Beauty in the Break

The Fear & Magic of Upgrading Your Life (Soup & Stories Pt 2)

Cesar Cardona & Foster Wilson Episode 26

In Part 2 of this immersive community conversation, Foster and Cesar invite their guests to explore a new question. From health scares and skyrocketing blood pressure to identity shifts, career crossroad moments, burnout, and creative reinvention, the group dives into candid reflections about mental health, emotional resilience, and spiritual realignment. The result is a powerful meditation on change, surrender, and rediscovering one’s purpose.

Connect with the guests:

Ari Hader

Duane Benjamin 

Jamaal Pittman

Katie Hall

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:

Foster Wilson:

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Send us a text

I don't have to partake in the ugliness. There's still beauty, you know, even in this crazy time that we're going through.

Maybe we need to go through this.

It is scary and change is hard, but there is power in the pivot.

This silent understanding of what it means to be a human walking on this planet and the beauty of it.

My gosh, this is a precious life.

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.

Hello, beloved. Welcome back to another episode of Beauty in the Break.

This is part two of our Soup and Stories conversation.

If you haven't heard part one, go back to the previous episode. You won't want to miss it.

So today we are going to dive even deeper and this is quite an emotional episode. I hope you enjoy.

All right, let's pull another card, yeah?

Let's do it.

Fantastic.

I can hear all of you inhaling right now.

Oh my God.

Deep inhale.

I felt it.

I felt it.

Oh, this is great actually.

What upgrades are you in need of?

Oh, I love that question.

That's fun.

I like that.

I like that.

Okay.

Anybody.

Anybody.

Go first.

Foster now, we'll go last.

So my career, my job has been a little bit stressful lately.

And I also have some family challenges to continue with as well.

So my blood pressure has pretty much skyrocketed recently.

But to my credit, I've done a great job of getting it down.

So in the past three weeks, it's gone from 155 over 111 to like 125 over like 88, which

is like really great.

So that was a combination of like diet, exercise, meditation, getting myself together.

So my upgrades are mind, physical, you know, spiritual realignment just to make sure I'm

staying healthy.

Congratulations.

The awareness of it is everything.

I know you know that obviously.

That's a very beautiful thing.

Okay.

I am in need of upgrading my surrendering.

That's kind of why I started this.

I started this new podcast, Magic and Manifestation for Actors.

And I do like a magical process.

And I also, the second part of it is working on just releasing my identity from being

so tied to being an actor.

I think it's just so hard when you've held on to something for so long to just like let

go in all of the ways.

So I need to upgrade my surrendering and my, I guess my magicalness, my witch, my inner witch.

I love that.

A friend of mine recently called me a witch.

She introduced me as, this is my friend Foster and she's basically a witch.

And I love that compliment so much.

I don't know what.

So true.

I think because I was telling her about how I became a doula and that I had gone into meditation

and kept hearing a voice say, be at a birth, be at a birth, be at a birth, and also be upside

down.

And I tried both of those things because I didn't know what, we still don't know what the upside

down thing was about.

That might be it though.

But it could also be that the fact that you've made this soup and you made all these people

come here and express themselves and be vulnerable into the world.

You made them confess all of their stuff.

It's probably the soup.

That's the witchy part.

Yeah, maybe so.

But I love that you have witch goals because I think I also have witchy goals as well.

That's not mine.

It's just a response to yours.

Lately, it's funny to be this age and feel like you're coming into a whole different

stage.

You lived your life one way and now you're living life differently.

So I'm trying to listen more.

I've learned so much in the last 10 years.

And if you guys knew my age, it'd really be funny.

I'm not saying that on the night.

But since I've met my beautiful wife, she's taught me a lot of things.

And that's been very, very helpful.

She was on your show not too long.

I knew you were getting ready to say that.

So listening, put my ego down, try to hear what somebody else is saying as opposed to me

being defensive about it.

I'm really trying to hear other people.

And Cesar's helped me with that a lot too.

I'm sure he doesn't even know it.

But I want to be that person.

And I think that it's helped me to be a better person in my career.

