The One Thing Your Older Self Would Tell You Today

Let’s flip the script on the old "letter to your younger self" exercise! Instead Foster and Cesar channel letters from their older, wiser selves, offering radical self-compassion, body acceptance, and personal growth wisdom that most of us spend a lifetime trying to find. From Cesar's quiet battle with his self-worth and inner critic, to Foster's vision of a barefoot, witchy life in Topanga full of drum circles and lemongrass tea, this episode is a tender, funny, and deeply human meditation on what it means to live fully – and if you've ever wondered whether your life is becoming what it was always meant to be, this one is for you. 

In this episode they explore: 

• The 3-step process Cesar uses to tame his inner critic 
• What does it actually mean to be fully in your body?
• The life hack for spotting a beautiful moment before it becomes a memory

If this episode spoke to you, you will love Stop Caring What People Think: The Art of Giving Less Fucks. 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 Jamaal Pittman. You can donate to his scholarship at WheelerScholarship.com, supporting college enrollment.

Transcript

There's a silent knowingness within me that says you're not worth it.
Cesar wasn't super applying of himself during school when he was a kid.
Hell no!
I don't know where I channeled all this from, but...
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.
This woman, I saw her on Instagram.
She's redheaded.
She's got a British accent.
And she's some sort of physicist.
I forget.
And she was talking about the fourth dimension.
She said if you could see fourth dimension,
if one object was three dimensional, but you could only see some fourth dimensional,
the shadow itself would become four dimensional.
You'd have a four dimensional shadow.
And my brain, brain-gasmed.
Yeah.
I would love to see that.
I would love to.
I don't even know what you're talking about.
Yeah, I know.
She said, she was like, the one thing about that you know about fourth dimension is that
we don't know about fourth dimension.
Welcome to Beauty and the Break.
Welcome to Beauty and the Break.
Today, we are going to not give a letter to our younger self.
We are going to give a letter from our older self to our self.
Is that right?
That's right.
I was just wondering why you were so subconscious about it.
Our current selves are going to receive a letter from our older selves.
And in my head, I went to 85.
Is that an appropriate age for this exercise?
Sure.
Yeah.
What was I thinking?
I was thinking like mid-60s, probably.
All right.
Well, I went 85.
I was doubling my age, sort of.
Almost doubling.
What are you going to-
I'm 36.
I know that.
You said it like you were a schoolboy, like trying to get the answer.
And they're 36.
36 and a half.
Like Jeopardy.
I'm being deposed.
Yeah.
I'm 36.
And a half.
I do not recall.
Could you repeat the question?
At 85, what do you think you're going to be like?
Great question.
Good question.
Thank you so much.
At 85, I would like to be kind of similar to how my late great friend Jack Angel was.
My friend Arlene Angel, she is a commercial voiceover agent.
And her husband was the voice for a ton of things.
You just Google Jack Angel voiceover, you are guaranteed your childhood was filled with his voice.
Mm-hmm.
He died at, I want to say, '91, I think it was.
The man was a jokester and a trickster, and he found everything funny and silly till the day he died.
Mm-hmm.
He just was hilarious.
And he has a great line he always would say is, if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.
I have been working more and more in my life of being just silly funny as much as I can.
My childhood was full of a lot of serious stuff, and I felt like an adult at that time.
I'm at a point now where I have the freedom, and I kind of am living a Benjamin Button life, perhaps, because I want to enjoy myself in life.
It's some shit that I didn't get as a child.
I would want to be 85, having a good time, finding the humor in all things, experiencing life the way it is, accepting my body, turning over into the sundown version of it to where it starts to slow down.
I'll still be active because I like it, but I won't ever be pissed that I can't run as fast or hit as hard or kickbox better or whatever.
I'm just going to be there and say, "Isn't this hilarious? Isn't life fun and funny?"
In a more practical sense, I'd love to be already retired from most of my big stuff.
I'd like to have had a good two-term presidency in the United States as well, and I've written a book and doing talks and whatnot, but put me on Saturday Night Live.
