Beauty in the Break
Beauty in the Break is a new podcast that explores the powerful moments when life shatters—and the unexpected beauty that follows.
Hosted by public speaker Cesar Cardona & filmmaker and poet Foster Wilson, each episode dives into conversations of healing, transformation and resilience through self-awareness, storytelling and mindfulness. Whether you’re navigating change or seeking inspiration, this series uncovers the common threads that connect us all, to help you achieve personal or professional growth.
Beauty in the Break
How to Stop People-Pleasing Without Losing Love
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In this episode of Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar share their real-time struggles with breaking through personal barriers in relationships and self-awareness. Foster reveals her pattern of people-pleasing and difficulty knowing what she wants, especially in romantic relationships, while Cesar confronts unexpected impatience that's surfaced as he's achieved more success in his speaking and meditation career. Through vulnerable conversation, they explore how women's intuition gets buried beneath societal conditioning, why men struggle when women can't articulate their needs, and how personal growth requires constantly meeting your partner (and yourself) in new versions as you evolve.
In this episode they explore:
- Why successful women still struggle to say what they want in relationships
- Men opening doors for women: patronizing or respectful?
- The Buddhist story about success that humbled a meditation teacher
- The difference between releasing your demons and working with them
- Why growth requires meeting your partner again and again in new versions
- The iPhone update theory of human transformation
Episodes referenced:
- Episode 23: Our Most Uncomfortable Conversation Yet: Money - where we explored the “messy middle” of healing our money issues
- Episode 33: How Psychedelics Changed Our Lives
If this episode spoke to you, you will love Why It’s Never Equal where we explore gender roles and invisible labor. 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 and TikTok.
Cesar Cardona:
- Receive his newsletter Insights That Matter
- Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website
- Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
Foster Wilson:
- Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
- Learn about her postpartum services
- Receive her newsletter Foster’s Village
Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson
Executive Producer: Glenn Milley
This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates
And I actually believe that.
My needs are not as important as yours.
You believe that?
Uh-huh.
A lot of men in particular is like, we're hunting.
Tell us.
We'll go do the thing.
You know, tell us.
Tell us, tell us, tell us.
And then there's the other side of it that sometimes we can be mama's boys as males.
We can be like, I want it my way.
I was quite nervous.
My brain was like, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Welcome to Beauty and the Break.
Here we explore stories of how barriers are broken, both within ourselves and within the world.
I'm Foster Wilson.
And I'm Cesar Cardona.
This is a home for you.
Questioning the rules you inherited and choosing your own path forward.
We are here with you on this messy and courageous journey.
Let's dive in.
Welcome back to another episode of Beauty and the Brig.
You're here.
You're here for all of this, whatever this is.
Thanks for being here.
Wherever you are, I hope you're in a space of peace, calm, and clarity.
Today, so we're kind of like, you know, getting into our next season, right?
And we mentioned in a previous episode that we are reframing a little bit, slight little nudge about how this show is going to be framed.
One of the main differences in how we are kind of fine tuning our show going forward is that we want the show to be about the barriers we have broken through, whether that's within ourselves or out in the world.
And so there's no better way to start off the beginning of the year than to really talk about in real time what barriers we are currently working on.
Because this is not something we've done past tense.
This is something that we're in the messy middle of trying to break through for ourselves.
Yeah.
When we had the episode about money, it was something that we were working on right in the moment.
Yeah.
And it was challenging for both of us.
And a lot of people told me and you and therefore us how impactful that episode was for them.
How good it felt for someone to hear people be vulnerable and open and not have all the answers and not say like, this is all the things that I know.
Instead, we were saying, this is what we don't know.
And so I wanted to copy and paste that in a sense, take that same framework and say, let's talk about the things that we're trying to barrier break in our life right now.
I feel like it's constant with us.
We're always got something that we're trying to break through.
And it feels like either within the world, which we've got that too, but in particular within ourselves, I feel like so much of my thoughts and attention is focused on bettering myself in a way.
But maybe that's the wrong way to phrase it.
Not to make myself better, but to break through something that's like kind of got me stuck.
You know?
I think that's a better way of saying it.
Yeah.
Working through things is usually what I say.
Uh-huh.
And I say like, oh, I'm rehearsing it.
For what show?
I don't know.
Yeah.
But I'm just constantly at rehearsal of something.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, we talked about in our psychedelics episode about the remembering of what we're really all here for.
And so sometimes we've got these elements of our life that are like stuck in our chest and are prohibiting us from the freedom that we want in this world and the play and the joy and the happiness.
And we can get so bogged down and stuck by like being human and getting, you know, going to work.
And everything's hard.
And it is hard.
But like we cannot live our lives like everything.
That can't be all there is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These things we break through hopefully onto the other side, but we're not there yet.
Sometimes I don't know what I'm working on until it just shoves itself right into my face.
Oh, interesting.
Money was like a big one for me for the whole year.
And still, still working through that.
But I'm like, I feel like I'm on the downhill with that.
Recently, you and I were up in the cabin and you frequently will ask me, maybe is there something you want to listen to music wise?
We have our phones, literally every single song you could possibly imagine.
Yeah.
And what do you want to listen to?
And oftentimes we're in your place or in the car or whatever.
You are, you're playing your music and you try to give me like, hey, you want to pick?
