Mantras, Motivators, and Deep Thoughts
Kathy and Michelle talk about how they stay positive when things are difficult, what mantras keep them going, and the deep thoughts that make you feel like a philosopher.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Happy Friday, Kathy.
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Woo. We made it to another week. I’m excited.
Speaker 0 00:00:09 Seven more days.
Speaker 1 00:00:10 I woke up this morning and I, I swore, I swore that it was Saturday. I was just like, Oh. I made it through another, almost made it through another. had to change it. I literally thought it was Saturday, but it’s not
Speaker 0 00:00:25 Friday. Last last week, on Thursday all day long. I was like, Oh, thank God it’s Friday. And then like I even tweeted at some point, like, you know, when you think all day on Thursday that it’s Friday, waking up on Friday is really gonna suck . But we did, we made it through another week. Here we are.
Speaker 1 00:00:44 We did, we did.
Speaker 0 00:00:45 We’re both, we’re both smiling. Whether it’s real or forced. Although always talking to you, it’s real cuz I have fun with you. But ,
Speaker 1 00:00:53 Yes. I cherish my time with you every week. This is so much fun.
Speaker 0 00:00:57 Likewise.
Speaker 1 00:00:58 And I, this week I’m, one of the things I’m grateful for is I don’t work at Twitter.
Speaker 0 00:01:04 Oh yeah. Um, yeah. And then I read, there was like layoffs at Stripe too this week. So Yeah. It’s a scary time to be in tech.
Speaker 1 00:01:16 It’s a scary time period. It’s been a scary time.
Speaker 0 00:01:20 You’re right. But
Speaker 1 00:01:22 We’re all still here. We’re still here and we’re having fun now,
Speaker 0 00:01:27 So. Exactly. Exactly. For sure. Um, we were just talking before we started, so if you’re listening to us, first of all, thank you. We appreciate you. Um, secondly, if you’re listening to us or watching us hello, um, on our YouTube channel, we never know what we’re gonna talk about. Cause it’s not like we have scripted out, you know, platitudes and mantras and it, it’s not, this is not like deep thoughts with Jack Handy. Remember those first Saturday Night Life years ago or from whatever that was mad TV or whatever it was. We we’re not that level of deep. Um, we do not think ahead. We kind of like, so what happened this weekend? Did we make it through? And how deep was the compost? And we should really just rename this, the compost podcast.
Speaker 1 00:02:14 But WP Compost
Speaker 0 00:02:18 T I’m not sure how all that would go over the community, but I find it hysterical. Um,
Speaker 1 00:02:23 I do too,
Speaker 0 00:02:25 Right before. So we get all that, we get on the Zoom call together and we’re like, so what are you gonna talk about this week? I dunno, what are we gonna talk about this week? And then somehow we end up with at least 20 minutes of whether it’s inanity, I don’t know if that’s a word. I like it. Like it’s in name. This, I think in unanimity should be a word, if not already, Um, or, you know, really deep stuff. Or we might even have a few tears before we actually start, um, recording because life is not always freaking easy. But today Kathy started reading notes to herself and I love her notes to stuff because she has some of the best little self motivators as she started reading. So, So I want, I want you to share, Kathy, some of your little motivational things, the ones that you feel like feel comfortable sharing. Of
Speaker 1 00:03:11 Course. All right. Well, okay. So I, um, every morning I take my dog dogs for walks, , I’ve got the golden retriever who needs a long walk. And then I’ve got the docs end who’s only five, six months old and he needs a very short walk. And I’m just grateful for legs. You know, he’s got short legs and he gets his business done like that. Whereas the golden retriever has, you know, ulterior motives of like sniffing everything. . So I go for walks and I listen to anything that come. I’ll just like load up YouTube and it’s just like, okay, whatever looks interesting. Or I’ve got a few podcasts that I listen to. I listened to some stuff earlier this week and I actually like sat here and took notes because this person went super deep and I was just like writing these things down and some of the stuff was like coming to me, but some of the stuff was, he was saying it.