Put me on sketch shit. I'll go make a fool of myself, no problem.
That's cool. I never had that. I never had a picture of you, really, but that was really cool.
Yeah. In my head, I look like my grandfather.
Yeah.
I think about him a lot in that way. Yeah. How about you?
I think I'm going to be very hippie.
Yeah.
My hair's going to be really long, like down to my butt.
I don't want to be like a short-haired old lady. I want to be like a long-haired old lady.
Okay.
And be like really free and flowy.
Like living in Topanga.
Uh-huh. Yeah, probably barefoot in the woods kind of. Having fun making concoctions and things.
Like alcohol?
No, like making kombucha.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like doing more kind of like earthy vibe.
You give me like hippie witch in a cinch, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
I get tired of all of the technology after a while.
Okay.
I'm already pretty much there.
Uh-huh.
Witchy stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Things I'll have time to kind of like, let's watch this ferment.
Uh-huh.
I'll have a lot of youthful energy and a lot of people around all the time and kind of like
joyful play and drum circles and that kind of thing.
That kind of thing.
Do you think our friend Nitsan is a guide on how she would be?
Yeah.
I think so.
She's full white hair.
Her backyard's a garden.
I think she had chickens back there.
Oh, yeah.
She's lovely as can be.
You can see she's always like tinkering away at something.
Yeah.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
Yeah.
And we went to her house and she had lemongrass.
Right.
And she had pulled the lemongrass off of the lemongrass.
I think it's a tree or a bush.
I don't know.
She just pulled it and then put it in hot water and made lemongrass tea for us.
And it was like the most refreshing thing I've ever, ever fucking had.
She gave you something to take to the fridge, right?
Yes.
She gave me something to take home and I was hoping to be able to like root some of it,
but I didn't.
I don't know.
I couldn't somehow, but she did take me something to take home.
I could see that about you.
Okay.
So anyway, this is who they're coming from.
Okay.
Did you actually write a letter?
I sort of took notes.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
I guess you're going to have to expand on that.
I have a dissertation.
The okay was so good.
Okay.
Okay.
Whoever listening, hit that 15 button.
Go back and listen to that okay, because that okay was killer.
Okay.
Well, we prepare ourselves a little differently.
Yeah, we definitely do.
Do you want to go ahead and read yours?
There's a lot here.
Sure.
I'm happy to.
So I asked you if you wrote a letter and you said a little bit, but now you're saying
there's a lot here?
There's a lot here.
It's not in a form of a letter like complete sentences.
Oh, I see.
I have a full page of notes.
Okay.
But I do feel like when I was writing this, I was like channeling my older self.
Oh, wow.
Because they're not necessarily things that I would say.
And I also feel a little bit like they're coming from my higher self.
Okay.
The best version of myself, which I would hope to be at 85, the best version of myself
to date.
So should I dive in?
Please.
Give me like 10 seconds.
I'll finish my letter that I'm writing right now.
So.
Dear Cesar.
You've done it.
Exclamation point.
Happy birthday.
What?
What?
What?
Cesar wasn't like super applying of himself during school when he was a kid.
Hell no.
By the way, this is my question, by the way.
Yeah.
I thought this whole question up months ago.
And I ask people this question all the time.
And I'm not prepared for it.
I'm prepared for it.
I just, I'm better off the cuff.
Yeah.
You're better at riffing and I'm better at preparing a dissertation.
So here goes.
First thing I wrote down was your body is a wonderland.
Your body is the vehicle that helps you experience this life.
And it's here as long as you want it to be.
It is not the thing.
Yeah.
Uh huh.
It's vessel sustains me.
It cannot contain me.
And so I think this is something that I do know now, but I, I know my older self will
really want to make sure that I remember, which is that a lot of my life I've been focused
on the body being the thing as opposed to just this vehicle that's here to help me.
Yes.
It's important.
Yeah.
It's important because you do need to take care of it in order to sustain and live out
your life here as long as you desire.