Because I'm like kind of got the controls here.
And I often will say, I don't know.
I'll get kind of overwhelmed by the question.
I'll say like, I don't know.
Whatever.
Keep playing what you're playing.
I do find the question overwhelming because it's a huge library to choose from.
But then it happened again when we were trying to pick a show to watch.
And I was looking at the different shows and the different choices and nothing really quite felt right.
And I was like reached into the arsenal of movies we want to watch.
And I picked something that I knew you wanted to see and that you liked.
And I felt pretty neutral about it.
And I was like, let's watch this.
And I caught myself doing that.
I'm like, what am I doing here?
I am consistently not choosing what I want, but I also don't even know what I want.
And I'm deferring to my partner for what I know is going to keep him happy because I don't know.
I feel safer that way.
This is an easier choice.
And so I had this realization, and I think I told you pretty quickly after having it,
that I don't always know what I need or what I want, and I'm very good at pushing my needs and wants down.
The idea that I don't know what I want is kind of scary to realize.
And it's especially scary because I remember working on this before when I was younger.
I mean, I am a, to go way back, I'm like a historical people pleaser, right?
And I even went into a profession of acting when I first started training and, you know, going to school.
I went into a profession that was like someone else is going to tell me what to do.
They're going to approve of me to get in the room, to get the job, to not get the job.
And then they're going to tell me exactly where to go, what to do, how to say it, all of the things.
That's not really true about actors, but that is what my perception was of acting at the time.
Yeah, that was your buy-in.
That was your way to do that job because that's what you assumed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I was not an actor who needed or wanted agency within my career.
I was somebody who was like, I'll be really happy if someone just tells me where to go,
tells me exactly how to do it, and I'll just do it.
Part of my growth personally in my career was many years later transitioning into directing.
And that was so scary to me because I was like, now I have to have a vision.
Now I have to know what I want.
Now I'm the one who's laying the foundation for other people to have their crafts and to say,
I need you to start here and the blocking ends over here.
And you had to have a really clear vision and direction about what you wanted.
And the sign of a weak director was somebody who didn't know what they wanted.
So I worked on that really, really hard.
To come full circle and now be in a relationship with you and realize I still have this little bit to work on here
is scary, but I know that I can do it.
It's now only appears in relationships.
I worked on this in my career and now it's still showing up in my romantic relationships.
Right.
It's closest to you, a romantic relationship.
So I would assume that it's probably gonna be the hardest thing to work through.
When I ask you, what do you want to watch or listen to?
What do you feel?
What's the first thing that comes up for you?
I think there's two things going on.
One is I get over, I really get overwhelmed by the question because if you say this or that,
right?
Do you want to watch this or do you want to watch that?
I can make a choice.
But when there's an infinite number of choices, my brain shuts down.
But that night when we were talking about what I wanted to watch, I very clearly was like,
this will make him happy.
And I'd rather not ruffle feathers.
I'd rather be dissatisfied or feel neutral about the movie than ruffle any feathers with you,
which is an old thing.
Right.
This is from in relationships in my past, deferring to someone else was the safest way for me to be.
Right.
Do I ever give you a feeling of do the thing that I want?
Otherwise I'll be upset or feathers will be ruffled?
No, it's not you.
It's a pattern.
It's just a pattern for it.
Okay.
It's a you thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's not about the movies or the music.
It's not, yeah.
It's about, do I know what makes me happy?
Do I know what I want in my life?
Do I know what I want for us?
Do I know what I want for me?
I think part of it is we're two years and change into our relationship.
Early on, it's easy to be like, yeah, whatever you want.
Yeah, you know, that sort of, I want us to be copacetic.
I don't want us to fight.
I want us to have agreements about things.
Sometimes I will like just defer.
I will just, it's almost like shoving it under the rug, sweeping it under the rug, something
that I want and be like, my needs are not that important.
And I actually believe that, that my needs are not as important as yours.
You believe that?
Uh-huh.
You actually believe that your needs are not as important?
Not consciously, but subconsciously.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
Sorry, I should have specified that, but yes.
Uh-huh.
There are times where we are having a conversation about something or last week, for example,
there was some food that was left.
You spoke first and said to one of our kids, do you want this?
And they said no.
And then two other people in the room, me and someone else said, is there enough for both
of us as well to have like a scoop or so, a little bit out?
And you were like, yeah, sure.
Just have it.
Just have it.
And you just gave the whole thing away.
And I went, babe, I just want a small scoop.
You should have it.
You asked for this thing.
A few things.
I think that's a motherly thing.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's a society that tells women that they're secondary.
Mm-hmm.
To want to just keep giving and giving and giving and giving.
the moment you step up, you're too demanding, you're too whatever.
But to be more specific here, there are in men conversations and men dialogue and like
memes that are aimed towards men, very often talking about women not knowing what they want.
Yeah.
Oh, that is true.
You're right.
I mean, there's that whole gif of like a guy's like, I'm going to go ask my girl where we're
going to dinner.
And it just changes to Ryan Gosling in the notebook yelling at Rachel McAdams.
He's like, what do you want?
Like that, right?
There's another one, this woman, she's like on death row.
And he's like, what would you like for your last meal?
She goes, I don't know.
What do you want?
Yeah.
It's hilarious because there's some actual truth in there, right?