Speaker 1 00:04:07 And I’ve got like three pages of stuff where I am just like that. Then the next day after I did this, I went for a walk and it’s like, I was so like, detached from all of the things that might trigger me or all of my patterns of thoughts that might take me into a darker place or even patterns of thoughts that take me into a lighter place. I was just like in the present moment, so detached from all of this stuff and I was like, it’s just like the pattern of Cathy is taking the dog for a walk. It’s not even me. So who’s me? And I kept going deeper and deeper into this like nowness of me that was like really kind of divorced from the things that I believe about myself. Mm-hmm. , I’m telling you, it was sort of this existential experience.
Speaker 1 00:04:54 And then as I’m getting home I’m like, I bet you something’s going to trigger me. . I’m feeling so clean and so clear and so in the present moment of my now self, something’s gonna hit. And sure enough it did and it was like trying to go it, it was like trying to get in like super deep with me and I’m like, I was so good. I was, But it was just like, you get into this like momentary like nowness where everything is okay. Mm-hmm. and uh, yeah. So I, I haven’t looked at the notes since like listening to it, but until you mentioned something and I’m like, well let me look at my notes. And it’s like, so here’s one joy, have joy because you exist, don’t have joy because this happened or that didn’t happen because then you have to feel like bad or negative when something doesn’t happen or whatever.
Speaker 1 00:05:50 Mm-hmm. just be joyful that you exist. Hmm. Like just that you’re here. Yeah. And it like takes you down to, to like the core of self. I was just like, okay, I can try that because we aren’t our circumstances. Right. And when you’re joyful in that the patterns of like our beliefs about who we are, what we’re supposed to be, just get out of the way. And I like literally felt that for a few moments that one walk until I got tested and then it went away . But I’m gonna try really hard to get back to that
Speaker 0 00:06:23
Speaker 1 00:06:24 The last few days.
Speaker 0 00:06:26 You joy , you know joy
Speaker 1 00:06:29 Because you’re just here. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:31 You, you make me think about though, cuz it’s like crazy, crazy crazy. I’m on my walk. I, I listen to this, I have my moment, it’s peace, I’m centered and then like trigger, trigger trigger more insanity in our lives. Right. I don’t, I can’t remember if I shared the story with you or not yet, but I was, um, I think it was not tic cuz you know, I’m a single person. I live my life on TikTok. Um,
Speaker 0 00:06:57 But it was somebody saying that it was either their Reddit story, come on, those are the two places where I live. But where they were saying how they, uh, it was during Hurricane Ian and they were, um, in the middle of the storm and they, and it got calm and they went outside to kind of take that moment and they looked next door and the woman, the new couple that had moved in, um, the husband, the garage door was open, the car was gone, the wife was starting to take the um, the the boarding off of like the windows and stuff. And the, the lady said, What are you doing? And they’re like, Oh, it’s over, blah blah. And she goes, No, you have about 40 minutes before it starts back up again. This is the eye of the storm. And she says, if you can get ahold of your husband, if you know, if your sales work call him cuz he needs to get back home and get that car back in the garage and y’all need to batten down for the second half of this. And so when you were saying about like, you had that day and then like sure enough something’s gonna happen. I’m like, Yeah, sometimes we do get those moments where it’s the eye of the storm, you know, and we know more’s coming and we’ve been through it, we’re not done yet. But man, you can actually walk outside, rest and breathe Yeah. During those moments of respite.
Speaker 1 00:08:14 Right, right. Yeah. I keep trying to, because I mean my life, we have to engage, you know, I can’t just as much as I’d like to meditate all day and just kind of be in my inner peace. Yeah. I have to engage. I have, I have things I have to do, but I also have things I want to do, you know. Sure. I mean, I love the word press community and I love helping, I just got the coolest message from somebody on LinkedIn of all places, which usually it’s just like people selling their SEO services and stuff. But this person actually like, just started working with Cadence and created like a gorgeous site and wanted to share it. I’m just like, I’m here for, I am here for that person, Andy and all anybody else. You’re doing something cool with WordPress, I wanna see it. I’m, I’m here for that. Right. Yeah. And if I’m just sitting there meditating, how am I like, like I wanna feel that passion that’s exciting to me. That gets me wanting to do Yes. And to the rest of the world. So I’m okay with a little bit of storm if it means that I get to do that. You know?
