Ep. 28 2023's Gifts and Lessons - Dirty Chai with Chio

The podcast episode discusses the importance of gratitude and understanding that life can be both brutal and beautiful. The host reflects on their experiences and highlights the need to practice gratitude and appreciate the good moments amidst the challenges. They also emphasize the importance of accepting that not everything can be controlled and focusing on what can be controlled or influenced. Hello. Hi. Welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Shite Podcast with me, your host, the podcast where we focus on holistic, professional, and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today's installment is the last installment of 2023. The next installment will be on the 2nd of January 2024. Can you believe that? I approach this installment with a lot of mixed feelings. It's holiday season. It was Christmas yesterday. Merry Christmas. I hope you had a beautiful one with your family. It tends to happen to me on big holidays like this. Christmas is a particularly big holiday in my life because it was a big holiday in my mother's life. She did a lot to make sure that Christmas was special for us as kids. We didn't have a whole lot as far as material things are concerned, but as an adult, I can fully appreciate that we had an immersive love experience, that notwithstanding the fact that we got the occasional beating and were shouted at occasionally, that generally she somehow managed to make us feel special and to create special memories around these things. Those memories did not have anything to do necessarily with the thing that we got, but it had to do with how we felt. And so I find that all of us at this stage of our lives, my siblings and I, have a particular affinity for holidays and we particularly remember our mother and those feelings at this time. I try to create the same for my children and I try to limit how much I give them as best as I can, just so they understand that Christmas is first a feeling and then everything else. I mean, second food, but you know what I mean. This episode or this installment is about the things that 2023 gifted me. It's about expressing gratitude. It's about the things that I would like to take away from the podcast, from the newsletter, from the year as a whole, things that I would like to highlight as the things that made this year memorable and special. And I would love to hear the things that made yours memorable and special, too. So number one is the understanding that gratitude is everything. You see, there is a common misconception or a common way of thinking that there will come a time when I can put all of this stuff down, all of this adulting stuff down and then take a moment to be grateful and then take a moment to think about what I would like to do in the future and then take a moment to plan. Let me just finish this. Then I will get around to the softer things. When life is a little bit quiet, maybe I'll journal. When things are settled, then I'll decide what I'm doing with the future. I think what 2023 taught me, and it was an inadvertent lesson, it wasn't direct. So let me tell you how the lesson came about and I'll tell you what the lesson is. What happened is when I joined my current employer, in the first year, they were just like, oh, come. There's a lot happening. We're pretty much closed. There's not a lot of work that can be done this time. We're just looking at changing a few things. I came in, a few things turned out to be monstrous things that required a lot of late nights, changing policy documents, changing things, seeking approval from various authorities to get these things done. Then the year passed and then I had my performance review and it was well done. It was an unusual type of year. It was quite hectic, but we're going into a quiet period. I know you want to study for a PhD. You can go ahead and do that. You've got lots of time. You've got lots of time. Enter second year, maybe a couple of months into the second year, boom, first big project that sort of swallows everything whole. Did that, delivered that in June to a month later, two or a month later, yeah, a month later, immediately hit by another big project that consumed everything until just about the end of the year. That's the end of the second year. We go into the performance review period, well done, well done. We're going into a quiet year, which is now 2023. We're going into a quiet year. You'll have plenty of time to figure things out. We get into 2023 and boom, biggest project of my life. Nevermind the other two years. We're talking numbers I have never laid eyes on before. It hit me that life is relentless, that life is an ending, that life and its responsibilities keep coming. That is what life and adulting are. They can't help themselves. It is up to me to self-regulate. It is up to me to manage myself. It is up to me to be responsible. It's up to me to put in place the things that help me get on with surviving or thriving within that relentless environment. One of those things for me looks like gratitude. Gratitude that in this particular example, it can be many things, that I have a job, that I have a team or that I am part of a team that I enjoy working with, that I have a quirky sense of humor that is understood by the people with whom I spend the most time, that I can express myself freely when I'm amongst my colleagues and they can do the same and it's a safe environment to do so, that I get paid to do these things in a world where life is so expensive and money is also a means to freedom. That is a lot of stuff to be grateful for when you can very easily live a life of constant frustration. God, why is this happening? God, why don't we have any downtime? God, why don't we do this? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And I'm not saying that from a place of judgment. I'm saying it from a place of, it is very easy to get to that point. I at some point was not taking care of my brain, brain space and my energy in the way that I should because things got way too busy and I found myself getting frustrated by things that I don't typically get frustrated by. I found myself getting emotionally frustrated by life being life, like the occasional gate breaking, for example, at home and you need to get it fixed or the garage door is not opening, any of that stuff. That is normal life stuff that happens. When you find yourself reacting to it in a way that is not typical, if you're a person who regulates well, it's also a sign that maybe you are not servicing your heart, mind and soul in the way that it needs for it to regulate when you are under pressure. And so I remember things like being grateful. I remember things like reminding yourself for five minutes every day of the little things that you're grateful for. This is not meant to, this is not a feature, a toxic, this is not the sort of positivity that typifies toxic positivity. That's not what I'm talking about. When I say things like gratitude, I mean a realistic gratitude. This is hard, but this is also beautiful. This is difficult, but this is also wonderful. Glennon Doyle explains it in the best way that I've heard so far. She says life is brutal and beautiful most of the time. She calls it brutiful. And I thought that that was a great way to put it because life's beauty does not wait for the brutal moments to end. Life's brutality and life's beauty coexist. And once you understand that it's a package deal, something magical happens in your mind that frees you from waiting to appreciate the good when the difficult parts are done. It starts teaching you to fit the beautiful parts in between. It starts teaching you to remember to stop and to breathe and to say a grateful word, or to journal for two minutes, or to send a person you love or appreciate a snippet of your feelings, to send love to someone you haven't heard from for a while, to phone the people who matter to you. It's those little moments are the fuel that keep you going on the other side, on the brutal side of life. If you don't continuously service your soul and your heart and your mind by practicing gratitude, by reconnecting with what's important to you, by reconnecting with why you're doing things, you will find yourself breaking down. Because in reality, life waits for no man. Life's difficulty waits for no man. And life's beauty waits for no man. It is one and done. And we only get to do this, this one time. Charlotte Bronte said, For my part, I am almost contented just now, and very thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion. It fills the heart, but not to bursting. It warms it, but not to fever. And I thought that was an exceptionally beautiful way of saying, while you're going through this brutal life, a sense of gratitude, a sense of connectedness makes the hard parts palatable, and makes your mind clear to navigate the hard parts. But it also gives you an appreciation of the beauty that is happening in real time. There are very many people who go through life without ever, ever pausing to say, Oh my gosh, I am living the dream today that I dreamt about yesterday, even though I'm still making my way to the dream I dream of for tomorrow. It is key. The second thing that 2023 gave me was an understanding that you can't control everything. You can control some of it. You can't control when things break. You can't control when you get ill. You can't control what happens in your place of employment. You can't control. You can't control life. There are aspects of it that you can control. And for those aspects that you can control, you should take charge of the things that you can control. But lean in when the things that you cannot control happen. Because when you obsess about trying to control the things that you can't control, they break you because they are simply not within your power. So I came across an interesting thought. Let me just find it quickly. I think Stephen Covey in his book distinguishes between the sphere of influence and the sphere of control. Where you have control, use it. Where you have influence, you can use that too. Where you have none, sit back and watch what happens. I read an interesting article as well online and it talks about how letting go of control takes a lot less energy and a lot less effort than trying to control everything. Especially knowing that you cannot control everything. So instead of spending energy on the things that you cannot control that will happen as they will anyway, why don't you apply yourself to the things that you can control in that matter? It is much better to attend to your mindset and to your energy so that you can be prepared for any outcome than it is to actually attempt to prepare for every possible outcome because the latter is impossible. But it consumes a lot of energy and makes a lot of people feel better or feel like they're doing something. When in truth, they are just burning energy that should be used for other things. Perhaps energy that they should be applying to gratitude. I don't know, speaking to the earlier point. When you let go of putting the energy where you shouldn't be wasting it, you actually open yourself up to