How to Say “I Was Wrong” (And Why It Feels So Damn Good)

In this episode of Beauty in the Break, Cesar and Foster dive into the vulnerable, often uncomfortable act of admitting when we’re wrong—and how that simple phrase can shift everything. They reflect on how our ego, upbringing, and societal norms all shape our relationship to being right, and how choosing honesty over defensiveness can lead to unexpected moments of intimacy, relief, and growth.

Through heartfelt personal stories, they offer the idea that saying “I was wrong” can build deeper connections with kids, partners, colleagues, and even ourselves. This episode is a love letter to imperfection and the courage it takes to be real.

In this episode they explore: 

• Why “I was wrong” might be the most powerful phrase you’re not using enough—and how it actually builds trust
• A real-life story about how a failed podcast booking turned into a personal breakthrough for Cesar
• What Foster learned about parenting solo and repairing ruptures with her children in real time
• How to give yourself the parenting you wished you had as a child 
• Foster’s career pivots and how letting go of “what could have been” has brought her more joy
• A forgiveness practice you can do even if the person who hurt you never says they’re sorry
• The Buddhist metaphor that will reframe your understanding of rigidity and growth forever

Cesar mentions Episode 5: Cesar’s Accident. 

You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Transcript

I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in being real.

I was afraid of disappointing people.

I was afraid everyone would think that I had duped them

or that I didn't really have it in me.

So I reached out to them and said,

Hey, do you mind if I ask you these sorts of questions?

And it totally backfired.

Because to be right all the time, it is a rigid box to live in.

It's very human, but we need to grow.

And then one of the kids said to you,

why did Cesar lie?

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.

I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open

and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.

We are here with you.

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

Welcome everybody to another episode of Beauty in the Break.

I'm really excited that you're here.

And I want to say that I kind of feel like you and me and the person listening today are a team.

And we're on this journey together.

Totally.

Whatever reason you're listening to the show today,

I feel like it means that there's something for you in this episode.

I could not agree more.

I get the image in my head of like you walk through like a grassy area and there's a bunch of acorns there.

And just like one of them, you know, is going to take root, right?

Like all the stuff we try to share and the stuff that we try to bring to this conversation here.

I feel like every person could listen to this and just take one little thing with them.

And we've done the job that we wanted to do.

Yeah.

And I know you value your time.

And so I'm really grateful you're here.

I, as you know, had a very hard weekend.

And at the end of a hard day this weekend, somebody called me and left me a voice message.

It was a friend of mine who works at a bar.

He works a day shift.

And this bar is particularly kind of a kind of cafe-ish during the day.

And there were two women who came and sat up at the bar and one of them had a lot of work to do.

And the other friend didn't have anything to do.

And she said to my friend, do you have a book I could borrow?

I'm going to be here for another hour or so.

And my friend said, as a matter of fact, I do.

And then he shared with me that he carries my book of poetry around with him in his bag everywhere he goes.

That's precious.

And so he, I get chills.

Like, think about it.

He handed her the book to read, Afternoon Abundance.

She opened it up and she read the first poem and he heard her gasp.

He said she poured through the book like an hour.

She read like almost half of it.

But she was really taking in every poem.

He just was watching her kind of like be really affected by it.

And when they ended up leaving, she gave the book back to him.

And he said, you know what?

You take it.

I'll get another copy from Foster, I'm sure.

But take it.

I could see it really meant something to you.

And I think it's supposed to be with you today.

And then he called me to tell me that, which was just so sweet.

Oh, that's very sweet.

That's really sweet.

And Foster won't let you know this, that this is not the first time someone has said that to her.

Multiple times they've sent emails, voice messages, left reviews to talk about how impactful your book is.

I don't remember who it was, but someone told you that they've been reading it right before they go to sleep.

Oh, yeah.

That's really sweet.

I'm glad it's hit people in a way.

Same as this show.