And you think that's hard for men?
It's hard.
Yes.
It's very challenging, especially for a lot of men in particular.
It's like, like we kind of were hunting.
Tell us, we'll go do the thing.
Oh, right, right, right.
You know, tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us.
And then there's the other side of it that sometimes we can be mama's boys as males.
We can be like, I want it my way.
I want it my way.
And we'll push back.
I mean, I think there's room for both of those spaces where it's like, no, I want this this
time.
And sometimes like, no, no, I want to do exactly what you want to do.
But I ask this question to you in particular to try to speak for, from that space, from,
you don't have to speak for all women, of course, but from that space of an understanding of what
is it that you don't know about what you want?
I think that deep down, my intuition, if I pay attention, knows exactly what I want.
I think if I'm actually in tune with my intuition and like my heart, I do know what I want.
If I'm too much in my mind and my cerebral, maybe it's prefrontal cortex.
I don't know, but if I'm in my mind and it's racing and I've been working the whole day
trying to like figure out things and make things happen, I don't know what I want because I'm
not tapped into the intuitive parts of me.
Actually, women are incredibly intuitive.
Do you know this whole thing about chivalry and opening doors?
Oh, maybe.
Remind me.
So the idea of like, oh, it's chivalrous for a man to open a door for a woman, right?
And then there was all this backlash of like women like, I don't want you to open the door
for me.
I can open the door for my damn self, right?
But it historically goes back to when people would live in tribes and they would go explore
new land, they would send the women first.
The women would go in and sniff out essentially, where is water?
Where are we going to have a good food source?
And they would use their intuition first, be like, yes, this is a good place for us to land.
Now men come in and do all the like-
The muscle and the more direct logical kind of like, this is that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here's where we are.
And the women were like leading.
That's fascinating.
We're born leaders.
So it's like an honoring of that historic thing.
That's precious.
The woman goes first to get the lay of the land and I'll come after and she'll tell me where
to sit in this room full of people or whatever.
So why am I saying that?
So you do know what you want.
Oh yes, I do know what I want deep down, but I am so often in this like masculine energy
world driven by my head and driven by like these masculine sort of energy choices.
And I'm not tapped into my internal thing.
And then this part two is even when I'm tapped in, and I'll give you an example of this,
but even when I'm tapped in and I know exactly what I want, I then run it through my head
about how you will feel about that.
There you go.
And this is just as my partner, not like as a male, but as my partner being like, if I
say what I want, it might hurt his feelings.
That's amygdala by the way, not prefrontal cortex.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm not correcting you.
I'm pointing out like, that's a fear thing.
Like that's, that's coming from a space of fear and like a scarcity mindset.
That's more of a, like a flight or flight amygdala kind of thing.
Maybe.
I feel like I'm caretaking you in that sense.
Cause if with the food, you wanted it, you were still hungry.
Well then somehow I was like, it doesn't matter if I have a few more bites of this.
I want him to be satisfied.
Yeah.
I want a caretake for you.
What?
Yeah.
It's like your head.
Well, I'm shaking.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I'm shaking my head for all those listeners out there.
I'm shaking my head because it is, it takes a toll.
It takes a toll on a person who goes that way often.
My mother constantly would throw parties, cook food for everybody, and then be too tired to
make a plate for herself.
Make your own plate first.
Put your mask on in the airplane before you put the oxygen mask on somebody else.
Like you need, fill your cup first.
There's all these phrases for it.
I can keep going on and on.
The food thing, you did it out of habit, but you were drained that you had to do it.
Yeah.
I saw it in your body language.
Yeah.
Well, that's because I do that.
That's, I do that for my children.
Precisely.
Yeah.
And again, there goes that mother archetypal thing.
And that's, is that not mother nature right now, by the way?
We are taking up so much resources of mother nature constantly until one day she's going to spit
us out or something.
So someday she's worn out or until she gives us a virus and tells us to go to our rooms
and don't come out to me.
Think about what we've done.
I could sense that from you in that moment, the way you handed the box over to us.
Yeah.
Well, because it, by shoving this down and by being like, okay, in that moment, I knew what
I wanted.
It wasn't, I wasn't unclear about that, but I was going to sacrifice.
But there's a small part that comes with that sacrifice that is bitter and resentful.
And resentful.
That's the word I was thinking of.
And we all know the mother, the mother meme of like, you never, not even a meme, but just
the trope of a mother saying, you never appreciate me.
You know, I do all this for you.
I gave birth to you.
You never appreciate me.
And it's like, oh, that's, that's so much bitterness.
And it's deep.
And it's, and right.
And you can, I think about six feet under a lot when I see it, think about moms or that
sort of thing.
Like the mother in six feet under, she was so wound up.
And then she has that burst.
She's like, I want somebody to be intimate with me.
Well, any of you have intimacy with me?
And like, everybody's uncomfortable, obviously, but she just blew up, you know, you, you give
so much.
When we first started dating, it was a compliment to you.
I would call you Kuan Yin, that Bodhisattva that if you ever, you listening, if you ever
see any of these statues of a Eastern statue that has all these arms, it's the Bodhisattva
of generosity, of compassion, of caring, of giving.
And she has all these arms so she can continuously give.
It's infinite arms.
And you do that so well.
And there's nothing wrong with that, obviously.