Speaker 0 00:09:17 Yeah. I mean, Andy brought you joy, like Andy’s existence brought your existence joy. That’s that’s pretty sweet. Like those moments are really awesome moments, right?
Speaker 1 00:09:27 They are. Yeah. It’s just, you can’t get attached to them and like, okay, like where’s the next Andy? Like right. Please bring me in handy because I need to, I need to feel this otherwise I’m not okay. It’s like, no, I’m okay and, and this great thing has been added onto my life that just gave me joy. And guess what? I get to share that with the cadence team and say, Hey, you people did this for Andy and I’m just here to like tell the story. Right. But mm-hmm. to, to be able to like empower our team to be able to feel real pride in what they’re doing too and share that that is a blessing. That’s like, I got the best job in the world.
Speaker 0 00:10:05 Yeah. And so I was like, I was always told you can’t live on the mountaintop. Right. Those mountaintop experiences. Yes. There are people who live on mountaintops, I get that. Right. But like, you climb to that mountain, you have those mountaintop experiences where you’re like just on top of the world, um, which we, but we can’t live there. But you know what I was just thinking when you were saying that is when you’re standing on the mountaintop and you’re taking in the view, what’s the beautiful view that you’re seeing? You’re admiring the valley, but we live on the valley. Right. The valley’s not a bad place just cuz we’re not on the mountaintop all the time. We can’t see the gorgeousness of, of the area that we are. But you are still in the beauty and in where it happens. It’s just that those mountaintop experiences give us the opportunity to appreciate the whole
Speaker 1 00:10:49 Right. And then when you go back down to the valley, you get to look up at a beautiful mountain and I’m all about that, you know, and sudden
Speaker 0 00:10:56 You just, and suddenly we’re Jack handy. Did you hear that? We just got really deep. Ok. Sorry, what were we gonna say? ? Oh, we’re gonna have the younger generation like Googling who is Jack handy? .
Speaker 1 00:11:08 Yeah, exactly. It’ll be worth it,
Speaker 0 00:11:12 I promise. . So what are some of the other things that you wrote down? The other, um, motivations? Oh
Speaker 1 00:11:17 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:11:18 Um,
Speaker 1 00:11:20 Here’s wine love. Like you’ve never been hurt.
Speaker 0 00:11:26 Mm. That’s not always easy, is
Speaker 1 00:11:29 That? Cause we, we, it isn’t, We close ourselves down and try to, you know, our ego wants to protect us from being hurt. Our ego wants to protect us from bad things that threaten Michelle and Kathy. Right? Sure. Our ego wants to put up walls. But part of the beauty of life is to love. When I was younger, you know, I grew up sort of in a tumultuous family and I remember asking myself this question, Is it better to love or is it better to be loved? And I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t, I didn’t know. And I had to explore a lot of that. And now that I’m older, I I really get it. It’s better to love because that feeling’s cosing through you. It’s like, you know, like my husband, I know he loves me, but it’s, it feels better to me to love him.
Speaker 1 00:12:17 It’s, and to be able to like flow that love of everyone and everything and to not worry about what someone says or what someone does, but to just be love that feel to to to listen to a piece of music and feel appreciation and love of that music. And feel those feelings in your body to, to love someone, to love your dog, to love your cats, to love the trees and the tornado that’s trying to kill Texas, I guess . But to just feel love for everything. Um, that’s what we’re here to do. And to not worry about the hurt part of it, because really no one can hurt you. You know, no one can really, really hurt that core part of you. They can trigger you. They can trigger like a old ancestral pattern that you picked up from your parents and make that feel terrible. But just to feel love, to be love. It’s so not dependent upon anything on the exterior. It’s just right here inside and you can just sit and feel love. Um, the the thing is, is like, so as I was trying to unravel that trigger that hit me the other day. Yeah. I tried to feel love in that moment and I, it was so hard, but I just kept trying to go there. Mm-hmm. and I’m, I’m sad to report that I was unsuccessful in some . I tried and try again.
Speaker 0 00:13:41 In that moment, in that moment, you were unsuccessful, right?