Whoever is supposed to hear it and read it has found it and is going through it and getting affected by it.

So well said.

You know, a couple weeks ago I did this talk and it was to a large crowd of people.

Everything about it was beautiful.

That place was super organized.

I walked in and they were like, yes, come on in.

We got this.

We got that.

And then this one gentleman walks up to me and he says, Cesar, you're the speaker, right?

I go, I am the speaker.

And then he starts going down the stream of consciousness about he's excited for me to talk about my life journey and Buddhism because he's been reading these Buddhist books and he has been trying to understand them a little more.

And he said, I'm going to sit here and write some notes while you talk.

And I want to talk to you about them after your talk.

I said, sure, no problem.

Did my talk.

It was fantastic.

I just loved every second of it.

All the people came and walked by and we conversed and so on and so on.

And then he walks up to me and says, can we talk now?

I said, yeah, of course, of course.

Let's go.

We sit across from each other and we start going on the philosophy of Buddhism.

Side note, there's a big conversation on whether Buddhism is a religion or philosophy.

It is very much a waste of air, in my opinion.

He was like, what do you think?

So we kind of talked about breaking down what it meant.

And then he begun at some point to go into this stream of consciousness that lasted for 10 minutes, tying in from the philosophy of who are we?

Why are we here?

What is the message that's being read in this case, Buddhist texts to what can we do in our day to day life to the job he worked to the employees he worked with to the communication and connection?

He can try to work with people in their life.

By the way, I'm sitting here quiet, right?

I need to be listening.

And he went for a full 10 minutes.

And he would talk and talk and talk and then check in on my face and he'd comment on my face.

He'd say, oh, your eyebrows are raised.

You're still enjoying the conversation.

Great.

Thank you.

And he kept going and going.

And then I would smile.

He goes, oh, you're smiling.

I'm glad you're still here.

Thanks.

And he would just keep going back and forth and back and forth, right?

And then finally he paused and then exhaled and then looked to me.

And then he says, I love you.

I want to hug you.

But sometimes I don't know if that's appropriate to ask people because I have so much trouble with.

saying the wrong thing in situations.

And then he starts to go into another stream of consciousness.

And he pauses again, takes a breath.

And you could see his body kind of relax.

And I looked at him and I said his name.

He looked back at me and I said, I love you too.

I'm always here to give you a hug.

We hugged.

And immediately he dropped his face into my shoulder and started to weep.

Just crying, crying, crying.

Saying all these beautiful things that he felt about his life.

How often do we talk to people and just wait to say the next thing?

And then now compare that to how often we can just listen to somebody and get that sort of response.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

That was you just realizing you're enough.

You just being there is enough.

Absolutely.

To affect someone that deeply.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's get into our episode today.

I'm very excited.

Today is a good one.

We're going to be talking about saying the words, I was wrong.

Oh, let's let that just sit in our bodies for a moment.

I was wrong.

Yeah.

I was wrong about that.

I'm wrong in this moment.

I got to say, I have personally found that saying the words, I am wrong, has been one of the most relieving things of my life.

If I'm about to apologize about something and that I really thought that I was right in the thing, right before I'm going to say, I'm sorry, I was wrong.

I don't want to say it.

That's for sure.

But there's a part behind that that's like, you're going to enjoy how much better you're going to feel.

So for me, lately, saying things like I was wrong, I messed up has been kind of therapeutic and cathartic.

Why is it so hard to say that?

I mean, the list could be endless.

Our own ego, right?

We also live in a society where we really point at people for saying like they did this thing wrong and you don't want to be that person with the fingers pointed at you.

It's tough.

We live in a very materialized world.

So we make it black and white.

We do.

Yeah.

But it's not black and white, but we make it black and white.

Right.

It's a very old thought of I have to be right.

And that other side of the, I don't know, the land has to be wrong.

It's us versus them.

And that will maybe somehow I will survive through this.

Yeah.