But I could feel the resent in your body language sometimes.
I didn't know I was even doing that.
I just wanted a scoop of the movie, I just wanted a little bite of the pat-tie, whatever
it was, right?
The thing is, you're not doing anything.
Like, it's just, it was, I actually, that was one of the things I was thinking about as
an example of that, because it became so clear.
Recently, also the other day, you said to me, hey, do you want to go to this talk that
I have on this day?
Oh, right.
Right?
We were over text.
This is a talk, a place I've been before, multiple times, and it's quite a drive.
Instantly, my intuition was like, I don't want to go.
Love being with you.
I don't want to go.
I don't want to drive.
I don't want to do the drive.
I don't want to take my whole day.
I have very few days without the children.
And I like, no, I had all these things, but it didn't matter.
The answer was no.
And then I took probably five minutes at least to contemplate whether I was going to
say yes or no to you.
Because on the flip side, I thought, oh, he's going to be hurt because I know he likes me
as his company.
When he goes down there, he enjoys driving with me.
He enjoys, oftentimes we go out to lunch and we get to look at the ocean together.
And that's really nice.
Not denying that, but that wasn't top of my mind.
Now I was trying to think about how you would think about it.
Yeah.
I'm like, do I have to give him reasons I don't want to go?
Should I just say yes anyway?
And then I immediately fast forwarded to the day of it happening and me having agreed to
it, I'm now feeling bitter and resentful.
And why?
Not because of you, because I didn't say clearly what I want.
So I actually told you the truth, which was that I don't want to go.
You want to go.
And I actually didn't give an explanation.
You didn't ask for one.
No.
I told you later, but like-
Didn't ask for one.
You were like, great.
No problem.
You not wanting to go is, that's it.
Yeah.
No is a complete sentence.
Yeah.
I love going everywhere with you.
You're my best fucking friend.
I love it.
I love it.
And also, I love you being comfortable in whatever it is you want to do.
That's first, man.
That's just first.
That's just first.
So I don't need an explanation.
There are multiple times where I'll ask you something and you start going, I don't need an explanation.
Don't need an explanation whatsoever.
You'll say something.
I'll say, hey, babe, are you doing this or this or that?
You're like, yeah.
Well, I want to.
I don't need an explanation.
I don't need an explanation.
Keep it.
Keep that.
Keep that for yourself.
I don't need it.
And if you want to, okay, great.
But I can feel you sometimes maybe wanting to like, I need to explain myself, you know?
And then some of what I've noticed, like how will season respond if I don't want to go to a talk with him.
Do you think it's worth your energy to try to decide for me how I'm going to feel and let that affect your emotions?
Well, it's bit by bit.
I mean, practicing that and having it received, you know?
I got so much.
We talk about trust muscle.
I got so much trust muscle in that one experience from you.
So I was like, oh, oh, it was as easy as that.
I didn't even have to spend five minutes.
I could just say, nope, I don't want to.
And if you needed a reason, I could tell you.
Yeah, truly.
And also at the same time, I'm sure that if I turned to you and said, my love, this is something I really would like you to go with me.
I told you that.
Yeah.
I told you that.
If it was something you meant something to you and you really needed me there.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
And this is exactly what I love about us is our ability to always want to walk towards each other, which I like a lot.
You have the benefit of going to speak at a lot of events.
So I get my choice in terms of which ones I would like to attend that weekend or not.
So you're working on that.
What would be your mantra for you?
What is something you would tell yourself?
I think what I have to remember is that my intuition feels really good.
And to be like, that's a yes, a full body yes.
And to just do it because it's a full body yes, no matter what my mind says.
Or to say no to something that is a clear no.
And I'm not worried about anybody else.
It feels good in my system.
It's like taking a nap.
I feel rested.
The other day, a family in town, I had my kids.
I wanted to go ice skating.
It was my idea.
I was coming up with an activity for us all to do.
My idea, let's go ice skating.
Everybody's yes.
We spent most of the day trying to figure out which rink we were going to go to.
We have the abundance of choice here.
And we figured it out.
We got the time.
The rest of my family got off their work and whatever.
And we were all together.
And I was fucking exhausted.
Oh, my God.
All of a sudden, I hit this dip.
And I was like, I don't want to go anymore.
That was a tiny voice in my head.
I don't want to go anymore.
Everybody's excited.
On one level, I wanted to be there.
I didn't want to miss that experience.
But then on the other level, I was like, I'm so damn tired.
I'm going to be tired the whole time.
And I'm going to feel like this is an obligatory thing that I've done for my family.
Luckily, I have an amazing family.
And I was like, I don't want to go.
I want to take a nap.
And I let myself do that.
And also, my family was like, great, take a nap.
Nobody had any pushback.
And I have trust in them because they've done that so many times.
Where they're like, yeah, take a nap.
Same thing as you do.
Just take a nap.
And I slept so hard.
And they had a great time.
And I did miss that activity.
But I don't regret it.
It felt so good to be like, wow, I'm actually following through on what my intuition wants,
what my heart wants in this moment.
I've been picking up on some of that with you lately of wanting more time to yourself.
Yeah.
Which has been really nice.
I am so pro you having time to yourself in so many ways.
So to recap, it's you saying to yourself, my intuition feels good.
When it feels good, whatever the response is, go with that.