I have the reputation of being a little bit of a dictator because I feel like it has to be

like this.

But I'm finding out that it's not about your version of what right is, like you said.

And that's really been helpful.

It's brought a lot of peace into my life.

You know, we're all living in some crazy times right now.

I'm trying to find the beauty wherever it is.

You know, if it means because I woke up this morning.

I have a wife that loves me and I love the ground she walks on.

It's the beauty of being able to help my youngest child in his situations.

There's so many other things that we get focused on all the negative stuff.

And there's beauty all the time around us.

All you do is open up your eyes and look somewhere else.

It's like, wow.

And I remember when you posted that, the positive things about that company that learned how to break down plastic.

I'm like, those are the things that, you know, to keep me in the right mindset that I have to acknowledge,

there's still beauty.

You know, even in this crazy time that we're going through, maybe we need to go through this.

Maybe this is what needs to happen.

I don't have to partake in the ugliness.

I'm going to continue to work on that to the day.

I'm six feet under, you know.

So, yeah.

I thank you for saying that about me as well.

I appreciate it.

And I will say that to understand somebody is not agreeing with them.

Right.

It's huge.

And I think that we are still binding those two together.

And I think that if everybody in this room and you listening and every one of you listening,

if we all just went one time in our day to try to understand something that we don't agree with,

just understand it, I feel like this entire world can shift in a month.

What situations occurred for it to get to this, to get here?

Not, I understand that they're jerks.

I understand that they're whatever, bigots, whatever phrase.

No, no, no.

Understand how that person got to that situation and that decision.

If we did that, I think this whole world would change.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Even your story about being a vegan.

You know, 15 years ago, I'd be like, ah!

But hearing you explain it the way you did and me being open to hear it, you know.

And I think you're right.

I think if more of us did that, we'd be in a much better world.

And I really thank you for that because that's so wonderful.

Because communication is everything.

And I think that regardless of whether it's an animal or a baby or an elderly,

they're people without a voice.

And so I think that it's so important to stand up for vulnerable people and animals.

And I love that that hits you in a certain way.

So I will say, this is tough.

I feel like for me, my upgrade needed is to care less about things.

Not that matter.

But like, okay, so what I'm trying to say is I'm an actor and I'm a wedding planner.

I never give much thought to like what people think about me when I'm a wedding planner.

Like I'm good at my job.

I do the thing.

I show up.

I'm successful.

My clients love it.

Great.

As an actor, I second guess myself all the time.

And I know I'm good.

And perfect example, I just recently did a film and I was starring in it, but I was also casting

the role who was going to be playing opposite of me.

And to see how wildly different these people's reads are just confirms that like we are magic.

We are, only us can do the thing that we do.

And I think that so often I get into my head caring about what other people think about me

instead of just having fun.

And like truly, I'm trying to remember that because when I have fun, when I show up, like

magic happens.

We'll go to like a restaurant and like they'll, at the end of the night, one time they like

brought out like, I was like, oh, I really want more fries, but I want to ask for them

because I like don't want to feel like that.

And literally at that moment, a guy walked up to me and was like, we have like 18 extra

things of fries.

Do you guys like want them?

And I was like, yeah, yeah.

And like in that same trip, like things just happened.

Like I was getting married and I really wanted a cool place to like take photos beforehand.

And I was like walking up and down the streets of Eagle Rock and I saw this house that looked

like a fricking fairytale like house.

And I was like, I'm just going to leave them a note.

I'm just going to leave them a note and be like, I love your house.

Like, can I take photos?

Not only did they respond and say yes, but they like ordered pizza and then came to our wedding

reception later.

Like, and I think that the moral of the story is like, if you don't ask, it's going to be

a no.

So like just ask and like also don't really care what other people think.

Just like do you, as long as you're not harming people and you're being kind, like show the

world your magic.

So wait, what was the answer to the question?

I get, it was really hard.

I feel like caring less about what others think and just like giving me.

There's pieces of me that feel like, ooh, they're thinking this about me and like, and I

start to like second guess myself, but I'm, I'm like, no care less about external validation.