But I almost feel like the biggest question amongst our whole society in this age is, am I here to survive or am I here to thrive?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean, we lived in a scarcity society before, so we have the scarcity mindset.

We live in an abundant society today.

We still have the scarcity mindset.

We do.

It's a shift that we can slowly make.

And I do think we are making it.

Here we are having this conversation about it.

But how many times have you seen somebody get on television or celebrities or whatever get caught for something and they only apologize then?

Or they've doubled down and not apologize at all.

It's very hard.

I feel like whenever I've said to someone I was wrong or I've made a mistake or I don't know, which is kind of a big like, it's a big like, I'm wrong.

I could be wrong now.

I could be wrong in the future.

I don't know the answer to something is equally as hard for me to say.

When I say that, I feel completely vulnerable.

Yeah.

It's a very scary thing to feel too.

If I can see any opportunity to push that feeling a little further away for now and deal with it later, which every time I see it, I'm just going to keep pushing it out.

I start doing that cycle over and over again of like, right now I won't say I'm wrong.

Maybe it's this now.

No, no, maybe it's this thing.

That wasn't it.

It was probably because we didn't do this.

Instead of just saying, you know what?

I'm wrong here.

I'm going to rip that bandaid off right here, right now.

I get nervous just thinking about it, actually.

I think that we have that law of convenience thing.

Like, it's easy for us to just convince ourselves of the moment here without dealing with the pain.

But if you deal with that pain from the beginning, you're going to feel better in the long run.

Did you grow up around people who were either saying they were wrong all the time or saying they're not wrong?

I think in my formative years, there were multiple people that I have spent long periods of time with who had a really hard time admitting that they were wrong.

A really hard time.

Almost to the point where I don't know if I ever remember anybody admitting that they were wrong to me.

That did two things to me.

One, it turned me inward into shame.

I leaned really far into shame.

Okay, if they're always right, I'm the one who's always wrong.

Oh, okay.

Does it track a little bit?

No, I mean, yes, it does.

But my expression, my response to that was like, whew, there's so many ways we could take that.

And you, unfortunately, took it in a way that just like turns all the arrows onto you.

I turned on myself, actually.

I can feel that I'm still working on it, of course.

It's something I've worked on a lot to not to feel that shame.

But A, it's kind of baked into my personality type a little bit.

And also B, I think that growing up with those people and having different experiences with those types of people in my life really turned the shame to myself.

So then I actually feel like a lot of times it's easy for me to say I'm wrong.

Because it's easier to just say, okay, I'm wrong.

You're right.

What is it?

I'll just, I'll fix it.

That's safer to me.

The other thing that it did is that if I'm not in a moment of shame, then it ramps up my ego.

If the other person is not willing to admit wrongdoing, well, then I won't admit it either.

And then we'll be in a stalemate and we're standing off against each other.

And it's very rigid.

I came from a family of people who have said these actual words.

I'm always right.

So ironically, I grew up thinking I don't want to say that.

And then I just found ways to still act that way.

Right.

And one of my biggest things now that I'm really proud of myself is the ability to say I am wrong.

Please tell me a better way here.

You do that so beautifully.

How did you, I mean, first of all, you do that all the time with our kids.

You really get down on their level and apologize if you've really made a mistake.

And you don't do it all the time.

You know, you're not profusely apologizing.

I think there's a, there's an inherent gender issue here too, because women or people who

are raised as women in this world tend to apologize more.

Absolutely.

And apologize for things where they did nothing wrong, where they made no mistakes.

They sort of swallow the culpability and try to smooth things over.

And that's how we were raised to believe that.

So there's a bit of me that is working to not apologize all the time.

And still I need to hold on to the part of me that does need to be vulnerable and admit

when I am wrong, when I have made a mistake, especially if it hurts somebody else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that.

I like that part of you working on the other side of not saying you were wrong because

so much of our relationship, if I just say, Hey babe, and the tone is just not so warm.