opportunities and ideas because you release capacity in your brain. There are lots of things that we can't control. How other people treat you, if people like or dislike you, other people's actions, other people's feelings, other people's beliefs, other people's thoughts. Do you hear this other people theme? Who you're related to? Cats. I mean, no one can control cats. You just can't. The weather, natural disasters, the passing of time, death. When other people die, when you die. Physical and mental limitations and predispositions. Your physical needs. You need food, you need sleep, you need rest. This is a big one for me because I'm a workaholic. It is very difficult for me to know when to stop. And quite honestly, by the time I start saying I'm tired, often I have already burned past the last of the wick in my candle. So when I start lightly saying to my colleagues, oh, I'm kind of tired, I'm kind of tired. Usually they don't understand or it's difficult for me to convey that it's battle stations. I'm about to be sick. I'm about to collapse in a heap and get a drip in my arm. But that's my fault. It's something I need to take responsibility for. This will segue into the next point, but I can't avoid the fact that I need I have physical needs and I can you privilege. Some of us are privileged in some ways, whether we like to admit it or not. The fact that we can listen to this podcast, the fact that we can access information to the extent that we can. The fact that I can even do this podcast is a privilege because I was able to get the equipment. I was able to access the information. There are people out there who can't. The past, that change is inevitable. The future, the exact outcome of anything ever. Right? But the things you can control, the way you treat other people, whether you hold on to grudges or let go of them, your support and understanding of others, your actions towards others, your reaction to what people say and do, who you spend time with, how you spend your time, where you put your energy, taking care of your physical, mental and emotional needs, living by your values. My God, this is the cornerstone of my entire life. Expressing gratitude, learning to love yourself, holding on to emotions or letting them go, practicing personal growth, being present, being open to opportunities, being adaptable to change your actions, your reactions, your mindset. I'm going to say something that is potentially triggering for people who've had a narcissistic experience, but I think it's particularly important for those people. A lot of people who've had a narcissistic experience become consumed by the need to show or express to people that narcissists exist, that this happens with narcissists, this is da-da-da-da-da. What they don't realize is at the point where you exit your narcissist experience, you can also choose to walk away entirely, mentally, physically, emotionally, to the extent you continue to give this tape time to play in your head over and over and over. The truth is you haven't actually exited your narcissist experience. You are still living it over and over and over in your brain. Your body is still going through the physical trauma because your brain is playing the tape repeatedly. Emotionally, you're still going through the strain because your nervous system can tell the difference between you having a random thought about something, a memory, or a thing happening in real time. Your body responds anyway. This is why understanding what you have control over and what you don't have control over is so key. This is the gift that 2023 gave to me. Understanding in general, the narcissistic experience is something I just used as an example, but this applies to work, it applies to life, to love, to friendships, all things. It applies to all things. You get to choose what to apply yourself to on the basis of whether you can control it or not control it. When you apply yourself to the things that you can control, you spare yourself wasting bandwidth on things that you can't control. It is a more fruitful outcome. Then the last thing, which stands alone but is related to control, is also taking personal responsibility for your happiness. I would like to think that this is a lesson I learned three years ago, but somehow this lesson is like an onion. It has layers that peel, make you cry, and peel some more, but it takes you to somewhere tender and tasty. The realization is that we've spoken about this in many ways. It's things like understanding no one's coming to put a tiara on your head. To say, oh, well done at being an adult. You're great at adulting. There's an old episode in which I spoke about the tiara syndrome. Maybe we'll refresh that as we go into the beginning of the year. Also, nobody is going to come to you and say, I've taken some time to seriously consider the things that I think would make you happy, and I think this is a short list for you to consider. No, that's an inside job. That's a job that you have to do. Nobody is going to come and say, hmm, I wonder why no one has ever said to you, you are beautiful the way you are. No, that is an inside job. Actually, the more I learn about different ideologies, different ideas, different thoughts from different thought leaders, the more I hear, the more I think there are many ways in which we have come to a place where we unknowingly externalize responsibility for our happiness. One of those things is the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect is the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to believe they're being noticed more than they