And as long as like you feel good about who you are as a human, like that's cool.

I don't know what the upgrade would be, but that's the answer.

Is it my turn?

Yeah.

My phone just came over here.

So my upgrade is a little more cerebral.

I found myself when a task comes, my first thought is that it all needs to be done right

then and there.

I need to do it all right there.

So then if the task is at hand and I'm like, I don't have the time, I don't have the time

for this.

And then it just keeps getting pushed off because somewhere in my thoughts, I was like full biting

it instead of just taking bits, bits off.

My current upgrade right now is literally in the middle of the work, remembering the

small thought you just made.

That's the thought.

That's the thought.

Cause then I'll have a creative thought.

I'm like, okay, but then there's this, there's this.

I'm like, and then there's this and this.

And then I get bogged down.

I pick up my phone and I'm on Instagram and I'm on Reddit and I'm watching baseball.

And then I take a nap and then I'm like, whoa, what happened here?

What happened here?

This is, this is work that I enjoy.

What's the problem?

Foster, you said something to me last week when we were in New York that I said that

I forgot when I'm rehearsing for any of my talks.

Sometimes I'm like, there's so much.

I don't know where to begin.

Or I got to do the rehearsal.

Like this is going to be 20 whole minutes or 30 minutes or 45, whatever.

And you reminded me that I said to you, I don't remember this, that I say, if I just stand

up and say, thank you all for being here, I will naturally start going.

That's the upgrade for me.

Just do that.

That's good.

That's good.

Just do those little bits.

I think we often forget how the entire essence of the tree is in the acorn already.

Just plant the acorn.

I think for me, I don't know.

Maybe I interpreted this question a little differently, but I, this was my first thought, best thought.

I feel very lucky and blessed to have built my career as a doula in the last couple of years

so quickly and fully that I feel very blessed by that.

Because it was so aligned for me after being in all of these other careers within the entertainment

industry that I did love on levels and I loved to not love on other levels, right?

Not that they weren't aligned and they were a season, a reason, a lifetime.

But I stepped into doula work and birth work and just, I just fell right into it.

And I was actually talking to a colleague yesterday about now that I have a full practice, the work

is all one-on-one and I don't feel like I can help enough people this way.

And I love doing this work and I will continue to do it in pieces, but I'm noodling with how

to expand the work I do to help and support more people at a time.

Because with one client, I might be with them for six or eight weeks.

Sometimes I'll have two or three clients at a time, but that's a limit.

And my time is my time.

It's one-on-one.

It's intimate work.

It's beautiful work.

I love it.

And I could do it forever.

I'm so energized by it.

And I just think there's like more for me.

There's like a bigger platform of some kind.

I don't know what that is because there really aren't doulas on like a wide network, but I'm

trying to figure out how to help people remotely, how to help people emotionally.

There's more here that I can do for more people.

And so when I think of an upgrade, it's like, how do I zoom out and take the work I'm doing

bigger?

I don't want to say globally, but kind of like on a larger scale.

And I don't know what the answer is to it, but I think that will change a lot.

You're doing it.

You're doing it now.

You just don't know it.

All the things that you're doing right now, that's part of the steps.

You're doing the work now.

But while you're in it, sometimes you can't see like, how can I expand this?

How can I do this?

The next thing you know, you're going to be there and it's going to be for all the work

that you've been doing, the little baby steps that you're taking to get to that destination.

I truly believe that with all my heart.

I'm living proof.

Because as long as I'm doing the work, then the rest will open up for itself.

It will happen for you.

I guarantee it.

Guarantee it.

He just stole my soundbite, didn't he?

That's better than the vagina thing.

Good for you.

Good for you.

You know, steal my soundbite.

No, I was just going to say, Foster, this is why people think you're a witch.

Because you are like magical.

And it reminds, it just, I was thinking about how you were an actor and it was like, I wonder

if part of the reason why you became a director was because you wanted to do more.

I think it just feels like it's some sort of core quality to you and all the work that

you were doing with getting moms to be able to work in the entertainment industry.

Just, it feels like building a community is like a soul quality of yours.

Thank you.