You're like, what did I do?

I'm like, you didn't do anything.

You did nothing.

You're good.

And I can feel you being so ready to apologize.

Yeah.

Well, going back to my childhood, if someone else is, makes a mistake or is wrong or is rigid

about something and I admit that I did something wrong instead, that was safety for me.

There was a safety in that.

Well, I'll just make it better and then I'll be safe.

And for a child that is necessary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're, we are actually on the other side of the opposite side of the table and we are

metaphorically on the other side of the table of thought here because I spent so much time

thinking I am right or just not saying I'm wrong.

And then it started to kind of enforce my thinking.

So I started to believe the thing of saying I am right.

And then it made me think I was always right.

And any person who says they're always right is typically not the most secure and grounded

person.

And I wanted to be a person who was more grounded, more secure in that way.

And that requires you letting go of yourself.

Right.

How did you get to here?

Yeah.

A lot of experience, a lot of putting myself out there, a lot of seeing the patterns of what

am I doing?

And then what environment is it creating for me?

My accident that really helped me shape it a lot, which we talk about in a few episodes

back.

A lot of it is, this is a well that I keep going to becoming a Buddhist.

That was the probably one of the beginning moments of looking at my own thoughts.

And instead of wearing them as a shield, I started recognizing them as shirts, not so rigid, not

so tough.

And you take it off and you toss it out.

I don't remember the exact time it was, but I remember the feeling of the very first time

I said, oh, this is a chance I could say I'm wrong.

And like my brain did that, right?

I'm like, externally, I'm like, fine.

And then I did.

And the person was like, oh, that's cool.

That's okay.

And I was like, that's it?

That's it?

That's how we get that?

You're sure it's okay?

And it was fine because I'd built so much into my own self of I can't be wrong.

No way I'm wrong.

But under the surface of that was being scared of being wrong.

Yeah.

Did you have anybody who ever told you they were wrong?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is great.

The very first person that I can remember saying they were wrong in my childhood is my

bonus dad, my mother's current husband.

They met when I was about seven or eight.

And he has always been a calm guy.

I've never heard him yell.

My mom's got a lot of fiery energy.

I've never heard him yell.

He's very stoic, very chill.

He's very much a man of God.

And then I had to be eight or nine or so.

And I don't remember what it was, but he came into the room where I was.

And he sat down with me and he recapped what happened.

And he said, I want to say, I'm sorry for that.

I was wrong.

And I know myself at that time.

I was like, that's okay.

No problem.

It's okay.

But it stuck with me.

So much has stuck with me that now when time comes war, I apologize to our kids.

I can think of him in my head.

And I mimic how he was to me about that.

And to this day, he'll still apologize.

I just find that to be such a beautiful thing.

And someone who, again, has a stoicism to him.

He's very firm.

If you meet him, he can be a bit intimidating, but he's warm.

He just has a very strong figure.

He's former military.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

He's a veteran, right?

He's a big guy.

And you just, you can meet him and you feel like, man, this guy could do something.

But he's just super warm.

But he's also just so gentle in that way.

So time comes that I have a conversation with one of the kids.

That one instance of me swimming, side note, I don't know how to swim.

And we went to the pool.

And after like a month or so of you and the kids telling me, we'll teach you how to swim.

I got in the pool and just kind of swam from one side to the other, which wasn't really swimming.

But it was swimming.

And then one of the kids said to you, why did Caesar lie?

And I was like, oh, that's not what I'm trying to do here.

I was just being silly, like almost trickstery, you know?

So I made a mental note.

And I don't think I saw them for a little while, like a week or two weeks or something.

But I made a mental note because there's no part of me that wants to feel like they think I'm a liar.

Right.

So I sat with them and apologized about that.

What did you pick up from them when you apologized?

They gave me a similar response that I gave my bonus dad when he apologized to me.