If you don't do that, you know, chances are it won't sustain you.
I got confused for much of my life into thinking that the body was the thing.
That was the sculpture that I needed to carve out.
That's what I needed to do.
If body gets a compliment, you see that as the least.
But also you are going through your life trying not to think about your body image.
Right.
It's part of it.
I'm trying not to put great value on what others think of my body.
Okay.
So of course, that's great that you love my body.
I don't want to place my value in the fact that you love my body.
Sure.
Because inevitably my body is going to change.
And it won't look like this in five years, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years.
So that's great, but it doesn't like, if I keep focusing on that being the thing, it'll inevitably escape me.
I will never get to the perfection that I hope to attain in a body.
Interesting.
So it's just the tool that keeps me here to be able to have experiences.
She would say to me, have every experience you can, good or bad.
Don't try to predict if it's going to work for you, it's going to lie for you.
Have it good or bad.
Say that you had the experience because that will lead you to a full life.
I think about people in their later lives when they talk about horrible things, they're laughing at it.
It's like, and then remember, I fucking lost my house.
Like I just defaulted on a loan, fucking man called me.
They're not like crying in that moment unless like, you know, atrocities happened.
But usually they're like, yeah, that's right.
That was a wild time.
They're laughing at it.
I feel like older folks have so many stories to tell.
And I'm never going to tell a story about the day my to-do list got accomplished.
Amen.
You know, and that does consume a lot of my thoughts a lot of the time.
And it will never be accomplished.
We all know that anyway.
But that's never going to be the story.
But the going to this event that I'd never been to before, completely not knowing anyone, being by myself and dancing my ass off with 120 other women that I didn't know and getting sweaty and then getting like the runner up queen of the dancing night.
I was like, I'll never forget that because I never do that.
And that was so such an experience.
And I don't even need to do it again necessarily.
It was just an experience to have.
That long later you won another award for dancing also.
I did.
I did win two awards for dancing.
There you go.
In this spring quarter alone.
Well said.
Put that up on ESPN.
There you go.
I also think that the elder people that you're talking about also they live enough life to recognize the impermanence of all the fucking things and the real lack of urgency and majority of things.
And they're like, oh, right.
I really thought that was everything.
Like my first love.
I thought he was the one boy.
I thought.
And they just laugh it off because they realize it.
When you mentioned, you said my body will change in 30, 40 years.
I thought the same thing.
I was like, well, so is our mind.
So is our spirit.
So is our consciousness.
All of our consciousness.
But so is all of that.
That's all going to change too.
They all in accord in their own way, symphonically turn over time.
That's true.
That's true.
She also shared with me.
It's all great content.
It's all great content.
And that I think is the experience thing.
Like have those experiences.
They are stories.
They are great content.
She said, in addition to that on the body, listen to your body.
It tells you what you need to know, but it's an internal thing.
It's an inside job, not an external thing.
The listening is an internal you're saying?
Yeah.
Listening to your body comes from the inside about how your body feels, not how it looks
from the outside.
Got it.
Okay.
I don't know where I channeled all this from, but touches everything.
Touches everything.
I don't know why she had to say that, but that's something she would tell me.
Touches everything.
And your mind needs to rest.
That means that looking at the trees is equivalent, if not greater, than checking something off your
to-do list.
She also told me, "You will gather the most beautiful souls in your life, and your experiences
with them will be everything.
So live a bold, big life.
This is a canvas on which to paint.
Leave your mark everywhere."
That's precious.
Also, no one knows what they're doing.
That's pretty good.
And shoot your shot every day.
Yeah.
That happened to me this week, where I shot my shot at something, and I took no hesitation.
I pointed the arrow.
I let it go at the target.
Someone I didn't have any business talking to.
And I just did not give one moment of thought to be like, "Oh, this person's going to think
this of me.
Oh, they're going to say no."
I asked my question.
I got an immediate yes.
And I was like, "Great!"
And then it made me ask myself the question, like, "Why don't you shoot your shot every day?"