Thank you for saying that.

I appreciate that.

I do feel that building a commune maybe is my path.

No, no.

Thank you for saying that.

I know it will come and it will find the way.

What I was saying yesterday is I just have so, I just have so much that I want people to

hear and know to get them to be cared for and nourished in their postpartum experience.

I don't have to be the one to do all of that.

I just need them to have the information so that they can build the team that supports

them.

And that's kind of what I'm thinking about all the time now.

So we're going to do a little, something a little unorthodox and I'm going to pitch you

all a question.

If you're sitting at this soup and stories a year from now, what is the story you would

like to be telling that happened in this last year?

Go Katie, go.

Oh God.

Okay.

So viewers, y'all are going to, we're going to get real close real quick because a lot

of people in my life don't even know this.

So I have been with my husband for 16 years.

We have two kids and we have decided to shift our romantic relationship and create a new kind

of family.

We have realized that the versions of ourselves that met 16 years ago are just very different

now.

And so we are meeting with a mediator next week.

And so my goal, if we were sitting at a soup and stories this time next year was for me

to be in my own space with my kiddos.

We'll obviously split custody because he's a wonderful father.

And to have created a sort of family structure that is wildly wonderful and beautiful.

And for people who have gone through a divorce to look at us and say like, oh, like we don't

have to follow the recipe.

Like we don't have to have that like age old, oh, when you get divorced, you hate each other

and never speak to each other.

No, I picked this person for a reason back then.

And even though we have grown in separate directions, he will always be my family.

He will always be the father of my kids.

And he is a damn good one.

I want the best for him.

I want him to be happy.

I want me to be happy.

And so a year from now, I just want there to be continued magic and continued love and kindness

between our family.

And I want our families, which I think they're on board with this, to look at us and understand

that like it's okay if they don't understand, but that we are a unit and we will always be

one.

Yeah.

I do.

I love that for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just want us to be in a really good solid place.

And I want my kids to be happy.

I know that there's going to be a hump that we're going to have to get over, but kids are

resilient.

And I think that as long as they see their mom and their dad happy individually, and

as long as we keep them centered and remind them that like it is about them and we want

them to have a wonderful life, that yeah, I want them to just be thriving.

Okay.

I'll shit up now.

That was amazing.

Also, to my husband, who we haven't really said this publicly, I love you and thank you

for giving me 16 beautiful years.

Oh my God.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

You're a trailblazer for people to do it differently.

Yeah.

And also, if you're listening and you are in your own season of becoming, I want to urge

you to live your authentic life and don't worry about what other people think.

It is scary and change is hard, but there is power in the pivot.

There's your soundbite.

Oh, you got to go to someone else.

I'm crying in your story.

I'll jump in real quick.

My whole career has been writing and arranging and playing for someone else.

maybe when COVID hit, I started doing my voice and music.

Not too long ago, we took a trip to New Orleans and we went to the Whitney Plantation, which

is a plantation in New Orleans where it's a tour that you can take.

And there's narration as you have the headphones on walking through the different parts of the

plantation.

But it's told through the stories of the slaves.

And it just really, really, really, really touched me.

So about a year or two, I had the honor of conducting and writing for the Pacific Symphony in a concert

called Symphonic Soul, celebrating black musicians from the 20s that were classical musicians.

It was a fantastic, fantastic concert.

But I wanted to do a symphony about the plantation from the minute that they took the slaves out

of Africa to the work that they had to do.

It's just been bugging me for like five years.

Like, you guys know, you're an actress.

You know what happened.

You have to put your projects down to pay the bills.

But I'm determined next year to get this thing done and have it, a symphonic orchestra play

it.

So I don't care if anyone likes it or doesn't like it, but it will be my story, my journey,

my experience of how that influenced me.

Thank you for saying that.

And wherever and if ever that symphony, that orchestra is performing somewhere, please let

us know.

We will put it on the show notes.

We'll refer back to this episode here.

We can do a first Soup and Stories field trip together and all go to the event together.

Yeah.

So I wish that for you so much.

Thank you so much, so much.

