
That's on my list.
Again, life lessons, right? Life lessons.
Okay. Next question.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. If you were to read one, ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’, or ‘You Should Talk to Someone’, which one first? Go.
‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ because it's faster.
Gotcha. Okay. As you were.
Like the other one, it like, you laugh, you cry. It's like all, it's a [00:32:00] whole emotional journey. It's really good though.
Okay, next question. Are you ready?
Ready.
What is a mantra or a sentence or a saying that you tell yourself to pick yourself up or to keep going? Like what is that thing that you tell yourself?
Let me check my journal.
What have I been telling myself?
D, what about you?
I have a few. I was thinking about it. I have a few. “If it doesn't scare you, it doesn't change you.” kind of idea.
Woo. I like it.
Yes.
I know. That really spoke to me. Forgot where I got it from. Somebody told it to me this past year and I was like, “Ooh, I'm into it.”
I love that. D, actually, that reminds me of one that I was telling myself earlier this year was “Do it afraid.” “Do it afraid.”
Do it afraid. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Because this idea of fearlessness is just, is not true. It's not true. It's not really a thing. And the other thing that keeps me going is “What would the future you want you to do at this point?” So if I think of like the 55 year old or [00:33:00] 60 year old me, is that person gonna say, “Yeah, do it, do it. Do it.”
Yeah. I like that.
“Don't do it. Don't do it. It's a bad idea.” Whatever, either way. But I feel like tapping into that helps me.
Another way of saying it is, “What does the future me require of me right now?”
Yeah. That could work.
The person that I wanna be, what does it require of me right now to do?
Right. Yeah.
I have to write all these down.
Also, I like “If it doesn't scare you, it doesn't change you.” I like that better than “If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.” Because challenge is broad, but scared is specific, like it's more specific and it gets to more of what's going on inside, right?
Personal. Yes. Yes.
Carla, what about you? Well, I said “Do it afraid.” Yes. I thought I answered this question over. Do it afraid.
Okay. I lied. I'm looking for two. Do you have two?
I'm, well, I just opened up my journal to one and it was like, “Do things in love.” And what that means is that was what I was saying earlier about failure.
Like even [00:34:00] I'm so used to, “Okay, this, it has to be perfect.” Oh my God, no. If you're doing things in love, then nothing can go wrong. Right? There's nothing wrong if you're creating something out of love or something with a genuine intention. And that helps me get over that fear. And to do things afraid.
So that people are more forgiving of you too if you mess up if they know you're coming from a place of love. You know?
Yes, yes.
But we have to remember to love ourselves and love our imperfections, and you can't wait for perfection. It's not gonna come. You can't wait for permission. It's never going to come. You can't wait for approval. Not going to come.
Okay, so with that, we're gonna wrap up. Thank you so much for joining me, ladies. I've loved talking to you. I mean, I love talking to you all the time.
This wass fun.
Thank you so much for joining and I'll see you soon.[00:35:00]
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