Yeah.
Like, the yes feels so good.
The no, you've already gone over it in your head.
You already know exactly what that no is going to sound like.
You don't get the no, you don't get the no.
Shoot your shot every day.
Every day.
That's well said.
That's really well said.
That's all.
That's all?
Yeah.
You're like, type it up in a bullet point or you wrote it already.
Just frame it.
Put it on a wall for yourself.
Just kind of time capsule, sort of out in the world, check in for yourself.
Yeah.
That's kind of cool.
I like that.
Mine is quite simple.
It says, "Dear Caesar, you've done it.
Happy birthday."
Don't know why I wrote happy birthday, but I did.
While we were talking and I was rushing myself here.
And then just under it, I put in small letters, "Better than you thought, huh?"
I think your life was already better than you thought.
You got damn right about that.
This letter is from my older self of tomorrow.
Yeah.
The main thing I thought in a more serious note was the message my older self would say to me and find multiple ways to reiterate it is, "You are better than you think."
You're better than you think.
There's still so much in my psyche, even when I'm listening to our episodes in review, I can feel myself trying to get across that I am intelligent.
Mm-hmm.
That I am quick.
That I have an answer.
That I know something that I want to be seen.
Mm-hmm.
Now, some of that is valid.
Everybody wants to be seen.
And some of it is a great fire for cooking the meal of the career of your life.
How far, though, does it go before that fire that's cooking your meal starts to inflame the kitchen and therefore at the house?
But there's a silent knowingness within me that infiltrates all of my actions that says I'm not good enough.
To be more specific, you're not worth it.
And time and time again, I keep surprising myself because I've contrasted that with a big dose of "fuck it."
Right.
If you're not good enough, then you got nothing to lose.
You're already down here.
Shoot from the bottom.
See what happens.
But I will say, it's quite mind-boggling to me even, who knows you very well, much less the person listening who's like, "This person? Caesar? Doesn't think he's worth it?"
Like, your level of confidence, authentic confidence too, not braggadocious, not boastful.
I can stand in the room with all the people.
I know exactly who I am.
That's what you give off on a daily basis.
So it's so wild to me that that's your thought, that you're not worth it or that you're not good enough.
I know we all have that, but it's just really shocking.
I can see it from the outside too.
I know how I am.
I know how I come across.
I know how confident I am because I'm me.
In my thought process, when I'm listening to somebody, when I'm talking, when I'm sharing information, when I'm about to talk, my default is do it.
Of course you can, without question.
Why couldn't you?
Go.
But there's a person in the backseat of the car and that person is behind the passenger even.
So at any moment, he can just like lean over, like whisper in his ear and say something.
Even though the driver's confident as hell.
Yeah.
And I think so many people feel like that person, like how'd you get that person in the backseat?
Yeah.
That's what I want to know because that person for so many people is driving the car.
Yeah.
The inner critic.
That's a great question.
I found one, I started looking at the results when they did drive.
Mm-hmm.
And I examined it and said, okay, you've gotten us lost a lot of times.
You've gotten us pulled over.
You've gotten us in car accidents.
You've got us stuck in traffic.
We got into the wrong car once.
You know what I mean?
Mm-hmm.
I have data on what you've done.
Two, I raised the stakes high enough in my own self now.
Do you want to keep doing this sort of stuff in this car, Cesar?
No?
Well, then you're going to have to take accountability here.
You're going to have to turn to that voice and say, hey, you're not in charge anymore.
You're not in charge anymore.
And it's ironic that me saying that to that voice is an act of confidence.
Yeah.
And then, because I do that, it opens me up to be more confident out in the world.
Mm-hmm.
So, it's a three-prong thing.
One, I recognize, well, what has it gotten me so far?
Mm-hmm.
Two, do I want this to keep happening?
And because the answer is no, because we're talking about a voice that's dismissing us and limiting us.
Mm-hmm.
Three, how quickly can I start taking accountability for my own shit?
Mm-hmm.