You know, a year from now, if I'm sitting here at Soup and Stories, the story I want to tell

is what it feels like to be an entrepreneur who has a podcast that's been picked up by a

company.

Working with people that love life, that see life the way I see it.

And all of our output is to try to find the beauty within ourselves and then create it out into the world.

And that I'm just getting back here for the Soup and Stories because I just flew back in from a talk

somewhere in the country.

of doing the same thing.

Of talking to people.

Of talking to people.

Of talking to people.

Of talking to people.

Of talking to people.

Of talking to people.

Helping people recognize how valuable they really are.

Not even giving them anything.

Just reminding them what they already have.

If my life a year from now can be made of that where this show and my speaking career and teaching

meditation has grown to a capacity.

If some stranger can walk up to me in Trader Joe's saying the same thing.

I want to be able to sit here at the next Soup and Story a year from now and talk about what that

feels like.

To actually and finally gather this silent understanding of what it means to be a human walking on this planet.

And the beauty of it.

My gosh, this is a precious life.

If I can finally put that in a way of delivering that it affects people.

That some stranger walks up to me and says it.

And then I can double down on that and meet them right there in person and say,

You're right.

It is beautiful.

And so are you.

And then I can just retire back to my apartment here that we're all talking at a Soup and Stories

and just say,

Another person said that to me.

I can't believe this is my life.

That would be the best manifestation for me.

Should I go after that?

Okay, next year I want to be hot.

Hotter.

I'm kidding, but I'm also not.

No, that was really beautiful.

Mine's a lot more

Yeah.

I want to be hot.

And I also...

It's a total safe space.

You say whatever.

There's no brighter or better or worse.

Here's the thing.

I want to be sitting here a year from now and I want to be saying my career as an actress unequivocally working.

This has been a year of...

I was framing it as a year of questioning and now I'm framing it as a year of listening.

I've reframed it.

For the first time ever, I have a plan B.

I've made the decision that a year from now, if my career is not unequivocally working, I will transition.

But I don't...

To a new career.

I will transition to a new career.

Yeah.

I have space in my heart to think that maybe this...

Maybe I have to come back when I am older and less hot.

You know?

Like, I don't know.

But what I want the story to be is that this year is a year of surrender and a year of listening and a year of the magic and manifestation work that I want to believe so hard is true.

And that the answer is that that is what was required to get me to the place that I want to be in.

And then I can, like, give that message to all of the...

I mean, people, but just artists who are just struggling because the career is in such a difficult, challenging place.

And it feels like nobody cares if you make good art or not right now.

And I just want for that to change.

That is really great.

Thank you for sharing that.

This is going to sound like a plug, but I promise you it isn't.

So I am really passionate about the stories of missing kids, especially missing kids of color.

Because as you all can imagine, they don't get the same level of care or attention that other kids might get.

In 2020, I wrote a screenplay called Long Way Home.

Cesar's read it.

He liked it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

One of the best things I've written is about a missing eight-year-old black boy in the 1980s in North Carolina.

Although the story is fictional, the characters are based on people that I know.

Myself, my older brother, my mom, my dad.

So we're sitting here a year from now.

I hope to have the conversation that I have gotten this film funded that is going to happen and be made into a movie.

Conversations are happening right now with certain people in the industry.

I can't name names yet where this might be moving forward.

So if it does, I hope to be able to sit here with all of you and say, I have a movie out that's going to push the conversation forward about missing kids.

And we're all going to the premiere.

Yes.

Of this film.

Yes.

So that's what I want.

I love that.

I'm already so excited for the Super Stories a year from now.

It's going to be so amazing.

Holy smokes.

And one Saturday, we have to go to the symphony and a movie premiere.

Good problems.

Champagne problems.

Those are great problems there.

For me, it's funny that the first thing that came up is kind of an underbelly of what you said, Ari, about creating community.

Because I think of all the goals I have in my career, in my life, and what I actually want to exist in the world, whether I have a part in it or not, it does not matter to me.

And I'm going to cry because you know exactly what I'm talking about, Katie.

Is really and truly a momyoon where people can raise their children together.