Yeah.
I think that I need to practice.
A, understanding what I need or want.
B, saying it, actually verbalizing it to someone, which is the hardest part.
And then receiving the thing that I want.
Oftentimes, if I ask you for something, you will do it.
To go back to the music thing, I explained to you how overwhelming it was to choose from
like any music at all this morning.
And you came out, you're like, so what do you want to listen to?
Let's see, the sun is out today.
So I feel like maybe something slightly a little more upbeat.
So you really like Hosier.
You really like, what else did you say?
Lawrence.
Lawrence.
You like, and you gave me like three choices, right?
Sam Cooke.
And you're like, would you like this?
Would you like that?
Would you like this?
And I was like, fuck, he heard me.
I said, I see what you're doing here.
You did actually.
You gave me like a side look.
You're like, I see what you're doing.
I see what you're doing.
But it was so much infinitely easier.
So yeah.
Well, thanks for saying that.
Yeah.
Thanks for acknowledging that part too.
Yeah, you really did.
And you really do it.
So I have to receive what someone is giving me.
Hell yeah.
What about for you?
The barrier that I'm breaking through is one that actually I didn't expect to have again.
Actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even though I know growth is cyclical and I say it to everybody,
and it's a part of my talks and I know it for myself.
And even though you know it, it still will show up.
It comes back around the thing, the lesson, the whatever it is.
It just shows up a little stronger, a little different, and you'll be stronger every time,
but it's cyclical.
I, in the last year, really in the last three to six months, I have felt more calm, more clear,
more concise, more direct, more understanding of myself and of the world.
I'm reading quicker.
I'm retaining information better.
I'm reading three books at the moment and I can juggle them all and I'm retaining what I'm reading.
And then I'm seeing it out in the world.
And because of that, I'm seeing the results of my career benefit as a speaker, as a meditation guide,
and as a podcast host.
I'm seeing myself actualize the things that I want, doing them, and they're turning out effective and they're working.
This, in return, has spawned in me this other side of impatience with people that I did not expect to happen with me.
It has slapped me in the back of the head.
I was like, oh, you're still here?
Oh, oh my goodness.
And then it starts to use the things that I've done well to validate the impatience.
For example, it's like, tell this person to do this thing.
You guys are working together.
Do this thing.
And then they don't do the thing.
Or they take a long time to do the thing.
And I'm like, well, you, and my brain, my brain already goes.
And I'm going to do an impression of what my brain does right now.
One, this is not majority of my thoughts.
I'm just aware of the thought.
And I can hear the thought.
It doesn't take over.
How I am with this person in particular is not this way because I've already flushed through it.
But it's loud in my mind.
This is how it goes.
What are you doing?
I already said this.
Why does this take so long?
What could be so problematic that you can't do this thing that you know is going to benefit us?
Because I've already explained this.
Why do I have to wait on this person?
And then the big one is like, come on.
I hear it in my brain.
Imagine you listening here.
Imagine you are at a red light.
There's just one car in front of you.
The red light goes green and they don't move.
Imagine that feeling.
And then when they do start to move, five miles per hour, ten miles per hour,
that urgency of like, what are you doing?
Go already.
Is what's been creeping up in me.
Holy moly.
It has been loud.
And for context, if you don't know Caesar very well,
this is not ever something he would say out loud.
There's never something I've ever heard in the years I've known you to be impatient with people
or to be, you are like calm.
You are slow moving, like in the best way, like intentionally.
And so to hear you say that is like so far from who I know you to be.
But it's just in your head.
It's your brain.
It's just in my head.
You know, my old self, it would have lashed out.
It would have found some way out now.
But I'm regulated enough to understand like, oh, that's just a part.
That's just a voice in the room.
I don't have to listen to that voice in the room.
But because it is activating in me, when I get in my car, when I get home, I'm like,
jeez, I'm exhausted.
Because I keep seeing it in more people and more and more.
I'm like, why are they doing this?
This is not, this is eight steps to do one thing.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
And then, of course, I have to like hear that, listen to it really quickly,
and then turn to the person and say, okay, cool, let's do this.
Or this might be a better option if you want to try it this way.
No?
Okay.
And then it happens.
And this is another part of me.
This is both sides now.
This is the part of me who can watch that impatient person and the impatient person.
Both of them are speaking, saying, I told you so.
Yeah.
I told you this was going to happen.
I knew it.
Would you give an example of that, please?
It's an embarrassing one.
It's embarrassing to say because it involves us in this room.
Okay.
So last year, we were talking about social media posts.
And I was like, we should repost some of the videos that did really well.
We went viral a couple times.
We should repost those for one, it can reach a different audience, a different time of day,
a different algorithm.
Two, it did quite well so we can do it again.
And then three, if we have hashtags tied to it and someone follows the hashtag, they'll see multiple choices on those things in the grid.
And I remember I got a lot of pushback, soft pushback.
And I was like, all right, fine, no big deal.
Let it go.
And I almost forgot about it.
And then the last couple weeks, my brain's been thinking about that.
I'm like, where are you coming from with this?
Why are you bringing this up again?
What's going on?
It's like, they didn't do it.
They didn't want to do it.
But you know it's going to work.
You know it's effective.
I'm like, okay, but the team effort is, if you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Why are you talking still?