And I would say, like, a runner-up for it is, I'm not going to kick it out of the car either.
I'm going to give it a job.
If you are so negative about stuff, great.
Well, I need you to be in the car and speak up about things that I should be worried about in the car, that I should be mindful of.
Like, oh, we're going to get on the highway to drive this car.
Oh, God.
There's so many potholes on the 101.
Good point.
You're right.
Let me make sure I stay in the HOV lane.
Mm-hmm.
Cool.
Got it.
And I'm amalgamating that thing.
And thank you for that.
Also, these two hands that I have are on the wheel.
Yours won't ever touch the wheel.
That's my process.
And that got me to a deeper level of confidence.
And what does that look like practically?
One, thinking to yourself whenever it comes up, finding it, catching it.
Two, the act of practicing the shit in the world.
Because multiple times I was overly confident.
Mm-hmm.
And it shitted on me.
And I go, okay, noted.
Now I know.
Here's the data.
Let me find the way that works best for me.
So what is the advice that your older self gave your current self?
You're better than you think.
You're better than you think.
Even with all this confidence that I have, I'll meet that from your perspective, 85-year-old
Cesar, my 65, whichever.
You're 65 when I'm 85?
No, no.
You asked me who I was thinking about.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was like, 65.
We're not 20 years apart.
85.
We're definitely not 20 years apart.
But whichever one, they'll get there and they'll be like, you're better than you think.
You know that, right?
Because of the environment that I'm in, because I'm looking at a safe version of myself, I'll
be the most vulnerable.
And that individual, that older self can see it.
They can see it now.
All the things that I'm doing right now that are really, really vulnerable inducing.
Like the other day, you're showing me how to budget my money from not knowing anything.
Not even from beginners, from nothing.
I have to learn what I don't know.
I have to learn that I don't know what I don't know.
And then learn the shit.
Yeah.
That 65 year old man, the 85 year old who's retired after two terms as a president and
all that stuff.
He's thanking me right now.
He's proud of me right now.
I have to remind myself that I am better than I think in this stage in my life.
And that's the biggest thing for me.
Mostly everything else I've kind of amalgamated and been kind of comfortable with.
And like you said, it's been a completely surprise of this life already.
It's been better than I thought to begin with.
I didn't expect to live past 30.
I'm 36 now.
This is all bonus years.
And on top of it, it's dope.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
I mean, this morning we hugged in my kitchen and I said, my love, we're living the life
that most people would love to live.
Everything we do, we like.
We're stressed about how much of the things we have to do.
And that's a beautiful, precious thing.
Even at my very worst, life is beautiful on its own.
But I've gotten to this side of it and I'm just grateful for where I am.
Do you think your 65 year old recently retired from the Oval Office and might be doing SNL
on Saturday night would like to come to my house in Topanga and like come to the drum circle?
Maybe just like tell some jokes?
That'd be so great.
And I love that you already have the assumption we don't live together still.
Yeah, I know we still live together.
But also...
Because you know I live in Sherman Oaks still.
Yeah.
But also, I'm really robbing the cradle with you.
By that time?
Oh my God.
Because I'm 85 and you're 65 apparently.
How does this happen?
This is fantasy.
I don't know.
It's all fantasy.
I don't know.
But if I was 85 and you had that going on in Topanga, of course I'd be over there.
Without question.
I love Topanga.
Love it.
It's really beautiful up there.
And one day we will be talking about this conversation right here, right now.
Our world.
Well, that's crazy.
Ah!
It got super meta.
I think about this stuff all the time.
You know when you look back on a time in your life or a moment with like your friends
and you're like, wow, that was a beautiful moment.
Mm-hmm.
That beauty you see in it, you didn't pick up that beauty then.
Like the essence of that or that feeling that comes with why it was so beautiful wasn't
there then.
But I think it was.
Yeah.
So at some point, I started spotting that.
When I was like 16, 17, I would think about really nice times when I was a little younger.
I was 20 or so.
I think about like when I was 14, 15 with Nina.