They're like, oh, it's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

But you know how much that affected you.

Because that's a beautiful thing to just to remember that that one moment is a thread that doesn't come back until much later in your life.

And now you can see how it is affecting this child and their ability to see someone be humble, admit fault, say I was wrong about something.

You know it goes on and on and it's a ripple effect.

Absolutely.

If I'm going to be a male figure in their lives, a figure in general, but a male figure, I can't control what any other person in their life does.

All I can do is try to be the best version that I would want them to have.

And that comes with being human.

I'm not interested in being right.

I'm interested in being real.

That requires you saying words like, I was wrong.

I'm sorry.

I'd like to make this up.

What I thought was the way, it's not the way, and I was wrong.

Saying I was wrong is a scary thing to say.

But it's also very powerful and very freeing.

Because in that moment, you are taking care of your future self, who's probably going to make a mistake.

The next time you go to make a mistake, you've already done that work of opening up, being vulnerable, realizing that on the other side, you're still okay.

You make that future mistake and all the anxiety of, oh, do I tell that person I made a mistake?

Do I admit fault?

You've already done it.

You've already done it once.

You have a trust muscle.

You're right.

Yeah, well said.

And the more you do that thing, the more you can look back at the warehouse load of evidence of, oh, this actually benefits me.

I feel so much better.

I had it in this show, even.

We had planned a guest that we wanted to work with.

You and I know them.

And the three of us, you, our producer, Glenn Milley, and I, had had all this planning about how to bring this person onto the show.

And then I wanted to give it a personal touch.

And because I didn't necessarily know exactly how to approach the topic that they wanted to talk about.

So I reached out to them and said, hey, you mind if I ask you these sets of questions?

And it totally backfired.

And I tried to talk to them and meet them where they were.

And it just set them in a space that didn't make them feel right.

Even though my intentions were just to make the best version of a conversation.

And I felt terrible.

And when they messaged me, that first time I go, oh, no.

Oh, no.

So I immediately tried to go into, like, fix it mode a little bit, right?

And then I was messaging the two of you, you and Glenn.

Trying to keep cool.

And I'm trying to get it, like, make sure we get it back on the right track.

Because it didn't derail yet.

But you could see it tipping.

And I'm like, wow.

That wasn't the right choice.

Day later, they messaged me and said, hey, I don't think I can do this show.

And I was really upset.

There was a voice in my head at that moment when I found out that I made a mistake.

The voice said, double down.

Try to make it right in this conversation now.

And that's my old way.

That's most people's way.

They want to just keep pushing, keep pushing and double downing.

Instead, I didn't send that person a message.

I went straight to our thread, updated both of you, and immediately jumped into saying,

I was wrong.

I want to apologize for the misstep that I made.

I take full responsibility for it.

And it was not hard.

It was so heavy.

Because all of me, on almost the most important stage,

with two people that I love so much, you and Glenn,

I felt like I looked like a fool for making the wrong choice.

I often also feel a bit like an outsider when we're working, the three of us.

Because both of you have so much experience in the industry.

So sometimes I'm like, I want to share something.

I want to have a good idea.

I want to feel these things.

So I tried something, and it fell flat.

And all I could do was just say, I'm sorry, I apologize.

Majority of the rest of the day, there was a pit in my stomach.

And I felt so bad.

And I was embarrassed.

And I felt insecure.

And then it started bleeding into other things.

I was late to a client.

I went to meet another client at a spot, but we had already rescheduled.

So I showed up there for no reason.

And all those thoughts came in that were saying, see, you messed up.

This is why you shouldn't say you're wrong.

But I didn't listen to it.

And it's so very freeing.

Because on both sides, now you've done it.

And also on our side, too.

OK, there was a mistake made.

Great.

How much more comfortable will I be to say that I've made a mistake when that happens

very soon in the near future, I'm sure?

Wow.

Right?