And it was like this, this, this.
And then we had our team meeting.
All of us, you, me, and our producer, Glenn Milley.
And we're sitting down and I brought it up again.
And Glenn, as beautiful as ever, was like, isn't this beautiful?
Before when you brought it up, I didn't think so.
And now I kind of see it.
I just, again, externally, calmly, I was like, thank you.
Thanks for saying that.
But inside, I was like, oh my God, thank you.
Oh, I just want to be seen a little bit.
Leaning up into that though, it's just in the back of my mind.
Just like a little, not a little, a voice saying like, they're not listening to you.
Your thoughts don't matter.
This person's not listening to you, even though you know this information because you've been
learning this stuff and you've been successful and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
The voice was just going and going and going.
And I'm hearing the voice and not necessarily agreeing with the voice.
But whose voice is that?
So I've been trying to do some investigation on that to see the impatient version is probably
my dad.
When I was younger, if I didn't get things right, he would get very impatient.
Very, very, very impatient.
You get physical even.
That whole side of the family, they're pretty harsh, strung and impatient about stuff for the
most part.
But I pick up on that part.
The secondary part of it of like, I know the answer here.
It's interesting.
I don't know whose voice that is.
I don't know whose voice that is, honestly.
And typically I'm good at finding where that's threaded from.
It could come from the insecurity of not knowing things before and finally being like, I got
it now.
I finally understand it.
He won't hit me.
So that I'm sharing it with people and people are like, yeah, whatever.
I'm like, wait, hang on, dog.
I got this.
I know this now.
I know it.
I know the answer.
But you said, no one's listening to me.
No.
No one's paying attention to you.
What's that voice?
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, that, I'm going to assume a lot of it has to do with me feeling quite distant from
society my whole life.
Growing up as a kid, everybody was gone.
My parents were gone.
Then I'd go to school and I felt a little isolated from the schools.
I went to school in a different district than I should have been going to.
So like even the kids would play, they'd go walk home together and they'd all be friends
in the same neighborhood and I didn't have that even.
So I felt a little distant in that way.
And then the friends I made there in my home, in my area, they went to different schools.
So it was always some sort of disconnect.
I think I might've felt left out or not fully understood.
Your ego is trying to prove that that's correct.
Yeah.
Prove that people aren't listening to you and that you don't fit in.
Yeah.
And so have them understand what you're saying is right.
This is effective.
And it's starting, it's been using my success in my career lately, compounded with the things
I've been learning that I've applied to cause the success in my career to say, you see,
now you know some shit.
Now, you know, homeboy, go out there and tell them.
If they don't listen, then they're fucked up.
And I'm like, well, hang on.
Time out.
Slow down.
What are you, what are you saying here?
But I think the beautiful thing to remember in this case is that like our producer Glenn
said, he casually, easily, like, like you exhale, like you just naturally breathe out, said,
isn't that a beautiful thing that you can just change your mind on stuff?
And it's fascinating.
It's like, I mean, I can change my mind about what I want.
Right.
Right.
We can go weekly with this podcast and we can change our mind halfway through and go, this
isn't working.
Like I reserve the right to change my mind.
We all do.
We should.
We should be constantly changing our mind.
We're really going and learning.
I reserve the right to change my mind.
I heard that recently too on Glennon Doyle's podcast.
We can do hard things.
They, they have been an audio on only podcast for a long time.
This year they added video and they made a big to do about it.
A big promotion, all of the things they went on YouTube, all that.
They did it for like four months and they came back on recently and said, guess what?
It doesn't work for me.
And it's like, the doesn't work for me part is like, she didn't feel as comfortable in
her, in her body and sharing her truth and the things that she was good at in podcasting,
which is like sharing the beautiful, hard things that are going on in her life.
So they're like, so we're not going to do YouTube anymore.
YouTube, you can come find us over on the podcast.
And it was like, that's probably, probably not the best business decision in the world,
but it's right by the authenticity of who they are.
And I have mad respect for that.
Yeah.
That's your expander in that sense.
For sure.
Yeah.
I mean, it instantly expanded me.
Right.
Right.
In addition to all of that, that happened to me, I started feeling more deflated and flat.
Say more why?
In my energy.
Uh-huh.
Because I was feeling those ways instead of divisive.
And I don't, that's not who I am.
I don't want to.
When you were, when you're saying, when you were feeling like, oh, see, I know something
now.
When I was feeling that people were taking too long to do things.
Mm-hmm.
Impatience.
Yeah.
Impatience.
My thought was like, I'm just going to go ahead and do the thing on my own.
Okay.
Right.
On my own.
Right.
There's that division again.
And I started feeling isolated.
But you were going to go faster.
I was going to go faster.
Yeah.
And nature is so beautiful that way.
Because you'll always have that reminder of like, as soon as you're up here, you go back
down.
I've been reminded of that story of the humbling of Indra.
It's a, it's a Hindu story.
Indra is this king.
And he solves this drought that goes on.
And he's so happy, excited for himself.
And he says, what a good boy am I?
So he builds a castle to celebrate himself.
And then this mysterious blue boy walks in and says, of all the Indras, I've heard you
built the greatest castle.
And Indra says, all the Indras?
I'm the Indra.
What are you talking about?
And the blue boy says, are you kidding me?
They've come and gone this entire time.