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Yeah, I was. But I’m gonna try again. Like I’ve never been hurt.
Speaker 0 00:13:48 That’s right. Cause you can’t swim in the ocean and stand on the bottom at the same time. Right. Like, you’re not, if you’re not near the shore, so you could be in it, you know that there is a bottom, you know, that, you know that like at some point your feet are gonna hit the, hit that ground again. Right. But, and, and you could, and it’s the same. Like you could be surrounded in all this stuff, you know, that love is there when I’m struggling I, it’s like I become dory from finding an emo but instead of the swimming, I I say breathing, like, just keep breathing, just keep breathing, Just keep breathing, breathing, breathing. You know, that’s like my little thing is like, yes, I can get through this. Yes I can get through this. Yes I can get through. Just like preach it till I mean it, you know, until I feel it and yeah. Fake it till you make
Speaker 1 00:14:38 It. Well sometimes it’s just waiting for that other side of the storm to go by. It’s like there’s nothing you can do like with certain events and things that are happening around you or with somebody who’s like trying to trigger you to like breathe through that. Maybe that’s what I should have done . But to be able to like breathe through an experience like that until like the weather passes, you know, it’s eventually going to pass. It’s not going to, nothing is ever going to last forever except for that like, nowness within you so mm-hmm. . Yeah. Breathing through it.
Speaker 0 00:15:09 Just keep Yeah. Definit breathing. Definitely. And, and the other thing like, I remember like my whole life, people saying things like, somewhere somebody’s got it worse than you so don’t feel so bad. And I’ve always hated that, right? Like, just because somebody’s had it worse than me doesn’t mean that my feelings aren’t valid. Doesn’t mean I don’t get to not like what’s happening right now. Uh, cuz guess what? Somebody’s always got better than me too. So should I not be as happy? Right? So like feelings are ok, feelings are ok. You just can’t, You have the negative feelings, you just can’t cuz that’s negative, that’s hurting yourself. But Right. You’re allowed to have the negative feelings and process through them.
Speaker 1 00:15:47 We have to accept them. If you try to resist what you resist persists, it just sticks around until you look at it. Right? Yeah. And so if you don’t actually acknowledge that your feelings are valid and that it’s okay and that you can be devastated and you can lose everything and still be okay . Yeah. Just, you know, no matter what happens, no matter what, um, hurt happens, it, it, it doesn’t define you. You’re gonna be okay through it. But if you try to resist it and like, I can’t live through that. I can’t do this, I don’t want to do this and like push it away. It’s almost like it pushes it down until you like just say uncle and like then you realize you, you are okay no matter what happens because you are you and there’s no one else like you Yes. And you’re special and amazing and so to, but you have to accept the, the hurt feeling in order to understand it and let go of it. Mm-hmm. . But if you resist it.
Speaker 0 00:16:49 Yeah. And we could create our own joy too, right? So like we don’t have to like, we have to feel the feelings. We don’t have to wallow in them. And certainly we can decide to do things that make us happy instead. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna redirect us for a quick second here. Last week we talked about my Halloween costume. Yeah. And I gave everybody, if you’d heard about it in advance, this past Monday morning, I kept my camera off on this weekend. WordPress, Kathy and I are both co-hosts there. We never on the same time because we, we um, uh, rotate in and out of being co-host with uh, Nathan Wrigley on this weekend. WordPress, I happened to be the co-host on Halloween and I had a long grade haired wig, which I pulled back into a ponytail. I used makeup and gave myself that five o’clock shadow type beard put on my black glasses and a and a stellar WP T-shirt.
Speaker 0 00:17:40 So I was wearing a, a branded t-shirt and we started the show with the other three people with their cameras on and mine off. I asked Nathan to bring up to take the other two off screen for just a minute so it would be like large picture him and me and I turned my camera on and I thought he was gonna fall off his chair. He laughed so hard. So if you haven’t seen it yet, ping me, I will send you the direct link. Um, or just go to my Twitter account. Scroll down to last week. Cuz I’ve posted about a lot this week. I cannot tell you how much joy that brought me this week. in spite of everything else that happened this week. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 00:18:20 It was amazing. I’ve, I had to do something right when it was starting. Um, and so I didn’t get to watch it live, but I went back and the show was still going on and I had to do the YouTube scroll thing to try to get back to the moment. And Nathan was just, he was not expecting. That was so funny. And then I loved how you did the other Nathan Wrigley as you
Speaker 0 00:18:44 Spectacular.