Because to be right all the time, to pretend like we always have the answers and that we

are always right, it is a rigid box to live in.

It's very human.

We want to do it because of our ego, because we want to have safety.

But we need to grow, right?

We're here to grow, I think.

We're here to thrive and expand.

And to say I am wrong is to say I am growing.

Well said.

Well said.

Absolutely.

I know that when I left my marriage, I moved into this place of solo parenting.

50% of the time, I don't have my kids.

So I'm not a full-time single parent.

But for the first time ever, I moved into this space where I, when I had my kids, I'm

the only person in charge.

And that's terrifying for so many reasons.

But what it did for me was take me to ground zero about how do I want to parent?

I've been co-parenting.

Some of that was working and some of that was really not working.

But now I have to figure out what kind of parent am I going to be for these two kids?

You have all the reins.

All the reins.

Yeah.

Which is scary.

And you know, you have a lot of power in that sense, but it's also really scary, right?

So, you know, I would stumble and fall all the time as a parent.

And I would fall into rigidity of like, I said this one thing.

I set a boundary.

I set a rule.

This is it.

And I would fall into rigidity.

And after that, many times that had happened, I realized, you know what?

I need to just be vulnerable with my kids.

There wasn't room to pass the torch to a co-parent and take a break always.

So sometimes I had to give myself a break or break down right in front of them and then

say, and sometimes it was crying right in front of them and saying, listen, I am overwhelmed.

I don't know what to do in this situation.

I don't know how to solve this problem.

Let's the three of us talk about it.

And they, each of them in their own way would melt right in front of me.

Whatever was going on, whatever tension, fighting, or, you know, who didn't follow the rules

or whatever it was, would just kind of melt away.

And they would see me as a human, occasionally console me in my own vulnerability.

And they say, okay, we got to work this through together.

We got to figure out how to do this together.

It's just us.

There's no one else here.

It's just us.

And that can be messy.

It was really messy at some times.

But I had to kind of rebuild from the ground up.

What is the dynamic of the three of us?

How are we going to go moving forward?

And a lot of the time, it's a team.

We're a team.

We have to be.

Yeah.

Agreed.

I hear that.

And I can see you doing that work with them so often.

And by the way, if you have kids listening here, you know the kids are going to call it out.

They're going to pull that.

You said this.

You said that.

You said this.

You said that.

It's a great humbling experience in so many ways.

You've been doing so great at it.

And I've seen you fill up this warm air in your body.

And then you just kind of like open the spout a little bit, let some steam out.

And then you being able to turn and say, I'm human.

Again, I'm not interested in being right.

I'm interested in being real, which gets us so much further.

There was this cool study of this boss.

He would have meetings with his company.

And he would talk about to them the things that need to be done right because there was a problem that was going on.

And he would talk about how can we fix this.

And he would get minimal responses.

And then he went to them and said, you know what I can fix about my side of it?

And then people started speaking up afterwards and then taking their own responsibility for it.

That's cool.

Yeah.

What a cool example to set.

Because you think about parent to child, the same exact dynamic can be within boss and employee.

We can have a power dynamic and a power struggle here, which is going to be inherent in any kind of situation like that.

However, how can we level the playing field as much as we can?

As much as we can.

Not all the way.

As much as we can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're totally right.

Absolutely.

If you zoom out a bit, in my life, I see choosing a career and sticking with it and then changing careers to be a really big way of saying, hey, I was wrong.

Really?

Yeah.

Are you serious?

I feel, yes.

I'm sorry to cut you off.

I've only seen you skip, like skip pivot.

Like, okay, going to this now.

Right.

That's where I'm at now.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Yes.

But growing up and all throughout my twenties, I was an actor and that was the dream.

That was the goal that I was built, built my whole life around that.

Right.

I went to school for it.

I got a BFA for it.

I went, I moved out to California for it.

This was what my life was for.

And if you build up that much anticipation and also there's ego in that, not in wanting to be an actor, that's not it, but ego in that, I want to get this right.