And while he's talking, a storm of ants come walking into the castle.
And the blue boy giggles and Indra says, what are you laughing at?
He goes, don't ask unless you want to get your feelings hurt, homie.
And he goes, no, no, I'm asking.
Tell me.
The blue boy points to the ants and says, they all used to be Indras.
At some point, they got so high up in their success that they said, I'm doing so great.
What a good boy I am.
And in that moment, they go right back down to being ants.
And I find that metaphor to be phenomenal.
It's one of my favorite stories to tell about humility.
And I went through a two-week spell of that.
And I'm still there a little bit.
Like, he's still chattering a lot of stuff.
And I just keep wanting to be right about things.
I'm like, wait, wait, wait.
Hang on.
You were this way when you were an atheist.
Why are you?
And you were drinking.
Why is this coming up for you now?
And on the other hand, I'm probably glad that it is coming up again.
Because if I was that way when I was drinking an atheist and I wasn't dealing.
Not necessarily atheism, but the drinking part I wasn't dealing.
And now I'm in a space where I can deal.
Yeah.
And I can see it through.
And I can break that barrier.
So is your goal, is your work then to be less impatient?
Yeah.
That.
And also to find more compassion from my own self and the person.
Remember that, like, hey, this is okay.
This is fine.
You have choices.
You have choices.
A friend of mine said the other day about that.
He goes, I get in the car and I remind myself every time before I go drive in California traffic, you have choices.
Somebody does something wrong on the road.
You can choose how you want to respond and feel.
That helped me a lot.
So the compassion part is probably the big one.
That's why I picked Tibetan Buddhism for such a long time.
Because it's deep into compassion.
What does it look like for you to work through that, the other side of that thought of impatience?
The first thing I go to, and it's a Buddhist thing, and also Jesus said it as well.
For every one, I'm paraphrasing, for every one time somebody makes a fault, think of the thousand times you have made the same fault or a similar fault.
Yeah.
And remember, like, I've done that.
Yeah.
I've done that plenty of times.
I've been totally slow to move.
Okay.
Because why?
Because of a million circumstances.
Circumstances that I don't even know from my own life.
So there's no way I'm going to understand that person's circumstances.
So give them a little more grace.
Give them a lot more grace, maybe.
Do you beat yourself up for having this come up again?
Great question.
No.
Nope.
Not one bit.
I do not beat myself up.
I do a lot of work to not beat myself up about anything.
Anything.
I examine it and say, like, okay, that wasn't the right one.
Like, damn, what happened there?
I investigate it.
What did I do wrong?
We were setting up all this stuff here today.
And we had to buy a new arm for the microphone, these arms here.
And I ended up buying one without looking at the specifics.
And I just missed one little thing that makes everything a little maybe more awkward for you.
And in the full moment, I was like, why did I miss that?
Okay.
A specifics?
Okay.
And then I just started processing it.
It seemed like from the outside that I was being hard on myself.
I thought you were being, I thought you were being yourself up about it.
I'm like, yeah, we're returning.
No problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then I turned to you.
I was like, I'm not being hard on myself, actually.
Because the way you said it to me, I recognized.
Maybe I'm sounding like I'm being harsh.
I wasn't.
I'm investigating.
What were the steps that got me there?
I'm doing what's called double loop learning.
You do a thing and then it doesn't go right.
You don't change the thing.
You change the mindset that got you to do the thing.
And I thought about that and I go, okay, cool.
Next time I'll just recalibrate a little bit.
So to answer your question, no, I don't beat myself up about stuff.
I'm kind to myself.
It seems like you're on a next level.
You've up-leveled in the way that you think about things.
I think we're all doing work on ourselves.
I'm sure that everybody listening to this show is like a seeker of some kind,
somebody who's interested in personal development and growing.
It's like a core value of mine.
And I feel like a lot of people, so we're always reiterating and we're always giving,
if we give ourselves permission to change our minds,
we are reiterating into a new version of ourselves.
Second by second, by the way, if I may say.
Yeah.
And in that process, you have up-leveled.
I can see, it's fun to say, I know I'm up-leveling.
Like, I know where I'm at.
I'm about to leap into a new level or I've just been through an up-level.
And now I feel like I'm just getting calibrated on this new,
getting my nervous system used to this new pace.
It's a new way of working.
It's kind of how your brain is working at this in the last couple of months.
It's kind of how your career is going.
And we have to kind of like update our systems.
Constantly.
Yeah.
Constantly.
I've been finding myself more sleepy in the past two weeks.
Also, I feel like we're iPhones.
Yeah, yeah.
We are iPhones.
We have so much going on.
Just to update.
We sleep a little more.
Because when you update the iPhone, it shuts down.
I feel like we have to recalibrate by resting a whole lot as well.
Getting a new operating system.
Yeah, getting a new operating system.
So I think what happens is when we up-level like that, your old ways come in and check you.
In that cycle.
Yeah.
Like, hey, you're a new up-level.
Do you want a drink?
Do you want to go to any of your vices, which you've also had a bit of lately,
in some of your vices in life, resurfaced in your life?
You've had, do you want impatience in your life?
And maybe this was the one that snuck in there.
Because the other ones are like, nah, nah, I think I'm done with that.
No, thank you.
No to that.
Is it an easy no?