Speaker 1 00:18:47 It was so funny. I loved it
Speaker 0 00:18:49 Throughout most of this week. I don’t know if he’s changed it back yet, but he actually used a screenshot of my face as his profile picture on, on Twitter, which absolutely cracked me up. But every time I see him post, I think it’s me. And I’m so confused. .
Speaker 1 00:19:03 That is so funny. It was so epic. And it was, Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:19:08 I’ll never top that.
Speaker 1 00:19:09 I love how you did the five o’clock shadow too. That was like, that was per, You were gonna do a gray beard first, right? Right.
Speaker 0 00:19:16 I had this weird gray beard thing that I bought on Amazon and it was like, you know, that piece of like fake fur and it just, I just looked, I looked like, and off I looked like, you know, , like I don’t know who the hair potter guy is. You know, the, I can’t remember everybody’s names, but, um, yeah, it just, it looked like I was trying to be like too much cosplay and I was doing cosplay as Nathan, but he doesn’t have that big gray beard. So I went with the makeup and
Speaker 1 00:19:40 It worked.
Speaker 0 00:19:41 It worked. It was awesome. , I couldn’t see through the whole thing cause the glasses I was wearing, um, were bifocals and ad normally like I don’t, or otherwise I have to sit like this and look at the bottom of my glasses. So I couldn’t see a darn thing to the whole show. But it was worth, it was worth the headache that came later.
Speaker 1 00:20:01 Oh my gosh. It was the best thing that happened in WordPress this week, in my opinion. It was so fun. We need more of that.
Speaker 0 00:20:10 We do for sure. I don’t think there’s anybody else I could dress up as and have it click so fast. But it was, it was fun for sure.
Speaker 1 00:20:18 It was great. I loved it. Thank you. Thank you for the heads up on it. So that I knew to watch. Cause I think I messaged a couple of people, Oh you have to watch this morning. And I was like, someone booked me for a meeting and it’s like, you know, I’ll talk to anybody about cadence. He booked me, I’ll talk to you about it. No problem. Security, same thing. Um, and somebody booked me and I’m like, because it was an hour later because of their time changed.
Speaker 0 00:20:42 Right. And so I missed it. Yeah, that’s, But you got to see it. And that was important. The, um, the chat, you know, the, the community chat I went along with that was just, it was great. And then Bob don tweeting that, um, you know, starting his week with me, dress coming across as Nathan was not how he expected to start his Monday morning. And that hit well too. So that was a lot of fun. I had a plan. It
Speaker 1 00:21:05 Was so great. Loved
Speaker 0 00:21:06 It. So make your own joy, even if it means a wig and some, some, yeah. Fake, fake beard and all the other things and just, yeah. Find your moments. Have some fun. Life doesn’t have to be, life can be hard. Life is hard. But we can make the moments that we want. We can create those memories. We can create the joy. Um, we can forge the friendships and the relationships that bring us joy like ours. Um, and, and the things that kind of get you through it. So, um, if you’re having a tough week, just know that we’ve been there. We’re still going through it, but we’re finding ways to enjoy each other’s company, enjoy the company of others, and create the joy as we go along. So I appreciate your, um, your words and your mantra and your reminders, um, today. And I hope that other people find those to be as strong too.
Speaker 1 00:21:56 So, Thanks Michelle. Yeah. I’m glad I wrote ’em down because I need, I need to work on ’em more. So thank you.
Speaker 0 00:22:01 Yeah. Anytime you write ’em down, feel free to share them with me cuz they’re, they’re wonderful. They are those nuggets that we need sometimes. So. And if you’re listening and you’ve made it this far, thank you. You are also a nugget for us and we appreciate you and we hope that we’ve given you something to, um, motivate you through this week as well.
Speaker 1 00:22:20 Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 0 00:22:23 Bye.