I want to do this, be successful in this, in a career that is very often full of rejection, rejection, rejection, failure, failure, whatever it is over and over again.

Right.

And after wild died, after I pivoted and started directing, I had this transition moment of, I actually really like directing.

Now, granted, we're still in the same field.

It's not too far off.

But when I went to the other side of the camera and had all this extra new life in me and that career path, I, it took me two years to fully let go of acting because I had so much identity built into that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

And it was like, I was, I felt like I was turning around to everyone who had ever helped me in my life, go to school, my parents, my, my brother, everybody supporting me.

It felt like I had turned to them and go, eh, I had enough of that.

I was wrong.

Everything you invested in me was wrong.

I'm going to move over here and do this other thing.

It felt like that to you.

It felt like that to me.

Okay.

No one said that to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's that, again, that sort of like ego, like don't say you're wrong because all the images and stuff you built up in your head about what will happen if you say you're wrong.

Continue.

I was afraid of disappointing people.

I was afraid everyone would think that I had duped them or that I didn't really have it in me.

And I wanted to let go fully of acting and be in directing because I, I really like to be in something fully and fully immerse myself before I move on from it.

That length of time is from when I was 10 till probably I was 31, 32 is a long time of my life.

So much baked into that.

So much baked into it.

And so many dreams and aspirations.

I didn't feel like someone who could just float around.

I wanted to leave it behind because when I turned to directing, I really just wanted to focus on directing.

I didn't want to have a, well, sometimes I act, sometimes I direct.

A lot of people do that.

And for me, it wasn't how I wanted to spend my energy.

And then I've taken a big hiatus from directing now after about eight years.

And I've moved into the birth world and to postpartum work.

I don't really, I still have an identity there and I still have a hard time letting go of it, but it's significantly less time.

And now I see myself turning over and turning over.

Yeah.

Now, though, you don't have that sort of I was wrong feeling when you shed or evolve into a new life.

Now I don't.

Now I see it.

That's what I, I see the good stuff.

I only see you like doing it kind of gracefully and kind of effortlessly, gracefully, powerfully.

Not a word.

It's a word right now.

But that's how I see you do it.

Thank you.

Now I look at career choices and opportunities and creative opportunities as this is going to be a period of my life.

Because I know myself well enough to know that like whatever I do, I'm going to do for a period and then it's going to float away and I'll find something else that lights me up.

So now I have a comfort level in it.

But boy, it took a long time to get there.

I like that this is a period of my life.

The more we start looking at things like expecting them to have the new tide coming in, instead of looking at things like this is the way it is and seeing it as ocean waves,

the quicker we'll be able to do kind of what you're doing here is saying, okay, now we're doing this.

And somehow, for me at least, the life hack for it is me knowing that, it makes it even easier for me to say, oh, okay, I was wrong.

I was totally wrong.

Because now I know the wave of the ocean is always going to turn in life.

And my job is to be more flexible with it, right?

Rigidity is where things collapse.

That old video footage of that bridge, I think it's like in Oregon or whatever.

It's black and white.

And the bridge, you can Google this, the bridge starts getting wobbly like this and it breaks.

They made the bridge too rigid.

It has to have give to it.

Skyscrapers.

My aunt worked in the World Trade Center.

I would go with her when I was a kid in the towers.

And when it would rain, you could feel the building wobbly.

And inside all those skyscrapers, they have what's called a mass-tuned damper.

And it's a big ball that when the building goes one way, the ball goes the other way.

So it has to have give.

So you got to give and not be so rigid in that way.

And you, going back to sticking with the metaphor, bringing it back to what you're saying,

your voice lit up when you said, it brings me new life.

And that's exactly where you got.

And so, yeah, that's it.

That's the line.

That's what I got.

I see that new life in you at every turn of pivot that you make.

It's amazing.