It's desperately needed for newly divorced women.

I really want to live in community.

And I really want lots of people to benefit from living in community, especially raising children.

And however that looks, I don't know.

Logistically, it feels like the biggest mountain.

I can't see over the top of it.

But there exists a world in which we can all support each other and have richer lives, I believe, by actually doing things like this on a weekly basis with a community of people.

Gender aside, we really do support and live and care for our neighbors like they are family.

Here in Los Angeles and so many of us are transplants and so many of us live so far from our birth families.

I should say we've really chosen our families.

And you people are some of our family here.

I just want this to exist.

I just want it to exist.

And so if I'm here a year from now, like weeping in gratitude that I live around people that I love and who care about my children and who I care about their children, it just feels like more love.

More love in the world.

I want that for anyone who wants it.

That's what I want.

Thank you.

I just want to say that's beautiful that we all have goals.

And I want to emphasize that the journey to those goals may not be what you want.

It may be something more beautiful than you thought you were going to do when you set out to do that.

So the beauties and the work and the journey, your journey is, like you said, you might want to transition to do a different career.

I would tell you I had several jobs coming up, but I was always a musician that had that job.

I was an accountant, but I was a musician that used an accounting to further my music journey.

You know, you're an actress.

Don't give up.

Just do the things that you need to do to keep yourself going.

Even if it's...

You got me.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I feel you.

I feel you.

You know, acting is a very hard profession, but that's what you do.

That's who you are.

So if you have to work at Macy's for a year, be the actress that has to work at Macy's for a year.

Because eventually what's going to do, what you'll find out is that you needed to work at Macy's the further you're acting.

Don't give up.

That's all I want to say.

Don't give up because the journey will take you somewhere else.

And I'm getting teary-eyed now.

And I'm not rich or anything, but I am rich in what I do.

I love what I do.

And I've got to do it for a living.

So don't give up.

Please don't give up.

Just do what you have to do to survive, to keep on pursuing your dream.

Okay?

And that goes for everybody in here.

From a grandfather.

Ari, I wanted to ask you if you'd thought about what that other career would be.

Do you know what it is?

Yeah.

Will you share it with us?

Yeah.

It would be fitness and nutrition, but specifically for postpartum women.

And I also want to say that you can do both.

Yeah.

Like, I love being a wedding planner and event producer, but I would sell my company in a heartbeat if I was a series regular on a show that told a story that mattered.

Right?

But I think that we can do them both.

Like, especially right now with how things are in this industry.

Yeah.

I think it's like an energetic difference, though.

Oh.

You know.

Absolutely.

For me.

Oh, I hear you.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

There's nothing that quite sets your soul on fire, like telling a story and having people listen to that story.

But I did a storytelling about what's going on in my life, which there's a lot more to that.

And after every single show, I had a woman come up to me and, like, hold my arm and go, same.

And which was shocking because these are women that I know and that I didn't know that that was the same.

I don't know.

I just feel like I can see.

Listeners, you can't see.

Very.

But the way that they are responding to this, like, you're going to do great things.

And the fact that people are going to look at you and watch you on television and feel really comforted by what they see.

And they're going to connect with representation and, like, seeing themselves in you.

And what you do and say is going to matter to a lot of kids.

It's going to save lives.

And it's going to matter.

So, like he said, don't ever stop.

And I don't think you will.

I think that you have a backup because you're smart, but you're not going to stop.

Thank you guys for that.

That was really kind.

Both of you.

Thank you.

Well.

Now that you've made everybody at the table cry, what do you guys want to do now?

That has been another edition of Soup and Stories, the tearful edition.

It always kind of is, isn't it?

At least one person cries.

Sometimes everybody cries.

This has been a fantastic inaugural Soup and Stories on Beauty and the Break because we like alliteration, apparently.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you for being honest, present, being vulnerable.

It means the world to us.

And there's no doubt in my mind that at least one person is going to turn this episode off.

And they're going to see their world in a whole different way.

So, thank you all.

You did that.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

To you listening, as usual, please be kind to yourself.

Thank you.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty and the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

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

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar + the Clew.