really are. So what happens is you tend to think, let's say you're in a room or in a space or whatever it is, you tend to think that everyone is noticing you. For an example, let's say you're in a conversation with a group of other people. The spotlight effect causes you, let's say you make a grammatical error when you speak or there's a typo in your email, whatever it is, then you do that and you think, oh my God, now everybody's talking about how I'm stupid, right? That's the spotlight effect. It has this way of making you feel like you are the center of the universe. A more balanced way of thinking would be other people might have noticed my mistake, but they probably didn't think much of it afterwards, i.e. I'm not that important. And a few of my close, close friends would have heard me say this quite often. And it's a way of reminding myself that, A, I'm not that important in the greater scheme of the world. It's a great way to stay humble. Number two, I'm not that important is a great way to remind myself that it's okay to make mistakes and not be shattered by it, not be shattered by the fear of what people might say or may not say. They might or might not say it. But again, I'm not that important. Even if they talk about me for a hot minute, I'm not going to stay the headline because I'm not that important. But because I'm not that important there, it's important to understand that in my world, I need to be responsible for the things that I care about, because I am important to myself. It is not for other people to assign you particular importance for you to then work out what it is that you value most and to live by that. I'm hoping that I've landed that point in the way that I intend, but it is just so key to understand that we spend too much energy being consumed by responsibility for ourselves that we have externalized versus taking that responsibility and placing it on ourselves, rather than fearing a spotlight from an external place, taking time to sit with ourselves in a gentle light and say, Who are you? What do you like? What makes you happy? I am proud of you. I am so glad that we've gone through this part of the journey. I'm so glad that we've walked through these places that we've walked. I'm so glad that we looked and we saw that we came, we saw we may be conquered or didn't conquer, but we are here now. You, yourself, and you, you have made it to this point. There are a lot of things that you cannot change. There are a lot of things that you are yet to change. And I think what ties all these things together quite nicely is the massive aha moment reading the 12-week year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lemington gave me, which is that people do not execute. People collect information and ideas. They have thoughts. They have goals. But we live in an era of a crisis of execution. It is not the people who have superpowers that get things done. It's the people who do things that get things done. What happened is, according to Brian P. Moran, we lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important. Every day is important. Every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly. Intentionality is your secret weapon in your war on mediocrity. So many things are thought of. So few things are executed. According to them, execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than their competition. That's it. They do. I read this book and I had this bright, shining aha moment. I stopped waiting and I created my newsletter within that 12-week year. I created this podcast within that 12-week year. My fitness amped up wildly in that 12-week year because instead of contemplating and pontificating and considering and turning it over in my mind, I got to doing and figuring it out as I go. That is an incredible gift that 2023 gave me. These are the things that elevated my life in the 2023 experience that I look forward to applying in the 2024 experience. The podcast is going to evolve a little bit as we go into the 2024 experience. The newsletter is going to evolve a little bit as we go into the 2024 experience. I am excited about both. You remember that I was inspired to name the newsletter, The Maven Mail, by the fact that I had read Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and he explained that some people are mavens. Some people are mavens in that they love to collect information and to share it with other people. That's what I do. It brings me so much fulfillment in a world that is otherwise relentless in requiring me to do things that take from me rather than fulfill me. It is one of the things that I have plugged into my life for the purpose of keeping me sane. It is one of the things that I have plugged into my life for the purpose of giving and being made whole by it. I'm so grateful that you have chosen to be a part of this journey with me. I'm excited to see how we grow together in 2024. Thank you for being here in 2023. I wish you the very best for 2024. If you love the podcast, if you like the podcast, if you listen to the podcast and sort of like it, please leave me a rating in your podcast app of choice. I know a lot of people listen because I can see the statistics, but don't necessarily subscribe. I would love it if you would hit the subscribe button because it makes a huge difference to the algorithm and the number of people that the podcast gets recommended to. In the last couple of weeks, a lot more people have been subscribing and I can see an immediate change in the numbers and in the algorithm. I am so grateful to you and I so appreciate you. Let's take 2024.