You amaze me daily.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Of course, of course.

I find that it's really difficult to be around people who can never admit wrong.

Right?

I think it's...

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

I just had like a flash of one particular person.

I'm like, oh, yeah, right, right, right.

Yes, yes, yes.

Well, it's two things.

It's exhausting.

Uh-huh.

And it's not creative.

Mm-hmm.

We have no control over what other people do.

No.

We can only be humble and have humility and admit fault to ourselves and with that person,

but we're not going to change them.

Yeah.

We can only offer that.

There's a hack I've figured out.

If there's somebody in my life that I wish would do that, may or may not ever get it,

but I wish they would apologize for something, admit that they were wrong, be vulnerable, be open.

I have at times gone into kind of a meditative state and relived a situation with that person being completely everything I want them to be.

Oh, cool.

That's a pretty good idea.

Yeah, yeah.

Or a specific situation where I needed an apology and I needed that inner child in me to hear

I was wrong.

I apologize.

What do you need in this moment?

And it can either be that person or if that's too far-fetched, because sometimes it's too

far-fetched to believe it, it will be some other person in my life right now who I know

would give me that.

My dad would always give me that.

He would always give me the apology, the humility.

And so I will relive those situations and try to work on the deeper parts of my brain and

heal that.

You're right.

Yeah, you're right.

Just like you said, because it starts and ends with you when it pertains how you perceive

what's going on.

You're 100% right about that.

That reminded me a little bit of like that loving kindness meditation where you offer love and

warmth to somebody.

You find the most, we're going to make up a second word here, the most swellingest warmth that's

in your chest.

I said it.

Swellingest in your chestingest.

Great.

Kept going.

Great.

Thanks.

I appreciate that.

Beauty in the break, guys.

Thank you.

You find that warmth there and then immediately you start, while sitting in meditation, sending

it out to other people.

Tell me.

Now, some people can argue that it might change them.

It might.

It might.

But that's not really that important, is it?

What's important is that your perspective of it is shifting from wanting an apology from someone else.

And it's really also, maybe this is a whole other episode, but for God's sake,

forgiving the people who are rigid and unwilling to apologize for anything, unwilling to be wrong.

Finding that forgiveness in yourself.

It's only come to me recently.

It's only come to me recently.

Oh my gosh.

It is.

What a relief, man.

Yeah.

For myself.

Yeah.

What a relief.

How many times do you hear people talk about someone who passed away and they say, I forgive

them?

So much of my life.

I was like, they're not here.

What are you talking about?

And then I, at some point, had to do something similar to that.

That person didn't pass away, but there's somebody that I can put money on.

They're not going to apologize.

Or say that they're wrong.

That my giving them forgiveness is for me.

Yeah.

It's not for that person at all.

At all.

It frees you.

It frees you up.

Yeah.

You know, otherwise it's holding onto resentment, anger, aggression.

The Buddha says having anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person is going to die.

Ugh.

He was just Mr. Mic Drop. Book drop, I guess.

Just drop the book, you know.

But think about that.

Holding onto your own stuff in the hopes of somebody else who's going to feel it, that doesn't work that way.

So in that same vein, forgiveness, allowing forgiveness is now drinking cure to your own self without even worrying about whether that person is going to feel better or not.

Yeah.

Well said to you.

I wonder if the exercise for us, both of us, is to find an opportunity this week to

say I was wrong to someone about something.

The more vulnerable, the better.

But to say it and to get there as quickly as you possibly can.

Yeah.

Well said.

And it's a very safe space here, by the way.

So if you do, and whatever comes up for you afterwards, whether you feel relieved or weight

is off your shoulders or you didn't feel any difference, tell us too.

We want to have that conversation.

We love hearing this sort of stuff.

Yeah.

Email us at beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for listening today and thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing.

We appreciate you very much.

Please be kind to yourself.

See you next time.

Beauty in the Break.

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Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar & The Clew.