And then this one comes in to try to test you.
And it kind of snuck in.
And it found its way to you again.
And you have to figure out how to release that.
Or how to work that into the fabric of the new level.
Of who I am now.
Yeah.
Yes.
I love that you said the phrase, work that in instead of release.
Or you said it after release.
You asked me this last night.
You said, what are you trying to let go of?
Or what are you trying to shed?
Shed, yeah.
I personally don't believe in shedding things.
I don't think it happens, actually.
I think what you have turns into something else.
It evolves into something else.
Yeah.
Like I say before, the demon that's within you is just an unheard angel.
My job is now to recognize the impatience and say, okay, what can I use you for?
What can I learn from this?
And it's going to keep showing up?
It's the trickster that's in all of us.
It's the trickster archetype that wears the mask.
And you're like, I defeated you already.
Like, oh, but now I'm here wearing this outfit.
Now I'm over here.
It's the same thing with all of our darknesses that live within us.
And in this case, the darkness was aggressive and patience.
I'm glad you're working through that.
Thanks.
I feel better saying all of that right here, actually.
I was really nervous to say that story about working with Glenn.
Oh, yeah.
And all the stuff in the social media stuff.
I was nervous for a minute there.
I was quite nervous.
My brain was like, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Is it safe space here?
No.
And I will just wrap by saying, can I share what we were talking about last night?
Please.
I don't even know what you're talking about, but go ahead.
Well, we have been together for two years.
And I think each of us is going through some version of an up level of ourselves.
I think you've just come through it.
And I think I'm about to begin it.
I'm like on the threshold of something new.
I've been breaking through a couple of things, even just in the last 24 hours, that have been
really vitalizing to me, which maybe we'll share on another episode.
But it's scary because as we both change in various ways, I'm saying, I need a little more
space.
I need a little more time to myself.
I need to figure myself out a little bit more because I don't want to lose myself again.
I felt like in my marriage, I lost.
It's a combination of my marriage and being a mother and being a mother, homeschooling children
and COVID is all of those things.
But I lost.
I felt like 95% of who I was.
I didn't even know who I was anymore.
I didn't know what I did for fun.
I didn't know what I did for enjoyment.
I was like on autopilot.
It took me two years before I even met you of solitude, of reading and meditation and figuring
a lot of things out for myself to recalibrate my entire system.
Like cocooning.
Yeah.
And I felt like I became almost a completely unrecognizable new person.
Like I don't recognize an old, old versions of myself.
I completely turned over.
That was like the biggest transformation I've had in my life.
Now I feel like there's a smaller version happening.
And I was scared to realize that I was starting to lose a bit of myself in this relationship.
By making tiny deferments of what I want to you, deferring to you because I love you, because
I care about you, because I don't want your feelings to get hurt.
Small little bits of myself just like flaking off of me.
And I'm like, I know where this goes.
I know where this ends up.
And that's a terrible place to be.
The beauty of a longer life, yes.
And so now I'm reclaiming some of myself and I got to cocoon a little bit again.
And what I said to you last night was we have to trust that we're going to keep finding
each other in the new versions of ourselves and keep choosing each other.
But it's hard because we're going to have to meet each other again.
Constantly.
In our new versions.
And that is why this personal growth work, this self-analytical work can be so challenging
and so scary because we're like, who's going to be on the other side?
There are people who didn't meet me on the other side of my divorce that I lost along
the way.
And then there are people who came through in a new way and they could see me in a new
light.
And I have dear, dear, dear friends who could look at me in the eyes and say, oh, you are
sparkly now.
I see the real you that has come across.
So that's part of it.
That's part of growth.
Oh, wonderful.
And so I don't want to lose you.
So we have to keep, you know, like that.
We have to keep coming back to each other.
Constantly.
Constantly.
It is, I mean, it's metaphorically, but also actually it's a dance.
I'm doing my steps on rhythm.
We separate a little bit, but I'm always mindful of what's going on where you are.
I'm watching yours.
I'm trying to stay in rhythm as well.
All of me wants to always check back in with who you are.
You are so much a part of me now.
I can't even fathom who I am without you.
I don't even want to, honestly.
And I also said, the reason we're able to do this growth work that's happening right
now is because of what you and I have given each other.
What you have given me has gotten me to where I am right now.
So much of that, the space, the confidence, the mirror, showing me who I am.
You're just reflecting it back to me so clearly.
So each of us is only able to cross this new threshold personally because of the other person
allowing us the space.
I mean, it's our own too.
We both own it too.
But in the dance is how we've gotten able to go so fast with it.
Yes.
Because the other person.
Well, I think I say this a lot to people when I'm trying to describe how we work together.
We, one, don't tell each other what to do.
Two, we work on our own selves.
And then three, when we're together, we just share what we found.
We kind of put on the table and like, oh, I found this.
You found this.
Oh, try this.
I found this.
I found that.
And take it or leave it.
And we just keep washing, repeat.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Whatever the phrasing is.
We do this over and over and over again by not trying to tell each other what to do.
And showing us every single thing that we found since the last time we met each other.
Okay.
Well, great.
So onwards.
Onwards into more messy middle of all of that.
Thank you for being on this journey with us as I sweat my forehead off here.
Thank you for listening.
And as usual, please be kind to yourself.
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 in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
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.