And it was so beautiful.
But there's a, there was an essence about that time that I'm calling beautiful.
But I didn't feel it when I was in it.
I kind of life hacked that.
And I went about my day and life looking for moments like, oh, this is going to be the thing that we'll be talking about in the future.
Mm-hmm.
This will be it.
Yep.
And I, I try to see it from that reflective eyes of the person in the future enjoying it.
You did that on Sunday.
We were just taking a walk with the kids and we were being silly and, and jumping around and doing like dance moves in the air, leaps or something.
And you took a video so that you would remember because you said you just liked the, the casualness of the Sunday.
Yeah.
Well, I said, I'm going to record this so I can watch it in the future because this is the life that I want with my family.
I want to be able to watch this whenever.
But before that, I walked up the stairs to your place and I hugged you.
And I said, you know, that song I have by my band, The Clew, CLEW.
The song's called kindness.
It's at the end of my album.
The heart part is the hard part in the line of the song.
Of the song kindness.
I almost said he, the singer says, I want Sundays just like this.
And I was hugging you.
And I said, this is that kind of Sunday.
Mm hmm.
That's what you're talking about.
Yeah.
Well, that's remembering the moment in the moment, recognizing that the moment is going to be a moment in the moment.
Yeah.
A memory.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And they're beautiful ones too.
And also the other side too.
There is like, I was at an event recently and standing in the middle of that event, it's a cool, fun event, but I, it's clearly a stepping stone for me.
Mm hmm.
Because it's not my life, but it's a good step.
I'm going to remember standing there for the first time at that event because it was the first time I was ever at an event like that.
That's a big stepping stone for me.
Yeah.
And I'll think about that 10, 15 years later and what that was like, or I'll drive by the college and be like, oh, I, one of my first events was there.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Well, everybody, I would encourage you to try to write a letter to yourself as your 85 year old self.
Send a voice note.
Do they have to do the voice?
You asked it so seriously.
Thanks.
I was working on that.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
You should tell it all.
Hey.
This is, hey Sonny.
No one talks like that.
No one does.
I don't know why we do that.
But yeah.
Hey, Cesar.
How you doing?
Well, I wouldn't talk like that.
My voice would get deeper.
Do you think people will compliment you on your voice when you're 85?
On my...
85 year old voice.
85 year old voice.
Why?
Because I like compliments on my voice?
Yeah.
Yeah, probably.
My grandfather's voice has such gravitas to it.
He enunciated so well with his big, great Spanish accent.
And his voice was right about here.
It was very low and he would elongate his words.
So are you going to grow a Spanish accent in your old age?
I'll grow a Spanish accent so it like shows up a little bit.
Yeah.
Like, oh, this is in the beginning.
It's just budding right now.
This is my five o'clock.
It's just budding.
Yeah.
Shadow accent.
It's sprouting.
But nonetheless, I'm still English right now.
I saw somebody in the elevator that looked just like the guy from Instagram who has a very
thick Spanish accent and his girlfriend is always asking him to, his wife, to say things
and define things in his Spanish accent.
But this guy looked just like him and I had a fantasy in my head that it was him, but he
had spoken to me with no accent and I was like, what if that guy is all a ruse?
He's just faking it.
This is really him.
Yeah.
Like Larry the Cable guy.
The accent is so thick.
Yeah.
Anyway, send yourself a voice note with any accent you want.
Pick up a Jamaican accent.
Grow your accent.
You can be Canadian and say, "Oi, star!
What you doing here in the Canadians?
Yeah.
Yeah, have your maple leaf and your blunts and your red star, star.
Come on now.
This is me speaking to you from 85, star."
Wow.
Why is it Jamaican Canadian?
Because you said you could take up whatever accent you wanted.
Yeah.
So somebody who's like in Vancouver.
"Oi, me in Vancouver over here with our rude boys.
It's chilly as a nurse's tits on a winter night star."
It's like cool runnings.
Yeah, do that.
Do it.
I dare you.
Bye.
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.